The course begins by introducing the “wonder years” period (1989-1995) of Hollywood cinema that, according to Michele Pierson, encompassed several of the industrial and aesthetic milestones in digital visual effects. We will chart the rise of computer-generated imagery in this period through its growing application across popular U.S. genre cinema, and by focusing on stylistic distinctions between “technofuturist” and “simulationist” modes of digitally-mediated spectacle as popularised within 1990s film, examine how the novelty of Hollywood’s initial turn to CGI evoked some of the same exhibitionist tendencies found in silent cinema’s ‘trick’ films. Film: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991, 137 mins)

For our third session, we will trace the technological spectacle of digitally-created crowds, masses, multitudes, hoards, and armies as a way to understand distinctions between human and supra-human spectacle in the sophisticated construction of new kinds of digital action. We will explore the sublime and simulated effects of a moving digital crowd through the development of specific kinds of virtual effects software and programs (ATTILA, MASSIVE, DENIZEN), and forge links between contemporary science-fiction and fantasy cinema and earlier film genres (documentary, musical, historical epic) that similarly exploit the spectacular geometry and co-ordinated movement of large group formations. Film: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson, 2002, 179 mins)

This session interrogates what it means to ‘act’ in the digital era through a consideration of motion-capture as a form of virtual puppetry, and the technology’s complicated relationship to the so-called ‘crisis of acting’ prompted by the evolution of computer-generated ‘synthespians’ and avatars across the media industries. By looking at the myth of authorship and discourses of control that surround ‘mo-cap’ as a widespread production, alongside the industry narratives and labour hierarchies involved in the virtual transcription of the star body, we will pose and respond to the question of who performs the digital image. Film: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt, 2011, 105 mins)

In this penultimate session, we will discuss the growing screen representation of automatons, androids, and robots, and explore how the recent rendition of such ‘technologized’ bodies mirrors real-world machine/organism hybrids that populate contemporary culture, from the use of prosthetics and technological devices within medical procedures to highly-gendered and racialised interactive virtual assistants (Siri, Google Now, Alexa, and Cortana). We will examine the cyborg as an ongoing figure of fascination throughout film history, one whose uncanny humanity and provocative ‘in-betweenness’ allows it to function as a vital space of critique and exploration, if not as a crucial site of resistance, transformation, and fantasy. Film: Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014, 108 mins)

This final session examines contemporary Hollywood’s increasing exploration of digital de-aging, tracing its origins from the fashion and advertising industries (as a form of digital beauty FX) through to its widespread use within popular film and television in ways that de-age stars through excessive computer intervention. We will sharpen our understanding of the virtual recreation of youth via its links to recent posthumous performances and ‘live’ holography, as well as the bottom-up activity of online video artists who delight in the unlicensed re-appropriation of audiovisual footage thanks to the ‘reskinning’ properties of Deepfakes. Drawing together the cautionary tales and crisis narratives that have defined the industrial, critical, and cultural responses to these technologies of falsification, we will also focus on current intersections between celebrity and advanced digital VFX that have produced the star as a new kind of data asset in the era of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Film: Gemini Man (Ang Lee, 2019, 105 mins)