CGI effects in Hollywood science-fiction cinema 1989-95: the wonder years

Pierson, Michele

doi:10.1093/screen/40.2.158

Cited by 19 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…A quality test for a simulacrum could be as follows: A simulacrum is good enough if an evaluator experiences a striking similarity but also at the same time a discrepancy between illusion and reality. (Asplund, 2003: 39-40) From 18th-century French automata and Swedish theatrical spectacle through to magic shows and to CGI special effects (indeed, to cinema as a whole), these entertainment devices-that-simulate set out to amaze and enthral but, crucially, not to dissemble (Bolter and Grusin, 1999;Pierson, 1999). If the audience is fooled into thinking they are seeing the original then the simulacrum has failed.…”

Section: Simulacra and Automata: Devices That Simulatementioning

confidence: 99%

Dionysiac Machines

Giddings

2007

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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This article rethinks concepts of the simulational and the simulacral for popular digital culture. It plays concepts of the modern world as hyperreal against the more modest, pragmatic, but vital, insights of game studies into the literally simulational nature of computer media and videogames. Through a reading of Deleuze's essay Platonism and the Simulacrum, taking the GameBoy Advance game Advance Wars 2 as a case study, and proposing the significance of automata, it suggests ways of thinking about the artificial and simulacral character of contemporary technoculture and its devices, not as the implosion of reality, but of its production.Keywords / automata / computer games / cyberculture / Deleuze / game studies / simulacra / simulation / technoculture / videogames Plato, by dint of inquiring in the direction of the simulacrum, discovers, in the flash of an instant as he leans over its abyss, that the simulacrum is not simply a false copy, but that it calls into question the very notions of the copy . . . and of the model. (Deleuze, 1983: 47) Whomper hunted for the marmalade. 'Perhaps jam will do just as well', he said and tried to take the lid off a jam-pot. 'Painted plaster,' stated the Mymble's daughter. She took an apple and chewed at it. 'Wood,' she said. Little My laughed. But Whomper felt worried. All the things around him were false. Their pretty colours were a sham, and everything he touched was made of paper or wood or plaster. The golden crowns weren't nice and heavy, and the flowers were paper flowers. The fiddles had no strings and the boxes no bottoms, and the books couldn't even be opened. Troubled in his honest heart, Whomper pondered over the meaning of it all, but he couldn't find any solution. 'I wish I were just a tiny bit more clever', he thought. 'Or a few weeks older'. 'I like it here', said the Mymble's daughter. 'It's just as if nothing really mattered here'. 'Does anything matter anywhere?' asked Little My. 'No', her sister replied happily. 'Don't ask such silly questions'.

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Section: Simulacra and Automata: Devices That Simulatementioning

confidence: 99%

Dionysiac Machines

Giddings

2007

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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“…Although such ostentatious examples of the impossible photoreal continue to flourish within contemporary blockbuster cinema, Michelle Pierson (1999) observes that the early to mid-1990s signified the 'wonder years' of CGI effects wherein a photoreal-yet-overtly 'techno-futurist' aesthetic self-consciously drew attention to itself via prolonged close-ups and almost-fetishistic tracking shots, particularly within the context of science fiction cinema (pp. 158-61).…”

Section: Beyond Spectacle Vs Narrative: Cgi Immersion and The Contementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The earliest uses of cinematic CGI within such films as TRON and The Last Starfighter (Nick Castle, 1984) did indeed function as pure attraction insofar as they were rendered unavoidably ostentatious by the very basic rendering capabilities of early 1980s CGI, 10 while the vastly improved techniques of early-to-mid-1990s CGI tended to be mobilized as spectacle in 'impossible' photoreal special effects, ranging from Jurassic Park's dinosaurs to Independence Day's (Roland Emmerich, 1996) combustible White House. Although such ostentatious examples of the impossible photoreal continue to flourish within contemporary blockbuster cinema, Michelle Pierson (1999) observes that the early to mid-1990s signified the 'wonder years' of CGI effects wherein a photoreal-yet-overtly 'techno-futurist' aesthetic self-consciously drew attention to itself via prolonged close-ups and almost-fetishistic tracking shots, particularly within the context of science fiction cinema (pp. 158-61).…”

Section: Beyond Spectacle Vs Narrative: Cgi Immersion and The Contemporary Spectatormentioning

confidence: 99%

All AboardThe Polar Express: A ‘Playful’ Change of Address in the Computer-Generated Blockbuster

Aldred

2006

Animation

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Following Tom Gunning's assertion that each change in film history implies a change in its address to the spectator, this article closely analyses The Polar Express (Robert Zemeckis, 2004) in order to interrogate what kinds of changes are at stake for the contemporary spectator of the wholly computergenerated blockbuster. The article also considers the extent to which the immersive, video game-like visual aesthetic and mode of address present in The Polar Express strive to naturalize viewer relations with digital spaces and characters such as those inherent to both computer-generated films and the 'invisible' virtual realm of cyberspace. Finally, the article argues that The Polar Express functions as a compelling historical document of an era when cinema and video games have never been more intertwined in terms of aesthetics, character construction, and narrative, and raises compelling questions about whether video games have begun to exert the type of formative influence upon cinema that cinema previously exerted on video games.

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“…On the other hand, video manipulation took skilled experts and a significant amount of time to create, since every frame had to be changed individually. The technology for manipulating videos was perfected in Hollywood in the 1990s (Pierson, 1999), but it was so expensive that only a few movies made full use of it. Consequently, creating manipulated videos for the purpose of political propaganda was rare.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Don't Trust Your Eyes: Image Manipulation in the Age of DeepFakes

et al. 2021

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We review the phenomenon of deepfakes, a novel technology enabling inexpensive manipulation of video material through the use of artificial intelligence, in the context of today’s wider discussion on fake news. We discuss the foundation as well as recent developments of the technology, as well as the differences from earlier manipulation techniques and investigate technical countermeasures. While the threat of deepfake videos with substantial political impact has been widely discussed in recent years, so far, the political impact of the technology has been limited. We investigate reasons for this and extrapolate the types of deepfake videos we are likely to see in the future.

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CGI effects in Hollywood science-fiction cinema 1989-95: the wonder years

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Dionysiac Machines

Dionysiac Machines

All AboardThe Polar Express: A ‘Playful’ Change of Address in the Computer-Generated Blockbuster

Don't Trust Your Eyes: Image Manipulation in the Age of DeepFakes

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