Digital Cinema Research Articles

Devemos apelidá-los de estudos cine-culturais? O cine-mundificar da música popular e dos estudos juvenis

This article explorescinematic research-creation, or what I call cine-worlding. Indeed, ccine-worlding has the potential to contribute to a research practice unique to popular music and youth studies, areas of cultural life characterised by their openness and innovation with new media. Being aware of these opportunities means taking advantage of the technologies currently available. But there is an obstacle. Cinematic production must come together with research. Traditional cinematic research methods, due to their costs, difficulties with peer review and lack of institutional support, have not been accepted by academia. It has been anthropology that has done the most to develop cinematic research through ethnographic film. New developments in the digital cinema ecosystem have been little explored so far. The digital cinema ecosystem, emerging since 2009, consists of relatively cheap digital cameras and smartphones, free professional-grade digital platforms, a worldwide network of film festivals and the transformation of most art-house cinemas into digital screenings. This means that digital cinema made on a laptop can be shown anywhere. We are at the best possible moment for academic filmmaking, but then why do academics do so little of it?

Greetings from the Incoming Standards VP

<fig orientation="portrait" position="float" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <graphic orientation="portrait" position="float" xlink:href="schle-3136936.tif"/> </fig> The first SMPTE standard I ever got to study was ST 377:2004—the file format specification for the beloved Material Exchange Format (MXF). That was in 2005, when I started my career as an undergraduate student at Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen, Germany. Working there for a few hours a week, I was tasked with implementing small software tools to validate and process prototype Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs). The MXF standard was certainly no light read—I was both impressed and intimidated by its complexity. Frankly, I was quite happy about the publication of the famous <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">MXF Book</i> by Bruce Devlin <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> when I was still wrapping my head around operational patterns, descriptors, and package types. Now, 17 years after learning about MXF and SMPTE, it is a great honor to be serving the Society as the Standards Vice President. Picking up the baton from Mr. MXF himself is very humbling, to say the least. I thank Bruce for the leadership that he has provided to the standards community during his four years as Standards Vice President and for the guidance and support I personally received from him.

Effects of Digitalization on the Three-tier Structure of Tanzania’s Film Industry

This paper examines the effects of digitalization on the three-tier structure of Tanzania film industry. Explicitly, the paper focuses on the period between 1990 and 2020. It follows on the presumptions that omnipresent and pervasive digital video and Internet-based technologies promoted under the theme of digitalization and underpinned by the digital revolution theory are impacting on film industries across nations. The specific drivers of the digitalization that the paper advances are digital video cameras and computer-based nonlinear editing systems applied in the production of films, Digital Versatile Discs (DVD), Online movie streaming and Video on Demand (VOD) platforms as used in distributing films and digital cinema formats and projectors in exhibition of films. Key informant interview method was used to collect qualitative data from twenty six (26) respondents. The respondents included media experts, filmmakers, camera operators, video editors and various film industry stakeholders. Other data collection methods employed included direct observation and online ethnography. The paper reveals that digitalization elicits and enhances specific changes on the three-tier structure of the Tanzania film industry. Due to the effects of digitalization the Tanzania film industry has morphed into a functional film industry. The paper concludes that in spite of the differences in its effectiveness and purposes that are grounded on issues of contexts, digitalization is more important than other determining factors such as capital formation in impacting on the transformation of the three-tier structure of the country’s film industry.

A structure of database for managing the Digital Cinema: Focus on classification of data and media

A structure of database for managing the Digital Cinema: Focus on classification of data and media

Impact of Digital Technologies on the Development of Modern Film Production and Television

The popularity of streaming services has been steadily growing over the past 5 years, and the number of subscribers is increasing. This study was conducted to find out how the popularisation of streaming services affects filmmaking. The history of cinema is inextricably linked with the development of technology. It should be noted that each new page in the history of the film industry began with the invention of new innovations. During the digital age, a rapid leap forward in the television and film industry was also inevitable. Digital cinema is a format that has virtually left film and analogue cinema technology behind. Each revolution in the film industry has been a new step towards providing audiences with a new experience and an even more vivid film experience. Streaming services are one of the innovations that have emerged thanks to the development of digital technologies. They allow viewers to receive content for a fixed price. Streaming guarantees quality and availability with minimal technical support. For this study, theoretical materials on the impact of digital technologies on changes in cinema were investigated. The study analyses data on changes in the audience of the most popular streaming services over the past 10 years. The results of the study showed that the increase in demand for streaming and online cinemas affects the audience’s requirements for the genres and format of cinema. To satisfy audiences, filmmakers are constantly modernising the industry. It can be concluded that the tastes of the audience are changing and the workers of the film industry should be guided by this. In the future, global and Ukrainian streaming services will be able to create original content that will meet the requirements of viewers.

디지털 영화 기호학을 위한 이론적 시론: 이론적 검토와 스켈레톤 알고리즘의 제안을 중심으로

This paper aims to examine the possibilities of ‘digital cinema semiotics’ theoretically. This is an attempt to rethink the conventional cinema semiotics based on today’s digital conditions. There have been attempts to introduce the linguistics model (Metz), phenomenology (Mitry), and bodies-passions (Greimas & Fontanille) to explain the “sign” of cinema. To synthesize these discussions, this paper proposed to view the ‘sign’ of the cinema as the ‘cinematograph.’ Cinematograph is one of the technological grammatization with its own logic and system, meaning movement-graphic. This is because, unlike the “sign” of cinema, cinematographs are closely related to our bodies, perception system, and (un)consciousness as a writing system. Meanwhile, the digitization of the cinema allows the analysis of the movement-value of cinematographs. The computability of cinematographs is the condition of digital cinema semiotics. And this paper proposes a skeleton algorithm as a practical application example. This algorithm can help quantify and analyze the character’s action-movement value. Of course, it isn’t quite meaningful to analyze the value of one separated action-movement. It is similar to the attribute of ‘sign’ defined by Saussure. The meaning of the sign is constituted only through ‘differences’ and ‘combinations.’ Therefore, the cinematograph’s movement-value should be analyzed in terms of differences and combinations with other data, not just itself.

The Cinematic Milieu

AbstractTo what extent are media technologies autonomous forces that reorganize the environment around them to accommodate their own technological needs? In what ways are these technologies responsive to the milieu they grow within? A central theme of comparative media examines how media enter into reciprocal exchange with the broader cultural, social, and economic formations in which they emerge and which differ from place to place and over time. This article draws on the concept of milieu in order to analyze the evolution of digital cinema infrastructures in contemporary Nigeria.

The memory of perfection: Digital faces and nostalgic franchise cinema

This article is concerned with the intersection of digitally augmented performance and nostalgia in contemporary Hollywood franchise cinema. The practice of ‘de-ageing’ or even resurrecting actors following their real-life deaths in films like Tron: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski, 2010), Terminator Genysis (Alan Taylor, 2015), Rogue One (Gareth Edwards, 2016), Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019), and a large number of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, is now commonplace. Though such digital faces are primarily still found in franchise cinema, some exceptions ( The Irishman, Martin Scorsese, 2019; Gemini Man, Ang Lee, 2019) are telling in their franchise-like appeals to cinematic nostalgia. In particular, the digital face is most commonly aligned with the ‘legacy film’ (Golding, 2019), resurrected franchises interested in transferring franchise protagonists, themes and fandom across generations. The digital face therefore is an expression of the convergence of the digital with film, with the franchise, with the past and with memory. For these films, memory and nostalgia are meticulous exercises involving thousands of work hours of highly skilled CGI workers and cutting-edge technology. These highly technical, virtuosic digital faces are quite literally the face of this kind of nostalgia, and as Ndalianis observes, position the face ‘as façade that opens up a time-travel passageway between past and present’, inviting a seam-spotting game between audience and filmmaker (2014). Even if the digital face is perfect in its recreation, the audience’s knowledge of the impossibility of the performance leaves a trace of artistry. Accordingly, digital faces are creative, technical and financial decisions above all. This article outlines the uses of the digital face for memory, nostalgia and seriality in contemporary Hollywood franchise cinema, with a focus on representation and death.

Organic Lead Halide Nanocrystals Providing an Ultra-Wide Color Gamut with Almost-Unity Photoluminescence Quantum Yield.

The most attractive aspect of perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) for optoelectronic applications is their widely tunable emission wavelength, but it has been quite challenging to tune it without sacrificing the photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY). In this work, we report a facile ligand-optimized ion-exchange (LOIE) method to convert room-temperature spray-synthesized, perovskite parent NCs that emit a saturated green color to NCs capable of emitting colors across the entire visible spectrum. These NCs exhibited exceptionally stable and high PLQYs, particularly for the pure blue (96%) and red (93%) primary colors that are indispensable for display applications. Surprisingly, the blue- and red-emissive NCs obtained using the LOIE method preserved the cubic shape and cubic phase structure that they inherited from their parent NCs, while exhibiting high crystallinity and high color-purity. Together with the parent green-emissive NCs, the obtained blue- and red-emissive NCs provided a very wide color gamut, corresponding to a Digital Cinema Initiatives-P3 of 140% or an International Telecommunication Union Recommendation BT.2020 of 102%. With the superior optical merits of these LOIE-manipulated NCs, a corresponding color conversion luminescence device provided a high external quantum efficiency (10.5%) and extremely high brightness (970 000 cd/m2). This study provides a valid route toward highly stable, extremely emissive, and panchromatic perovskite NCs with potential use in a variety of future optoelectronic applications.

P‐58: DCI Quality Specifications for Emissive LED Screens

The Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) has established specifications for a theater system that creates a common shell where regardless of the technology (Projector, film, Emissive Screens) the experience experimented by the viewer is the closest to the one intended to be transmitted by the director.The theater system is built of a few components, one of them is the player or Media Block and the second is the LED emissive Screen. The main function of the Media Block is to provide a secure system environment within it performs content essence decryption. In addition to this, the Media Block shall contain the Security Manager, Image, Audio and Subtitle processing capabilities along with associated forensic markers. The function of the LED screen is providing the proper color and luminance values to provide the right environment where the viewer can have the best experience of the content as it was a real‐life environment scene.The quality of the system is based on the video performance. The Video performance can come from many parameters like brightness, contrast, color space, color consistency, refresh rate, and bit depth. For DCI, 12bits is the input bit depth, while the processing bit depth is much higher to reproduce the video on the right color space (specified as DCI‐P3) and providing the right grayscale performance values for what our eye is most sensitive area (scotopic vision) and at the same time for getting color (photopic vision). This experience is what brings a sensation that it is only achieved in theaters.

Digitization and Flexibility: Evidence from the South Korean Movie Market

This paper examines how the introduction of digital cinema technologies in the South Korean movie industry created flexibility for theaters in movie showings.

The texture of the age: Digital construction of unbounded Space in Birdman (Iñárritu 2014)

Like some of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s previous films, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Iñárritu 2014) is an exploration of the place of individuals in the midst of various global forces, in this case, technological, social and cultural globalization. The film’s most relevant formal feature, the digitally created ‘long take’, also partakes of the director’s well-known penchant for technological and formal experimentation when telling a story. In Birdman, cinematic form is closely related to its thematic concerns, particularly the impact of technology on global processes. This article explores the confluence between form – digital cinema – and content in Birdman. It looks at the global virtual space created by the internet and social networks and how they affect our sense of being in the world. To this end, the film exploits the possibilities and connotations of the apparently uninterrupted single take that comprises most of the duration of the film and of the composited, digital-realistic space thus created.

A shimmering movement: Ali Abbasi’s Border as a trans* posthumanist post-celluloid adaptation

Gräns (Border) (2018) is an adaptation of a short story by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist (2006). The film retains large parts of the literary plot as well as its focalization through the troll-protagonist Tina/Reva. At the same time, Border introduces significant modifications. I argue that by expanding the plot to include a number of new elements and amplifying Lindqvist’s strategy of ‘a shimmering movement’, including the experience of transness and identity as change, Abbasi’s film disrupts more forcefully our ideas about the human/nonhuman divide, sex and gender dualism, aesthetics, ethics and other normative regimes regulating our social and human lives. By examining the film as a post-celluloid adaptation, I show how Border incorporates Lindqvist’s critique of technology while also embracing the imaginative and affective possibilities of digital cinema to interrogate the responsibilities of humanity from a posthumanist perspective.

Phantom Perceptions

As digital cinema becomes increasingly dematerialized, in the vein of milestones such as Avatar (2009) and Gravity (2013), the role of CGI and other digital film technologies shift from a complement/corrective of filmed images to a means of creating images proper. In these films created without celluloid, without physical decors, and, increasingly, even without a camera, the insistence on retaining artifactual film formal techniques, codes, and devices from analog cinema is nonetheless striking: camera movements are simulated, lens flares are rendered digitally in the absence of lenses, editing proceeds according to classical codes of continuity, etc. This paper investigates the simulation of analog film forms and ‘dispositifs’ in digital cinema through the question of perception: what does it mean to perceive a camera that is not actually there? Or more generally, when are these simulated devices meant to be apparent, and when are they meant to be imperceptible? In order to approach these questions, this paper will look at cases in which perceptual objects may go unregistered, cases in which perceptual objects are rendered more perceptible by virtue of their digital simulation, and cases in which perceptual objects are meant to be perceived otherwise, in order to posit a skeuomorphic sensibility that links analog and digital cinema through experience.

ГИПЕРРЕАЛИЗМ В ЦИФРОВОМ КИНЕМАТОГРАФЕ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ СЕРИАЛА-АНТОЛОГИИ «ЛЮБОВЬ, СМЕРТЬ И РОБОТЫ»)

The article is devoted to the aesthetic features of digital cinematography. Due to the widespread use of computer graphics in films, traditional methods of analyzing cinema are no longer enough. The fusion of graphic and photographic elements and the use of photorealistic graphics enable researchers to take a fresh look at the nature of film. Digital cinema, based on contemporary technologies, no longer builds on the photographic principles of filmmaking and presents a new form of realism and representation of reality on the screen. Objects created with the help of computer graphics can transform and go beyond the simulated real objects, while remaining photorealistic, unable to exist outside the framework of the screen and the particular film. Using classical film studies and philosophical works of Jean Baudrillard, Siegfried Krakauer, André Bazin, Christian Metz and the works of modern researchers of digital cinema such as Lev Manovich, Thomas Elsaesser and Malthe Hagener, the author analyzes the process of transition of digital objects from photorealistic to hyperrealistic ones, which today can be identified as real, while not existing in reality. This phenomenon is of undoubted interest for the academic study of new forms of realism in digital cinema. Based on the analysis of the Snow in the Desert episode from the Love, Death &amp; Robots anthology series, the author traces the development of hyperrealism in digital cinema. Through state-of-the-art digital filmmaking technologies combining both graphic and photographic techniques—motion capture, digital cloning of actors, real-time fluid and environment modelling—we have a new kind of cinematography that is not limited to classical methods of filmmaking, but goes beyond cinema itself, merging with animation and video games. All these processes affect the film aesthetics and make it more malleable, free and less restricted by the classical understanding of motion picture.

Platform Anxiety: Locating Authorship in Tron, Hugo, and The Lego Movie

The term platform anxiety describes an existential crisis in industrial media-making arising from fundamental changes in the technological substrates of media. Platform anxiety has been expressed and confronted by a number of films that portray forms of authorial mastery over the techniques and the technologies of filmmaking. This article focuses on industrial anxiety related to the transition to digital cinema. Through films including Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982), Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011), and The Lego Movie (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 2014), Hollywood confronts its anxieties by asserting that established industrial strategies and modes of accreditation remain valid despite cinema's changing technologies.

Subverting the chronotope: the Donnie Darko (2001) case

This paper analyzes the film Donnie Darko (2001) by director and screenwriter Richard Kelly through the theoretical perspective of Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) chronotope. The latter defines it as an intermingling between temporal and spatial relations, artistically assimilated in literature (BAKHTIN, 1981), but in this study it is applied to film studies. Gilles Deleuze’s (1986, 1989) concepts of movement-image and time-image also contribute to the analysis. The film presents sequences of chronotope disruption, which are associated to the main’s characters mental state. Film techniques as parallelism, superimposition and ellipsis contribute to this break in the time and space association. Lastly, the analysis discusses Garret Stewart’s (2007) proposal that the digital cinema contributes to a disruptive cinematography, especially in relation to time-space constructions.

USING THE BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY BY UKRAINIAN CINEMA NETWORKS IN UNCERTAIN ENVIRONMENT

The subject matter of the article is ukrainian film distribution market. In today's world, the movie rental market is a sector of the economy that has recently shown a trend of stable growth. This process in most European countries is associated with the introduction of the latest digital cinema technology, increasing the level of wealth of the population and the high popularity of multi-screen cinemas. Film distribution is a mechanism to support the development, promotion of national cinema, one of the main forms of leisure and intercultural dialogue. The goal of the article is to determine the feasibility of applying the strategy by Ukrainian cinema networks to support the trend of dynamic development of the industry. After all, an effective concept of management in uncertain conditions can be a strategy of blue ocean, the principles of which are considered in the article on the example of market participants in market cinemas of Ukraine. The following tasks were solved: construction of a new strategic canvas for state cinemas of Ukraine; search for new value for cinema visitors; analysis of the foreign market of cinemas. The following methods used are: methods of analysis and synthesis, systemic, structural method in the article were summarized approaches to choosing a methodology for strategic enterprise management, taking into account the contemporary challenges of economic change in the world. The following results were obtained – the directions and possibilities of application of the blue ocean strategy by Ukrainian cinema networks as a tool of strategic success in the field of cinema were developed; the paper proposes a new strategic outline of cinema networks of Ukraine on the basis of a survey of 160 cinema spectators; а strategic plan for state and municipal cinemas has been developed, based on an updated four-action model; benchmarking of the world's leading cinemas was conducted, on the basis of which practical recommendations for the development of Ukrainian cinemas of various forms of ownership were formed; proposals for the creation of a blue ocean for companies engaged in the provision of services for the demonstration film products in Ukraine were presented. Conclusion: studies of the use of the Blue Ocean strategy have shown that this process is impossible without creating a new value for the consumer.

Imagens digitais e seus paradoxos tecnoestéticos na reinvenção do cinema

Resumo&#x0D; Investiga a morfogênese das imagens virtuais, bem como seus meios de veiculação; almejando entender sua força e influência no cinema e nas mídias audiovisuais, à medida que as imagens numéricas lhes propiciam recursos inéditos. Partimos da premissa que a emergência de uma arte audiovisual inovadora decorre da iconografia informatizada que explora novas formas e efeitos sinestésicos, abrangendo o imaginário em aberto das virtualidades. Pretendemos desenvolver algumas reflexões sobre as produções cinematográficas em sua aliança com as tecnologias da imagem que lhe propiciam novos paradigmas, novas denominações e, até mesmo, a problematização de suas supostas “mortes”. Metodologicamente, partimos da exposição dos pressupostos teóricos ligados ao conceito e à criação das imagens tecnológicas; para, num segundo momento, debruçar-nos sobre a linguagem cinematográfica atual; objetivando discutir questões tecnoestéticas que viabilizam uma reinvenção do cinema; com ênfase em determinadas designações mais recentes que lhe têm sido atribuídas, por força da digitalização.&#x0D; Palavras-chave: Imagens virtuais. Iconografia informatizada. Cinema digital.&#x0D;

Dream of the Bridal Chamber. 2005. Directed by Guo Baochang, 88 minutes. China: Digital Cinema Package (DCP).

Dream of the Bridal Chamber. 2005. Directed by Guo Baochang, 88 minutes. China: Digital Cinema Package (DCP).