Luciferjones

There are undoubtedly a significant number of technology driven elements that have in just the past decade fundamentally altered or shifted the established notions of what cinematic media is. And whilst Interactivity, Gaming, Virtual Cameras and On line distribution all fit this bill there are others that, though more subtle, have a none the less profound impact on visual language.

One of these is the conjoined arts of Motion Graphics and Compositing. Simply put these represent the shift from cinematic media assembly and language as a sequential progression to a layered simultaneous composition. Adding a vertical dimension to the otherwise horizontal montage.

And yet it perusing the knowledge base of writing about Motion Graphics and Compositing (a base that on a rigorous academic level is somewhat under populated) there seems a disparate and problematic  discourse of perspective on what Motion Graphics and Compositing are and what they represent.

Take for example Steve Wright’s perspective of definition for Compositing from his book ‘Digital compositing for film and video’…

“The ultimate artistic objective of the digital composite is to take images from a variety of different sources and combine them in such a way that they appear to have been shot at the same time under the same lighting conditions and with the same camera”
[page1]

Whilst this objective of perceptual ‘believability’ and ‘reality’ might be a valid objective for many compositing projects, to suggest that it is the ultimate aim of Compositing as an artistic process is simply too limiting and narrow; lacking in foresight and unable to account for the broad palette of possibilities both for now and for wht is to come.

More specifically this narrow attachment to realistic believability brings Compositing down to a much restrained and limited notion of perspective drawn from traditional cinematic thinking - multiple visions of a singular perspective rather than what is possible through compositing - singular vision with multiple perspectives.

The book ‘Motion by design’ by David Robbins, Spencer Drate, Judith Salavetz puts this into a succinct context:

“We now have the ability with sequence to show an entire context and the simultaneity of a particular event.”
[page7]

Its this notion of vertical editing and Eisenstein montage principles exerted in concurrent space rather than a sequential one that begins to point toward a new cinematic language capable of simultaneously deliver greater communicative efficiency along with visual complexity.

The father of contemporary motion graphics, Saul Bass, has made these connections in the example of the movie title sequence:

“a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already ave an emotional resonance with it.” [Interview in Film Quarterly Autumn 1996]

Lev Manovich has discussed much of this visual cinematic evolution in the context of the emergence of software-only compositing motion graphics systems such as After Effects. What he has termed the cinematicVelvet Revolution: in that its a revolution that has taken place quietly and without overt commentary and observation.

The thrust of this idea is focused on where cinematic media is heading in the context of of where it has come from. Where once cinematic media was rooted in the ‘Photographic’ as visual norm Manovich comments that:

“the ‘pure’ moving image media became an exception and hybrid media became the norm…. While the particular aesthetic solutions vary from one piece to the next and from one designer to another, they all share the same logic: the appearance of multiple media simultaneously in the same frame. Whether these media are openly juxtaposed or almost seamlessly blended together is less important than the fact of this co-presence itself.”

This points toward my assertion of cinematic space and aesthetics determined as much by production process as by composition technique. That the software environment is a space of production and due to its uniform non hierarchy of media creates a new composition space of coexistence that defies extant notions of composition, foreground/background and visual language of spatial arrangement. Simply put, the tools of production no longer make hierarchical or segmented media distinctions and therefor it is only natural that our visual language made from those tools moves to the same aesthetic.

Its often said, usually by those wishing to bypass the puerile “my software’s better than your software” arguments, that production software (NLE, DAW, Compositor etc) are simply tools, glorified hammers. But with the above perspectives and observations there is something inherently problematic about perceiving of production software as simple hammers. A builder changing their choice of hammer does not change the look, feel and aesthetic of the House they are building. It make it easier or faster but the structure neither changes nor is influenced by the tool.

The same cannot be said of digital software tools where the aesthetics of what is made by the tool is fundamentally altered by the tool itself.

Cinematography and visual language changed forever with the advent of the fluid head tripod and even further with the invention of the steadi-cam. The tool changed the aesthetic and the viewer’s expectations. Likewise in a world of After Effects and NLE’s that add compositing and multiple layers to the editors toolkit, what is made by those tools is fundamentally different to what was made prior to those tools.