WK 11

Digital Effects

Film and the Photographic Image:

• “during the analog era, cinema seemed to be a natural extension of photography… cinema testified to the reality of what had been before the camera.” (Prince, 39)

• photographs are assumed to have a high truth value, and what they are showing is usually real

Signs and Indexicality

• there are three different ways meanings can have different relationships to the signifier

• Symbol = arbitrary relationship (e.g the word ‘tree’ whichh means a tree.) No real reason behind it other than we all collectively decided that’s what it means. like an arrow signalling go this way

• Icon = perceptually resembles the thing (fire extinguisher icon looks like one)

• Index = has a physical relationship to what it signifies (liek if there’s a leaf somewhere, we know there’s a tree. Or like if there’s smoke there’s a fire somewhere)

Deepfakes - films being fakeable

• in the current age of AI, deepfakes are a prevalent part of misinformation. Anything can be faked these days and it can be hard to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not.

Digital Effects in Cinema:

• some digital effects are meant to seem completely invisible in post production.

  • getting rid of a fly coming in the scene

  • getting rid of a blink that distrusts the scene

  • stabilising colour throughout film

• It’s not really about changing what we see or making us see things that weren’t there, they’re there to produce the illusion of a photograph, and bring back indexicality of a photgraph.

• A lot of the time though, perceptual realism is all about making something fake look real. like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

• Sometimes aspects of filming on a camera such as lensflare is added to a photorealism portion of the film to make it feel more like it was recorded with a camera. IT enhances the realism of it.

Digital effects in Cinema History:

• Continuity editing

• Set facades

• Trick photopgrahy

• Physical special effects