Abstract
Stephen Prince’s new book is a valuable contribution to the growing literature on digital culture – an admirable attempt to both sum up its achievements and calm the level of anxiety that digital techniques have inspired in the critical community. Although this technology was initiated in the 1970s, the pace of its acceleration has been at a full tilt since the early 1990s releases of Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. Prince’s topic is limited to feature length movies, typically Hollywood higher budget movies, but within this limitation Prince is ecumenical in discussing films ranging across action, fantasy, drama, animation and other genres. All these genres, including full-length animation, are defined by their relationship to narrative realism.
Although the digital revolution is now fully matured, it still strives to be invisible. So far, digital visual manipulations emulate photorealism and are considered successful to the extent that the audience may well wonder if it has been a change at all. But we cannot ignore it: critical understanding postulates that even hidden techniques alter expressive meanings.
The book features a useful survey of the history of digital technology. Individual chapters are about selected production departments, such as lighting, performance and art directing, which form the codes of realism that anchor the visual aspect of classic Hollywood storytelling. Prince describes the astonishing lengths to which computer whizzes have gone to convince the viewing public that the digital image is still a photograph. There are breathtaking descriptions in the lighting section of global illumination algorithms, subsurface scattering and the computational invention of ‘gummi lights’ (pp. 66–69). The last is a mathematical formula for a virtual light that ‘conveys directional transmission through an object rather than by scattering’ (p. 69). Animators found this necessary for handling surfaces underwater in Finding Nemo (2003). Similar heroism occurred when other modellers recorded actual mirror balls to create the mathematics of high dynamic range imaging (p. 194). Even if the reader understands the older principles of cinematography, only a ‘gee whiz’ response is possible because it is so hard to comprehend these algorithms. Prince makes a valiant effort to describe the techniques, but he is hampered by the decision to not to include figures and illustrations.
Other more technical books will doubtless better explain the techniques. Here, the task is to argue that the digital visual effects adhere to conventional codes of realism. Prince goes so far as to borrow the film director James Cameron’s phrase ‘the seduction of reality’ for the subtitle of the book. Such hyperbole is a surprising move for an academic and betrays a certain anxiety. Film critics should not accept industry assurances that everything in movieland is the same except that effects are getting better. The continuous infiltration of digital into the filmic in recent years creates the problem of when does the sheer quantity of digital enhancements tip over into a ‘quality of film’ issue. ‘What are digital effects doing to our perception of realism?’ is Prince’s principal problem. Earlier he had developed the notion of perceptional realism to reassure digital skeptics (see Prince, 2006). The current book is an attempt to respond to those who continue to dispute perceptual realism.
In the 1950s, Andre Bazin famously used the photorealism of film to champion stylistic uses of deep focus and shots of long duration. Currently, digital sceptics such as Rodowick (2007) and Jean-Pierre (2002) have been quick to cite Bazin’s theory to question the new methods, and therefore Prince treats Bazin as the disapproving father who he tries to reconcile to the new digital effects. The reconciliation begins with the assertion that digital effects have effectively increased the opportunities for long duration shots and deeper focus because the digital recreation of the world overcomes the previous limitations of photographic equipment. Longer duration comes about because digital effects are so realistic that the shot can be held longer without the audience perceiving the artifice of the effect and because the transitions (such as from man to werewolf) can be presented in its entirety to the camera, eliminating the need for cutting to a reaction shot. Although digital techniques have forced actors to perform on a bare set against an empty green screen without props or costumes, some actors have actually claimed that the integrity of their performances have been enhanced by the ability to perform the entire scene, in one shot (the various camera angles are determined by the computer afterwards in post-production). Therefore, on two counts, the demands of the father are satisfied.
Although plausible, these and the other examples that rely too much on the audience’s acceptance of the results. Prince’s pragmatism sidesteps Rodowick’s categorical challenge to perceptual reality. I suspect Bazin would remain indifferent to Prince’s arguments. Bazin’s original remarks about film style were to champion the humanism of films made by Robert Bresson, Jean Renoir and others. Prince and others (such as David Bordwell and Tom Gunning) imply that categorical challenges are futile Luddite resistance to what the audience wants.
But there is determinism at work. The digital revolution is proceeding along its path because of the blockbuster aesthetic that has captured global film-making over the last few decades. It is the blockbuster emphasis on visceral experience over reflective emotions that conditions digital techniques. In other spheres of life, such as work and communication, the audience has already learned to accept the computational rendering of human relations and emotions. Digital visual effects ensure that storytelling will also become part of computational life, rather than a refuge.