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207 pages

English

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Extrait

Description

The world of media production is in a state of rapid transformation. In this age of the Internet, interactivity and digital broadcasting, do traditional standards of quality apply or must we identify and implement new criteria?

This profile of the work of the Cambridge University Moving Image Studio (CUMIS), presents a strong argument that new developments in digital media are absolutely dependent on an understanding of traditional excellence. The book stands alone in placing equal emphasis on theoretical and practical aspects of its subject matter and avoids jargon so as to be easily understood by the general reader as well as the specialist.

Chapters discuss:

• animation • navigable architectural environments • moving image narrativity
• questions of truth and representation • virtuality/reality • synthetic imaging
• interactivity

This broad analysis of current research, teaching and media production contains essential information for all those working or studying in the areas of multimedia, architecture, film and television.

The book is designed as a core text for the Cambridge University 1 year MPhil Degree in Architecture and the Moving Image.

Sujets

Media Studies

Social Science

Sociologie, société et politique

General officer

Cultural studies

General

Architecture

Informations

Publié par	Intellect Books
Date de parution	01 janvier 2003
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781841508924
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Architectures of Illusion
From Motion Pictures to Navigable Interactive Environments
Edited by
Maureen Thomas
Fran ois Penz
First Published in Great Britain in Hardback in 2003 by Intellect Books , PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First Published in USA in 2003 by Intellect Books , ISBS, 5824 N.E. Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA
Copyright 2003 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

Text Editor
Maureen Thomas
Image Editor
Fran ois Penz
Consulting Editor:
Robin Beecroft
Cover Design
Martin Robertson
Copy Editor:
Lisa Morris
Proofreader
Holly Spradling

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Electronic ISBN 1-84150-892-6 / ISBN 1-84150-045-3

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge
Contents
Historical Note
Introduction
Maureen Thomas
Animation, Art and Digitality
From Termite Terrace to Motion Painting
Brian Ashbee
1) The Escape from Termite Terrace
2) A Lexicon of Babel: The Multiple Languages of Animation
3) The Genie in the Lamp: Realism and Fantasy in the Animated Film
4) Animation and Documentary
5) Motion Painting
Beyond Digitality: Cinema, Console Games and Screen Language
The Spatial Organisation of Narrative
Maureen Thomas
1) Console Games and Storytelling
2) Tradition and Innovation - Drama, Narrative and Narration on the Film, TV and Interactive Screen
3) Big Screen/Small Screen - Cross Fertilization Between Film and Interactive Games
4) Narrative, Narration and Engagement in Adventure Gamestories
5) Storyscapes, Storyseekers and Storymakers - Dramatic Narrative in Navigable Expressive Space
Architecture and the Screen from Photography to Synthetic Imaging
Capturing and Building Space, Time and Motion
Fran ois Penz
1) Background
2) Architects Perspectives on Film
3) Film-Makers Perspectives on Architecture
4) Location Shooting in City Films
5) Toward the Digital Representation of Architecture and the City: Narrating 3D Spaces
The Creative Treatment of Actuality
Visions and Revisions in Representing Truth
Terence Wright
1) Theory and Practice
2) High and Low Control
3) The Motivation Behind the Camera
4) Ethnographic Movies - The Avant-Garde of Documentary?
5) The Interactive Documentary
Screenography
Bibliography
Index
Historical Note
Cambridge University Moving Image Studio (CUMIS), managed by the Department of Architecture, was established in November 1998,with strong support and encouragement from Professor Peter Carolin, to bring audiovisual digital technologies into the University s pursuit of knowledge, its curating and dissemination, with special care for the Arts and Humanities. CUMIS underpins the Department of Architecture s Digital Studios for Practice-Based Research in Design, Visualisation, Communication and Interactivity, where Fran ois Penz (Director of CUMIS) is Head of Research in Spatiality, and Maureen Thomas (Creative Director of CUMIS) is Head of Research in Narrativity. Although in its present form this volume reflects the research focuses of the Digital Studios and CUMIS, it was also inspired by the vision of Henning Camre, Director of the National Film Television School (NFTS), UK, where, from 1993 to 1998, Maureen Thomas was Head of Screen Studies and began her practice-based research in narrative interactive media. Video artist, animator, film-maker and art critic Brian Ashbee, and visual anthropologist, photographer and researcher in media representation Terence Wright, who both work regularly at CUMIS, were also tutors at the NFTS.
The perception that developments in 3D software and digital production methods would inevitably bring together the architects of the real world and the architects of the illusory world of the screen - a perception reflected in papers delivered at a joint symposium held by the NFTS and Cambridge University, published in the British Film Institute volume Cinema and Architecture (ed. Penz Thomas, BFI 1997) - has proved justified. The digital future was viewed in the 1990s by both architects and film-makers as a great opportunity for innovation and creativity, but a pressing need for collaborative research into its potential, in preparation for a new era of design and production, was identified. In 2003 - the digital present - the Digital Studios Research Group in Design, Visualisation, Communication and Interactivity, supported by CUMIS, provides an environment for the fulfilment of that need. From the vantage point of the Studio, this book offers different but complementary perspectives on the narrative organization of space and the spatial organization of narrative; on the historical cross-pollination between the photographic image, movement, character and animation; and on the relationships between recording, representing and generating screen events in moving-image media from motion pictures through architectural walk-throughs to navigable interactive environments for drama. Its emphasis is on the integration of diversity enabled by creative media technology in the 21 st century: tradition and innovation, fiction and fact, observation and creation, animation and live-action, 2D and 3D - in the context of both theory and practice.
Introduction
The buzzword of the 1990s in moving-image-based media was convergence . By the turn of the millennium, with faster and faster, more and more accessible computing and networks constantly speeding up the rate of development, convergence had come to pass. Communications technology (mobile devices, networks, telecoms) and creative media technology (computer graphics, computer-aided design and animation, real-time three-dimensional virtual environments (RT3D) and games design, digital broadcasting and movie-making, e- and d- cinema and digital versatile discs (DVD)) were flourishing in symbiosis in the environment of computer-enabled interactivity. What does this mean for the relationship between traditional design processes, presentation formats, delivery platforms and media production? Crucially, we need to recognise and understand the diverse components which constitute convergence, and integrate them effectively into an inclusive - but not arbitrary - approach. Part of this process is the clear identification of the strengths of traditional media in the context of emerging digital practices, and the creation of an informed awareness of the transformations which need to take place if worthwhile new work is to be produced.
Traditionally, cinema captured 3D reality and transformed it through the medium of film to project moving images on to the 2D screen; television transmitted real-time events from locations and studios, or fiction and factual programmes recorded on film or video, via the small domestic screen; animation created characters and environments from drawings and models for projection in 2D; while architecture created 2D visions on paper to be built in 3D reality. In the 21 st century, both architecture and the screen arts use the medium of the computer to capture, manipulate and transmit images via digital video and Webcams, including synthetic imaging for environments and sets, and to create totally simulated, navigable virtual worlds directly in 3D animation - narrating space, design process, experience and information, as well as entertainment, in electronic moving images. The computer as tool and medium has become central to designing buildings as well as sets, simulating real environments as well as staging them for fiction, and creating many different kinds of fictive, scientific and craftoriented, moving-image presentations - ranging from TV and architectural explorations of houses and gardens through the depiction of landscape and urban environments to instructional, informational, drama and music videos, commercials, games and movies for the cinema.
The effects on content production of the rapid expansion of digital technology - from documentary and real TV through narrative drama and adventure to animation and computer-generated environments - and the proliferation of computer-based methods of origination, production and delivery in all the visual, expressive and creative arts and design disciplines, require contextualizing in history and theory so that they can be assimilated appropriately into practice. Architects modelling buildings and making walk-throughs and other visualizations and presentations require the traditional skills of moving-image communication (including fiction, drama and music) to narrate architectural space - especially populated space - through DV, mixed media and 3D animations. Makers of moving-image material, factual or fictive, need to understand not only the structures and impact of digital effects on the traditional narrative conventions of 2D screenspace, but also the architectural and expressive properties of 3D navigable virtual environments as performance space. Moving-image language is as fundamental to culture in the 21st century as writing and drawing were in the 19th and, in the digital context, wielding it fluently requires spatial as well as temporal, visual and associative understanding.
Convergence is a somewhat hazy term, and easily obscures the importance of individual identity and diversity within the environment of digital complementarity. In education and training, as in practice-based research, it can be increasingly hard to find the balance between conceptual clarity, single specialist expertise, multi-skilling, teamwork and individual familiarity with a broad range of aesthetics and craft competences. Digital technologies bring the processes and people involved in production teams throughout the creative design and media world into new relationships. The development of a movie - whethe