True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory Stephen Prince Film Quarterly, Vol

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

Stephen Prince

Film Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 3. (Spring, 1996), pp. 27-37.

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http://www.jstor.org Sat Nov 24 11:49:34 2007 Stephen Prince True Lies Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory

Digital cornpositing in Forrest Gump

Digital imaging technologies are rapidly understood. Film theory has not yet come to terms transforming nearly all phases of contemporary film with these issues. What are the implications of com- production. Film-makers today storyboard, shoot, and puter-generated imagery for representation in cinema, edit their films in conjunction with the computer ma- particularly for concepts of photographically based nipulation of images. For the general public, the most realism? How might theory adapt to an era of digital visible application of these technologies lies in the imaging? new wave of computer-generated and -enhanced spe- Initial applications of special-effects digital imag- cial effects that are producing images-the watery ing in feature films began more than a decade ago in creature in The Abyss (1989) or the shimmering, productions like Tron (1982), Star Trek 11: The Wrath shape-shifting Terminator 2 (199 1)-unlike any seen of Khan (1982), and The Last Stafighter (1984). The previously. higher-profile successes of Terminator 2, Jurassic The rapid nature of these changes is creating prob- Park (1993), and Forrest Gump (1994), however, lems for film theory. Because the digital manipulation dramatically demonstrated the creative and remunera- of images is so novel and the creative possibilities it tive possibilities of computer-generatedimagery (CGI). offers are so unprecedented, its effects on cinematic Currently, two broad categories of digital imaging representation and the viewer's response are poorly exist. Digital-image processing covers applications like removing unwanted elements from the frame- formalism in film theory. As we will see, theory has hiding the wires supporting the stunt performers in construed realism solely as a matter of reference rather Climanger (1994), or erasing the Harrier jet from than as a matter of perception as well. It has neglected shots in True Lies (1994) where it accidentally ap- what I will term in this essay "perceptual realism." pears. CGI proper refers to building models and ani- This neglect has prevented theory from understanding mating them in the computer. Don Shay, editor of some of the fundamental ways in which cinema works Cinefex, a journal that tracks and discusses special- and is judged credible by viewers. effects work in cinema, emphasizes these distinctions between the categories.' Assumptions about realism in the cinema As a consequence of digital imaging, Forrest are frequently tied to concepts of indexicality prevail- Gump viewers saw photographic images of actor Gary ing between the photographic image and its referent. Sinise, playing Gump's amputee friend and fellow These, in turn, constitute part of the bifurcation be- Vietnam veteran, being lifted by a nurse from a hospi- tween realism and formalism in film theory. In order tal bed and carried, legless, through three-dimensional to understand how theories about the nature of cin- space. The film viewer is startled to realize that the ematic images may change in the era of digital-imag- representation does not depend on such old-fashioned ing practices, this bifurcation and these notions of an methods as tucking or tieing the actor's limbs behind indexically based film realism need to be examined. his body and concealing this with a loose-fitting cos- This approach to film realism-and it is, perhaps, tume. Instead, Sinise's legs had been digitally erased the most basic theoretical understanding of film real- from the shot by computer. ism-is rooted in the view that photographic images, Elsewhere in the same film, viewers saw photo- unlike paintings or line drawings, are indexical signs: graphic images of President Kennedy speaking to ac- they are causally or existentially connected to their tor Tom Hanks, with dialogue scripted by the film's referents. Charles S. Peirce, who devised the triadic writers. In the most widely publicized applications of model of indexical, iconic, and symbolic signs, noted CGI, viewers of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park that "Photographs, especially instantaneous photo- watched photographic images of moving, breathing, graphs, are very instructive, because we know that in and chomping dinosaurs, images which have no basis certain respects they are exactly like the objects they in any photographable reality but which nevertheless represent . . . they . . . correspond point by point to seemed realistic. In what follows, I will be assuming nature. In that respect then, they belong to the second that viewers routinely make assessments about the class of signs, those by physical connection." perceived realism of a film's images or characters, In his analysis of photography, Roland Barthes even when these are obviously fictionalized or other- noted that photographs, unlike every other type of wise impossible. Spielberg's dinosaurs made such a image, can never be divorced from their referents. huge impact on viewers in part because they seemed Photograph and referent "are glued together." For far more life-like than the miniature models and stop- Barthes, photographs are causally connected to their motion animation of previous generations of film. referents. The former testifies to the presence of the The obvious paradox here-creating credible latter. "I call 'photographic referent' not the option- photographic images of things which cannot be photo- ally real thing to which an image or sign refers but the graphed-and the computer-imaging capabilities necessarily real thing which has been placed before which lie behind it challenge some of the traditional the lens without which there would be no photo- assumptions about realism and the cinema which are graph."4 For Barthes, "Every photograph is a certifi- embodied in film theory. This essay first explores the cate of pre~ence."~ challenge posed by CGI to photographically based Because cinema is a photographic medium, theo- notions of cinematic realism. Next, it examines some rists of cinema developed concepts of realism in con- of the problems and challenges of creating computer nection with the indexical status of the photographic imagery in motion pictures by drawing on interviews sign. Most famously, Andre Bazin based his realist with computer-imaging artists. Finally, it develops an aesthetic on what he regarded as the "objective" na- alternate model, based on perceptual and social corre- ture of photography, which bears the mechanical trace spondences, of how the cinema communicates and is of its referents. In a well-known passage, he wrote, intelligible to viewers. This model may produce a "The photographic image is the object itself, the ob- better integration of the tensions between realism and ject freed from the conditions of time and space which govern it. No matter how fuzzy, distorted, or discol- began as a wireframe model in the computer, no ored, no matter how lacking in documentary value the profilmic referent existed to ground the indexicality of image may be, it shares, by virtue of the very process its image. Nevertheless, digital imaging can anchor of its becoming, the being of the model of which it is pictured objects, like this watery creature, in apparent the reproduction; it is the m~del."~ photographic reality by employing realistic lighting Other important theorists of film realism empha- (shadows, highlights, reflections) and surface texture sized the essential attribute cinema shares with pho- detail (the creature's rippling responses to the touch of tography of being a recording medium. Siegfried one of the film's live actors). At the same time, digital Kracauer noted that his theory of cinema, which he imaging can bend, twist, stretch, and contort physical subtitled "the redemption of physical reality," "rests objects in cartoonlike ways that mock indexicalized upon the assumption that film is essentially an exten- referentiality. In an Exxon ad, an automobile morphs sion of photography and therefore shares with that into a tiger, and in a spot for Listerine, the CGI bottle

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. .i Jurassic Park: not the real T. Rex

medium a marked affinity for the visible world around of mouthwash jiggles, expands, and contracts in an us. Films come into their own when they record and excited display of enthusiasm for its new f~rmula.'~ reveal physical reality."' Like Bazin, Stanley Cave11 In these obvious ways, digital imaging operates emphasized that cinema is the screening or projection according to a different ontology than do indexical of reality because of the way that photography, photographs. But in less obvious ways, as well, digital whether still or in motion, mechanically (that is, auto- imaging can depart from photographically coded real- matically) reproduces the world before the lens.8 ism. Objects can be co-present in computer space but For reasons that are alternately obvious and not in the physical 3D space which photography subtle, digital imaging in its dual modes of image records. When computer-animated objects move processing and CGI challenges indexically based no- around in a simulated space, they can intersect one tions of photographic realism. As Bill Nichols has another. This is one reason why computer animators noted, a digitally designed or created image can be start with wireframe models which they can rotate and subject to infinite manipulation.' Its reality is a func- see through in order to determine whether the model is tion of complex algorithms stored in computer intersecting other points in the simulated space. Com- memory rather than a necessary mechanical resem- puter-simulated environments, therefore, have to be blance to a referent. In cases like the slithery underwa- programmed to deal with the issues of collision detec- ter creature in James Cameron's The Abyss, which tion and collision response.ll The animators who created the herd of gallimimus points out that the painted light effects in the shot are that chases actor Sam Neil1 and two children in Juras- a digital manipulation so subtle that most viewers sic Park were careful to animate the twenty-four gallis probably do not notice the trickery. so they would look like they might collide and were Like lighting, the rendering of motion can be ac- reacting to that pos~ibility.'~First, they had to ensure complished by computer painting. President Kennedy that no gallis actually did pass into and through one speaking to Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump resulted another, and then they had to simulate the collision from two-dimensional painting, made to look like 3D, responses in the creatures' behaviors as if they were according to Pat Byme, Technical Director at Post corporeal beings subject to Newtonian space. Effects, a Chicago effects house that specializes in digital imaging.I5 The archival footage of Kennedy, once digitized, was repainted with the proper phonetic As moving photographic mouth movements to match the scripted dialogue and with highlights on his face to simulate the correspond- images, Spielberg's dinosaurs ing jaw and muscle changes. Morphs were used to smooth out the different painted configurations of are referentially fictional mouth and face.16 When animating motion via computer, special adjustments must be made precisely because of the In other subtle ways, digital imaging can fail to differences between photographically captured reality perform Kracauer's redemption of physical reality. and the synthetic realities engineered with CGI. Cred- Lights simulated in the computer don't need sources, ible computer animation requires the addition of mo- and shadows can be painted in irrespective of the tion blur to simulate the look of a photographic image. position of existing lights. Lighting, which in photog- The ping-pong ball swatted around by Forrest Gump raphy is responsible for creating the exposure and the and his Chinese opponents was animated on the com- resulting image, is, for computer images, strictly a puter from a digitally scanned photographic model of matter of painting, of changing the brightness and a ping-pong ball and was subsequently composited coloration of individual pixels. As a result, lighting in into the live-action footage of the game (the game computer imagery need not obey the rather fixed and itself was shot without any ball). The CGI ball seemed rigid physical conditions which must prevail in order credible because, among other reasons, the animators for photographs to be created. were careful to add motion blur, which a real, rapidly One of the more spectacular digital images in moving object passing in front of a camera will pos- True Lies is a long shot of a chateau nestled beside a sess (as seen by the camera which freezes the action as lake and surrounded by the Swiss Alps. The image is a series of still frames), but which a key-framed com- a digital composite, blending a mansion from New- puter animated object does not. port, Rhode Island, water shot in Nevada, and a digital In these ways, both macro and micro, digital im- matte painting of the Alps.'Vhe compositing was aging possesses a flexibility that frees it from the done by Digital Domain, a state-of-the-art effects indexicality of photography's relationship with its ref- house created by the film's director, James Cameron. erent." Does this mean, then, that digital-imaging ca- The shot is visually stunning+risply resolved, richly pabilities ought not be grouped under the rubric of a saturated with color, and brightly illuminated across realist film theory? If not, what are the alternatives? Alps, lake, and chateau. What kind of realism, if any, do these images possess? Kevin Mack, a digital effects supervisor at Digital In traditional film theory, only one alternative is Domain who worked on True Lies as well as Interview available: the perspective formulated in opposition to with the Vampire, points out that the image is unnatu- the positions staked out by realists like Kracauer, rally luminant.14 Too much light is distributed across Bazin, and Cavell. This position, which might be the shot. If aphotographer exposed for the lights in the termed the formalist outlook, stresses cinema's capac- chateau, the Alps would film too dark, and, con- ity for reorganizing, and even countering and falsify- versely, if one exposed for the Alps in, say, bright ing, physical reality. Early exponents of such a moonlight, the lights in the chateau would bum out. position include Rudolf Amheim, Dziga Vertov, and The chateau and the Alps could not be lit so they'd Sergei Eisenstein. In his discussion of classical film both expose as brightly as they do in the image. Mack theory, Noel Carroll has pointed out this bifurcation between the camps of realism and formalism and The tensions within film theory can be sur- linked it to an essentializing tendency within theory, a mounted by avoiding an essentializing conception of predilection of theorists to focus on either the the cinema stressing unique, fundamental properties23 cinema's capability to photographically copy physical and by employing, in place of indexically based no- reality or to stylistically transcend that reality.'* tions of film realism, a correspondence-based model This tension in classical theory between stressing of cinematic representation. Such a model will enable the ways film either records or reorganizes profilmic us to talk and think about both photographic images reality continues in contemporary theory, with the and computer-generated images and about the ways classical formalist emphasis upon the artificiality of that cinema can create images that seem alternately cinema structure being absorbed into theories of the real and unreal. To develop this approach, it will be apparatus, of psychoanalysis, or of ideology as ap- necessary to indicate, first, what is meant by a corre- plied to the cinema. In these cases, cinematic realism spondence-based model and, then, how digital imag- is seen as an effect produced by the apparatus or by ing fits within it. spectators positioned within the Lacanian Imaginary. Cinematic realism is viewed as a discourse coded for transparency such that the indexicality of photo- Anextensive body of evidence indicates graphic realism is replaced by a view of the "reality- the many ways in which film spectatorship builds on effect" produced by codes and discourse. Jean-Louis correspondences between selected features of the cin- Baudry suggests that "Between 'objective reality' and ematic display and a viewer's real-world visual and the camera, site of inscription, and between the in- social experien~e.~~These include iconic and non- scription and the projection are situated certain opera- iconic visual and social cues which are structured into tions, a work which has as its result a finished cinematic images in ways that facilitate comprehen- product."lY Writing about the principles of realism, sion and invite interpretation and evaluation by view- Colin McCabe stresses that film is "constituted by a ers based on the salience of represented cues or pat- set of discourses which . . . produce acertain reality.020 terned deviations from them. At a visual level, these Summarizing these views, Dudley Andrew ex- cues include the ways that photographic images and plains, "The discovery that resemblance is coded and edited sequences are isomorphic with their corre- therefore learned was a tremendous and hard-won vic- sponding real-world displays (e.g., through replica- tory for semiotics over those upholding a notion of tion of edge and contour information and of monocu- naive perception in ~inema."~'Where classical film lar distance codes; in the case of moving pictures, theory was organized by a dichotomy between realism replication of motion parallax; and in the case of con- and formalism, contemporary theory has preserved tinuity editing, the creation of a screen geography with the dichotomy even while recasting one set of its coherent coordinates through the projective geometry terms. Today, indexically based notions of cinema of successive camera positions). Under such condi- realism exist in tension with a semiotic view of the tions, empirical evidence indicates that naive viewers cinema as discourse and of realism as one discourse readily recognize experientially familiar pictured ob- among others. jects and can comprehend filmed sequences, and that In some of the ways just discussed, digital imag- continuity editing enhances such c~mprehension.~~ ing is inconsistent with indexically based notions of At the level of social experience, the evidence film realism. Given the tensions in contemporary film indicates that viewers draw from a common stock of theory, should we then conclude that digital-imaging moral constructs and interpersonal cues and percepts technologies are necessarily illusionistic, that they when evaluating both people in real life and repre- construct a reality-effect which is merely discursive? sented characters in the media. Socially derived as- They do, in fact, permit film artists to create synthetic sumptions about motive, intent, and proper role-based realities that can look just like photographic realities. behavior are employed when responding to real and As Pat Byrne noted, "The line between real and not- media-based personalities and behavior.26As commu- real will become more and more blurred."22 How nication scholars Elizabeth Perse and Rebecca Rubin should we understand digital imaging in theory? How have pointed out, "'people' constitutes a construct should we build theory around it? When faced with domain that may be sufficiently permeable to include digitized images, will we need to discard entirely no- both interpersonal and [media] contexts."27 tions of realism in the cinema? Recognizing that cinematic representation operates significantly, though not exclusively, in terms of refer to creatures that once existed, but as moving structured correspondences between the audiovisual photographic images they are referentially fictional. display and a viewer's extra-filmic visual and social No dinosaurs now live which could be filmed doing experience enables us to ask about the range of cues or things the fictionalized creatures do'in Jurassic Park. correspondences within the image or film, how they By contrast, referentially realistic images bear indexi- are structured, and the ways a given film patterns its cal and iconic homologies with their referents. They represented fictionalized reality around these cues. resemble the referent, which, in turn, stands in a What kind of transformations does a given film carry causal, existential relationship to the image.28 out upon the correspondences it employs with view- A perceptually realistic image is one which struc- ers' visual and social experience? Attributions of real- turally corresponds to the viewer's audiovisual expe- ism, or the lack thereof, by viewers will inhere in the rience of three-dimensional space. Perceptually ways these correspondences are structured into and/or realistic images correspond to this experience because transformed by the image and film. Instead of asking film-makers build them to do so. Such images display

whether a film is realistic or formalistic, we can ask a nested hierarchy of cues which organize the display about the kinds of linkages that connect the repre- of light, color, texture, movement, and sound in ways sented fictionalized reality of a given film to the visual that correspond with the viewer's own understanding and social coordinates of our own three-dimensional of these phenomena in daily life. Perceptual realism, world, and this can be done for both "realist" and therefore, designates a relationship between the image "fantasy" films alike. Such a focus need not reinstate or film and the spectator, and it can encompass both indexicality as the ground of realism, since it can em- unreal images and those which are referentially realis- phasize falsified correspondences and transformation tic. Because of this, unreal images may be referen- of cues. Nor need such a focus turn everything about tially fictional but perceptually realistic. the cinema back into discourse, into an arbitrarily We should now return to, and connect this discus- coded reorganization of experience. As we will see, sion back to, the issue of digital imaging. When light- even unreal images can be perceptually realistic. Un- ing a scene becomes a matter of painting pixels, and real images are those which are referentially fictional. capturing movement is a function of employing the The Terminator is a represented fictional character correct algorithms for mass, inertia, torque, and speed that lacks reference to any category of being existing (with the appropriate motion blur added as part of the outside the fiction. Spielberg's dinosaurs obviously mix), indexical referencing is no longer required for the appearance of photographic realism in the digital extremely important and quite difficult, because the image. Instead, Gump's ping-pong ball and information provided must seem credible. Currently, Spielberg's dinosaurs look like convincing photo- many of the algorithms needed for convincing move- graphic realities because of the complex sets of per- ment either do not exist or are prohibitively expensive ceptual correspondences that have been built into to run on today's computers. The animators and ren- these images. These correspondences, which anchor derers at Industrial Light and Magic used innovative the computer-generated image in apparent three-di- software to texture-map32skin and wrinkles onto their mensional space, routinely include such variables as dinosaurs and calibrated variations in skin jostling and surface texture, color, light, shadow, reflectance, mo- wrinkling with particular movements of the creatures. tion speed and direction. However, while bone and joint rotation are success- Embedding or compositing computer imagery fully visualized, complex information about the into live action, as occurs when Tom Hanks as Gump movement of muscles and tendons below the skin "hits" the CG ping-pong ball or when Sam Neil1 is surface is lacking. "chased" by the CG gallimimus herd, requires match- Kevin Mack describes this limit in present rendering both environments. The physical properties and ing abilities as the "human h~rdle"~~-thatis, the coordinates of the computer-generated scene compo- present inability of computers to fully capture the nents must be made to correspond with those of the complexities of movement by living organisms. Hair, live-action scene. Doing this requires precise and for example, is extremely difficult to render because time-consuming creation and manipulation of mul- of the complexities of mathematically simulating tiple 3D perceptual cues. Kevin Mack, at Digital Do- properties of mass and inertia for finely detailed main, and Chris Voellmann, a digital modeller and strands.34Chris Voellmann points out that today's animator at Century I11 Universal Studios, point out software can create flexors and rotators but cannot yet that light, texture, and movement are among the most control veins or muscles. important cues to be manipulated in order to create a Multiple levels of information capture must be synthetic reality that looks as real as p~ssible.~' successfully executed to convincingly animate and To simulate light properties that match both envi- render living movement because the viewer's eye is ronments, a digital animator may employ scan-line adept at perceiving inaccurate inf~rmation.~~These algorithms that calculate pixel coloration one scan levels include locomotor mechanics-the specifica- line at a time, ray tracing methods that calculate the tion of forces, torques, and joint rotations. In addition, passage of light rays through a modelled environment, "gait-specific rules"" must be specified. The Jurassic or radiosity formulations that can account for diffuse, Park animators, for example, derived gait-specific indirect illumination by analyzing the energy transfer rules for their dinosaurs by studying the movements of between surface^.^' Such techniques enable a success- elephants, rhinos, komodo dragons, and ostriches and ful rendering3' of perceptual information that can then making some intelligent extrapolations. Beyond work to match live-action and computer environments these two levels of information control is the most and lend credence and a sense of reality to the difficult one--capturing the expressive properties of cornposited image such that its computerized compo- movement. Human and animal movement cannot look nents seem to fulfill the indexicalized conditions of mechanical and be convincing; it must be expressive photographic realism. When the velociraptors hunt of mood and affect. the children inside the park's kitchen in the climax of As the foregoing discussion indicates, available Jurassic Park, the film's viewer sees their movements software and the speed and economics of present com- reflected on the gleaming metal surfaces of tables and putational abilities are placing limits on the complexi- cookware. These reflections anchor the creatures in- ties of digitally rendered 3D cues used to integrate side Cartesian space and perceptual reality and provide synthetic and live-action objects and environments. a bridge between live-action and computer-generated But the more important point is that present abilities to environments. In the opening sequence of Forrest digitally simulate perceptual cues about surface tex- Gump, as a CG feather drifts and tumbles through ture, reflectance, coloration, motion, and distance pro- space, its physical reality is enhanced by the addition vide an extremely powerful means of "gluing" of a digitally painted reflection on an automobile together synthetic and live-action environments and windshield. of furnishing the viewer with an internally unified and To complete this anchoring process, the provision coherent set of cues that establish correspondences of information about surface texture and movement is with the properties of physical space and living sys- tems in daily life. These correspondences in turn es- tially unreal, a paradox that present film theory has a tablish some of the most important criteria by which hard time accounting for. viewers can judge the apparent realism or credibility The profound impact of digital imaging, in this possessed by the digital image. respect, lies in the unprecedented ways that it permits film-makers to extend principles of perceptual realism to unreal images. The creative manipulation of photographic images is, of course, as old as the medium of photography. For example, flashing film prior to development or dodging and burning portions of the Digital imaging exposes the image during printing will produce lighting effects that did not exist in the scene that was photographed. enduring dichotomy in film The tension between perceptual realism and referen- theory as a false boundary tial artifice clearly predates digital imaging. It has informed all fantasy and special-effects work where film-makers strive to create unreal images that nevertheless seem credible. What is new and revolutionary about digital imaging is that it increases to an extraor- dinary degree a film-maker's control over the infor- Obvious paradoxes arise from these judgements. mational cues that establish perceptual realism. No one has seen a living dinosaur. Even paleontolo- Unreal images have never before seemed so real. gists can only hazard guesses about how such crea- Digital imaging alters our sense of the necessary tures might have moved and how swiftly. Yet the relationship involving both the camera and the dinosaurs created at ILM have a palpable reality about profilmic event. The presence of either is no longer an them, and this is due to the extremely detailed texture- absolute requirement for generating photographic im- mapping, motion animation, and integration with live ages that correspond to spatio-temporally valid prop- action carried out via digital imaging. Indexicality erties of the physical world. If neither a camera nor an cannot furnish us with the basis for understanding this existent referent is necessary for the digital rendition apparent photographic realism, but a correspondence- of photographic reality, the application of internally based approach can. Because the computer-generated valid perceptual correspondences with the 3D world is images have been rendered with such attention to 3D necessary for establishing the credibility of the syn- spatial information, they acquire a very powerful per- thetic reality. These correspondences establish ceptual realism, despite the obvious ontological prob- bridges between what can be seen and photographed lems in calling them "realistic." These are falsified and that which can be "photographed" but not seen. correspondences, yet because the perceptual informa- Because these correspondences between syn- tion they contain is valid, the dinosaurs acquire a re- thetic environments and real environments employ markable degree of photographic realism. multiple cues, the induced realism of the final CG In a similar way, President Kennedy speaking in image can be extraordinarily convincing. The digital- Forrest Gump is a falsified correspondence which is effects artists interviewed for this essay resisted the nevertheless built from internally valid perceptual in- idea that any one cue was more important than others formation. Computer modelling of synthetic visual and instead emphasized that their task was to build as speech and facial animation relies on cxisting micro- much 3D information as possible into the CG image, analyses of human facial expression and phonetic given budgetary constraints, present computational mouth articulations. The digital-effects artist used limitations, and the stylistic demands of a given film. these facial cues to animate Kennedy's image and With respect to the latter, Kevin Mack pointed out that sync his mouth movements with the scripted dialogue. style coexists with the capability for making the CG At the perceptual level of phonemic articulation and images look as real as possible. The Swiss chateau facial register, the correspondences established are composite in True Lies discussed earlier exemplifies true and enable the viewer to accept the photographic this tension. and dramatic reality of the scene. But these correspon- The apparent realism of digitally processed or cre- dences also establish a falsified relationship with the ated images, then, is a function of the way that mul- historical and archival filmic records of reality. The tiple levels of perceptual correspondence are built into resulting image is perceptually realistic but referen- the image. These establish reference points with the viewer's own experientially based understanding of either indexically records the world or stylistically light, space, motion, and the behavior of objects in a transfigures it. Cinema does both. Similarly, digital- three-dimensional world. The resulting images may imaging practices suggest that contemporary film not contain photographable events, but neither do they theory's insistence upon the constructedness and arti- represent purely illusory constructions. The reliability fice of cinema's discursive properties may be less or nonreliability of the perceptual information they productive than is commonly thought. The problem contain furnishes the viewer with an important frame- here is the implication of discursive equivalence, the work for evaluating the logic of the screen worlds idea that all cinematic representations are, in the end, these images help establish. equally artificial, since all are the constructions of form or ideology. But, as this essay has suggested, some of these representations, while being referen- Theemphasis in contemporary film theory tially unreal, are perceptually realistic. Viewers use has undeniably shifted away from naive notions of and rely upon these perceptual correspondences when

Computer imaging in The Mask

indexical realism in favor of an attention to the responding to, and evaluating, screen experience. constructedness of cinematic discourse. Yet These areas of correspondence coexist in any indexicality remains an important point of origin even given film with narrative, formal, and generic conven- for perspectives that reincorporate it as a variant of tions, as well as intertextual determinants of meaning. illusionism, of the cinema's ability to produce a real- Christopher Williams has recently observed that ity-effect. Bill Nichols notes that "Something of real- viewers make strong demands for reference from ity itself seems to pass through the lens and remain motion pictures, but in ways that simultaneously embedded in the photographic emulsion," while also accomodate style and creativity: "We need films to be recognizing that "Digital sampling techniques destroy about life in one way or another, but we allow them this claim."37 He concludes that the implications of lattitude in how they meet this need."40 Thus, Wil- this "are only beginning to be gra~ped,'"~and there- liams maintains that any given film will feature "the fore limits his recent study of the filmic representation active interplay between the elements which can be of reality to non-digitized images. defined as realist, and the others which function si- Digital imaging exposes the enduring dichotomy multaneously and have either a nonrealist character in film theory as a false boundary. It is not as if cinema (primarily formal, linguistic or conventional) or one which can be called anti-realist because the character larger issue of how viewers see. Doing this may mean of its formal, linguistic or conventional procedures that film theory itself will change, and this essay has specifically or explicitly tries to counteract the cogni- suggested some ways in which that might occur. Digi- tive dimensions we have linked with reali~m."~' tal imaging represents not only the new domain of Building 3D cues inside computer-generated images cinema experiences, but a new threshold for theory as enables viewers to correlate those images with their well. own spatio-temporal experience, even when the digitally processed image fails in other ways to obey that Stephen Prince teaches in the experience (as when the Terminator morphs out of a Department of Communication Studies tiled floor to seize his victim). Satisfying the viewer's at Virginia Tech. His newest book demand for reference permits, in turn, patterned or is Movies and Meaning: stylish deviations from reference. An Introduction to Film, forthcoming from Allyn and Bacon. Stressing correspondence-based transformational abilities enables us to maintain a link, a relationship, Thanks to Carl Plantinga and Mark J. P. Wolf for their between the materials that are to be digitally trans- helpful suggestions on an early version of this paper. formed (elements of the 3D world) and their changed state, as well as providing a means for preserving a Notes basis for concepts of realism in a digitized cinema. Before we can subject digitally animated and pro- 1. Telephone interview with the author, October 19, 1994. cessed images, like the velociraptors stalking the chil- 2. Quoted in Peter Wollen, Signs and Meanings in the Cin- dren through the kitchens of Jurassic Park, to ema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976), extended meta-critiques of their discursive or ideo- pp. 123-24. logical inflections (and these critiques are necessary), 3. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photog- we first need to develop a precise understanding of raphy,trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), p. 5. how these images work in securing for the viewer a 4. Ibid., p. 76. perceptually valid experience which may even in- 5. Ibid., p. 87. voke, as a kind of memory trace, now historically 6. Andr6 Bazin, What Is Cinema? vol. 1, ed. and trans. Hugh superseded assumptions about indexical referencing Gray (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, as the basis of the credibility that photographic images 1967), p. 14. seem to possess. 7. Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, In the correspondence-based approach to cin- 1960), p. ix. ematic representation developed here, perceptual re- 8. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed (Cambridge, MA: alism, the accurate replication of valid 3D cues, Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 16-23. becomes not only the glue cementing digitally created 9. Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts and live-action environments, but also the foundation in Documentary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), note 2, p. 268. upon which the uniquely transformational functions 10. The design and creation of these ads are profiled in detail of cinema exist. Perceptual realism furnishes the basis in Christopher W. Baker, How Did They Do It? Computer on which digital imaging may be carried out by effects Illusion in Film and TV (Indianapolis, IN: Alpha Books, artists and understood, evaluated, and interpreted by 1994). viewers. The digital replication of perceptual corre- 1 1. See Ming C. Lin and Dinesh Manocha, "Interference De- tection Between Curved Objects for Computer Anima- spondence for the film viewer is an enormously com- tion," in Models and Techniques in Computer Animation, plex undertaking and its ramifications clearly extend ed. Nadia Magnenat Thalmann and Daniel Thalmann well beyond film theory and aesthetics to encompass (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993), pp. 43-57. ethical, legal, and social issues. Film theory will need 12. Ron Magid, "ILM's Digital Dinosaurs Tear Up Effects to catch up to this rapidly evolving new category of Jungle," American Cinematographer, vol. 74, no. 12 (De- cember 1993), p. 56. imaging capabilities and grasp it in all of its complex- 13. Stephen Pizello, "True Lies Tests Cinema's Limits," ity. To date, theory has tended to minimize the impor- American Cinematographer, vol. 75, no. 9 (September tance of perceptual correspondences, but the advent of 1994), p. 44. digital imaging demonstrates how important they are 14. Telephone interview with the author, October 25, 1994. and have been all along. Film theory needs now to pay 15. Telephone interview with the author, October 25, 1994. 16. Ron Magid, "ILM Breaks New Digital Ground for closer attention to what viewers see on the screen, how Gump," American Cinematographer, vol. 75, no. 10 (OC- they see it, and the relation of these processes to the tober 1994), p. 52. Press, 1981), pp. 363-85; Cynthia Hoffner and Joanne 17. I do not wish to imply that photography was ever a mere Cantor, "Developmental Differences in Response to a mechanical recording of the visual world. During shoot- Television Character's Appearance and Behavior," De- ing, printing, and developing, photographers found ways velopmental Psychology, vol. 21, no. 6 (1985), pp. 1065- of creating their own special effects. Despite this, theo- 74; Paul Messaris and Larry Gross, "Interpretations of a rists have insisted upon the medium's fundamental Photographic Narrative by Viewers in Four Age Groups," indexicality. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication no. 18. Noel Carroll, Philosophical Problems of Classical Film 4 (1977), pp. 99-111. Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 27. Elizabeth M. Perse and Rebecca B. Rubin, "Attribution in 1988). Social and Parasocial Relationships," Communication 19. Jean-Louis Baudry, "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cin- Research, vol. 16, no. 1 (February 1989), pp. 59-77. ematographic Apparatus," in Narrative, Apparatus, Ide- 28. I am indebted to Carl Plantinga for clarification of some of ology, ed. Philip Rosen (New York: Columbia University these distinctions. Press, 1986), p. 287. 29. Telephone interviews with the author, October 25, 1994. 20. Colin McCabe, "Theory and Film: Principles of Realism 30. Stuart Feldman, "Rendering Techniques for Computer- and Pleasure," in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, p. 182. Aided Design," SMPTE Journal, vol. 103, no. 1 (January 21. Dudley Andrew, Concepts in Film Theory (New York: 1994), pp. 7-12. Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 25. 31. With respect to digital-imaging practices, rendering is 22. Telephone interview with the author, October 25, 1994. distinct from the phases of model-building and animation 23. Noel Carroll has urged film theory in this direction by and refers to the provision of texture, light, and color cues recommending smaller scale, piece-meal theorizing about within a simulated environment. selected aspects of cinema rather than cinema in toto and 32. Texture-mapping is a process whereby a flat surface is on a grand scale. See Philosophical Problems of Classical detailed with texture, such as skin wrinkles, and can then Film Theory, p. 255, and Carroll, Mystifying Movies: be wrapped around a three-dimensional model visualized Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory (New in computer space. Some surfaces texture-map more eas- York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 230-34. ily than others. Pat Byme, at Post Effects, points out that 24. For a fuller discussion of this literature, see my essays spherical objects are problematic because the top and "The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies," bottom tend to look pinched. Telephone interview with Film Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 1 (Fall 1993), pp. 16-28 and the author, October 25, 1994. "Psychoanalytic Film Theory and the Problem of the 33. Telephone interview with the author. Missing Spectator," in Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film 34. Author's interview with Kevin Mack. See also Tsuneya Studies, ed. David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (Madison, Kurihara, Ken-ichi Anjyo, and Daniel Thalmann, "Hair WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996). Animation with Collision Detection," in Models and 25. See Uta Frith and Jocelyn E. Robson, "Perceiving the Techniques in Computer Animation, pp. 128-38. Language of Films," Perception, vol. 4 (1975), pp. 97- 35. See Stephania Loizidou and Gordon J. Clapworthy, 103; Renee Hobbs, Richard Frost, Arthur Davis, and John "Legged Locomotion Using HIDDS," in Models and Stauffer, "How First-Time Viewers Comprehend Editing Techniques in Computer Animation, pp. 257-69. Conventions," Journal of Communication, no. 38 (1988), 36. Ibid., p. 258. pp. 50-60; Julian Hochberg and Virginia Brooks, "Picture 37. Nichols, Representing Reality, p. 5. Perception as an Unlearned Ability: A Study of One 38. Ibid., p. 268. Child's Performance," American Journal of Psychology, 39. Christopher Williams, "After the Classic, the Classical vol. 74, no. 4 (December 1962), pp. 624-28; Robert N. and Ideology: the Differences of Realism," Screen, vol. Kraft, "Rules and Strategies of Visual Narratives," Per- 35, no. 3 (Autumn 1994), p. 282. ceptual and Motor Skills no. 64 (1987), pp. 3-14; Robert 40. Ibid., p. 289. N. Kraft, Phillip Cantor, and Charles Gottdiener, "The Coherence of Visual Narratives," Communication Re- search, vol. 18, no. 5 (October 1991), pp. 601-16; Robin Smith, Daniel R. Anderson, and Catherine Fischer, "Young Children's Comprehension of Montage," Child Development no. 56 (1985), pp. 962-71. 26. See Austin S. Babrow, Barbara J. O'Keefe, David L. Swanson, Renee A. Myers, and Mary A. Murphy, "Person Free sampler catalog from Facets' astonishing Perception and Children's Impression of Television and collection of over 27,000 foreign, classic Real Peers," Communication Research, vol. 15, no. 6 American, silent, documentary, experimental, (December 1988), pp. 680-98; Thomas J. Bemdt and music, fine arts, children's videos and laser discs. Emily G. Berndt, "Children's Use of Motives and Inten- Purchase for as low as $7.99 or rent-by-mail. tionality in Person Perception and Moral Judgement," Child Development no. 46 (1975), pp. 904-12; Aimee 1 1517 W. Fullerton X5103 FACETS VIDEO I Dorr, "How Children Make Sense of Television," in Chicago, IL 60614 Reader in Public Opinion and Mass Communication, ed. e-mail: [email protected] 1-800-331-61 97 Extension 51 Morris Janowitz and Paul M. Hirsch (New York: Free 03 http://www.jstor.org

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You have printed the following article: True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory Stephen Prince Film Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 3. (Spring, 1996), pp. 27-37. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0015-1386%28199621%2949%3A3%3C27%3ATLPRDI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K

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Notes

25 Pictorial Recognition as an Unlearned Ability: A Study of One Child's Performance Julian Hochberg; Virginia Brooks The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 75, No. 4. (Dec., 1962), pp. 624-628. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9556%28196212%2975%3A4%3C624%3APRAAUA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4

25 Young Children's Comprehension of Montage Robin Smith; Daniel R. Anderson; Catherine Fischer Child Development, Vol. 56, No. 4. (Aug., 1985), pp. 962-971. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-3920%28198508%2956%3A4%3C962%3AYCCOM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S

26 Children's Use of Motives and Intentionality in Person Perception and Moral Judgment Thomas J. Berndt; Emily G. Berndt Child Development, Vol. 46, No. 4. (Dec., 1975), pp. 904-912. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-3920%28197512%2946%3A4%3C904%3ACUOMAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0

NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list.