Academic literature on the topic 'Cinematography – Technological innovations'

<p><em>The world of media today is undergoing substantial transformation and advancement with various media forms making the most of it to attract the audience. Digital cinematography since 2010 has been enhancing not only the visual impact of the movies but also redefining the way they are produced and created. Silver screen, the most popular form of media too keeps resorting to new innovations to increase the marketing value of its productions by exploiting the technological advancements be it in the form of graphic effects or animations to appeal the watchers. Moreover, the digital world has revolutionalized the way movies are captured thus rendering refinement to its projection on the screen. Even the distribution of the movies, these days, is done via Internet or hard drive.</em><em> </em></p><p><em>In the genre of cinema, Hollywood animated movies amply exemplify the improvement that has resulted because of the contribution of the digitized world. The animated movies have now come a long way from being mere caricatures to real life characters, from being conception to concrete and surreal to real, so much so that these graphic projections are admired as well as emulated as the real life actors.</em><em> </em></p><p><em>One of the masterpieces of digitised visual effects that left the world awestruck was Ang Lee's Life of Pi, a 2012 American Adventure. It was soon perceived as a visual wonder by audiences all over the world for the use of animated technology and the realistic scenes created in 3D. The paper would be an attempt to examine the way visual effects have been exploited by the makers of this movie to create a successful story and a realistic depiction of imaginary on the screen. <br /></em></p>

Technological development has extremely useful facets for everyday life, since disruptive innovations are increasingly present in society. In this current scenario, the State's intervention in the economy is increasingly difficult. The objective of this research is to investigate the regulatory role of the Executive Power and regulatory agencies regarding streaming technologies. To do so, initially, the paper investigates the definition of streaming services, analyzing their legal adequancy according to Brazilian legislation. Subsequently, the regulatory competence of the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication, the National Telecommunications Agency and the National Cinema Agency in relation to new technologies for dispersion of audiovisual content is analyzed. In the end, it is concluded that it is the responsibility of MCTIC to be the granting power of broadcasting services, not interfering in streaming services. Anatel is responsible for regulating the conditions and the relationship between streaming and telecommunications service providers, in this case, the internet, as well as assuring them the right to use the internet infrastructure. Ancine is responsible for acting with the objective of promoting, regulating and supervising the cinematographic and videophonographic industry in the various market segments. The research methodology used is the hypothetical-deductive and research technique is indirect documentation.

Purpose Unmanned aerial vehicles are commonly known as UAVs and drones. Nowadays, industries have begun to realise the operational and economic benefits of drone-enabled tasks. The Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, drones, etc., represent implementable advanced technologies intended to accomplish Industry 4.0. The purpose of this study is to discuss the significant contributions of drones for Industry 4.0. Design/methodology/approach Nowadays, drones are used for inspections, mapping and surveying in difficult or hazardous locations. For writing this paper, relevant research papers on drone for Industry 4.0 are identified from various research platforms such as Scopus, Google Scholar, ResearchGate and ScienceDirect. Given the enormous extent of the topic, this work analyses many papers, reports and news stories in an attempt to comprehend and clarify Industry 4.0. Findings Drones are being implemented in manufacturing, entertainment industries (cinematography, etc.) and machinery across the world. Thermal-imaging devices attached to drones can detect variable heat levels emanating from a facility, trigger the sprinkler system and inform emergency authorities. Due partly to their utility and adaptability in industrial areas such as energy, transportation, engineering and more, autonomous drones significantly impact Industry 4.0. This paper discusses drones and their types. Several technological advances and primary extents of drones for Industry 4.0 are diagrammatically elaborated. Further, the authors identified and discussed 19 major applications of drones for Industry 4.0. Originality/value This paper’s originality lies in its discussion and exploration of the capabilities of drones for Industry 4.0, especially in manufacturing organisations. In addition to improving efficiency and site productivity, drones can easily undertake routine inspections and check streamlines operations and maintenance procedures. This work contributes to creating a common foundation for comprehending Industry 4.0 outcomes from many disciplinary viewpoints, allowing for more research and development for industrial innovation and technological progress.

During the history of filmmaking, film industry has been innovating to overcome the challenges demanded by the stories wanted to be told. These technical innovations always came from the hand of new discoveries, technological developments and above all, from the craftsmanship and creative work of the pioneers of cinema, who with their hands created new procedures to achieve the right cinematic image to convey the sensations and feelings that the film diegesis required. From the evolution of silent to sound films, going through the use of chroma key backgrounds and their historical development to the application of background systems with big scale circular screens that reproduce synthetic moving image rendered in real time, built and reproduced by video game engines such as Unreal Engine, this paper proposes a historical journey through these technical evolutions, as well as delving into the new procedures and innovations with which film industry starts working currently, through the case study of The Mandalorian (Favreau, 2019-2020), the latest production of the Star Wars transmedia franchise (Lucas, 1977-present).

Cabiria is ‘an autonomous work of art’, between aesthetical and stylistic peculiarities. In order to legitimately recognise these specificities, we should not exalt the high level of the technical cleverness mixed with ‘tricks’ or mechanisms of technological artificiality. On the contrary, we should – first and foremost – be aware of the identity of the movie, expression of the figurative art which combines painting, sculpture, architecture, theatre and cinematograph, constitutive nucleus of a poetics of the marvellous, created by d’Annunzio’s fervid fantasy and by the director Pastrone, invention – though in a real historical context – precise as regards the chronological limits, of forms, visible signs, allegories and symbols of the Jungian ‘collective subconscious’. Visions of a tangible reality, concrete, recovered by the truth, but raised to the realm of dream, in the oneiric atmosphere of the unreal, conquer the human sensibility. It is like the idea by de Chirico, who thinks the picture as a mental theatre, stage and ideal container of a moving drama that conveys the familiarity of the represented environment with figurative clarity. Thus, the work of the master-director-demiurge becomes an organic solution of all the arts between innovation and modernity.

«For a place to leave an impression on us, it must be made of time as well as space – of its past, its history, its culture» (Sciascia, 1987). Architecture is one the many disciplines which, due to their heteronomous nature, aspire to represent the past, present and future of a community. Just as the construction of buildings is not merely a response to a need, but rather an act that incorporates the concrete translation of desires and aspirations, so too do music, philosophy, and the figurative arts reflect contemporary themes in their evolution. The fragmentation of skills, the specialisation of knowledge, the rapid modification of the tools we work with, the digitalisation and hyperdevelopment of communication are all phenomena that have a substantial impact on the evolution of disciplines in a reciprocal interaction with the intangible values of a community – economic, social and cultural – as well as the material assets of the places where it expresses itself. Interpreting heteronomy as a condition in which an action is not guided by an autonomous principle that is intrinsic to the discipline, but rather determined by its interaction with external factors, a theoretical reflection on the evolution of the tools of knowledge and creation has the task of defining possible scenarios capable of tackling the risk of losing an ability to synthesise the relationships between the conditions that define the identity of architecture itself. The challenge of complexity is rooted in social, technological and environmental shifts: a challenge that involves space, a material resource, in its global scale and its human measure; and time, an immaterial resource, nowadays evaluated in terms of speed and flexibility, but also duration and permanence. These elements impact upon the project as a whole, as a combination of multiple forms of knowledge which, given their constant evolution, is subject to continuous comparison. The cultural debate has investigated at length the topic of art being forced to devote itself to heteronomy whilst also retaining a need for aesthetic autonomy. The risk of forgetting its own ontological status, of losing its own identity in the fragmentation and entropy of the contemporary world, finds an answer in the idea of design as a synthesis between an artistic idea and the social and environmental conditions in which it is places, configuring itself as an element capable of reconciling the antithetical drives towards an autonomous vision of the work, on the one hand, and a heteronomous one linked to its geographical, cultural, sociological and psychological characteristics, on the other. In the systemic and concerted working process so intrinsic to disciplines such as filmmaking and music – but also the visual arts or even philosophy – the act of designing is the expression of the relationship with a community of individuals whose actions are based on a role that is as social as it is technical, given that they act based on material and immaterial values of a public nature. If indeed the sciences – as Thomas Kuhn demonstrated in his writings on the scientific revolutions – cannot be understood without their historical dimension, then disciplines such as those addressed in this Dossier represent cultural phenomena that can only truly be understood in their entirety when considered in the context of their era and the many factors that fed into their creation. However, precisely as demonstrated by Kuhn’s theories (Kuhn, 1987), their evolution also consists of “scientific revolutions”: moments of disruption capable of changing the community’s attitude towards the discipline itself and, perhaps more importantly, its paradigms. Music, cinema, art, architecture and philosophy are all expressions of that which makes us human, in all its complexity: divided and confined to their own disciplinary fields, they are not capable of expressing the poetic quality of life and thus «making people feel and become aware of the aesthetic feeling» (Morin, 2019). Emanuele Coccia, an internationally renowned philosopher and associate professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, imagines a world in which everything you see is the product of an intentionality articulated by human, non-human and non-living actors. Design – not only anthropocentric design – is the most universal power in the world. Every living being can, in effect, design the world, but at the same time, every agent of matter can also design, and it is the interplay between these elements that creates a continuous metamorphosis of our environment. In other words, being alive is not a necessary condition for being a designer. The two anthropologists Alfred Gell and Philippe Descola, in their writings on Western society and nature, present contrasting views on the presence of the soul/animism in nature. The result is a sort of architecture of the landscape, in which nature itself is imbued with a sense of design intentionality that exists in a continuum with mankind. Edoardo Tresoldi, a young Italian sculptor, is one of the latest exponents of the heteronomy of architecture, which rejects the limiting confines of individual disciplines so as to imagine a transversal vision of the environment and its construction. Through the interplay of transparencies created with ephemeral metal structures, Tresoldi exalts the geometrical qualities of this raw material, going beyond the simple spatiotemporal dimension to establish a dialogue between place and the artistic representation thereof. Tresoldi recounts this journey of his through five themes: Place, because architecture in itself is markedly conditioned by its context, as is – in his case – art; Design, that is the act of envisaging the work, which is ultimately influenced by everything around us and our imagination; Time, as art is characterised by a potential interweaving, a continuity in the creative processes influenced by the history of the place; Material, or rather, materiality and the duality between the technical and artistic parts; and, finally, “What’s Next”, exploring the idea of what the future holds for us. On this last point, Tresoldi imagines his works further opening up to a diversified range of skills in a way that would also carve out new professional profiles for young people. Cristina Frosini, Director of the Milan Conservatory, with a contribution on music – «the supreme mystery of the sciences of man» (Lévi-Strauss, 2004) – offers reflections on a field with deep affinities with the discipline of architecture, with both sharing a strong relationship between composition and execution. The sheer vastness of musical expression, from the precision of the classical score to the freedom of interpretation exemplified by the conductor or the improvising jazz musician, sees the concepts of overall rhythm and melody, the homogeneity and identity of different instruments, and the circularity of the process as the key themes of music as a public art whose creative process has always been founded upon the relationship between technical factors and cultural factors. The contribution provided by Michele Guerra, an academic and professor of History of Cinema, confirms the words of Edgar Morin. «Nowadays, cinema is widely recognised as an art, and in my opinion, it is a tremendous polyphonic and polymorphous art that is capable of stimulating and integrating into itself the virtues of all the other arts: novel-writing, theatre, music, painting, scenography, photography. [...] it can be said that those who participate in the creation of a film are artisans, artists, who play an important role in the aesthetics of the film» (Morin, 2019). The work of the “cinematographic construction site” is driven by forces which, incorporating the status quo of the technical and material factors, lead to “an idea of imaginary metamorphosis” which reflects the aspirations of a society in its efforts to become contemporary. A concept of a heteronomous approach to “making” is also founded upon recognising the didactic value of the work, as emerges from Luigi Alini’s contribution on the figure of Vittorio Garatti – an intellectual first and architect second – whose pieces are the result of work that is as much immaterial as it is material, with an «experiential rather than mediatic» approach (Frampton, in Borsa and Carboni Maestri, 2018), as true architecture is expected to be. The heteronomy of architecture, much like that of other similar disciplines, is based on engagement on two fronts: an understanding of the relevant international scenarios and the definition of the project charter, with a view to conforming it so that it takes into account any changes, operates in continuity with and with an appreciation for history, and develops in harmony with the universality of the discipline and the teachings of its masters. Stimulating a dialogue between different cultural positions is a means to create the conditions for a degree of adherence to contemporaneity without compromising on a principle of historical continuity. In light of this, the contribution by Ferruccio Resta – the current Rector of the Politecnico di Milano – focuses on the varying cultural and intellectual positions that have animated the culture of the Politecnico over the years, representing a highly valuable heritage for the university. Nowadays, with the presence of certain indispensable premises such as sustainability and connectivity, technology seems to overwhelm the design process, outsourcing it to a sort of management of the engineering and component production aspects. Hence the need to reaffirm a “humanistic and human” dimension of the act of making, starting at the root by orienting the training processes in line with the words of historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, who says: «Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs” – critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. More broadly, they believe, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations». This need reopens the theme of the dualism between “art” and “discipline”, surpassing it in favour of a coexistence of terminology in that it is the quality of the design and the piece that define where it belongs. Reflecting on the foundations of the paths and tools employed in different disciplines – in light of the innovations that involve the project charter in terms not only of concepts, but also of instruments – means reflecting on the concept of “project culture”, understood as the ability to work through actions which combine different contributions, tackling complex problems by way of a conscious creative process. The ability to envisage the new – as is implicit in the etymology of the word “project” itself – and, at the same time, to interpret continuity in the sense of a coherent system of methods and values, is shared by the disciplines and skills brought together in the Dossier: dealing with culture, society, the city, the landscape and the environment all at once requires a multifaceted vision, an ability to read problems, but also a certain openmindedness towards opportunities, the management of complexities, control of the risks of drops in quality in service of concepts of efficiency based on numerical parameters and the standardisation of languages. A comparison of the various contributions and perspectives throws up a picture in which the importance of relationships, the search for what Eiffell defined «the secret laws of harmony», the disciplinary specificity of design as the ability to relate in order to «understand, criticise, transform» (Gregotti, 1981), the ability to distinguish that which is different by involving it in the transformation of design, all represent the foundations for the evolution of heteronomous disciplines in how they move beyond the notions of technique and context as passive referents which generate possibilities in line with the Rogersian reflection on pre-existing environmental elements as historical conditions for reference, critically taken on as determinants. Hence the validity of a “polytechnic” cultural approach that is not only capable of deploying tools and skills which can deal with the operating conditions to be found in a heteronomous context, but also of stimulating critical approaches oriented towards innovation and managing change with the perspective of a project as an opportunity – in the words of Franco Albini – for «experimentation and verification in relation to the progression of construction techniques, tools for investigation, knowledge in the various fields and in relation to the shifts in contemporary culture» (Albini, 1968). The need for a sense of humanism is strongly linked to the reintroduction of the concept of “beauty”, in its modern meaning, under which it shifts from a subjective value to a universal one. Hence the importance of the dialogue with disciplines that identify with the polytechnic mould – that is, one which has always been deeply attentive to the relationship between theory and practice, to the design of architecture as an action that is at once intellectual and technical. As such, starting from the assumption that «no theory can be pursued without hitting a wall that only practice can penetrate» (Deleuze and Foucault 1972; Deleuze, 2002; Foucault, 1977; Deleuze, 2007), it is now essential to promote the professional profiles of artists, musicians, philosophers, humanistic architects and so on who are capable of managing design as a synthesis of external factors, but also as an internal dialectic, as well as skills capable of creating culture understood as technical knowledge. Sometimes, faced with the difficulty of discerning an identity for disciplines, we attempt to draw a boundary that allows us to better understand their meaning and content. However, going on the points of view that have emerged in the Dossier, it seems more important than ever to «work on the boundaries of each field of knowledge», drawing upon a concept expressed by Salvatore Veca (Veca, 1979), making communication between fields a central value, interpreting relationships and connections, identifying the relational perspective as a fundamental aspect of the creative act. The position of architecture as an “art at the edge of the arts”1, as so often posited by Renzo Piano, allows for a reflection on its identity by placing it in a position that centralises rather than marginalises it. A concept of “edge” that touches upon the sociological viewpoint that distinguishes the “finite limit” (boundary) from the “area of interaction” (border) (Sennet, 2011; Sennet, 2018), in which the transformational yet constructive contact with the entities necessary for its realisation takes place. The heteronomy of architecture coincides with its “universality”, a concept that Alberto Campo Baeza (Campo Baeza, 2018) believes to represent the identity of architecture itself. Indeed, its dependence upon human life, the development of society, of its cultural growth, derives from a single and inalienable factor: its heteronomy, the necessary condition for a process as artistic as it is technical, tasked with expressing the values of a community over time and representing the “beautiful” rather than the “new”. A design practice based on – to borrow some concepts already expressed years ago by Edgar Morin – “contaminations that are necessary as well as possible”, on the contribution of “knowledge as an open system”, but above all, one aimed at working “against the continuities incapable of grasping the dynamics of change” (Morin, 1974), thus becomes an opportunity to develop a theory on the identity of the discipline itself, striking a balance between the technical and poetic spheres, but necessarily materialising in the finished work, lending substance to the «webs of intricate relationships that seek form» (Italo Calvino).

Technique and creativity Having been called upon to provide a contribution to a publication dedicated to “Techne”, I feel it is fitting to start from the theme of technique, given that for too many years now, we have fruitlessly attempted to understand the inner workings of cinema whilst disregarding the element of technique. And this has posed a significant problem in our field of study, as it would be impossible to gain a true understanding of what cinema is without immersing ourselves in the technical and industrial culture of the 19th century. It was within this culture that a desire was born: to mould the imaginary through the new techniques of reproduction and transfiguration of reality through images. Studying the development of the so-called “pre-cinema” – i.e. the period up to the conventional birth of cinema on 28 December 1895 with the presentation of the Cinématographe Lumière – we discover that the technical history of cinema is not only almost more enthralling than its artistic and cultural history, but that it contains all the great theoretical, philosophical and scientific insights that we need to help us understand the social, economic and cultural impact that cinema had on the culture of the 20th century. At the 1900 Paris Exposition, when cinema had already existed in some form for a few years, when the first few short films of narrative fiction also already existed, the cinematograph was placed in the Pavilion of Technical Discoveries, to emphasise the fact that the first wonder, this element of unparalleled novelty and modernity, was still there, in technique, in this marvel of innovation and creativity. I would like to express my idea through the words of Franco Moretti, who claims in one of his most recent works that it is only possible to understand form through the forces that pulsate through it and press on it from beneath, finally allowing the form itself to come to the surface and make itself visible and comprehensible to our senses. As such, the cinematic form – that which appears on the screen, that which is now so familiar to us, that which each of us has now internalised, that has even somehow become capable of configuring our way of thinking, imagining, dreaming – that form is underpinned by forces that allow it to eventually make its way onto the screen and become artistic and narrative substance. And those forces are the forces of technique, the forces of industry, the economic, political and social forces without which we could never hope to understand cinema. One of the issues that I always make a point of addressing in the first few lessons with my students is that if they think that the history of cinema is made up of films, directors, narrative plots to be understood, perhaps even retold in some way, then they are entirely on the wrong track; if, on the other hand, they understand that it is the story of an institution with economic, political and social drivers within it that can, in some way, allow us to come to the great creators, the great titles, but that without a firm grasp of those drivers, there is no point in even attempting to explore it, then they are on the right track. As I see it, cinema in the twentieth century was a great democratic, interclassist laboratory such as no other art has ever been, and this occurred thanks to the fact that what underpinned it was an industrial reasoning: it had to respond to the capital invested in it, it had to make money, and as such, it had to reach the largest possible number of people, immersing it into a wholly unprecedented relational situation. The aim was to be as inclusive as possible, ultimately giving rise to the idea that cinema could not be autonomous, as other forms of art could be, but that it must instead be able to negotiate all the various forces acting upon it, pushing it in every direction. This concept of negotiation is one which has been explored in great detail by one of the greatest film theorists of our modern age, Francesco Casetti. In a 2005 book entitled “Eye of the Century”, which I consider to be a very important work, Casetti actually argues that cinema has proven itself to be the art form most capable of adhering to the complexity and fast pace of the short century, and that it is for this very reason that its golden age (in the broadest sense) can be contained within the span of just a hundred years. The fact that cinema was the true epistemological driving force of 20th-century modernity – a position now usurped by the Internet – is not, in my opinion, something that diminishes the strength of cinema, but rather an element of even greater interest. Casetti posits that cinema was the great negotiator of new cultural needs, of the need to look at art in a different way, of the willingness to adapt to technique and technology: indeed, the form of cinema has always changed according to the techniques and technologies that it has brought to the table or established a dialogue with on a number of occasions. Barry Salt, whose background is in physics, wrote an important book – publishing it at his own expense, as a mark of how difficult it is to work in certain fields – entitled “Film Style and Technology”, in which he calls upon us stop writing the history of cinema starting from the creators, from the spirit of the time, from the great cultural and historical questions, and instead to start afresh by following the techniques available over the course of its development. Throughout the history of cinema, the creation of certain films has been the result of a particular set of technical conditions: having a certain type of film, a certain type of camera, only being able to move in a certain way, needing a certain level of lighting, having an entire arsenal of equipment that was very difficult to move and handle; and as the equipment, medium and techniques changed and evolved over the years, so too did the type of cinema that we were able to make. This means framing the history of cinema and film theory in terms of the techniques that were available, and starting from there: of course, whilst Barry Salt’s somewhat provocative suggestion by no means cancels out the entire cultural, artistic and aesthetic discourse in cinema – which remains fundamental – it nonetheless raises an interesting point, as if we fail to consider the methods and techniques of production, we will probably never truly grasp what cinema is. These considerations also help us to understand just how vast the “construction site” of cinema is – the sort of “factory” that lies behind the production of any given film. Erwin Panofsky wrote a single essay on cinema in the 1930s entitled “Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures” – a very intelligent piece, as one would expect from Panofsky – in which at a certain point, he compares the construction site of the cinema to those of Gothic cathedrals, which were also under an immense amount of pressure from different forces, namely religious ones, but also socio-political and economic forces which ultimately shaped – in the case of the Gothic cathedral and its development – an idea of the relationship between the earth and the otherworldly. The same could be said for cinema, because it also involves starting with something very earthly, very grounded, which is then capable of unleashing an idea of imaginary metamorphosis. Some scholars, such as Edgar Morin, will say that cinema is increasingly becoming the new supernatural, the world of contemporary gods, as religion gradually gives way to other forms of deification. Panofsky’s image is a very focused one: by making film production into a construction site, which to all intents and purposes it is, he leads us to understand that there are different forces at work, represented by a producer, a scriptwriter, a director, but also a workforce, the simple labourers, as is always the case in large construction sites, calling into question the idea of who the “creator” truly is. So much so that cinema, now more than ever before, is reconsidering the question of authorship, moving towards a “history of cinema without names” in an attempt to combat the “policy of the author” which, in the 1950s, especially in France, identified the director as the de facto author of the film. Today, we are still in that position, with the director still considered the author of the film, but that was not always so: back in the 1910s, in the United States, the author of the film was the scriptwriter, the person who wrote it (as is now the case for TV series, where they have once again taken pride of place as the showrunner, the creator, the true author of the series, and nobody remembers the names of the directors of the individual episodes); or at times, it can be the producer, as was the case for a long time when the Oscar for Best Picture, for example, was accepted by the producer in their capacity as the commissioner, as the “owner” of the work. As such, the theme of authorship is a very controversial one indeed, but one which helps us to understand the great meeting of minds that goes into the production of a film, starting with the technicians, of course, but also including the actors. Occasionally, a film is even attributed to the name of a star, almost as if to declare that that film is theirs, in that it is their body and their talent as an actor lending it a signature that provides far more of a draw to audiences than the name of the director does. In light of this, the theme of authorship, which Panofsky raised in the 1930s through the example of the Gothic cathedral, which ultimately does not have a single creator, is one which uses the image of the construction site to also help us to better understand what kind of development a film production can go through and to what extent this affects its critical and historical reception; as such, grouping films together based on their director means doing something that, whilst certainly not incorrect in itself, precludes other avenues of interpretation and analysis which could have favoured or could still favour a different reading of the “cinematographic construction site”. Design and execution The great classic Hollywood film industry was a model that, although it no longer exists in the same form today, unquestionably made an indelible mark at a global level on the history not only of cinema, but more broadly, of the culture of the 20th century. The industry involved a very strong vertical system resembling an assembly line, revolving around producers, who had a high level of decision-making autonomy and a great deal of expertise, often inclined towards a certain genre of film and therefore capable of bringing together the exact kinds of skills and visions required to make that particular film. The history of classic American cinema is one that can also be reconstructed around the units that these producers would form. The “majors”, along with the so-called “minors”, were put together like football teams, with a chairman flanked by figures whom we would nowadays refer to as a sporting director and a managing director, who built the team based on specific ideas, “buying” directors, scriptwriters, scenographers, directors of photography, and even actors and actresses who generally worked almost exclusively for their major – although they could occasionally be “loaned out” to other studios. This system led to a very marked characterisation and allowed for the film to be designed in a highly consistent, recognisable way in an age when genres reigned supreme and there was the idea that in order to keep the audience coming back, it was important to provide certain reassurances about what they would see: anyone going to see a Western knew what sorts of characters and storylines to expect, with the same applying to a musical, a crime film, a comedy, a melodrama, and so on. The star system served to fuel this working method, with these major actors also representing both forces and materials in the hands of an approach to the filmmaking which had the ultimate objective of constructing the perfect film, in which everything had to function according to a rule rooted in both the aesthetic and the economic. Gore Vidal wrote that from 1939 onwards, Hollywood did not produce a single “wrong” film: indeed, whilst certainly hyperbolic, this claim confirms that that system produced films that were never wrong, never off-key, but instead always perfectly in tune with what the studios wished to achieve. Whilst this long-entrenched system of yesteryear ultimately imploded due to certain historical phenomena that determined it to be outdated, the way of thinking about production has not changed all that much, with film design remaining tied to a professional approach that is still rooted within it. The overwhelming majority of productions still start from a system which analyses the market and the possible economic impact of the film, before even starting to tackle the various steps that lead up to the creation of the film itself. Following production systems and the ways in which they have changed, in terms of both the technology and the cultural contexts, also involves taking stock of the still considerable differences that exist between approaches to filmmaking in different countries, or indeed the similarities linking highly disparate economic systems (consider, for example, India’s “Bollywood” or Nigeria’s “Nollywood”: two incredibly strong film industries that we are not generally familiar with as they lack global distribution, although they are built very solidly). In other words, any attempt to study Italian cinema and American cinema – to stay within this double field – with the same yardstick is unthinkable, precisely because the context of their production and design is completely different. Composition and innovation Studying the publications on cinema in the United States in the early 1900s – which, from about 1911 to 1923, offers us a revealing insight into the attempts made to garner an in-depth understanding of how this new storytelling machine worked and the development of the first real cultural industry of the modern age – casts light on the centrality of the issues of design and composition. I remain convinced that without reading and understanding that debate, it is very difficult to understand why cinema is as we have come to be familiar with it today. Many educational works investigated the inner workings of cinema, and some, having understood them, suggested that they were capable of teaching others to do so. These publications have almost never been translated into Italian and remain seldom studied even in the US, and yet they are absolutely crucial for understanding how cinema established itself on an industrial and aesthetic level. There are two key words that crop up time and time again in these books, the first being “action”, one of the first words uttered when a film starts rolling: “lights, camera, action”. This collection of terms is interesting in that “motore” highlights the presence of a machine that has to be started up, followed by “action”, which expresses that something must happen at that moment in front of that machine, otherwise the film will not exist. As such, “action” – a term to which I have devoted some of my studies – is a fundamental word here in that it represents a sort of moment of birth of the film that is very clear – tangible, even. The other word is “composition”, and this is an even more interesting word with a history that deserves a closer look: the first professor of cinema in history, Victor Oscar Freeburg (I edited the Italian translation of his textbook “The Art of Photoplay Making”, published in 1918), took up his position at Columbia University in 1915 and, in doing so, took on the task of teaching the first ever university course in cinema. Whilst Freeburg was, for his time, a very well-educated and highly-qualified person, having studied at Yale and then obtained his doctorate in theatre at Columbia, cinema was not entirely his field of expertise. He was asked to teach a course entitled “Photoplay Writing”. At the time, a film was known as a “photoplay”, in that it was a photographed play of sorts, and the fact that the central topic of the course was photoplay writing makes it clear that back then, the scriptwriter was considered the main author of the work. From this point of view, it made sense to entrust the teaching of cinema to an expert in theatre, based on the idea that it was useful to first and foremost teach a sort of photographable dramaturgy. However, upon arriving at Columbia, Freeburg soon realised whilst preparing his course that “photoplay writing” risked misleading the students, as it is not enough to simply write a story in order to make a film; as such, he decided to change the title of his course to “photoplay composition”. This apparently minor alteration, from “writing” to “composition”, in fact marked a decisive conceptual shift in that it highlighted that it was no longer enough to merely write: one had to “compose”. So it was that the author of a film became, according to Freeburg, not the scriptwriter or director, but the “cinema composer” (a term of his own coinage), thus directing and broadening the concept of composition towards music, on the one hand, and architecture, on the other. We are often inclined to think that cinema has inherited expressive modules that come partly from literature, partly from theatre and partly from painting, but in actual fact, what Freeburg helps us to understand is that there are strong elements of music and architecture in a film, emphasising the lofty theme of the project. In his book, he explores at great length the relationship between static and dynamic forms in cinema, a topic that few have ever addressed in that way and that again, does not immediately spring to mind as applicable to a film. I believe that those initial intuitions were the result of a reflection unhindered by all the prejudices and preconceived notions that subsequently began to condition film studies as a discipline, and I feel that they are of great use to use today because they guide us, on the one hand, towards a symphonic idea of filmmaking, and on the other, towards an idea that preserves the fairly clear imprint of architecture. Space-Time In cinema as in architecture, the relationship between space and time is a crucial theme: in every textbook, space and time are amongst the first chapters to be studied precisely because in cinema, they undergo a process of metamorphosis – as Edgar Morin would say – which is vital to constructing the intermediate world of film. Indeed, from both a temporal and a spatial point of view, cinema provides a kind of ubiquitous opportunity to overlap different temporalities and spatialities, to move freely from one space to another, but above all, to construct new systems of time. The rules of film editing – especially so-called “invisible editing”, i.e. classical editing that conceals its own presence – are rules built upon specific and precise connections that hold together different spaces – even distant ones – whilst nonetheless giving the impression of unity, of contiguity, of everything that cinema never is in reality, because cinema is constantly fragmented and interrupted, even though we very often perceive it in continuity. As such, from both a spatial and a temporal perspective, there are technical studies that explain the rules of how to edit so as to give the idea of spatial continuity, as well as theoretical studies that explain how cinema has transformed our sense of space and time. To mark the beginning of Parma’s run as Italy’s Capital of Culture, an exhibition was organised entitled “Time Machine. Seeing and Experiencing Time”, curated by Antonio Somaini, with the challenge of demonstrating how cinema, from its earliest experiments to the digital age, has managed to manipulate and transform time, profoundly affecting our way of engaging with it. The themes of time and space are vital to understanding cinema, including from a philosophical point of view: in two of Gilles Deleuze’s seminal volumes, “The Movement Image” and “The Time Image”, the issues of space and time become the two great paradigms not only for explaining cinema, but also – as Deleuze himself says – for explaining a certain 20th-century philosophy. Deleuze succeeds in a truly impressive endeavour, namely linking cinema to philosophical reflection – indeed, making cinema into an instrument of philosophical thought; this heteronomy of filmmaking is then also transferred to its ability to become an instrument that goes beyond its own existence to become a reflection on the century that saw it as a protagonist of sorts. Don Ihde argues that every era has a technical discovery that somehow becomes what he calls an “epistemological engine”: a tool that opens up a system of thought that would never have been possible without that discovery. One of the many examples of this over the centuries is the camera obscura, but we could also name cinema as the defining discovery for 20th-century thought: indeed, cinema is indispensable for understanding the 20th century, just as the Internet is for understanding our way of thinking in the 21st century. Real-virtual Nowadays, the film industry is facing the crisis of cinema closures, ultimately caused by ever-spreading media platforms and the power of the economic competition that they are exerting by aggressively entering the field of production and distribution, albeit with a different angle on the age-old desire to garner audiences. Just a few days ago, Martin Scorsese was lamenting the fact that on these platforms, the artistic project is in danger of foundering, as excellent projects are placed in a catalogue alongside a series of products of varying quality, thus confusing the viewer. A few years ago, during the opening ceremony of the academic year at the University of Southern California, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas expressed the same concept about the future of cinema in a different way. Lucas argued that cinemas would soon have to become incredibly high-tech places where people can have an experience that is impossible to reproduce elsewhere, with a ticket price that takes into account the expanded and increased experiential value on offer thanks to the new technologies used. Spielberg, meanwhile, observed that cinemas will manage to survive if they manage to transform the cinemagoer from a simple viewer into a player, an actor of sorts. The history of cinema has always been marked by continuous adaptation to technological evolutions. I do not believe that cinema will ever end. Jean-Luc Godard, one of the great masters of the Nouvelle Vague, once said in an interview: «I am very sorry not to have witnessed the birth of cinema, but I am sure that I will witness its death». Godard, who was born in 1930, is still alive. Since its origins, cinema has always transformed rather than dying. Raymond Bellour says that cinema is an art that never finishes finishing, a phrase that encapsulates the beauty and the secret of cinema: an art that never quite finishes finishing is an art that is always on the very edge of the precipice but never falls off, although it leans farther and farther over that edge. This is undoubtedly down to cinema’s ability to continually keep up with technique and technology, and in doing so to move – even to a different medium – to relocate, as contemporary theorists say, even finally moving out of cinemas themselves to shift onto platforms and tablets, yet all without ever ceasing to be cinema. That said, we should give everything we’ve got to ensure that cinemas survive.

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The research has emerged from the concern about technologies that fascinate people due to their eases and possibilities and that also frighten because of the overlooked practices and knowledge that preceded them. Does the novelty replace what comes previously or simply overlap it? What does one gain and what does one lose in this process? Among several examples, I focused on a technological transition and a professional category that symbolized this lack of communication between the new and what precedes it; they mirrored each other. The film-to-digital transition in the cinema was also the projectionist - IT technician transition. What other transitions exist within this one? From film to digital. From the 35mm projector to the digital projector. From the projectionist to the IT technician. From the analog to the digital. From the photochemical film to the computer. From the touch to the virtual. From the physics and chemistry to the mathematics. The research has aimed to understand the film-to-digital transition from the point of view of the cinema projectionist. For that, semi-structured interviews were conducted with three professionals in the city of São Paulo, with similar years of experience and involvement with cinema, similar belonging and affection feelings. In addition, the narratives of two other professionals who worked in the 1950s have been added. These interviews were transcribed in full, sequentially organized in order to identify the themes and later analyzed through thematic maps. The results of the analysis were presented in a narrative form, composed by the direct inscription of the interviews, historical passages about the cinema and testimonies of other professionals of the area, as well as of intellectuals who dialogue with the research proposal. These different points of view have been structured in a narrative form in this dissertation, as a conversation. The research has been anchored in the constructivist approach of discursive practices and production of meanings in everyday life. The analysis pointed out to the intrinsic relationship between death and life in technology and in professional relationships, with emphasis on the importance of registration and of cultural memory
A pesquisa surgiu da inquietação diante de tecnologias que fascinam por suas facilidades e possibilidades e assustam pelo descaso com práticas e saberes que as precederam. O novo substitui o anterior ou apenas se sobrepõe a ele? O que se ganha, o que se perde nesse processo? Entre diversos exemplos, focalizei uma transição tecnológica e uma categoria profissional que simbolizavam essa falta de comunicação entre o novo e o precedente; espelhavam uma à outra. A transição película / digital no cinema era também a transição projecionista / técnico de TI. Quais outras transições existem dentro dessas? Da película para o digital. Do projetor 35mm para o projetor digital. Do projecionista para o técnico de TI. Do analógico para o digital. Do filme fotoquímico para o computador. Do tato ao virtual. Da física e da química para a matemática. A pesquisa teve por objetivo entender a transição película / digital do ponto de vista do projecionista de cinema. Para tanto, foram realizadas entrevistas semiestruturadas com três profissionais na cidade de São Paulo, com tempo de ofício e envolvimento semelhantes com o cinema, de pertencimento e afeto. Além disso, somaram-se às narrativas destes as de outros dois profissionais que atuaram nos anos 1950. As entrevistas foram transcritas na íntegra, organizadas sequencialmente para identificação dos temas e posteriormente analisadas por meio de mapas temáticos. Os resultados da análise foram apresentados de forma narrativa, compostos com a inscrição direta das entrevistas, passagens históricas sobre o cinema e depoimentos de outros profissionais da área, bem como de intelectuais que dialogam com a proposta da pesquisa. Esses diversos pontos de vista foram estruturados em narrativa nesta dissertação, como uma conversa. A pesquisa foi ancorada na abordagem construcionista de práticas discursivas e produção de sentidos no cotidiano. A análise apontou para a relação intrínseca entre morte e vida na tecnologia e nas relações profissionais, com ênfase na importância do registro e da memória cultural

Esta tese apresenta uma nova abordagem para a discussão da Representação da Luz na fotografia do Cinema. Para além do entendimento corrente que conceitua o Cinema como linguagem, pretendeu-se mostrar que é, sobretudo, a Luz, e o uso que se faz dela, o principal fundamento da fotografia do Cinema. Uma vez que o Cinema é uma atividade de caráter sociocultural, que é estruturada por forças históricas, sociais, culturais, econômicas e tecnológicas, mas que por sua vez modela e se soma às forças estruturantes da sociedade, pode-se inferir que há uma dialética permeando os processos de produção, reprodução, recepção e difusão da Luz codificada do Cinema. Para entabular a discussão da Luz como linguagem, foram estabelecidos três eixos norteadores, a partir dos quais se buscou compreender a interdependência existente entre as representações, as ações e o coeficiente de transparência da fotografia cinematográfica que, de forma relacional, possibilitam diferentes graus de inteligibilidade e concorrem para que o intercâmbio entre o Cinema, as pessoas, e a materialidade do mundo, se efetive. Na primeira parte da tese, chamada de Eixo X - Referencialidade, composta pelos dois primeiros capítulos, tratou-se da Luz, a partir de dois aspectos: o primeiro, mais amplo, apresentou a Luz como um elemento indissociável da vida humana e da Cultura; o segundo, pretendeu estabelecer a relação entre a representação da Luz em imagens artísticas e a fotografia do Cinema. As referências visuais históricas, oriundas de outras modalidades artísticas, especialmente da pintura e do teatro, formaram a base visual, de onde se originou boa parte das referências fotográficas e dos diferentes usos da Luz, no Cinema. Portanto, a Luz do Cinema tem predecessores. Na segunda parte, tratou-se do chamado Eixo Y – Ação, que foi desenvolvido no terceiro capítulo. Aqui, sob a égide de pensadores como Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Clifford Geertz, e os do Interacionismo Simbólico, a ênfase da discussão recaiu no elemento de novidade que a ação introduz, nos modelos de codificação da Luz estabelecidos pela cultura. Desta forma, a ação atualiza e dinamiza a linguagem. Na terceira e última parte da tese, nomeada de Eixo Z – Transparência, composta pelo quarto e quinto capítulos, tratou-se de mostrar como e por que a Referencialidade e a Ação, de forma articulada, influenciam, do ponto de vista de sua construção técnica, material, significativa e sígnica, a representação da Luz no Cinema. O conceito de transparência cultural foi cunhado e aplicado, na tentativa de se demarcar esta inter-relação. Do ponto de vista teórico-metodológico, esta tese filia-se ao paradigma interpretativo, de cunho qualitativo. Além das referências bibliográficas, e de textos e artigos procedentes da Internet, utilizou-se, largamente, imagens de diferentes linguagens artísticas, assim como foram produzidas imagens fotográficas, filmográficas e videográficas, que se configuraram como importantes fontes para efeito de análise, nesta tese.
Our thesis introduces a new approach to the debate on the Representation of Light in Film photography. In addition to the current consensus that posits Film as language, we have strived to demonstrate that above all Light, and the manner in which it is used, is the main foundation of Film photography. Inasmuch as Film is a sociocultural activity, structured by historical, social, cultural, economic and technological forces, but in turn shapes and joins society’s structuring forces, one can infer the dialectics permeating the processes of production, reproduction, reception and diffusion of Light coded in Film. With a view to addressing the debate of Light as language, three guiding axes were established, from which we sought to determine the existing interdependence among representations, actions and the transparency coefficient of film photography which, in relating to one another, provide different degrees of intelligibility and contribute to the realization of the exchange among Film, people and the material nature of the world. In the first part of our thesis, titled Axis X – Referentiality, comprising the first two chapters, Light is approached from two points of view: the first one, from a broader perspective, introduces Light as an indissociable element of human life and of Culture; the second one aims to establish the relationship between the representation of Light in artistic pictures and Film photography. Visual historical references, arising from other art forms, especially painting and theater, form the visual basis, from which a large parte of photographic references and different uses of light in Film originate. Thus it can be said that Light in Film has its predecessors. In the second part, we addressed the so-called Axis Y – Action, developed in the third chapter. With the support of thinkers such as Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Clifford Geertz, and those from Symbolic Interactionism, the focus of the debate fell upon the new element introduced by action, within the codified models dictated by culture. Action thus updates and brings dynamics to language. In the third and last part of the thesis, called Axis Z – Transparency, encompassing the fourth and fifth chapters, we sought to demonstrate how and why Referentiality and Action, in an articulated manner, influence, from a technical, material, meaning and sign construction standpoint, the representation of Light in Film. The concept of cultural transparency was coined and applied, in an attempt to define this interrelation. From a theoretical and methodological point of view, our thesis subscribes to the interpretative paradigm, which has an qualitative characteristic. In addition to the bibliographical references, and to online texts and articles, we made extensive use of images from different artistic languages, as well as produced photographic, film and video images, which became important sources for analysis within our thesis.

CNPq
Esta dissertação busca demonstrar a influência recíproca entre a arte e a tecnologia para além do artefato com o uso da cor na obtenção da harmonia cromática e do reforço perceptivo visual e cultural. Procuramos evidenciar como a arte se apropria da tecnologia na obtenção da harmonia pelo uso da cor no processo criativo. A arte, ao ser mediada pela tecnologia, desafia o artista a opor-se ao determinismo tecnológico que impõe resultados pela estandardização do uso de seus aparatos, superando seus limites na reinvenção de suas finalidades. Este trabalho tem como objetivo localizar a escolha e o uso das cores nos filmes de animação de curtas-metragens da Disney-Pixar como materialização de significados na construção de uma narrativa, evidenciando a oposição entre o contexto relacional e instrumental da tecnologia pela superação dos seus limites reinventados pelo próprio uso da cor de forma a reforçar os significados propostos por esta narrativa. Inicialmente apresentaremos pressupostos passíveis de localizar a tecnologia em suas dimensões conceituais partindo do eixo cor que atravessa todo o trabalho, daremos ênfase aos conceitos da teoria da cor essenciais para este entendimento, para que finalmente, munidos do referencial teórico, possamos analisar as imagens e concluir nossa pesquisa. Para realizar este trabalho de pesquisa de abordagem qualitativa realizamos a análise das imagens da amostra selecionada intencionalmente dentro de critérios específicos priorizando as imagens que denotavam as características predeterminadas.
This paper search is to demonstrate the reciprocal influence between art and technology in addition to the artifact through the use of color in obtaining the chromatic harmony and strengthening visual perceptual and cultural. We try to show how the art appropriates technology in obtaining harmony by using the color in the creative process. The art, to be mediated by technology, challenges the artist to oppose technological determinism that imposes results by standardization of the use of its gadgets, surpassing its limits in reinvention of their purposes. This work has as objective find the choices and the uses of color in the animation short films of Disney-Pixar’s as materialization of meanings in the construction of a narrative, highlighting the opposition between the relational context and instrumental of technology by overcoming its limits reinvented itself by using the color in order to reinforce the meanings offered by this narrative. Initially we will be presenting assumptions likely to find technology in their conceptual dimensions starting from the axis color that permeates throughout the work, the main focus will be on the concepts of the theory of color essential for to this understanding, and finally, armed with the theoretical framework, we will analyze the images and complete our survey. To carry out this research work in qualitative approach we performed the analysis of the images of the sample selected intentionally within specific criteria prioritizing images that suffered from the predetermined characteristics.

Cinema, as a complex social and cultural phenomenon, has been recently challenged by digital media cultures and aesthetics since the 1990s. In this study, Hong Kong cinematic productions, blending the West and the East, and flexibly manoeuvring production and post-production with limited resources, are used to demonstrate the advent of new digital cinematic aesthetics and productions in the era of globalization and digitalization. The production culture and aesthetics of local cinema has been, to a great extent, internally modified by the impacts of digital media cultures and technologies, especially digital effects and computer animation of unprecedented imaginary spaces and perspectives for creative productions. The increasing complexity of digital cinematic productions and the rapidly changing cultural production systems bring in newcomers of alternative modes/choices of thoughts and interpretations, thus facilitating production/product differentiation and de-differentiation to cater for the increasing and changing demands of active audiences. The vigorous struggle for cultural representations in digital cinematic aesthetics by producers and consumers of disparate repertoires is the focus of analysis in this research. Empirical evidences suggest a new paradigmatic model to study cultural representations of digital cinematic aesthetics within contemporary creative systems of production and consumption.
The findings generally support the advent of the ten new aesthetics of digital cinema as a global trend as well as a new glocalism in the Hong Kong cases. While most interviewed producers and audiences articulate the new characteristics of digital cinematic aesthetics, many audiences show disjunctive judgments toward those local filmmakers' treatments to cross-fertilize video game with their cinematic productions. This reveals the inevitability of internal modifications of organization cultures and representational practices to create new digital cinematic aesthetics and productions within new dynamics of digital media cultures and technologies in the fast changing media ecology. Hong Kong filmmakers and computer animators show their strength and flexibility to glocalize digital cinematic aesthetics and productions by integrating digital visual effects with local film and production cultures, especially in comedic and martial arts cinematic productions. However, it seems that there are larger discrepancies concerning the tastes and aesthetic judgments toward cultural representations in digital cinematic aesthetics by cross-fertilization with video game between general audiences and professionals. This study reflects that the rigid, director-oriented Hong Kong film production system is too demanding on the film director's independent ability of coordination and greatly influences the development of cultural representations in digital cinema by collective imaginative inputs of increasing complexity and flexibility. Producers and consumers of disparate repertoires of cultural practices contribute to the meaning construction of multiple layers of digital effects and computer animation by systematic coordination and collaboration. In other words, the "spectrum of cultural representations", as a framework, helps us understand the complexity and creativity of the new digital cinematic aesthetics from production to consumption practices.
This study is a multidimensional investigation of the moments of creativity and struggles over organization cultures and representational practices by both cultural producers and audiences. There are case studies of the general trend of digital cinematic productions in Hollywood and the specific development of digital cinema in Hong Kong, as well as in China. From these empirical analyses, ten new characteristics of digital cinematic aesthetics are generalized. They include (l) amplification, (2) free referencing, (3) seamlessness and believability, (4) multiple-layered composition, (5) patterning, (6) imaginary perspectives, (7) collective imaginative inputs, (8) cross-fertilization with comic, (9) cross-fertilization with video game, and (10) cross-cultural, cross-historical, cross-genre production. Such inductive findings are also deployed to study the social functions of both producers and audiences in the meaning construction of digital cinematic aesthetics and productions within the dynamics of digitalization and globalization. Eighteen in-depth interviews of production insiders, five focus groups of disparate generations of movie audiences and amateurs, and eleven case studies of Hong Kong digital cinematic productions have been examined. The empirical validity about the ten new forms of digital cinematic aesthetics and their production and consumption is investigated, and also achieved by intensive and interactive case studies, production studies and audience studies, combining textual and discourse analyses and production and reception analyses.
Lam, Sui Kwong Sunny.
Advisers: Anthony Y. H. Fung; Eric K. W. Ma.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: A, page: .
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 536-562).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract also in Chinese.

I set out to explore cinema in terms of its potential function as a medium of the sublime. Burke and Kant’s accounts of the sublime are employed to examine their correlation with cinema’s technological, formal, and receptive repertoire. This encompasses intrinsic features such as cinematography’s innovation of putting in motion photographic images, aspects of the montage, the aesthetic potential of the camera as cinema’s central organ of expression and perception, sound effects, and multimedia interplay as well as external features of cinema which constitute the medium as a concrete space for cinematic experiences. To what extent do these various features provoke, facilitate, mediate, or participate in a sensory and affective overpowering of the viewer?