Intangible spaces

Hugo: building space

John Logan, the scriptwriter of Hugo, describes Martin Scorsese in the following way: ‘Here is a master of the movie-telling art form working with a new technology for the first time’. Stated in the context of a celebration of Scorsese (and the film-making team involved in Hugo), a mastery of 3D is implied too. That the paratexts around Hugo frequently and explicitly promote the perspective of a master at work is not surprising, they more usually than not endorse the successes of a director, especially one with such an illustrious career as Scorsese. Paratexts also applaud the film-making teams involved in visual effects and digital 3D cinematography. The emphasis on mastery obscures a complex negotiation between technologies and film-makers. Alongside such emphases, paratexts equally reveal a 3D space that is shaped by the relations between moving image technologies and their human users. Thinking in terms of relationality involves giving more scope to the technological shaping of cinema space. In making this move, both human users and technologies contribute, technologies mediating the aims of the film-maker and vice versa. Of particular interest in the disclosures of Hugo is the description of 3D space as something in which to build depth, rather than a space where film-makers build in depth. The latter suggests that depth is already there, while the former draws attention to negotiations between a technologically mediated shaping of 3D space and film-makers who seek to work with and in that space. ²

Teasing apart the emphasis on mastery can begin by looking at Hugo and how it explores the relationship between technologies and humans. Questions about mastery are not only pervasive in the paratexts, as it is also active in the narratives of technology running through the story-world of Hugo. In the featurette Shooting the Moon, released on the DVD of Hugo, director Martin Scorsese remarks that the young boy Hugo has an ‘association with the machinery of creativity’. In Hugo, the boy is seen to master this machinery as he tends to the station’s clocks, fixes toys and the automaton so central to the story arc around the figure of Georges Méliès. Mastery over the machinery of dreams is also encountered through the reconstruction of Méliès’ Star Film Studio and the restaging of his illusions. Inside the reimagined studio, the scenario played out is taken from The Kingdom of Fairies. The method for staging depth circa 1903, the year the film was made, is part of the reveal of the scene, seen through the fascinated eyes of another little boy, the young Professor Tabard. As the contemporary 3D camera reframes from an apparently complete scene to show a man dropping lobsters into a large fish tank, the creation of early cinematic space through set design and trick photography becomes apparent. ³

The emphasis on the creation of cinematic space in this reconstruction of the Star Film Studio resonates with Scorsese’s view (also stated in Shooting the Moon) that how a person uses space to tell a story is always important. But unlike the evocative visit to the Star Film Studio, the story-world depictions of spectacular clock mechanisms, and the delicate intricacies of the automaton, the machinery of the high definition (HD)-digital 3D space of contemporary cinema is much less tangible. Even so, the playful reveal of lobsters dropped into a fish tank shows early cinematic space to be an illusion based on technologically mediated relations between objects and provides an allusion for understanding 3D cinematic space too. That is, a space that is a coming together of particular entities and not something already out there waiting to be mastered.

A year before the release of Hugo, Scorsese was interviewed about his experience of using 3D:

When asked how the filming of Hugo Cabret was going, Scorsese said, ‘It’s going. It’s going. It’s an experience. The geometry of it, everything, you’re really redefining. You’re trying to figure out how to tell the story again in pictures with this 3D, which is really interesting.’ (Martin Scorsese, quoted in Clark, 2010)

Relationality is a quite long-standing concept in science and technology studies, where it is understood to be a network of connections ‘composed not only of people but also of machines, animals, texts, money, architectures – any material that you care to mention’ (Law, 1992). As the stuff of relations occur across a range of heterogeneous materials, mediation involves intervening interactions between the technologies, humans and objects that come together. Writing about 3D cinematography on Hugo, Oliver Peters states: ‘Unlike the groundbreaking Avatar, which relied heavily on motion capture and synthetic environments, Hugo is a more cinematic production with real sets, actors and is based on the traditional language of filmmaking’ (Peters, 2011). The heterogeneous materials include the deep sets designed for the film, the computer-generated extensions of those sets, the cast of actors and numerous extras that appear within many of the sequences, and also the film crew. Commenting further on the interplay between these elements and the stereoscopic camera, Peters comments: ‘Performances, lighting, stereography and the position of items in the set were all tweaked to get the best results in 3D’ (Peters, 2011). Looking at Bruno Latour’s distinction between an intermediary and mediation helps clarify how an object such as a camera can be said to mediate in creating depth. An intermediary ‘is what transports meaning or force without transformation: defining its inputs is enough to define its outputs’ (Latour, 2007: 39). Mediators, by contrast, alter an input: ‘Their input is never a good predictor of their output; their specificity has to be taken into account every time. Mediators transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry’ (Latour, 2007: 39). Objects mediate, then, by intervening in some way, and the extent and range of interventions varies according to different situations. Following this definition of mediation, the relations between the film crew, HD-digital (in the case of Hugo Arri Alexa) cameras and stereoscopic rig, actors and physical set, shape the space seen within the frame.

Returning to stereographer Demetri Portelli’s comments about working on the set of Hugo: ‘With 3D tools in the film-maker’s toolbox, a new language is emerging in our trade, a constantly evolving language that involves digital-workflow solutions, and depth-within-space concepts’ (Portelli, quoted in Hope-Jones, 2011: 58). ‘Depth-within-space’ is an unusual turn of phrase, and the one that begins to get closer to the particular mediations that generate ‘true’ 3D space. Depth is not just there, given by the parameters of the set, it is also possible to ‘build depth’, to use Portelli’s phrase. By this, Portelli is referring to the ability of a stereographer to control (via convergence) where the 3D space in located in relation to a viewer, so that they see objects in depth in front or behind the screen. This depth is referred to as the stereoscopic volume, which can be inflated or deflated, depending on the shot requirement. In addition, the focal plane lies somewhere within that stereoscopic volume. ⁶ By having elements within the stereoscopic volume in focus or not, the cinematic space is shaped to direct a viewer’s attention to different aspects of the shot. Stereography involves working with both the stereoscopic volume and focal plane so as to build and sculpt depth, and then, as Lisa Purse puts it: ‘[T]he spectator is forced to reconsider the configuration of the space they are engaging with’ (Purse, 2013: 141).

To give some further technical details on controlling convergence: a 3D rig consists of two cameras, and depth of space is crafted by working with both the inter-axial distance (IA) and convergence. The IA (sometimes also called inter-ocular distance (IO)) refers to the distance between the centres of the two lenses. Widening the IA by moving the lenses apart shifts all the objects in a scene away from one another and so increases the perceived depth separation. Altering the angle between the lenses repositions the point of convergence. The convergence point is the screen plane, the point at which the two stereoscopic images merge and can be thought of as the anchor point for 3D space. Behind the screen plane or the convergence point, objects have the appearance of going into depth away from viewers (positive parallax), while in front of the screen plane objects apparently come out towards a viewer (negative parallax or protrusion). Prince describes this as follows: ‘The ability to control convergence settings so as to position objects in stereo space changes the planar screen of conventional cinema to a window in depth through which and out of which objects and characters may travel’ (Prince, 2012: 208). Adjusting both the IA and convergence point allow film-makers to build depth rather than build in depth, expanding or reducing the stereoscopic volume of a scene. According to Portelli, these mediations allow for a range of depth configurations, crafted to suit the particular stylistic needs of any given film:

Every 3D shot starts as a 2D shot – every time you set up the camera, we’re all in 2D land. And then you have to find the appropriate stereo for the shot; the right depth space. It’s always particular to the film – are you going for realism, or something very surreal or expressive? (Portelli, quoted in 3D Ontario, 2011)

Expanding on the notion of entanglement explains this further. Karen Barad argues: ‘To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence’ (Barad, 2007: ix). ⁷ When entangled, things come into being through their material-discursive relationalities. Any discursive system is itself entangled with the materiality of both the means of knowing and the thing known: ‘The point is not merely that knowledge practices have material consequences but that practices of knowing are specific material engagements that participate in (re)configuring the world’ (Barad, 2007: 91). Rephrasing this in terms of space allows us to say that the practices of building depth are specific material engagements that participate in reconfiguring cinematic space. Building depth through a material engagement with 3D comes from a manipulation of the relations between the dual cameras that define the parameters of the stereoscopic volumes. That is to say, building depth does not involve directly manipulating 3D space, as that would assume it has an independent existence. Instead, building depth is able to happen because it involves manipulating the material relations through which such a space exists. Writing about relations between objects and people, Ian Hodder puts entanglement in the following way: ‘the behavior of things…traps humans into various forms of care’ (Hodder, 2012: 85). By the behaviour of things, Hodder refers to the ways in the materialities of objects influence how things happen, setting particular courses of action into play. Because 3D space comes into being through the relationality of the camera lenses, plus numerous other influences, building depth is both dynamic and contingent.

Approaching intangible space through the perspective of relationality, mediation and entanglement, exposes the materiality of 3D space and the spatial relations that give it shape. The final configurations evident in any 3D film are a consequence of a process of negotiation between the topologies of 3D space and the intentions of the film-makers to use space in particular ways to tell their story. As pointed out earlier, the cinematic language of Hugo has been described as aiming towards the traditional conventions of two-dimensional film-making. But using 3D does add dimensions to the cinematic language and Lisa Purse rightly comments that by ‘Locating its characters in a dynamically three-dimensional cinematic space, Hugo deploys stereoscopic design to animate spatialised figures which are central to our experience and understanding of the narrative and its setting’ (Purse, 2013: 149). To add a further perspective on the dynamic shifts to which Purse refers, the following builds on the theme of relationality between humans and technologies already discussed via the paratexts. This involves considering a character’s actions as operations that configure space, as opposed to actions that only move the narrative forward. The boy Hugo is neither master of nor mastered by the spaces he inhabits, instead he and the space configure each other. Consider the sequence where Hugo goes up the clock tower to wind the station clock. Across this sequence, which occurs just before the title appears (some 12 minutes after the opening shot), a range of different stereoscopic volumes are in play, each of which accentuates in different ways how this small boy is one of the elements that comes together in the workings of a vast mechanism, which includes not only the clocks but the station and, by extension, Paris too. Vince Pace, who with James Cameron designed the stereoscopic rigs used on Hugo, comments: ‘The real challenge is reversing the tide of 3D going to effects instead of perspective…Hugo helps us get it back on the right track’ (Pace, quoted in Gaudiosi, 2011). The ability to build depth perspective in 3D is central to creating a sense of the shifting relationality between Hugo and the clock mechanism seen in the sequence. As Hugo ascends a metal staircase, the camera position stays low. Still in motion, the camera tilts upward, and the spatial expansion into the full height of the clock tower makes the boy seem tiny. The perspective running along the line of the pendulum and the gradations of each level of the stairwell maximizes the visual impact of depth behind the screen. The contrast of the next shot relies on the different framing of the vast pendulum. With the pendulum swinging to and fro, first into and then and out of negative parallax, the stereoscopic depth is less exaggerated. The reduced inflation of the stereoscopic volume allows the pendulum to fill the screen. The following shot resizes the space again, this time holding together a close-up of the huge cogwheels of the clock with the descending space of the tower delineated by the ladders and lights hanging downwards.

The progression of shots, each of which involves a different volume, seems to not be content with simply showing Hugo as a small figure against the extensive interior of an ascending tower or aligned near huge pieces of a machine. In shifting between more or less exaggerated stereoscopic volumes, created by depth built using IO and convergence adjustments, space is kept active for a viewer’s experience. These scenes are not just introducing the audience to the life of the boy, as the introduction is also to these extraordinary spaces. Furthermore, while Hugo has no choice but to work hard to continue his existence, he is part of the configuration of these volumes, rather than a reluctant participant of the kind so famously created by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times (1936). In the shot where it is tempting to see him as only oppressed, there is something more going on. As Hugo winds the mechanism, the boy is placed within the space of the connected cogs, and seen from a low angle, they click around and above him. In the stereoscopic depth, as he leans forward to push the handle, the handle protrudes, and when he pulls it back, the handle revolves back into the depth of the space. The circular movements of Hugo’s actions define the boundaries of the stereoscopic volume of these moments, giving the impression that he is active in the workings of a mechanism, not just of the clock but also spatial configurations. Since the boundaries of stereoscopic space are delineated in this scene by the movements of the handle, it is possible to go further and say that this human figure’s actions manipulate the material relations through which such a space exists. Just as stereoscopic volumes dynamically shift across these shots, so do the relationalities between Hugo and spatial configurations. In the same way that 3D space does not have an independent existence, Hugo is both defined by his location in space and his location also defines space.

The theme of control over space and technology is never far away in either the story-world of Hugo or the many paratexts outlining the way the film-making team successfully created the imagery. As to be expected, these disclosures endorse the expertise of members of the team, from Scorsese, to the stereographer and cinematographer and visual effects teams (Seymour, 2011). At the same time, a simple idea of mastery is contested through descriptions of the technological mediations of 3D space, a space accessible only through technology, and which is always contingent on a gathering together of entities. The claim that technologies and space can be mastered obscures a much more interesting configuration, in which crafting 3D space relies on the transforming and entangled relationalities between people and objects. What is interesting about the sequence showing Hugo’s climb up into the clock tower is that the imagery too is based on a shifting relationality between the boy, the space and the mechanism of the clock.

The Dark Knight: ambiguous immersion

IMAX is another example of intangible space, and like that of 3D, it can be explored through the ideas of relationality, mediation and entanglement. By giving an account of the parameters of intangible space in The Dark Knight, the IMAX format is argued to offer multiple points of engagement for an audience, rather than a seamlessly immersive space. A large format celluloid-based process, the IMAX image provides a bigger area for composition, and when projected in theatres, a much larger image for viewers to experience. Though only used in short sections within the film, the immersive possibilities of IMAX lie at the heart of many of the paratexts surrounding around The Dark Knight: ‘Nolan and Pfister envisioned the possibilities for creating a more immersive movie going experience when they saw the test footage projected’ (Fisher, 2008). For Nolan, IMAX technology draws an audience closer in to the action:

In continuing Batman’s story, the challenge was to make things bigger and better – to expand the world we established in the first film, both through the story and in the way we presented it, he states. ‘I was thrilled with the way the IMAX photography turned out. It throws the audience right into the action in a way no other film format could.’ (Nolan, quoted in Roberts, 2008)

Like Hugo, The Dark Knight too is concerned with mastery, both with regard to the possibilities of deploying IMAX technology to throw the audience into the action and also the conflicts between the Batman and the Joker within the story-world. Alison Griffiths suggests that ‘being immersed in the image is the defining feature of the IMAX brand, whether in flat-screen theatres, 3D, or Dome screens’ (Griffiths, 2008: 94). The Prologue, initially released as a trailer in IMAX cinemas, builds on this brand and was designed to whet appetites, not simply for the highly anticipated Batman sequel but also for the scale of the adventure to come. Visually, the first few shots are a gleeful exhibition of the possibilities of using the IMAX format. Beginning with what seems to be a conventional helicopter IMAX shot, they initially appear to consolidate Nolan’s narrative of immersion. The trajectory of the shot quickly becomes less than usual, dipping down towards the façade of a building and reaching a conclusion when one of the windows suddenly shatters outwards. The next two shots further underline the distinct ways the format will be deployed in The Dark Knight. It is quickly obvious that the IMAX format will not stop the film-makers taking the camera close in on the action. This is evident in a tightly framed interior shot of a man shooting a cable out of window, the camera reframing as the man moves to get a better aim. The third shot puts the IMAX scale back into the shot, the camera moving in to reframe the back of a man standing on a city street until his almost silhouette dominates the frame. The expansive cityscape, moving camera and large-scale view of the figure gives rise to the inevitable question: who is this man? As so described, the Prologue meshes with the descriptions of the increasingly immersive tendencies of film-making since 1990s. Tim Recuber argues that IMAX aesthetics have been imported into action-based cinema and that this is evident in the increased intensity of audiovisual effects: ‘immersion cinema represents a new set of technological and aesthetic criteria in which sensory experience and the physical immersion of the spectator within the medium are paramount’ (Recuber, 2007: 321). The opening three shots not only demonstrate the logic of the film-makers’ use of the IMAX format but also the extent to which they exploit a sense of physicality. As a viewer, I am flown through the air, cut into a tight interior space and dropped to street level before overseeing a vertiginous plunge between buildings.

Figurations of control run seamlessly across the different narratives that consolidate the idea of immersion. In Nolan’s narrative, IMAX technology throws an audience into things, the editing pattern and framing of shots plays on such control, while Recuber’s idea of immersion cinema posits a spectator whose ‘only real choice is to sit back and enjoy, to plug in, and hang on tight’ (Recuber, 2007: 324). Nolan and Recuber’s narratives suggest two things. First, IMAX is brought into being as a technology that is controlling and controlled, its capacity to mediate affording the film-makers’ desire to expand the story and its presentation. Second, a viewer’s position is fully circumscribed by the operations of IMAX. An alternative to this impression of overwhelming image and overwhelmed viewer, introduced via claims about immersion, emerges in the interior shots of the bank heist following the rooftop opening of The Dark Knight. Within the highly edited and carefully composed shots, the impact of the materiality of IMAX starts to become visually apparent. Looking at the depth of field draws attention to the entangled relations between film-makers, objects and technologies and the intangible space that emerges. The influence of a narrow depth of focus is especially evident in the stand-off between two of the robbers that occurs just before the school bus bursts through the double doors and the Joker makes his getaway with the cash. As the robber with the spike-haired mask (Spike) pulls his gun on the other remaining robber (soon to be revealed as the Joker), the former’s mask is in full focus. By contrast, the gun he holds at arm’s length is outside the depth of field. In the next shot but one, the camera is behind Spike. His head is out of focus, his hand a little blurred, while the Joker is crisp. Against the blurred areas of the image, those in full focus stand out, drawing a viewer’s eye to the masked Joker, making him literally the focal point and in a position of power. This unusual focal organization of the image is visible when the last-standing robber pulls down his mask to reveal his white-painted face: he is the Joker. As the shot is briefly held, the Joker’s head fills the height of the screen, all the background blurred so that the Joker’s face stands out. The extraordinary details of this image, the rumpled and disconcertingly plump red edges of his facial scar, the uneven smeary white face paint, his unkempt green hair picked out by the edge lighting thrown halfway across his cheek are simply there, ‘in your face’. The score underlines this as a significant moment, the crescendo of the tightening back note of the Joker’s theme merging with the bass beat that has come to dominate.

Caught up in the flow of the first experience of watching the Prologue, especially in an IMAX theatre, it is hard to be distanced enough to pick up on the contradiction in these images. But it is there and pulls towards alternative perspectives on immersion, ones that place spectators in a more ambiguous position. Writing about the relevance of entanglement to technology and performance in the theatre, Chris Salter argues that ‘performance as an entanglement amongst humans, instruments, algorithms, and machines on the stage, in the laboratories, and through the streets of cities…yield[s] a new knowing about the world through its sudden presence and equally sudden disappearance’ (Salter, 2010: 352). In the gunplay between the two robbers, the intangible space brought into view through the unusually narrow focal plane too suddenly appears and disappears, drawing attention to less seamless spaces. Discussing what she refers to as the cinema of attractions of the 1990s, Angela Ndalianis suggests that:

As with early cinema, the spectator is engaged in an ambiguous relationship to this spectacle…Crucial to this relationship is the simultaneous acceptance of the fantastic illusion as both a technological achievement and a realistic, alternative reality; thus the effects technology is both exposed and disguised. (Ndalianis, 2000: 259)

Disclosures in paratexts consolidate this alternative perspective on immersion and IMAX. The entanglements of the IMAX format appear in commentaries about the depth of focus of the Prologue’s imagery. Bob Hall, the first assistant cameraman working on the IMAX heist sequence states: ‘When we saw the depth-of-field test projected, it was pretty scary…it was a close-up, and very little of the face was in focus’ (Hall, quoted in Heuring, 2008). Hall elaborates further on filming the interior shots of the heist sequence:

[T]hey quickly learned what kinds of shots to avoid. ‘Because the IMAX screen is so huge, you tend to follow the action that’s in focus, and that helped us,’ Hall says. ‘Also, we saw that certain actions had to be minimized to an extent. Strobing [flicker introduced by fast camera movement] was an issue, and we learned which fast shots and what kinds of moves we could get away with. Chris is very astute about what is usable and what isn’t; he realized that in extremely difficult shallow-depth-of-field shots, some moments would be out of focus. His intent was to get certain important beats, and once we had those in focus, we could move on.’ (Hall, quoted in Heuring, 2008)

The examples of shallow depth of focus are an extreme within the overall aesthetic of The Dark Knight, a point at which the entanglements of technology is actively visible on the screen, creating moments in which a viewer can inhabit an ambiguous position between enjoying the show and being aware of its construction. Paratexts further reveal the extent to which IMAX technology mediates the actions of the film-makers. Paul Franklin (visual effects supervisor at Double Negative) comments that the decision to use IMAX technology had consequences for the details and resolution of the digital imagery constructed to complete the environment of Gotham City:

We had to create more environments from scratch and had more matte paintings than in Batman Begins, Franklin says. ‘We also built the digital Batpod and Batmobile, and all those assets had to hold up in full-frame, harsh lighting conditions. Things we could get away with at 2K wouldn’t cut the mustard on Dark Knight.’ In addition to the higher-resolution format pushing the need for detail, the camera moved closer to the digital architecture, the digital vehicles and the digital stunt doubles. (Robertson, 2008)

Conclusion

Existing ways of thinking about cinema and technology already understand their associations to be complex, composed of diverse ideas that lie at intersecting social, economic, political and cultural settings (Bennett et al., 2008). The ideas that connect with films (and also television programmes and games) also accumulate through the many paratexts associated with moving images, either online, on DVD and Blu-ray or in paper formats such as books and magazines. Exploring paratexts for what they reveal about intangible spaces provides another way of thinking about technologies and cinema by focussing on the materiality of mediated spaces.

Analyzing the paratextual disclosures about technologically mediated spaces through the concepts of mediation, relationality and entanglement, lead to a greater understanding of the material basis of the 3D spaces in the production of Hugo and those arising through the use of the IMAX format in The Dark Knight. In the case of the 3D of Hugo, depth emerges as something that is built rather than built in. Not only is seeing this space reliant on 3D projection and glasses but creating it is contingent on a topology that emerges in relation to the coming together of a stereoscopic rig, film sets, actors and film-makers in various combinations. This way of thinking not only allows a greater purchase on questions to do with the influences of technology in film-making, it also provides another way of framing a discussion of the imagery of Hugo. The stereoscopic depth of Hugo is often fluid, changing on a shot by shot basis. This shifting between more or less exaggerated stereoscopic volumes keeps both the space active for a viewer’s experience and also introduces a range of relationalities between figures and objects and spaces. These shifting relationalities offer another way of thinking about cinematic space. In considering the IMAX format sequences in The Dark Knight, detailing the materiality of the mediated space brings into a play a different way of thinking about engagement. Rather than seeing it as a seamlessly immersive experience, paratexts place a viewer in a more multifaceted relationship with the film’s imagery.

Approaching cinematic space through the idea of intangible space opens out another way of thinking through questions about the ways in which technologies shape cinematic spaces. Since intangible spaces are a particular gathering together of influences, including those of people, things, locations and technologies, different kinds of technological influences will lead to different kinds of space. Hugo and The Dark Knight offer only two examples amongst the many possibilities of intangible space, both in contemporary and older film-making practices.