The best [effect] is a computer-animated stained-glass window that ghts a duel with a priest. I liked the effect, but I would have liked it more if … Holmes had drawn Watson aside, and, using a few elementary observations … had deduced the eventual invention of computers. (Roger Ebert reviewing Young Sherlock Holmes)
Why do cinematic technologies, though promoted as 'utopian' and 'progressive', ultimately repeat earlier cultural/Visual practices? To answer this question, this paper examines cinema's integration of new technologies. It proposes that nineteenth-century institutions such as the insurance industry and the railroad provide cinema with a strategic model for choosing and regulating new cinematic technologies. To investigate this hypothesis, the paper overlays film history's three most important technological transitions: cinema's 'invention' in 1895, sound's standardisation in the 1920s, and the contemporary integration of computer-generated images (CGI). By examining the history of each technology and the film texts they produce, the paper reveals an institutional pattern of technological assimilation.
This article examines the work of mid-century French filmmaker Jacques Tati. Tati suggested that his films allow more visual freedom to audiences and that audiences discover new material upon multiple viewings of his films. We review the scholarship on Tati, especially in relation to critic André Bazin’s theories of realism, and then propose another model for understanding Tati’s films: the psychological concept of inattentional blindness. The article then discusses our experiment using eye tracking technology to study how subjects watch Tati’s films versus other types of cinema and also how they re-watch films. Finally, we applied several statistical and mathematical tests to the eye tracking data to understand key differences between Tati’s films and other filmmaking practices.
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