The Empire of Effects : Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism
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| Title: | The Empire of Effects : Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism |
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| Description: | 2024 Finalist, Marshall McLuhan Outstanding Book Award, Media Ecology Association How one company created the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Just about every major film now comes to us with an assist from digital effects. The results are obvious in superhero fantasies, yet dramas like Roma also rely on computer-generated imagery to enhance the verisimilitude of scenes. But the realism of digital effects is not actually true to life. It is a realism invented by Hollywood—by one company specifically: Industrial Light & Magic. The Empire of Effects shows how the effects company known for the puppets and space battles of the original Star Wars went on to develop the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Julie A. Turnock finds that ILM borrowed its technique from the New Hollywood of the 1970s, incorporating lens flares, wobbly camerawork, haphazard framing, and other cinematography that called attention to the person behind the camera. In the context of digital imagery, however, these aesthetic strategies had the opposite effect, heightening the sense of realism by calling on tropes suggesting the authenticity to which viewers were accustomed. ILM's style, on display in the most successful films of the 1980s and beyond, was so convincing that other studios were forced to follow suit, and today, ILM is a victim of its own success, having fostered a cinematic monoculture in which it is but one player among many. |
| Authors: | Julie A. Turnock |
| Resource Type: | eBook. |
| Subjects: | Computer animation--History, Realism in motion pictures--History, Cinematography--Special effects--History, Digital cinematography--History, Motion pictures--Aesthetics--History, Motion picture industry--History |
| Categories: | PERFORMING ARTS / General, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism |
| Database: | eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) |
| Abstract: | 2024 Finalist, Marshall McLuhan Outstanding Book Award, Media Ecology Association How one company created the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Just about every major film now comes to us with an assist from digital effects. The results are obvious in superhero fantasies, yet dramas like Roma also rely on computer-generated imagery to enhance the verisimilitude of scenes. But the realism of digital effects is not actually true to life. It is a realism invented by Hollywood—by one company specifically: Industrial Light & Magic. The Empire of Effects shows how the effects company known for the puppets and space battles of the original Star Wars went on to develop the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Julie A. Turnock finds that ILM borrowed its technique from the New Hollywood of the 1970s, incorporating lens flares, wobbly camerawork, haphazard framing, and other cinematography that called attention to the person behind the camera. In the context of digital imagery, however, these aesthetic strategies had the opposite effect, heightening the sense of realism by calling on tropes suggesting the authenticity to which viewers were accustomed. ILM's style, on display in the most successful films of the 1980s and beyond, was so convincing that other studios were forced to follow suit, and today, ILM is a victim of its own success, having fostered a cinematic monoculture in which it is but one player among many. |
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| ISBN: | 9781477325308 9781477328972 9781477325315 9781477325322 |
