The space of transparency - motion graphics, visual fx and compositing
Motion graphic compositing... It is neither Animation nor Special Effects.
Whilst any clean definition is problematic we may say, for ease of argument, that Animation is concerned with 'giving life to'. Where as Motion Graphics is more broadly about the 'setting in motion' of visual elements; a decidedly much broader act of cinema creation.
Likewise in regard to Special Effects I would make, as Lev Manovich does in his article 'After Effects or Velvet Revolution', a clear distinction between the visual/special effects of large budget cinema (which may indeed use compositing and layers) and motion graphic compositing as an art unto itself.
Manovich rightly defines these 'special' effects (think, Godzilla, King Kong, Independence day, Star Wars, bullet time effects in The Matrix and so on) as being the construction of an illusion space. This is fundamentally different to the motion graphics composit which bares no hallmarks of illusion in the sense of an intent to deceive the viewers perceptions.
In simple terms special-effects seek to be unidentifiable as effects. Where as motion graphic compositing by contrast wears its constructed non-natural modes on its sleeve making no pretence at 'hiding the edges'.
John Jackman, speaking from a technical production level, applies a broad brush to defining compositing as an umbrella term we use to cover a number of different technologies that allow the creation of a new image from multiple unrelated elements. (2007, p5)
Despite the purely practical and technical nature of Jackmans book on Chromakey effects, his definition alludes to something much more significant to the conceptual aesthetics of compositing and what the process of fusing cinematic layers may pertain for our understanding of the cinema language.
His use of the words multiple unrelated elements drives us to consider the implication of imagery that would otherwise not coexist spatially and dynamically, combined into a layered, but none the less holistic, perception.
Layers and the Common Denominator
For all the tools, techniques and technicalities that permit compositing there is a single fundamental that allows for compositing to exist Transparency. Without the ability to render parts, selections or gradations of an image transparent to subsequent layers beneath, compositing is not possible. It becomes simple collage with a range of fundamentally different aesthetics.
The act of deliberately investing an image with transparency (both in terms of selective portions of the image as well as levels of opacity) by default, invites into the visual indexicallity of that image the visual properties of other images. Subsequently (and rather obviously) transparency is what makes layers possible. A see-through section of one image positioned over another allows for the lower image layer to contribute to the greater image whole.
The range of what might be called motion graphic compositing is enormous but the creation and exploitation of Layered Transparency, known in computer graphic terms as the Alpha Channel - a mask for the Red Green Blue channels of the image, is fundamental to all forms and processes.
The other distinction, as Manovich points out, central to compositing; that which makes it unique from simple collage, is "the new ability to combine together multiple levels of imagery with varying degrees of transparency"
Manovich comments that the lack of transparency limited the number of image sources, and so to possibilities, of arrangement in traditional cinema construction environments.
But I would argue this further and more broadly. Collage, by virtue of a finite spatiality, where there is a saturation point of imagery, there is an inherent hierarchy in the images used. Collage obviously allows for 'Layers' but without levels of transparency those layers take on positions of hierarchical privilege. One image over another, opaquely obscuring it, creates dominance.
Similarly, Collage aesthetics are effectively linear in that by this opaque hierarchical obscuring and hard-edge placement, they dictate a non-temporal but none the less segmented and progressional manner of experience.
However when alpha-channel transparency is introduced dominance and visual hierarchy are supplanted with a much more open spatiality of composition. The composer of a motion graphic sequence is not inherently working in a linear manner and because transparency makes for variation, flexibility and visual elemental uncertainty, there are no inherent biases or hierachical structures. An identifiable sense of where one element ends and the next begins is largely dispensed with.
Third meanings
two film pieces of any kind, placed together, inevitably combine into a new concept, a new quality, arising out of the juxtaposition. (Eisenstein, 1947. p4)
This quote from Sergi Eisenstein is the foundation of montage cinema; the principle of the third-meaning that arises when two images are sequenced together; context and meaning built from arrangement of images in order rather than the indexical meaning inherent in the image itself, statically.
This idea of blending multiple images in a layered fashion is certainly nothing new nor unique to the digital realm; rather the art of compositing has a long history through cinema.
But what the digital age and, in particular the software environment, has done however is create universal suffrage for media types. Within the compositing software paradigm there is no privilege for one media type over another. Photo, video, 2d, 3d, real and virtual, text and sound all universally co-exist without hierarchy.
When we use compositing to bring together these otherwise unrelated media and fuse them into singularity through layers we invoke new relationships between image, the viewer and visual representation.
That said, it is still fair to ask is motion graphic compositing simply Moving Image Collage?
Juxtaposition, as a concept, is fundamental to collage as a composition - that disparate elements that naturally have no place to coexist, are placed in a forced association to forge new meanings by proximity.
The very premise of collage through juxtaposition is to make the viewer acutely aware of the unnaturalness of the association of disparate elements in order to create meanings.
But in motion graphic compositing the unique production/creation 'space' the software environment constructs is one where the very essence of juxtaposition is lost as all media elements possess a natural, non hierarchical status of coexistence - they all stand of equal rank and equal importance on a stage where animation, illustration, typography and photography do not play second fiddle to video or film as a prime media.
These 'unnatural' interplays have no innate strangeness. The association is perfectly 'normal' despite the individual language tenets each may individually bring to bare.
Motion graphic compositing is therefore arguably not concerned with making meaning through juxtaposition but more simply meaning derived from throwing open the colour palette of visual language possibilities to work cohesively in a unified space.
Singularity
The significance of this is in comparison and contrast to other artforms that similarly use multiple coexisting elements; photo montage for example or painterly artworks comprised of multiple paintings assembled into a conglomerate of discreet images to form an impression of a whole.
The core distinction is that in non-computer photography, painting and drawing, a parameter of transparency is simply absent, largely not possible or functional by the nature of physical mediums such as paper and canvas.
By contrast digital transparency allows for a palpable sense of the infinite; that the individual parts relinquish their individuality and become integrated contributors to a spatial rather than framic composition - a limitless whole.
Moreover that the viewer, whilst most often under no illusion as to the apparatus of the image fantasy, is none the less unprompted to see the components of the composit as anything but a singular form.
Collage vs Montage vs Composit ?
So, to understand more fully how compositing might present new modes of cinematic language, we need to perhaps articulate the key terms...
Collage = individual elements identifiable individually but seen simultaneously (juxtaposition by adjacent proximity)
Montage = individual elements identifiable individually but also seen individually (juxtaposition by temporal sequence)
Composit = individual elements that are neither necasarilly identifiable individually nor seen individually and which are perceived both sequentially and simultaneously (juxtaposition constructed in time and arrangement but as a singularity of space)
In this context we may view transparency as the spatial organizer of Baroque aesthetics in layered and spatially-based cinematic form.
Transparency becomes the conduit to allow the form to exist.
Without transparency we have a finite saturation of image information.
But with transparency we have an infinite spectrum of blending possibilities for image co-existence and the frames that define individual image elements rendered dissolved.
Object vs Subject
Compositing, in essence, centres on a purity of visual Objectification - a solitary focus on the object alone and divorced from surrounds, environs, place and context.
Where camera-based cinema might be said to be a process of placing the Subject in spatiality of scenic locale (much of the traditional Mise en scene) the construction of cinematic composits is an antithesis approach whereby the Object is removed from scenic locale and 'objectified' as a solitary component freely able to have a context constructed for it and around it.
By contrast, in traditional cinema the focal element may be seen as a 'subject' because the meanings built for the audience are done so by directly subjecting the element to other framic parameters which imbue the subject with meaning. The element is subjected to the compositional space and frame.
In compositing the focal element is an 'Object' because it is objectified as independent and outside of (even unaffected by) its surrounds rather than subjected to them.
To the Object-Based composit the framing is irrelevant. To the Subject-Based camera shot the framing is paramount.
Between these two we can see very different, even opposing, perceptions of the 'space' from which the images are drawn - Compositing seeks in its genesis to remove spatial/framic composition, Cinema in its genesis seeks to embrace the spatiality of framic composition.
Cinema language
A study by the Media Research Lab at the University of Texas (entitled Surfing all channels) lays out the media consumption of US consumers. Of all the forms that could be defined as cinematic media (ie screen-based audio-visual mediums) it is feature film at the movie theatre that is an extremely distant last in terms of viewer exposure.
According to the study, theatrical box office represents just 12 hours of viewing per person, per year where as total television hours were 1555 per year. Even considering that some proportion of the TV viewing is feature films and home DVD (92 hours per year) may be dominantly feature films, the proportion of cinematic media being consumed is still overwhelmingly NOT from the feature film category.
As such defining common cinematic language narrowly by the trends and aesthetics of theatrical release feature film is simply dysfunctional. Instead we must look to the mainstream language of cinematic forms outside of theatrical release to gain a more consistent and accurate conceptualization of the evolving visual language viewers possess and, indeed, are being consistently trained to read.
The spatial composition of layers employing transparency via the alpha channel, the symbiotic simultaneity of a visual communication that defies the frame and embraces three-dimensionality of composition, is at the heart of contemporary cinematic form.
Whilst feature film still relies predominantly on these tools and aesthetics for the construction of perceptible realities (special effects to make the unreal look real) the broader concept of cinema evokes a much larger aesthetic context; one that seeks density and efficiency of communication through a new spatial language of layers.
The imperative for this examination is to re-consider the modes by which we might understand Directorial Intent. Cinema Studies has long made assumptions about a direct connectedness between how cinema is MADE and how it is WATCHED. A definitive quote from Gibbs highlights this assumption
On set or location, filmmakers do not stage the action and only subsequently think about where the camera is going to be placed in order to record it. (Gibbs, 2002. p54)
What Gibbs seems to be suggesting is that the position of viewership is pre-defined by the filmaker from the outset of the 'composition'.
Evidently Gibbs has never made a film and certainly has never worked with contemporary 3D CGI or motion graphics technology for that is EXACTLY what directors do.
The composition of live-action, let alone 3D and layered projects, is directly a process of defining a spatiality first into which then a camera is inserted. Indeed in the 3D and Layered paradigm the possibilities for that camera insertion are infinite and not constrained by physicality.
Thus, I would contend there is a distinct disconnect whereby the viewer experiences Framed composition, seeing the FRAME as primary. But for the Director the FRAME is actually the last and least significant compositional paradigm. The composition of an architectural rather than photographic SPACE is first and foremost.
Moreover this spatiality is wholly consistent across all screen-based media - animation, motion graphics, 3D, computer gaming all experienced framicaly but are composed spatially.
For the viewer cinema remains the 'moving image' but for the filmmaker it is distinctly 'moving architecture'
As such I believe we are prompted to reconsider how we analyse directorial intent. In studying cinema we must reconsider the assumptions we make about the Auteur and the Mise en scene.
We must recognize that screen is not inverted camera, and the mode of viewing is not directly connected to the mode of making.
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An audio podcast of this paper is available form my website www.mikejones.net.au: just got to the podcast section.
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http://www.artofthetitle.com/
http://motionographer.com/
Manovich, L., 2006. AFter Effects or Velvet Revolution Part 2. Available at: http://manovich.net/DOCS/ae_article_part2.doc.
Jackman, J., 2007. Bluescreen compositing: a practical guide for video and moviemaking., Burlington: Focal Press.
Eisenstein, S., 1947. The Film Sense 1969th ed., San Diego: Harcourt Brace.
Ndalianis, A., 2000. Architectures of the senses: Neo-Baroque entertainment spectacles. In Rethinking media change. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Erin Geisler, 2007. Surfing All the Channels. Available at: http://www.utexas.edu/features/2007/media/ [Accessed July 20, 2008].
Gibbs, J., 2002. Mise-En-Scene: film style and interpretation, London: Wallflower Press.
