CMAf15 Contemporary Hollywood and Digital Effects

Filozofická fakulta
jaro 2025
Rozsah
2/0/0. 5 kr. Ukončení: zk.
Vyučující
Christopher Holliday (přednášející)
Garance
Mgr. Šárka Jelínek Gmiterková, Ph.D.
Ústav filmu a audiovizuální kultury – Filozofická fakulta
Kontaktní osoba: Mgr. Šárka Jelínek Gmiterková, Ph.D.
Dodavatelské pracoviště: Ústav filmu a audiovizuální kultury – Filozofická fakulta
Předpoklady
There are none.
Omezení zápisu do předmětu
Předmět je určen pouze studentům mateřských oborů.
Mateřské obory/plány
Cíle předmětu
This series of six lectures interrogates the relationship between popular Hollywood cinema and the emergence of computer graphics, looking at a selection of flashpoint films that each reflect a key moment in the technological evolution and visual spectacle of digital effects. Taking as a starting point the integration of computer-generated imagery (CGI) within mainstream U.S. cinema during the 1980s, the course offers a chronological overview of the major innovations in effects technologies, from the photorealistic representation of metamorphosing bodies and expansive digital multitudes to developments in motion-capture performance and the virtual recreation of youth. We will map how Hollywood as an entertainment industry has responded to advances in – and pushed the boundaries of – different kinds of computerised effects, images, characters, and bodies, alongside the ways in which audiences have been invited to marvel at the creative possibilities enabled by Hollywood’s computer revolution.
Výstupy z učení
After completing this course, students will be able to:
• chart the history of digital VFX imagery within contemporary Hollywood cinema from the 1980s to the present.
• define the industrial and technological shifts that have supported the acceleration of computer-generated imagery within mainstream filmmaking.
• situate transformations in film style and aesthetics within broader critical paradigms and contexts.
Osnova
  • Lecture 1
  • Topic: Digital VFX and Hollywood’s Wonder Years
  • 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)
  • Lecture 2
  • Topic: New Digital Wonderlands
  • This session critically reflects on key developments that would transform the landscape of visual effects imagery throughout the 1990s and into the first decade of the new millennium, including the rise in green-/bluescreen processes, digital backlot production, and ‘bullet-time’ technology. We will also look at the stylistic and ideological features of cinema’s representation of cyberspace and virtual reality, and what this reflexive illustration of computer power after the end of the “wonder years” tells us about the pleasures, perils, and politics of Hollywood’s still-new digital wonderlands.
  • Film: The Matrix (Lilly and Lana Wachowski, 1999, 136 mins)
  • Lecture 3
  • Topic: Masses and Multitudes
  • 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)
  • Lecture 4
  • Topic: Motion Capture and Digital Performance
  • 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)
  • Lecture 5
  • Topic: Posthumanist Bodies and the Cyborg
  • 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)
  • Lecture 6
  • Topic: Digital De-Aging
  • 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)
Literatura
    povinná literatura
  • • Lisa Purse, “The New Spatial Dynamics of the Bullet Time Effect,” in The Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond, ed. Geoff King (Portland: Intellect Books, 2005), 151–160.
  • • Kristen Whissel, “The Digital Multitude,” Cinema Journal 49, no. 4 (Summer 2010): 90–110.
  • • Angela Ndalianis, “Special Morphing Magic, and the 1990s Cinema of Attractions,” in Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick Change, ed. Vivian Sobchack (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 250–272.
  • • Anne Balsamo, “Reading Cyborgs Writing Feminism,” in The Gendered Cyborg, eds. Fiona Hovenden, Linda Janes, Gill Kirkup and Kathryn Woodward (New York: Routledge, 2000), 148–158.
  • • Tanine Allison, “More than a Man in a Monkey Suit: Andy Serkis Motion Capture and Digital Realism,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 28, no. 4 (2011): 325–341.
  • • Christopher Holliday, “Retroframing the Future: Digital De-aging Technologies in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema,” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 61, no. 5 (2021-2022): 210–237.
Výukové metody
Six lectures of this short intensive course will take place in the final week of the semester: May 19th - May 23rd. Detailed schedule will be specified.
The course as well as selected screenings will take place in the screening room C34. Please note that student attendance is obligatory on all lectures and will be regularly checked.
Once the enrolment number will reach 74 and more, some students will have to take the classes online, through MS Teams. Further instructions regarding the capacities will be specified mid-March, once the enrolment is closed.
Metody hodnocení
Written test based on the obligatory reading, presentations and films. Further instructions will be specified.
Náhradní absolvování
It is also possible to take the course in an alternative form, in case of a an Erasmus stay abroad. Readings will be available in the interactive syllabi and AV materials in the IS study materials.
Vyučovací jazyk
Angličtina
Informace učitele
Dr. Christopher Holliday is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education, and the Deputy Director and Education Lead of the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities at King's College, London. He gained his PhD in Film Studies from King’s College London (2013), having previously been an undergraduate and postgraduate student at the University of Warwick where he graduated with a First-Class BA Honours degree in Film and Television Studies (2006) and an MA for Research in Film and Television Studies with Distinction (2008). Dr. Holliday has taught Film, Media, and Cultural Studies at a variety of UK universities, including at King’s as a Teaching Fellow (2015-2017) in the Department of Film Studies, and at the University of Kent (2014), University of Surrey (2015), and as part of the BA Film Practice course at London South Bank University (2013-2015). He is currently a visiting lecturer at the London Film Academy and consultant for the New York-based animation consulting studio Story Critters.
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