Michael LaRocco The “Film Look” as Semiotic Decoy: Slow Frame Rate as Cinematic Code

Abstract This paper investigates the epistemological effects of frame rate in fiction film and television through an analysis of contemporary video camera technology. HD video has widely overtaken film as the dominant motion picture shooting format over the start of the 21st century, but despite the new format’s ability to render images at much faster frame rates, video camera manufacturers have largely opted to recreate the motion rendering of 35mm film by preserving its comparatively slow 24 frame- per-second frame rate – achieving what the filmmaking trade press calls “the film look.” The development of video technology represents a unique example in technological evolution, as it has been driven by a logic of emulation rather than a more common logic of obsolescence, in which the “new and improved” replaces the old and stale. I argue that the emulation of film in video camera technology reveals the extent to which frame rate functions as a visual code in narrative cinema, serving as both an indicator of high production value and also a means for coding images as fictional.

Even before its critical and commercial success, release of 28 Days Later: “Video has long held a Danny Boyle’s horror film 28 Days Later (2002) stigma in the feature film world that’s been a barrier was making waves in the independent filmmaking to distribution. If an independent feature was shot community. Boyle and his cinematographer, on video, it was considered an amateur production Anthony Dod Mantle, had challenged aesthetic that was relegated to cable access or maybe late and industrial conventions by shooting the movie night broadcast TV. If an independent feature was on digital video instead of film – and not the shot on film, it was admitted to the next level and tremendously expensive high definition digital considered for distribution.”1 28 Days Later served video of the era, as was the case with Star Wars: as an example of how a movie shot on video did Attack of the Clones, released that same year. Boyle indeed have a chance to not only achieve critical and Dod Mantle shot on MiniDV, the same video acclaim, as did the Dogme 95 films of the same era, format most low budget, amateur, and independent but also widespread release and success amongst its filmmakers were using. It was also the same Hollywood-born celluloid peers. format used to film most children’s soccer games, Despite being shot in the same medium, 28 weddings, and bar mitzvahs. Shot on the Canon Days Later looks significantly different from the XL-1, a workhorse camera ubiquitous in the video video of a children’s soccer game (even aside from production world of the early 2000s, the release the absence of flesh eating zombies). Its video and success of 28 Days Later was noteworthy – image had been electronically stripped of its “video even inspirational – to independent filmmakers look” – a phrase commonly used within the video who had long dreaded shooting and releasing their production trade press to refer to the smooth projects on video. Filmmakers Dale Newton and rendering of motion associated with 30 frame-per- John Gaspard summarize this dread in their guide second (fps) interlaced video. While 28 Days Later to digital filmmaking, published shortly before the may have offered independent filmmakers a long-

58 Technologies of Knowing Sonia Misra and Maria Zalewska, editors, Spectator 36:1 (Spring 2016): 58-66. LaROCCO awaited validation of video as a format, validation rendering of 35mm film. As a counter example, take came in the form of a backhanded compliment – Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, a movie shot on video could succeed aesthetically released 10 years later. The movie was shot on top- and financially as long as it didn’t look like video. of-the-line high definition video that effectively Boyle was not alone in his choice to give his movie matched the resolution, dynamic range, and color an appearance more in line with the traditionally rendering of film. In image quality, it was virtually cinematic motion of 24 fps film – a so-called indistinguishable from film, though it rendered “film look.” The early 2000s saw a focused effort motion quite differently. Jackson had elected to buck on the part of filmmakers, camera manufacturers, the nearly century-long trend of shooting cinema at and software developers to bring the look of the 24 fps and doubled it, feeling that 48 fps allowed for video image closer to that of the film image. The smoother motion, heightened realism, and an image development of video technology represents a that was easier on the eyes of 3D audiences.3 That unique example in technological evolution, as it one divergence in frame rate led to a slew of negative has been driven by a logic of emulation rather than press at the movie’s release, as many critics found a more common logic of obsolescence, in which the that the hyperreal, ultrasmooth motion rendering “new and improved” replaces the old and stale. resulted in an uncanny, unpleasant image, looking The emulation of film in video camera technology more like consumer grade video or a daytime soap reveals the extent to which frame rate functions as opera than cinema.4 Film scholar Julie Turnock a visual code in narrative cinema, serving as both commented, “I imagine that the [48 fps] Hobbit is an indicator of high production value and also a somewhat disconcerting because it looks like what means for coding images as fictional. This essay digital cinematography would look like if it were not will investigate this particular masquerade of image forced to imitate the ‘photochemical’ look.”5 Even formats and the extent to which the cinematic with an image that was filmic in nearly all respects, form and a “video look” were incompatible in the the increased frame rate was enough to send many minds of independent filmmakers and, as they likely critics into a filmophilic tizzy. presumed, their audiences. The pursuit of the “film The case of The Hobbit, taken alongside the look” was an attempt to re-code the video image as case of 28 Days Later, suggests the “video look” – one of aesthetic legitimacy and illusion through the and its stigmatization – are largely related to the use of legitimate illusory aesthetics. relationship between frame rate and motion. It is The Characteristics of the “Video Look” not surprising, then, that many trade press articles and videos offering tutorials on “How to Create a “If it walks like a duck and flies like a Film Look with Video” begin with the notion: “The 2 largest, most important thing you can do to get the duck, it must be a duck.” 6 - Decoying Your Video to film-like look … is to slow the frame rate down.” Look Like Film The myriad characteristics of video as a medium and its inherent ontological separation from film are 28 Days Later is a unique case study in medium far beyond the transformative capabilities of eager specificity because it was shot on video, but does videomakers and their equipment, just as they are not exhibit the characteristic “video look.” To far beyond the scope of this essay. The semiotic re- avoid slippage in terminology, the phrase “video coding of video is not alchemy; it is a careful balance look” needs a stricter definition, as 28 Days Later of science and sleight-of-hand. While trade press still maintained many of the characteristics of video writers are quick to caution that video will never “be” and lacked many of those of film. Its images were film, altering the way that video renders motion is low resolution, colors were muted and bled together, the key to turning one’s video into what Videomaker the dynamic range between light and dark sections columnist Michael Reff calls a “decoy.”7 of the frame was quite limited, electronic gain was As a semiotic system, a motion picture image visible on screen, etc. The one and only significant works as a traditional mimetic system: a film image change was in the movie’s frame rate, which was of a house, for example, serves as an indexical digitally altered to more closely recreate the motion signifier for the real-world house being filmed. The

TECHNOLOGIES OF KNOWING 59 The “Film Look” as Semiotic Decoy mechanical act of filming is, in itself, an objective That is, each of the 30 individual frames is split into recording of reality. In the words of Roland Barthes: a series of 486 horizontal lines. When a television displays each frame, it first displays a field of its From the object to its image there is odd-numbered lines, and then displays the field of of course a reduction – in proportion, even-numbered lines. Thus, while NTSC plays at perspective, color – but at no time is this 30 frames per second, it actually displays 60 fields per reduction a transformation … certainly second, with each field representing half a frame. the image is not the reality but at least Because of persistence of vision in the human it is its perfect analogon and it is exactly eye, 30 fps interlaced video effectively retains the this analogical perfection which, to qualities of an image projected at 60 fps (hence common sense, defines the photograph. the comparisons between digital video and Peter Thus can be seen the special status of Jackson’s high frame rate videography). The reasons the photographic image: it is a message for this interlacing method are twofold. First, without a code.8 because of the inherent brightness of a television display, the higher effective frame rate reduces what Though this objective indexical denotation would otherwise be a distracting flicker. Second, of the image is without code, it becomes coded reducing the image information at any given through connotation, which according to Barthes, instant reduces the bandwidth of the video signal, “is the manner in which the society to a certain 9 facilitating television broadcasting and allowing extent communicates what it thinks of it.” for a higher total image resolution. The aesthetic Changing the camera angle, for example, does result of the process is that interlaced NTSC video not alter the objective mechanical reproduction, displayed at 30 frames (60 fields) per second renders but functions as a connotation based on the motion on screen in a way that is markedly distinct cinematic language system of the filmmaker and the from 24 fps, and it is this difference in motion audience. Connotative coding can exist through the rendering that accounts for the visual recognition of embellishment of the image by altering its physical 10 the “video look” by audiences. texture – that which Barthes calls photogenia. In order to electronically un-code and re- For example, based on a contemporary cinematic code the rendering of motion, several techniques language system, sepia-tinting changes the sign of existed in the early 2000s allowing videomakers “house” into the sign of “house in the past.” I would to alter the interlacing process. In the case of suggest that a similar photogeniac coding extends 28 Days Later, Boyle and Dod Mantle shot on into film and video shooting formats. An audience’s the Canon XL-1, a camera particularly popular recognition of the “video look” as a semiotic code amongst digital moviemakers because of a de- relies on a visual recognition of video’s particular interlacing feature called “Frame Mode.”11 When rendering of motion. Electronically altering this applied, the two interlaced fields of each frame motion to match a more traditionally cinematic are combined to form one single frame, as would standard is enough to un-code a video image and, be the case in film, effectively creating a true 30 in doing so, deactivate an audience’s recognition of fps image and a corresponding loss of the distinct the “video look” – a semiotic decoy. smoothness of higher frame rate video. Boyle and Un-Coding / Re-Coding Video – Making the Decoy Dod Mantle additionally shot the movie on PAL video, the European standard, which runs at 25 The means of creating a “film look decoy” require an frames (50 fields) per second. The XL-1 could de- understanding of the differences in the way motion interlace this format to a true 25 fps in order to is rendered on video versus how it is rendered on bring the frame rate even closer to the 24 fps film film, and how the two might be made to match. standard.12 Strategic use of the PAL format was NTSC video, the North American broadcast often mentioned in “film look” tutorials originating standard in the early 2000s, runs at a rate of 30 in the U.S. but was often discouraged because it fps, seemingly not that far off from the 24 fps film required the purchase of a European camera that standard. However, the video image is interlaced. was incompatible with American video equipment.

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Many camera manufacturers of the era emulated the image through a “film look?” Within the Canon’s Frame Mode de-interlacer,13 and an independent filmmaking press and the videomaking important successor – the Panasonic AG-DVX100 community more generally, the two dominant – was noteworthy for taking a step backward, as discourses surrounding the stigmatization of the the first consumer video camera to allow the much video image are ones of aesthetic legitimacy and desired 24 fps format. In addition to in-camera illusion. In the first, the “video look” needs to be techniques, de-interlacing and frame rate reduction shed in order to achieve validation in the eyes of could be achieved in postproduction with a variety critics, film festivals, distributors, and the public of visual effects programs like Adobe After Effects more generally. In the second, video is associated and plug-ins specifically designed to remove the with some loose notion of realism, in which the “video look,” like Red Giant’s “Magic Bullet” and smooth motion rendering makes the suspension Rubber Monkey’s “Film Convert Pro.” If theatrical of disbelief in fiction movies more difficult. Sean distribution was the goal, as in the case of 28 Days Cubitt’s analysis of video as a medium comments Later, finished videos would need to be printed onto on its semiotics: “Video is like language less because film stock, further altering the “video look” through it is a ‘langue,’ a systemic organization of rules the presence of emulsion and film grain.14 and difference, and more because it is composed All of these decoys came at a price – the “film of ‘paroles,’ of instances of usage in which their look”-capable cameras and software of the era ran construction, their textuality, and their reception 16 several thousand dollars apiece, and a feature-length are all at play.” Any attempt to understand the film transfer could cost upwards of $50,000.15 Still, stigmatization of the “video look” must involve not compared to the price of shooting on 35mm or even just an analysis of medium specificity, but of video’s 16mm film, video technology offered a much more usage in everyday society (common frames) and affordable if less authentic option. Authenticity its use in creating artistic and non-artistic textual became a non-issue by the end of the decade. As objects (intertextual frames). 24 fps HD video became the professional standard Umberto Eco explains the concept of for television and cinema in the late-2000s, striving common frames, quoting linguist Teun Van Dijk: for the Hollywood “film look” really meant striving “frames are ‘common knowledge representations for a high-grade “video look.” Aesthetics had been about the “world” which enable us to perform such basic cognitive acts as perception, language divorced from their media of origin. It is truly an 17 oddity from a medium specificity point-of-view comprehension, and actions.’” The recognition of the “video look” by a viewer elicits inferences that 48 fps film is said to exhibit a “video look,” based on his or her common experience with its and 24 fps HD video is said to exhibit a “film look.” usage in society, i.e. “Where else in my life have The terminology, which is rooted in technological I experienced this type of rendered motion, and history rather than stylistics, is experiencing what sensations did it evoke?” Through common a slippage – what once referred to the specific frames, video functions less as an artistic text, and qualities of a medium now refers to the semiotic more as a familiar technological object. In his coding associated with its rendering of motion. seminal work on video as a medium, Fred Armes Connotations of the “Video Look” reminds, “No aesthetics of video can omit totally those applications in which the nature and quality As the “video look” can function as a visual code of the work is secondary.”18 Intertextual frames, on through the rendering of motion associated with the other hand, involve weighing a text specifically the faster frame rates of interlaced video, it is useful against other texts.19 Recognition of the “video to discuss how this code developed its connotation look” along with the content being rendered – the apparent “stigma of video.” Why did high elicits comparisons to other texts in which A) that frame rate motion rendering trigger not just a content was experienced and B) that motion was recognition of video, but one with a particularly experienced. Thus, by the early 2000s the “video negative character? Consequently, what precisely look” had been coded both through its history as did filmmakers gain by un-coding and re-coding a text on television and also through more general

TECHNOLOGIES OF KNOWING 61 The “Film Look” as Semiotic Decoy social uses like CCTV surveillance and home it is a regime of the glance rather than the gaze. video.20 The gaze implies a concentration of the spectator’s activity into that of looking; the glance implies no The “Video Look” as Illegitimacy extraordinary effort is being invested in the activity of looking.”26 Ellis’s works contrasts “a high value “Q: I would like to give my videos a film for the cultural and ethical works of cinema” with look. Can you help?” 21 “a low opinion of the aesthetics of television … – Tony the televisual image is regarded as fundamentally incapable of attracting and captivating our gaze.”27 This was the question burning in the mind of Even if, as Buonanno argues, Ellis’s binary lacks a one reader of Videomaker magazine in 2001, and middle ground to account for television’s hypnotic if the abundance of articles on this topic across properties, the hierarchy between the two media the moviemaking press was any indication, it was formats is reflected often in academic work, within burning in the minds of many other moviemakers production communities, and in the public at as well. Given the titles of the publications, like 28 large. The apparent illegitimacy of television has Videomaker and Digital Video Magazine, it is been redirected to video and the “video look” has surprising and ironic how often the responses to been confined almost exclusively to this “lesser” questions like Tony’s were marked with an air medium since television’s inception. Up until the of inferiority. Videomaker’s frequent “film look” 2000s, narrative work shot on film was seen in tutorial articles often included phrases like “film 22 cinema and on television, but narratives shot on looks better than video” and “projects shot with video were largely seen only on television. film simply look better”23 and “the moviegoing 24 Video’s absence from the cinema space was public aesthetically prefers film to video.” As a partly practical – until the 2000s, video projectors result, the magazines read like the newsletter of were not a standard feature in most multiplexes. If perennial second placers, no doubt a reflection of a video were to screen in a theater, it would have to the stigmatization of video, but also an effective undergo a telecine transfer to film and, in doing so, contribution to it, given the magazines’ readership. much of its “video look” would be removed. Lack For digital filmmakers, artistic validation often of video work in feature moviemaking in general, came only if films found an audience, and in the though, was partly a result of technical limitations pre-YouTube era, this opportunity was generally in editing. Before the availability and popularity of sought through exhibition in a theater – especially nonlinear editing systems in the 1990s, video was through film festivals – or on television, but both edited linearly, tape-to-tape. As Brian McKernan’s institutions were under the control of cultural history of digital cinema explains, the linear editing gatekeepers. As Newton and Gaspard point out in process was notably inaccurate until the late 1970s, Digital Cinema 101, there was a general feeling that and it was not until the advent of nonlinear systems these gatekeepers were less likely to allow passage in the digital era that video editors could cut with 25 for a movie if it had a “video look.” Accurate or the ease and precision of film editors.29 Video’s not, filmmakers presumed a semiotic reading on the ontology as a continuously running signal has part of their audiences that interpreted the “video frequently been a point of artistic experimentation look” as signifying a medium less aesthetically in the world of installation art and has clear benefits legitimate than film. in the case of live television, but for moviemakers Part of the legitimacy debate stems from a larger needing to access the fundamental building block one regarding the hierarchy of film and television of cinema, the frame, video was cumbersome at best more broadly. TV scholar Milly Buonanno’s book, and impossible at worst for decades. The ire with The Age of Television, traces the history of the latter, which linear video editing is discussed by video building on and critiquing John Ellis’s influential editors in the present day (myself included) likely work on the glance vs. the gaze. Based on TV’s accounts for some of the negative kneejerk reactions usage within the space of the home, Ellis argues that to the “video look” on the part of filmmakers in the “TV’s regime of vision is less intense than cinema’s: early 2000s, if simply by association.

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In addition to hierarchies of legitimacy in “video look,” for every independent movie shot exhibition format, similar hierarchies existed in on video there were thousands of home movies areas of style and genre. In the case of video, genre being produced on the same format, coding the privileging was less of a contributing factor in the “video look” through its recording of the banal, the first decades of television as video was used, at quotidian, the decidedly un-cinematic. Re-coding least on occasion, to produce nearly all styles and video through the “film look” allowed independent genres, fiction and nonfiction. Thus, the “video filmmakers to gain aesthetic legitimacy by look” would not have been initially coded with any separating themselves from a stereotypically lesser particular high or low cultural status intertextually. medium, low genres, low production values, and the However, significant technological innovations in technologically inept masses. the 1980s led to aesthetic trends that colored the video image differently. John Caldwell outlines Video as Broken Illusion two major modes of production in the 1980s – the cinematic and the videographic. The cinematic here When critics responded to The Hobbit and its new refers to film stock and/or a “film look,” but also 48 fps format, many commented on the uncanny a corresponding increase in production value and realism of its images, likening the viewing experience more elaborate “feature-style” cinematography.30 to watching documentary, reality TV, even a live As film stocks and telecine transfers onto videotape theatrical production rather than cinema.33 While became more efficient and affordable, there was a Peter Jackson had intended the motion of high surge in the use of film to produce dramatic shows, frame rate video to heighten the sense of realism, relegating the videographic mode to areas of many found the effect disconcerting. Film scholar nonfiction programming or, if fictional, shows with Julie Turnock explains this effect: a live audience.31 As a result, throughout the 1980s Removing the ‘pane of glass’ between and 90s, the “video look” became associated with the viewer and what is captured by liveness and reality (as will be relevant in this essay’s the camera does not necessarily result following section) but also with programming that in pleasurably enhanced realism or was stereotypically “low” culturally or, at least, low immersion. Instead, it can result in the budget – daytime talk shows, sitcoms, soap operas, aesthetically unpleasing effect in which local news and commercials, reality TV, home 32 the diegesis looks too much like a film shopping networks, etc. Additionally, because set or live event, rather than a fully so many of these formats were filmed live or live- realized imaginative world.34 to-tape, the control over the image that exists in single-camera production was impossible, as shots The rendering of motion in the video image had to be framed and studio sets lit to accommodate has long been associated with a general notion of multiple camera angles simultaneously. “realism,” a term that, despite its inherent ambiguity, Because of the spike in film productions in the comes up frequently in “film look” tutorials. As two decades prior to the digital filmmaking era, and one such article states quite plainly, “The biggest because of film’s association with culturally higher downside to video’s frame rate (30 frames per genres, the “video look” was coded through its second) is that it looks too much like reality.”35 content on television as less legitimate precisely at The coding of the “video look” as being excessively a time in which video was becoming a more viable realistic is a problem for narrative filmmakers medium for production on the part of independent attempting to encourage suspension of disbelief and amateur moviemakers. In addition, as much in their audiences and, as the tutorials suggest, the as the advancements in digital video technology re-coding of the image through a “film look” allows enabled independent filmmakers to produce filmmakers to bring audiences into a more familiar, higher-grade images, the affordability of that same more traditionally cinematic mental place. technology also enabled image creation on a much Before any discussion of coding through wider scale in the home video market. In what was intertextual or common frames, it is worth likely the most damning common framing of the considering the validity of the “realism” argument

TECHNOLOGIES OF KNOWING 63 The “Film Look” as Semiotic Decoy on purely physiological grounds. Does the high experienced in a cinema space. Trumbull’s argument frame rate video image appear more realistic solely additionally runs into problems from a historical because it matches human vision more closely? perspective, as much of the fiction programming In the 1970s, visual effects artist and film director in the first decades of television, both dramatic and Douglas Trumbull ran a series of tests on the effects comedic, was shot on video, and soap operas and of frame rate on perception. Working for a research sitcoms up until the HD era exhibited a distinctive and development wing of Paramount Pictures, “video look.” Thus, a “video look” could indeed be Trumbull and his team ran an experiment in which used to suspend disbelief and therefore was no less a group of college students were brought into a intrinsically illusory than a “film look.” The other theater and hooked up to a variety of machines side of the argument holds true as well, wherein to measure physiological response. Trumbull many nonfiction programs and documentaries played footage from different formats and frame have been shot on film as well as video (sometimes rates, from 24 – 72 fps, and found that “there was both within the same movie) without any sense of a remarkable difference in response between 24 unpleasantness. If the “video look” of The Hobbit frames per second and 72 … you could see that at resulted in uncanny distancing rather than illusion, 60 frames [the subjects’] responses were very high that is largely because audiences have recently on the curve.”36 At high frame rates, the audience’s become accustomed to illusion looking a certain heart rate, brain waves, skin and muscle response way. intensified. Trumbull further claimed that “people The relationship between television/video and unanimously reported not only a greatly increased liveness has been a central discussion in television physiological response to the film, but better color, studies, and the concept is certainly relevant to the better sharpness, a sense of three-dimensionality, a coding of the video image. Whether liveness is sense of participation, and an illusion of reality.”37 indeed a central aspect of television’s ontology or, as While Trumbull had discovered a difference in Jane Feuer suggests, liveness is largely constructed physiological perception at different frame rates, he through ideology and corporate rhetoric, the fact made a jump from science to aesthetics, claiming remains that the video image can be live, and the that higher frames rates were “too vivid and life- film image cannot.39 Thus, up until the digital like for fiction film. It becomes invasive. I decided era and the possibilities of attaining a “film look” that for conventional movies, it’s best to stay with on video, live television always had a “video look.” 24 frames per second. It keeps the image under Much like the case with cinema and television, the proscenium arch. That’s important, because wherein a “video look” was almost never seen in most of the audience wants to be non-participating a theater space, liveness can never be experienced voyeurs.”38 Trumbull’s assumption was that the with film. In her theoretical investigation of video, higher frame rates associated with a “video look” Jarice Hanson argues that because we can only were intrinsically unsuited to fiction work due to experience liveness through video, and because their greater similarity to human vision. the image quality of recorded video looks identical Even if Trumbull is right in his analysis to that of live video, we have been conditioned to and higher frame rates more accurately recreate see all video images with a sense of liveness: “The human vision, it is impossible to attribute all of the fact remains that videotape projection and live uncanniness of higher frame rates to physics and projection look indistinguishable from each other … biology. The argument against Trumbull’s claim, we have culturally understood the televised images coming from Peter Jackson and his constituency, produced live or by videotape to present an ongoing is one of nurture rather than nature – had cinema presentation of ‘reality,’ or actuality, meaning that always been 48 fps, neither Trumbull’s nor Jackson’s the material is current, and real.”40 I would argue use of high frame rates would seem unpleasant or that the effects of the conditioning of liveness were uncanny. In the case of Trumbull’s experiment, the less relevant in the first few decades of television, physiological intensity experienced by his subjects when a wider variety of genres and styles were could be attributed not just to the format itself, but to presented on video, but in recent years the effect has its marked difference from that which is traditionally been more prominent. To return to John Caldwell’s 64 SPRING 2016 laROCCO work on the cinematic vs. the videographic, as independent filmmaking community was because more and more dramatic productions began to it was shot on video but managed to overcome be produced on film in the 1980s and 90s and both of the obstacles associated with the “video the videographic mode was relegated to areas of look” – legitimacy and illusion. The film was able nonfiction programming or, if fictional, shows with to receive a wide theatrical release and acclaim from a live audience, the balance between fiction and critics, and its box office return suggests that it was nonfiction programming shot on video was thrown a particularly effective horror film, a testament to its off.41 ability to sustain illusion. Even though the film had Stepping outside of the entertainment industry, a multimillion dollar budget, the fact that its images the coding of the “video look” with reality was were produced with a consumer camera seemed to furthered in two major sites: home video and CCTV. suggest a democratization of the “film look.” It was, While home movies were once a thing of film, as at least in principal, a revolutionary film. The word VCRs and camcorders became more commonplace “revolutionary” is thrown about quite a bit in regards in the 70s and 80s, the domestic recording of reality to video production technology. Patrick Lang’s was linked to a “video look.” As was the case with review of the Panasonic AG-DVX100, the first 24 42 legitimacy, the very technological developments that fps consumer camera, calls it “revolutionary.” Kurt put video cameras in the hands of moviemakers also Lancaster’s guide to digital filmmaking frequently 43 put them in the hands of everyone else. For every refers to the “HD revolution.” Michael Newman’s fictional narrative video that worked to liberate the video history, Video Revolutions, is not surprisingly medium from reality, significantly more weddings based on this very concept of viewing video and birthday parties firmly attached the “video look” technology through a lens of societal change. The to the real. Additionally, the liveness of video makes “revolutionary” status refers not just to a noteworthy its image ubiquitous in surveillance culture, linking change in technology, but a shift in cultural power the “video look” to what is perhaps the least illusory dynamic. The ability to re-code video images with a context of all. With CCTV, the “pane of glass” “film look decoy” granted independent filmmakers between content and viewer is turned into a one-way the same legitimacy and illusion as the films of mirror, allowing reality to be observed in real time, Hollywood, but on a much cheaper budget. But to a mode of viewing very much dependent on belief what extent was this power shift a decoy as well? Michael Wayne’s analysis of video as a medium rather than the suspension thereof. The coding of suggests that the closeness between the video image the “video look” through these two social contexts and the film image is not democratizing at all, but has been exacerbated further by the recreation of mystifying. The ability for low budget filmmakers their modes of viewing as tropes in cinema and to create an image that is close to film, but not television. Within a fictional work shot on film, the quite film, only serves to reinforce the standards switch in mode from cinematic to point-of-view of quality established by the culture industry.44 A surveillance or home video is often marked with a true revolution would be to buck the trend entirely shift in format as well. Re-coding video through – to embrace the “video look” en masse, to force the “film look” allowed filmmakers to deactivate any the recognition of its legitimacy as-is, to create associations of video with reality in their audience, fictional works and un-condition the populace to physiological or conditioned, resulting from several embrace the medium without it having to bow to decades of increasingly common non-fictional the standards of Hollywood. But that, too, would uses. be futile. The moment that the masses accept the Conclusion – The Democratizing of the “Film Look?” “video look” is the moment that Hollywood will reclaim it, squashing our revolution under the To return to 28 Days Later, one of the reasons foot of a $300 million 48 fps 3D IMAX-sized why the movie was seen as such a triumph in the hobbit. Michael LaRocco is an Annenberg PhD Fellow and filmmaker at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Both his academic and creative work investigate the evolution of video technologies and their application in filmmaking. TECHNOLOGIES OF KNOWING 65 The “Film Look” as Semiotic Decoy Notes

1. Dale Newton and John Gaspard, Digital Filmmaking 101 (Studio City: Michael Weisse Productions, 2001), 104. 2. Michael Reff, “Duck, Duck? Goose?? Decoying Your Video to Look Like Film,” Videomaker ( July 2006): 49. 3. Julie Turnock, “Removing the Pane of Glass: The Hobbit, 3D High Frame Rate Filmmaking, and the Rhetoric of Digital Convergence,” Film Criticism 32.2 (March 2013): 41-42. 4. Jesse David Fox, “What the Critics are Saying about The Hobbit’s High Frame Rate,” vulture.com (December 12th, 2014). 5. Turnock, “Removing the Pane of Glass,” 49. 6. Reff, “Duck, Duck? Goose??” 50. 7. Ibid., 49. 8. Roland Barthes, Image – Music – Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 17. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 23. 11. Bruce Coykendall, “Tech Support,” Videomaker (August 2001): 8. 12. Douglas Bankston, “All the Rage,” American Cinematographer 84.7 ( July 2003): 82. 13. Sony cameras featured “Progressive Recording,” Panasonic featured “Digital Cinema Mode.” 14. While commercial distribution made film transfer a necessity rather than an aesthetic choice, as the vast majority of theaters in the early 2000s still used film projectors exclusively, it is noteworthy that the28 Days Later DVD was created using the film print, not the video print, a choice that was not mandated by necessity. 15. John Jackman, “How to Make Video Look Like Film,” Digital Video Magazine 28 (December 2001). 16. Sean Cubitt, Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1993), 13. 17. Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), 20-21, quoting Teun Van Dijk, “Macro- Structures and Cognition” (Paper presented at Twelfth Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, May 1976). 18. Roy Armes, On Video (London: Routledge, 1988), 196. 19. Eco, The Role of the Reader, 21. 20. It is important not to neglect the place of video in a third sphere – that of installation art, as this likely played a role in the coding of the video image for some, though likely only a small minority of the video-watching public more generally. Additionally, in terms of the rhetoric amongst independent filmmakers, magazines likeVideomaker , Digital Video Magazine, The Independent, and Filmmaker were engaged primarily with narrative filmmaking for televisual or theatrical exhibition. 21. Coykendall, “Tech Support,” 8. 22. Eric D. Franks, “Is 24p For Me?” Videomaker (August 2003): 45. 23. Brian Peterson, “Getting that Film Look: Shooting Video to Look Like Film,” Videomaker ( July 2008): 37. 24. Patrick Lang, “24p For You and Me,” Videomaker (April 2003): 15. 25. Newton and Gaspard, Digital Filmmaking 101, 104. 26. John Ellis, Visible Fictions (London: Routledge, 1982), 137. 27. Milly Buonanno, The Age of Television: Experiences and Theories (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 37. 28. Ibid., 38. 29. Brian McKernan, Digital Cinema: The Revolution in Cinematography, Postproduction, and Distribution (New York: McGraw Hill, 2005), 13. 30. John Caldwell, Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 12. 31. Ibid., 12-14. 32. Ibid., 19. 33. Fox, “High Frame Rate,” vulture.com. 34. Turnock, “Removing the Pane of Glass,” 44. 35. Coykendall, “Tech Support,” 8. 36. Bob Fisher and Marji Rhea, “Interview: Doug Trumbull and Richard Yuricich,” American Cinematographer 75.8 (August 1994): 56. 37. Gaylin Studlar, “Trumbull on Technology,” Spectator 3.1 (Fall 1983): 7. 38. Fisher and Rhea, “Interview,” 59. 39. Jane Feuer, “The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology” in Regarding Television: Critical Approaches, an Anthology, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (Los Angeles: AFI, 1983), 15. 40. Jarice Hanson, Understanding Video: Applications, Impact, and Theory (Newbury Park: SAGE Publication, Inc., 1987), 27. 41. Caldwell, Televisuality, 12-14. 42. Lang, “24p,” 15. 43. Kurt Lancaster, DSLR Cinema: Crafting the Film Look with Video (Oxford: Focal Press, 2011), Electronic Edition, Introduction. 44. Mike Wayne, Theorizing Video Practice (London: Lawrence and Wishart Limited, 1997), 46.

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