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A Changing Cinema: Re-Conceptualizing Indexicality and Digital Technologies

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A Changing Cinema: Re-Conceptualizing Indexicality and Digital Technologies A Changing Cinema: Re-conceptualizing Indexicality and Digital Technologies by Jennifer Elizabeth Dobbs, B.A. (Honours) A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Film Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2012 Jennifer Elizabeth Dobbs Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du 1+1 Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-93555-2 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-93555-2 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada ABSTRACT New digital technologies in cinema have challenged the theoretical concepts of realism and indexicality, two defining features of cinema itself. A thorough review of the concept of indexicality as originally established by Charles Sanders Peirce, emphasizing functionality and phenomenology in the process of perception and understanding the real, combined with a historical survey of related film scholarship, reveals a misappropriation of the term from the beginning. More recently, film scholarship has focused its technical analyses solely on the digital process, ignoring older technologies and perpetuating these misconceptions. This paper seeks to remedy these misunderstandings, as well as apply industry examples of digital motion capture to create a complete understanding of how these issues operate for spectators, (keywords: indexicality, CGI, movement, phenomenology, spectatorship, motion capture) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor Marc Furstenau for the time he has spent discussing and clarifying with me the concepts surrounding indexicality, as well as for reviewing and revising my writing so that I could more clearly convey my research and ideas. I would also like to thank my family and friends for supporting me throughout this very busy time. I would particularly like to thank Jonathan RL Nuttall for his love and patience as well as the countless hours that he listened to me talk out and formulate my thoughts about the index or pick his brain so that I could better understand the science and physics of photography. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ................................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................iii Introduction ...........................................................................................................................1 Chapter One Re-defining the Index .............................................................................7 Chapter Two Comparing Analog and Digital Technologies ....................................... 40 Chapter Three Digital Motion Capture: The Next Phase in Cinema’s Development..76 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 108 Bibliography...................................................................................................................... 120 1 INTRODUCTION The cinema is changing, particularly its methods of production and distribution. Though most of the changes are happening in terms of distribution and access, it is the changes in production that have caused the most concern for scholars. This is due in part because changinghow cinema is made has led film scholars to speculate or believe that this directly changes what cinema is. From the beginning, establishing a definition for cinema has been a matter of much debate and definitions themselves are problematic. Despite this, a recurring concept can be seen in these discussions, the index. With the advent of digital technology, there has been a renewed vigour in discussions and debates surrounding the concept of the index, particularly as it relates to visual imagery. Indexicality is a term associated with Charles S. Peirce’s theory of semiotics, which sets up a system of classification for signs and describes how they convey their signification. Peirce was an American scientist, philosopher, and logician, known today for his contribution in founding pragmatics and semiotics. Peirce’s theories and writings were not immediately recognized or well received by the academic community until after his death. Scholars who did write about his work initially did so in respect to pragmatics, linguistics, and philosophy. In the 1960s, Roland Barthes’ Elements o f Semiology examined some of the key aspects of Peirce’s theory but in relation to the photographic image, giving rise to a school of thought that analyzes all imagery as a visual sign system. The work by Barthes quickly prompted film scholars to apply these concepts with regards to cinematic imagery, since at the core of cinema is a photographic image that has been set in motion. Many film scholars relate the concept of the index to issues of realism 2 as an aesthetic, in part due to the connection the index has with the real. Films that traditionally are associated with realism have been given this quality based on their adherence to filming images with minimal manipulation, maintaining the highest degree of accuracy to what we would visually see if we had been there ourselves. Films that fit into the more formalist or fantasy category did just the opposite, especially in the early days of cinema. Indexicality was never questioned in formalist or fantasy films until the creation of digital cinema. This is due to the view on indexicality which supposes a direct relationship between the object photographed or filmed and the final media product such as a film. Since digital cinema is often used in science fiction or fantasy films that have little basis in reality, these technologies challenge the very notion of the existential bond of indexicality. As such, realism is often at the heart of debates on defining exactly what cinema is and how its representations reflect universal truths or falsities. The index, and its association with the real, has therefore long been a defining feature of cinema and part of what makes up a portion of its essence. Digital technologies for cinema production do not need a real world counterpart in order to create its images. For many film scholars then, these new technologies challenge not only the concept of the index, but by default they also challenge what was once seen as an inherent aspect of cinema’s very being, causing a transformation that seems to change the essence of cinema itself. In general, academic discussions on indexicality and digital production technologies tend to focus on only two aspects of the index. The first defining feature stems from Barthes who gave the index an attribute that he phrased as a sense of “having been there,” which means that all photographs are associated with the past tense. The other aspect of the index is the idea of the index as a trace, meaning that it is directly created by the object 3 itself such as a footprint in the sand. In the case of photography, it is by the particles of light reflecting off the object and being captured and revealed on film stock. Chapter One of this thesis focuses on clarifying these two aspects of the index, as well as demonstrating that film scholars have misappropriated these aspects, which is not only problematic but has had larger scale ramifications for the understanding of the index and the essence of photography and cinema. Chapter One also emphasizes that there are other aspects of the index that have been omitted by scholars as they sought to make the index useable in the study of photography. These other aspects need to be remembered in order to bring about a clearer definition of the index so that it
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