2007 | Volume I, Issue 2 | Pages 67–75 After Effects, or Velvet Revolution Lev Manovich, University of California, San Diego This article is a first part of the series devoted to INTRODUCTION the analysis of the new hybrid visual language of During the heyday of postmodern debates, at least moving images that emerged during the period one critic in America noted the connection between postmodern pastiche and computerization. In his 1993–1998. Today this language dominates our book After the Great Divide, Andreas Huyssen writes: visual culture. It can be seen in commercials, “All modern and avantgardist techniques, forms music videos, motion graphics, TV graphics, and and images are now stored for instant recall in the other types of short non-narrative films and moving computerized memory banks of our culture. But the image sequences being produced around the world same memory also stores all of premodernist art by the media professionals including companies, as well as the genres, codes, and image worlds of popular cultures and modern mass culture” (1986, p. individual designers and artists, and students. This 196). article analyzes a particular software application which played the key role in the emergence of His analysis is accurate – except that these “computerized memory banks” did not really became this language: After Effects. Introduced in 1993, commonplace for another 15 years. Only when After Effects was the first software designed to the Web absorbed enough of the media archives do animation, compositing, and special effects on did it become this universal cultural memory bank the personal computer. Its broad effect on moving accessible to all cultural producers. But, even for the image production can be compared to the effects professionals, the ability to easily integrate multiple of Photoshop and Illustrator on photography, media sources within the same project – multiple layers of video, scanned still images, animation, illustration, and graphic design. This analysis is graphics, and typography – only came towards the used to support the author’s theory that the logic end of the 1990s. of the new visual language is that of remixability. Normally remixing involves combining content In 1985 when Huyssen’s book was in preparation for publication I was working for one of the few – for example, different music tracks. In this computer animation companies in the world, called case what gets remixed is not only the content Digital Effects.1 Each computer animator had his own of different media or simply their aesthetics, but interactive graphics terminal that could show 3D their fundamental techniques, working methods, models but only in wireframe and in monochrome; to languages, and assumptions. United within the see them fully rendered in color, we had to take turns as the company had only one color raster display common software environment, cinematography, that we all shared. The data were stored on bulky animation, computer animation, special effects, magnetic tapes about a foot in diameter; to find the graphic design, and typography have come to form data from an old job was a cumbersome process that a new metamedium. A work produced in this new involved locating the right tape in the tape library, metamedium can use all techniques that were putting it on a tape drive and then searching for the previously unique to these different media, or any right part of the tape.We did not have a color scanner, so getting “all modern and avantgardist techniques, subset of these techniques. forms and images” into the computer was far from trivial. And even if we had one, there was no way to store, recall, and modify these images. The machine which could do that – Quantel Paintbox – cost over US$160,000, which we could not afford. And when in Keywords: aesthetics, design, interface, film, motion graphics, 1986 Quantel introduced Harry, the first commercial software, visual culture non-linear editing system, which allowed for digital compositing of multiple layers of video and special 67 effects, its cost similarly made it prohibitive for One of the reasons is that in this revolution no new everybody except network television stations and media per se were created. Just like 10 years ago, a few production houses. Harry could record only the designers were making still images and moving 80 seconds of broadcast-quality video. In the realm images. But the aesthetics of these images was of still images, things were not much better: for now very different. In fact, it was so new that, in instance, digital still store Picturebox released by retrospect, the postmodern imagery of just 10 years Quantel in 1990 could hold only 500 broadcast quality ago that at the time looked strikingly different now images and its cost was similarly very high. appears as a barely noticeable blip on the radar of cultural history. In short, in the middle of the 1980s neither we nor other production companies had anything VISUAL HYBRIDITY approaching the “computerized memory banks” This article is the first part of a series devoted to imagined by Huyssen. And of course, the same was the analysis of the new hybrid visual language of true for the visual artists who were then associated moving images that emerged during the period with postmodernism and the ideas of pastiche, 19931998. Today this language dominates our visual collage, and appropriation. In 1986 the BBC produced culture. While narrative features mostly stick to a documentary, Painting with Light, for which half live cinematography, and video shot by ordinary a dozen well-known painters including Richard people with consumer video cameras and cell Hamilton and David Hockney were invited to work phones is similarly usually left as is, everything else with Quantel Paintbox. The resulting images were – commercials, music videos, motion graphics, TV not so different from the normal paintings that graphics, and other types of short nonnarrative films these artists were producing without a computer. and moving image sequences being produced around And while some artists were making references to the world by the media professionals including “modern and avantgardist techniques, forms and companies, individual designers and artists, and images”, these references were painted rather than students – is hybrid. being directly loaded from “computerized memory banks”. Only in the mid-1990s, when relatively Of course, I could have picked different dates, for inexpensive graphics workstations and personal instance starting a few years earlier but since After computers running image editing, animation, Effects software – which will play the key role in my compositing, and illustration software became account – was released in 1993, I decided to pick this commonplace and affordable for freelance graphic year as my first date. And while my second date also designers, illustrators, and small post-production could have been different, I believe that by 1998 the and animation studios, did the situation described by broad changes in the aesthetics of moving image Huyssen start to become a reality. became visible. If you want to quickly see this for yourself, simply compare demo reels from the same The results were dramatic. Within about five visual effects companies made in the early 1990s and years, modern visual culture was fundamentally late 1990s (a number of them are available online – transformed. Previously separate media – live look for instance at the work of Pacific Data Images2). action cinematography, graphics, still photography, In the work from the beginning of the decade, animation, 3D computer animation, and typography computer imagery in most cases appears by itself – – started to be combined in numerous ways. By that is, we see whole commercials and promotional the end of the decade, the “pure” moving-image videos done in 3D computer animation, and the media became an exception and hybrid media novelty of this new media is foregrounded. By the end became the norm. However, in contrast to other of the 1990s, computer animation becomes just one computer revolutions such as the rise of the World element integrated in the media mix that also includes Wide Web around the same time, this revolution live action, typography, and design. was not acknowledged by the popular media or by cultural critics. What received attention were the Although these transformations happened only developments that affected narrative filmmaking recently, the ubiquity of the new hybrid visual – the use of computer-produced special effects in language today (2006) is such that it takes an effort Hollywood feature films or the inexpensive digital to recall how different things looked before. Similarly, video and editing tools outside it. But another process the changes in production processes and equipment that happened on a larger scale – the transformation that made this language possible also quickly fade of the visual language used by all forms of moving from both the public and professional memory. As a images outside narrative films – has not been way to quick evoke these changes as seen from the critically analyzed. In fact, while the results of these professional perspective, I am going to quote from transformations became fully visible by about 1998, an interview with Mindi Lipschultz (2004) who has at the time of writing (early 2006) I am not aware of a worked as an editor, producer, and director in Los single theoretical article discussing them. Angeles since 1979: Artifact |2007 | Volume I, Issue 2 | Pages 67–75 68 other programs in a similar price category such as If you wanted to be more creative [in the Apple’s Motion, Autodesk’s Combustion, and Adobe’s 1980s], you couldn’t just add more software Flash have challenged the dominance of After to your system. You had to spend hundreds Effects. of thousands of dollars and buy a paintbox. Finally, before proceeding I should explain the use If you wanted to do something graphic – an of examples in this article.