True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory

In the paper

“These correspondences, which anchor the computer-generated image in apparent three-dimensional space, routinely include such variables as surface texture, color, light, shadow, reflectance, motion speed and direction.”

In the paper

“the painted light effects in the shot are a digital manipulation so subtle that most viewers probably do not notice the trickery.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [14] 14. Jean-Louis Baudry, "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cin- ematographic Apparatus," in Narrative, Apparatus, Ide- ology, ed. Philip Rosen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 287.

In the paper

“The image is a digital composite, blending a mansion from Newport, Rhode Island, water shot in Nevada, and a digital matte painting of the Alps.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [13] 13. Noel Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988).

In the paper

“Spielberg's dinosaurs obviously refer to creatures that once existed, but as moving photographic images they are referentially fictional.”

In the paper

“the image is unnaturally luminant.'4Too much light is distributed across the shot.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [14] 14. Jean-Louis Baudry, "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cin- ematographic Apparatus," in Narrative, Apparatus, Ide- ology, ed. Philip Rosen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 287.

In the paper

“Like lighting, the rendering of motion can be accomplished by computer painting.”

In the paper

“No dinosaurs now live which could be filmed doing things the fictionalized creatures do in Jurassic Park.”

In the paper

“The digitaleffects artists interviewed for this essay resisted the idea that any one cue was more important than others and instead emphasized that their task was to build as much 3D information as possible into the CG image, given budgetary constraints, present computational limitations, and the stylistic demands of a given film.”

In the paper

“theory has construed realism solely as a matter of reference rather than as a matter of perception as well.”

In the paper

“a nested hierarchy of cues which organize the display of light, color, texture, movement, and sound in ways that correspond with the viewer's own understanding of these phenomena in daily life.”

In the paper

“Currently, many of the algorithms needed for convincing movement either do not exist or are prohibitively expensive to run on today's computers.”

In the paper

“The tensions within film theory can be surmounted by avoiding an essentializing conception of the cinema stressing unique, fundamental properties23 and by employing, in place of indexically based notions of film realism, a correspondence-based model of cinematic representation.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [23] 23. Robert N. Kraft, Phillip Cantor, and Charles Gottdiener, "The Coherence of Visual Narratives," Communication Re- search, vol. 18, no. 5 (October 1991), pp. 601-16; source

In the paper

“'people' constitutes a construct domain that may be sufficiently permeable to include both interpersonal and [media] contexts.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [27] 27. Aimee Dorr, "How Children Make Sense of Television," in Reader in Public Opinion and Mass Communication, ed.

In the paper

“However, while bone and joint rotation are successfully visualized, complex information about the movement of muscles and tendons below the skin surface is lacking.”

In the paper

“Indexicality cannot furnish us with the basis for understanding this apparent photographic realism, but a correspondencebased approach can.”

In the paper

“The Jurassic Park animators, for example, derived gait-specific rules for their dinosaurs by studying the movements of elephants, rhinos, komodo dragons, and ostriches and then making some intelligent extrapolations.”

In the paper

“Such techniques enable a successful rendering31 of perceptual information that can work to match live-action and computer environments and lend credence and a sense of reality to the composited image such that its computerized components seem to fulfill the indexicalized”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [31] 31. Elizabeth M. Perse and Rebecca B. Rubin, "Attribution in Social and Parasocial Relationships," Communication Research, vol. 16, no. 1 (February 1989), pp. 59-77. source

In the paper

“At the perceptual level of phonemic articulation and facial register, the correspondences established are true and enable the viewer to accept the photographic and dramatic reality of the scene.”

In the paper

“empirical evidence indicates that naive viewers readily recognize experientially familiar pictured objects and can comprehend filmed sequences, and that continuity editing enhances such comprehension.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [25] 25. See Austin S. Babrow, Barbara J. O'Keefe, David L. Swanson, Renee A. Myers, and Mary A. Murphy, "Person Perception and Children's Impression of Television and Real Peers," Communication Research, vol. 15, no. 6 (December 1988), pp. 680-98; source

In the paper

“Credible computer animation requires the addition of motion blur to simulate the look of a photographic image.”

In the paper

“These are falsified correspondences, yet because the perceptual information they contain is valid, the dinosaurs acquire a remarkable degree of photographic realism.”

In the paper

“Today, indexically based notions of cinema realism exist in tension with a semiotic view of the cinema as discourse and of realism as one discourse among others.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [19] 19. See Uta Frith and Jocelyn E. Robson, "Perceiving the Language of Films," Perception, vol. 4 (1975), pp. 97- 103; source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [20] 20. Renee Hobbs, Richard Frost, Arthur Davis, and John Stauffer, "How First-Time Viewers Comprehend Editing Conventions," Journal of Communication, no. 38 (1988), pp. 50-60; source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [21] 21. Julian Hochberg and Virginia Brooks, "Picture Perception as an Unlearned Ability: A Study of One Child's Performance," American Journal of Psychology, vol. 74, no. 4 (December 1962), pp. 624-28;

In the paper

“Hair, for example, is extremely difficult to render because of the complexities of mathematically simulating properties of mass and inertia for finely detailed strands.34”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [34] 34. With respect to digital-imaging practices, rendering is distinct from the phases of model-building and animation and refers to the provision of texture, light, and color cues within a simulated environment.

In the paper

“Chris Voellmann points out that today's software can create flexors and rotators but cannot yet control veins or muscles.”

In the paper

“Beyond these two levels of information control is the most difficult one-capturing the expressive properties of movement.Human and animal movement cannot look mechanical and be convincing; it must be expressive of mood and affect.”

In the paper

“To complete this anchoring process, the provision of information about surface texture and movement is extremely important and quite difficult, because the information provided must seem credible.”

In the paper

“Such a model will enable us to talk and think about both photographic images and computer-generated images and about the ways that cinema can create images that seem alternately real and unreal.”

In the paper

“The digital-effects artist used these facial cues to animate Kennedy's image and sync his mouth movements with the scripted dialogue.”

In the paper

“light, texture, and movement are among the most important cues to be manipulated in order to create a synthetic reality that looks as real as possible.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [29] 29. Cynthia Hoffner and Joanne Cantor, "Developmental Differences in Response to a Television Character's Appearance and Behavior," De- velopmental Psychology, vol. 21, no. 6 (1985), pp. 1065- 74; source

In the paper

“When the velociraptors hunt the children inside the park's kitchen in the climax of Jurassic Park, the film's viewer sees their movements reflected on the gleaming metal surfaces of tables and cookware.These reflections anchor the creatures inside Cartesian space and perceptual reality and provide a bridge between live-action and computer-generated environments.”

In the paper

“The animators and renderers at Industrial Light and Magic used innovative software to texture-map32 skin and wrinkles onto their dinosaurs and calibrated variations in skin jostling and wrinkling with particular movements of the creatures.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [32] 32. I am indebted to Carl Plantinga for clarification of some of these distinctions. 29. Telephone interviews with the author, October 25, 1994.

In the paper

“The reliability or nonreliability of the perceptual information they contain furnishes the viewer with an important framework for evaluating the logic of the screen worlds these images help establish.”

In the paper

“Stressing correspondence-based transformational abilities enables us to maintain a link, a relationship, between the materials that are to be digitally transformed (elements of the 3D world) and their changed state, as well as providing a means for preserving a basis for concepts of realism in a digitized cinema.”

In the paper

“These areas of correspondence coexist in any given film with narrative, formal, and generic conventions, as well as intertextual determinants of meaning.”

In the paper

“The creative manipulation of photographic images is, of course, as old as the medium of photography.”

In the paper

“The resulting image is perceptually realistic but referen-tially unreal, a paradox that present film theory has a hard time accounting for.”

In the paper

“Perceptual realism furnishes the basis on which digital imaging may be carried out by effects artists and understood, evaluated, and interpreted by viewers.”

In the paper

“If neither a camera nor an existent referent is necessary for the digital rendition of photographic reality, the application of internally valid perceptual correspondences with the 3D world is necessary for establishing the credibility of the synthetic reality.”

In the paper

“In the correspondence-based approach to cinematic representation developed here, perceptual realism, the accurate replication of valid 3D cues, becomes not only the glue cementing digitally created and live-action environments, but also the foundation upon which the uniquely transformational functions of cinema exist.”

In the paper

“Unreal images have never before seemed so real.”

In the paper

“With respect to the latter, Kevin Mack pointed out that style coexists with the capability for making the CG images look as real as possible.”

In the paper

“The Swiss chateau composite in True Lies discussed earlier exemplifies this tension.”

In the paper

“To date, theory has tended to minimize the importance of perceptual correspondences, but the advent of digital imaging demonstrates how important they are and have been all along.”

In the paper

“The resulting images may not contain photographable events, but neither do they represent purely illusory constructions.”

In the paper

“The digital replication of perceptual correspondence for the film viewer is an enormously complex undertaking and its ramifications clearly extend well beyond film theory and aesthetics to encompass ethical, legal, and social issues.”

In the paper

“Digital imaging represents not only the new domain of cinema experiences, but a new threshold for theory as well.”

In the paper

“It is not as if cinema either indexically records the world or stylistically transfigures it.Cinema does both.”