Total Cinema, Total Theatre, Total World: From Set as Architecture to Set as Virtual Performer

Abstract

Sets are a construction within André Bazin’s “recreation of the world in its own image.” During the 1920s, advances in film stock (which improved image clarity) and better lenses (which expanded depth of field) meant that the visual fidelity of sets had to increase. Most critical was more sophisticated camera motion. Cranes could now take the camera into sets, which required more complete environments. Sets have mutated and spread ever since. Architects began working in the movie industry and movie people began working as architects. With the introduction of the first Disney theme park, this practice became codified and thematic placemaking has since proliferated globally. Sets later provided the blueprint for digital games, and as embodied in the game engine have reached virtual holism. Today, Industrial Light & Magic’s StageCraft pairs LED display walls with game engine technology on a soundstage called the Volume. StageCraft replaces both CGI and the traditional set with mixed reality, photorealistic digital environments. Filmmakers can also make design changes in real time and move these virtual backgrounds around the players. This article posits a new history of the spatial philosophy of set design in which the experiential mode of themed spaces, video games, and virtual reality each become a unified recombination of Bazin’s rigid theatre/ cinema dichotomy.