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Rupture and Recuperation Rupture and Recuperation: Technological Traces in Digital Narrative Cinema. Submitted for the consideration of the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics Newcastle University 9 March 2015 Joseph Frank Barton Student No. 070791576 i ABSTRACT In this thesis I analyse visual traces of digital technologies in narrative cinema as a way of exploring broader questions about the medium and the cultural status of its technological constituents. In so doing, I not only identify a number of areas of filmmaking that are currently under-researched or overlooked, but move the focus away from the questions of what digitisation means for cinema’s ‘identity’, and towards a consideration of how the implications of digitisation are at once exaggerated in rhetoric and tempered in practice by aesthetic, ideological, and economic factors. To do this, I focus on recent narrative films (1998-2013) in which digital filmmaking technologies are themselves salient features of the cinematic image. I argue that initial appearances of these digital traces are presented and received as disruptive, in that they appear to symbolise both a break with the ontological assumptions of cinema, and the potential to re-imagine the very notion of the medium itself. However, I demonstrate how each of these disruptions are, to differing extents, soon absorbed into the conventional formal structures of narrative cinema, such that their ultimate effect on the medium is to broaden its stylistic palate rather than to radically transform its identity. In so doing, I make four main scholarly contributions. Firstly, I provide an account of digital cinema contextualised in relation to the broader use of digital image technologies over this time period. Secondly, I use the technological trace as a locus for exploring intersections of aesthetic, ideological, and industrial factors in the production of these films. Thirdly, I temper hyperbolic reactions to digitisation by stressing continuities with, and echoes of, the history of analogue narrative cinema. Finally, I demonstrate how digital ontologies are shaped by popular discourses, and how these reinforce, qualify, and in some instances, contest, existing scholarly debate. ii Dedications Elizabeth June Barton (1930 -2015) Frank Barton (1952 -2012) Frank Marshall Barton (1921-2014) iii Acknowledgments I would firstly like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this project. For her help in applying for this funding, and for encouraging me to pursue postgraduate research in the first place, I would like to thank Stacy Gillis. Over the last five years, Stacy has been an unerring source of advice and support, and it remains that I would not have even considered pursuing postgraduate study if it were not for her initial encouragement. A huge thank you to my supervisors, Andrew Shail and Melanie Bell, for making this experience a happy one. Melanie has been clear and succinct in her guidance at precisely the moments that it was needed, and Andrew has been exceptionally generous with his time and feedback - our supervisions together have not only been consistently encouraging and nourishing, but a genuine pleasure. More generally, this project has benefited immensely from his unwavering attention to detail, be it at the level of theory, structure, or punctuation. Special thanks go to my examiners Guy Austin and Dan North for an encouraging and rigorous viva and a constructive and supportive report. Additional scholarly advice from Bob Rehak, Nicholas Rombes and Alan Kirby has proven heartening, and I would like to thank them for their kind responses to my unsolicited emails. During my time at Newcastle University I have had the good fortune to be part of a wonderful community of staff and students. With regards to staff, I would particularly like to thank Neelam Srivastava, Madhu Krishnan, and everyone at the Research Centre for Film and Digital Media for their support and advice. In terms of students, thanks go to Janelle Rodriques, Marie Stern-Peltz, Tom Langley, Dave Spittle, Claire Irving, Sadek Kessous, Faye Keegan, Jon Quayle, Bea Turner, Helen Stark, Katie Cooper, Katherine Farrimond, Azad Maudaressi, Mani Sharpe, and Gary Jenkins for hours of conversation. The best of luck for all of your future endeavours. Thanks also to the following people, outside of Newcastle University, whose craic has proven vital sustenance over the past four years: Paul Gardner, Chris Machell, Kev Ilett, Ollie Walton, Ben Lowes Smith, Marc Bird, Martin Jacobs, Laura Smith, Will Tasker, Charlie Bayley, Gordon Bruce, Iain Croall, Steph Ferrâo, Sam Shepard, John Egdell, Calum Robson, Jack Gardner, Cheryl Whilby, Ste Powers and all the members of Newcastle Labour Party. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their love and support: Jacqueline Barton and Steve O’Rourke, Aimee Barton, John and Joan Sheard, Frank Marshall Barton (RIP) and Elizabeth Barton, and Beryl “Bringe” Brindley. Ultimate gratitude goes to my father, Frank Barton, who died during the first year of this project – this is for you, Dad. iv v Table of Contents List of Figures .................................................................................................................................................................................................... viii Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. Rupture and Recuperation ................................................................................................................................................... 5 1.1 Digital Cinema .............................................................................................................................................................................. 5 1.1.1 ‘Traces of digital technologies’ ................................................................................................................................ 7 1.1.2 ‘Traces of digital technologies’ ................................................................................................................................ 9 1.1.3 The cinema medium ................................................................................................................................................... 11 1.1.4 The digital cinema medium .................................................................................................................................... 13 1.1.5 The ontological ‘break’.............................................................................................................................................. 15 1.1.6 The fallacy of digital immateriality ................................................................................................................... 20 1.2 Contextualising Cinema in a Broader Digital Culture....................................................................................... 25 1.2.1 Digimodernism .............................................................................................................................................................. 26 1.2.2 Other expressive accounts ...................................................................................................................................... 30 1.2.3 Rupture and recuperation ...................................................................................................................................... 32 Chapter 2: The Digital Camera and Found-Footage Transparency .................................................................................. 38 2.1 Defining found-footage ........................................................................................................................................................ 39 2.2 Digital found-footage and the turn toward transparency ............................................................................. 47 2.3 Early digital found-footage: immediacy .................................................................................................................... 52 2.4 Later digital found-footage: recuperation ............................................................................................................... 61 2.5 Recuperation as satire ......................................................................................................................................................... 71 2.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................................... 82 Chapter 3. The Digital Backlot in “Hybrid” Cinema .................................................................................................................... 85 3.1 “Hybrid” cinema ....................................................................................................................................................................... 87 3.2 The Digital Backlot ................................................................................................................................................................. 90 3.3 “Invisible” chroma key – full recuperation ............................................................................................................. 92 3.4 Variations on the digital backlot
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