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By
Peter O’Brien
2012-13
1
Abstract
theory’s understandings of the spectator and the spectacle; with particular emphasis
directed towards the neurobiological implications of the spectator’s body. The thesis will
argue that these shortcomings are representative of wider ranging issues of complacency
engulfing the film industry and film exhibition as a whole. Furthermore, the fundamental
disruptions of the digital upgrade of cinema, and the expanding means through which film
content can be experienced, will be explored in relation to the pressing need for film theory
dissertation is a highly progressive expression of how film experience has always been
about transcendence and, as a result of its digital re-birth and diversifications, it is now
2
Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle is the culmination of a lifelong personal
passion, a seven month research project and a last minute change of mind. The paper has
been praised for its originality, progressive thinking and received the highest mark ever
assigned to an undergraduate Film and Screen Studies dissertation at Bath Spa University;
3
“Pete, you have a fantastic dissertation which deserves the highest possible grade. Really, it
is brilliantly written which displays your thorough research and passion for the topic and,
most importantly, it is original and not something that people have written about tens of
thousands of times. You've done something new and fantastic.” (Matt Coot, Proof-reader,
03/06/2013).
4
FL6001:40 FILM & SCREEN STUDIES: DISSERTATION 2012-13
1st marker’s 75
mark
2nd marker’s 85
mark
5
FL6001:40 FILM & SCREEN STUDIES: DISSERTATION 2012-13
Introduction /
statement of aims
Knowledge and
understanding of topic
area
Analysis and
application of concepts
(making an argument)
Written
presentation
Referencing &
Bibliography
6
This is clearly an ambitious project. It makes a passionate case for the
revival of grand theory in studies of Spectatorship in particular and Film
Studies in general and sustains this case through argumentation of an
exceedingly high order. It acknowledges the need to expand the scope
of such studies beyond film, in its reference to a wide range of media
texts as much as to critical literature, all of which are directed towards
an understanding of spectatorship from points of view as diverse as the
sensory, experiential, philosophical, spiritual, metaphysical and
neurological. The two chapter structure with ten appendices is
unconventional for a dissertation, but an interesting and evidently
viable one, and is executed with workmanlike assurance.
7
For Douglas Trumbull.
8
Contents
List of Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Declaration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Hypercinema
The Implications of the Spectacle as a Hyper-Immersive Commodity. . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Conclusion
Deshi Basara
A Pressing Need to Understand the Hidden Language of the Spectator
and the Spectacle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
9
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Appendix E
Resolutions
Image Resolutions, Higher Frame Rates and the Standardisation of Film Exhibition. . . 123
Appendix F
10
Appendix G
A Lousy Experience
The Multiplex Complaint that went Viral. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Appendix H
Highlighting IMAX
Comparisons of Conventional and IMAX Film Posters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Appendix I
Appendix J
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Discography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Filmography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
11
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure 2: A poster for Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Dir. Werner Herzog, 2011). . . . . . . . 42
Figure 3: The eight-legged bison. A screen capture from Cave of Forgotten Dreams. . . . 43
Chapter One
Figure 4: Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) looks through his peep hole.
Ways of Seeing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
12
Chapter Two
Figure 10: The Higher frame rate FAQ sheet for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. . . . 65
Figure 16: The number of films released in IMAX venues between 2009 and 2012. . . . . 75
Figure 17: The IMAX poster for The Dark Knight Rises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
13
Figure 18: The number of IMAX venues worldwide between 2008 and 2012. . . . . . . . 78
Figure 19: ‘Take in a Movie or get taken into one’. ‘IMAX is believing’
advertisement poster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
perception of motion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Figure 24: A diagram demonstrating the human eye’s rods and cones
Figure 25: Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) jump for their
lives. A screen capture from the 9 minute IMAX preview of Star Trek Into Darkness. . . . 86
14
Figure 29: A photograph demonstration of the in-ride experience of
Conclusion
Figure 31: ‘See a movie or be part of one’. ‘IMAX is believing’ advertisement poster. . . 97
Figure 32: A hand print cave painting from the El Castillo cave in Spain. . . . . . . . . . . 98
Figure 33: Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) prepares for his ascent from the pit.
Figure 35: Bruce Wayne climbs up the cavern. A screen capture from
Figure 37: Bruce Wayne contemplates his leap. A publicity photograph for
15
Figure 38: Bruce Wayne - risen from darkness. A screen capture from
Appendix B
Figure 39: A photograph of the food and drink counter of a Vue cinema. . . . . . . . . . 113
Appendix C
Figure 40: ‘The Microphone – the Terror of the Studios’, the cover
Appendix D
Figure 43: A point of view roller coaster sequence from This is Cinerama.
A smile box re-creation of what the 3-strip Cinerama version of This is Cinerama
16
Figure 44: A layout demonstration of the workings of a Cinerama theatre. . . . . . . . . 121
Figure 45: Linus Rawlings (James Stewart) greets the Native Americans. A smile
box re-creation of what the 3-strip Cinerama version of How The West Was Won
Appendix E
Figure 46: A diagram illustrating the parameters of different image resolutions. . . . . 124
Appendix F
Figure 48: A photograph of The Little Theatre Cinema, Bath, UK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Figure 49: A photograph of the city centre Cineworld, Glasgow, UK. . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Figure 51: A photograph of the Cineworld in Crawley, West Sussex, UK. . . . . . . . . . 132
17
Figure 53: An advertisement poster for Odeon’s isense. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Appendix H
Figure 55: A conventional poster for The Dark Knight Rises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Figure 56: The IMAX poster for The Dark Knight Rises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Figure 59: A conventional poster for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. . . . . . . . . 143
Figure 60: One of four IMAX character posters for The Hobbit:
Appendix I
Figure 61: “What a difference 8 years makes: St. Peter's Square in 2005
18
Figure 62: Netflix account homepage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Figure 65: Glass Glass - a user’s point of view. A screen capture from
Appendix J
19
Foreword
“I just feel like I haven’t said everything I want to say on Film Studies,” these were the
words I lamented to Dr Terence Rodgers, the head of the Department of Film and Media, as
I was sat in his office on the 19th September 2012. Less than a week before the Film and
Screen Studies dissertation module was due to begin, I was presenting my case for why I
should be allowed to change to the module. Some would argue that I was very lucky with
my undergraduate degree, BA (Hons) Creative Writing with Film and Screen Studies, as it is
a joint degree, the final year dissertation is not compulsory for me. However, throughout
the summer break I had been debating whether I should stick with the scriptwriting module
I had signed up for or if I should change to the dissertation module for one final hurrah with
Film Studies. Ultimately, people like me have something inside… something to do with film
and fundamentally deep down inside of me there was something concerned with the
Up until that point I had been enrolled in Film Studies for five years (two for A-level and
three for Undergraduate). Beyond that, I had been studying films for much longer; I had
been fascinated by their status as a spectacle and my role as a spectator since I was about
five years old. It is fair to say that I subconsciously understood film grammar and the
conventions of cinema long before Ian Fleming properly taught me to read at the age of
fourteen! Films spoke to me in a way that no other form of education came close to; films
provided me with a context though which I was able to understand the world. Therefore,
the chance to study films on an academic basis was instantly appealing when the
opportunity arose. However, throughout my time studying films academically, I felt that I
rarely stepped beyond what were the safe-zone conventions of the academic Film
20
Studies/film theory field. As my grades had always been top-notch, I certainly feel that I had
taken steps in the right direction with all of my previous Film Studies endeavours, but there
was a complacent part of me that was always afraid to keep pushing things down a specific
direction or to take things down a wholly new progressive route. This dissertation is actually
the first time that I have looked at a current topic in the film and media field; in the past,
whether it was the national identity of Charlie Chaplin or the humanity of Kurosawa, all of
my Film Studies endeavours had always looked at subjects that had already passed. I always
followed that pattern because it was a safe pattern; there are too many unknowns in the
contemporary because it is always changing. To this end, I always felt like I had always
copped out with Film Studies. Therefore, I saw a dissertation as my last chance to set things
right and to say something absolutely relevant to what was happening right here, right
uniquely personal on film that would deal with where I was as a person in the here and now
(or whatever the here and now was for me a year ago). Even if I did not consciously know
what that really unique personal thing was, deep down I wanted to write the film
Subconsciously and intuitively, I had already decided on the subject of my dissertation two
months previously, on the 20th July 2012 to be exact. This dissertation’s subject found a
very formidable physical manifestation when I saw The Dark Knight Rises at the BFI IMAX.
This was my first time in an IMAX theatre and The Dark Knight Rises was the first true IMAX
film that I had the pleasure of watching and the experience revealed to me this whole other
potential for experiencing films – a type of experience that made films intimately and
intensely more enjoyable! In the creation of my filmic experience with The Dark Knight
Rises via the IMAX format I saw into the pit of myself and realised that there was a great
climb to be undertaken. It was a climb that no one else had undertaken and through the
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seven month process of that climb I went on to discover a fundamentally ancient yearning
of humanity that still manifests itself in the spectator and spectacle of today. Ultimately, I
wrote this dissertation because I wanted to discover why it was I had always enjoyed films
so much and, in turn, I was able to use that knowledge to reveal something far grander
about our human nature, our grasp of reality and our ways of being. Basically, on a
conscious level, I quite unknowingly stumbled into a largely untapped area where all of my
previously acquired and seemingly unrelated academic and non-academic knowledge all
convoluted together to give me an intuitive grasp on what you now have before you.
A monumental event! I have made many return visits to the BFI IMAX since The Dark Knight
Rises. One of my most recent visits in June was for The Dark Knight Trilogy all-nighter, in
which the whole auditorium gasped in sock when the first true IMAX image was projected
on to the screen – that gasp epitomises exactly what this dissertation is about!
22
However, all of this consciously eluded me as I was sat across from Terry trying to explain
what I would look at in my dissertation. The best I could come up with (because it was a
huge franchise that would surely have something a dissertation could be based around) was
the James Bond franchise. Fortunately, I did not need to try so hard and Terry let me
change to the dissertation with surprising ease. If I had known the full implications of the
exhausting seven month process that I was in store for I probably would have thought twice
On top of my other final year commitments, writing this paper was an absolute death-trip.
However, that is not to say that I did not enjoy it and that I am not grateful for the
opportunity to be able to write it. If anything, the grinding process of writing it, of climbing
out of the pit, is what informs the paper with an extra level of hypertextuality and further
23
Seven gruelling months and several extensions later, when I finally submitted the resulting
paper for examination on the 6th June 2013, I had no Idea it would go on to receive the
highest mark ever awarded to a Film and Screen Studies dissertation at Bath Spa University
and be bestowed with the Media Futures Research Award! I also did not anticipate how
much attention the paper would go on to receive, or that I would continue to conduct
research after I had let the paper go, or that I would be asked back to give a talk to the
following year’s dissertation students, or that I would be invited by the Media Futures
Research Centre to give talks on whatever I wanted to talk about, or that it would provide
refined draft.
The changes I have implemented in this refined draft are minimal and I would like to make
it clear that the content of the research and argumentation have not been altered or added
to in any way. Rather, the changes I have implanted are the polishing of sentences to make
things a bit clearer, some further proofing and the adding of initial page material. The most
prominent of this new initial page material is the marking feedback sheets I received from
the first and second markers. As I included the Notes of the Text section in the submission
draft to detail the formatting differences between the digital and paper volumes I
submitted, much of what is in the Notes on the Text section will not be fully accurate with
this new draft. Furthermore, I have not adjusted the Notes on the Text section for this
refined draft because I wanted to retain a record of what the submission draft was like and
how it evolved from the initial drafts. Likewise, the word counts in the Notes on the Text
section will not be applicable to this draft; in fact, the word count that is presented on the
front page is the unified word count for the entirety of this refined volume.
24
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Media Futures Research Centre at
Bath Spa University for bestowing this paper with the Media Futures Research Award. The
honour of being given this award was the final incentive for me to make something out of
the research I continued to do after I submitted the paper - this is how Ways 2 Interface or
I always referred to this paper as an introductory speculation and, accordingly, that makes
sense as it now serves as the introduction to Ways 2 Interface. This paper touches on some
very broad and highly untapped subjects and, as such, there is much I was not able to say in
this paper (even with the addition of the Appendices). Therefore, Ways 2 Interface now
provides me with a platform on which I can explore these other areas. Additionally, as
multimedia and eLearning in a way that I was not able to do in this paper, something that I
consciously bemoaned while writing it! Also, it provides the potential to get others involved
and this is something that I am keen to do, considering this paper deals with several
severely under-researched areas. Therefore, please do get in contact if this paper’s focus is
Furthermore, my final year creative enterprise project: EYES, an experimental web series
companion to this paper and overall research project. As this paper fulfils the criteria of my
practical dissertation.
25
Both this project and the EYES project were produced over the same time period and very
much rifted off of each other; as such, EYES is very much the practical expression of many
of things I explore in this paper and equally went on to inform many of the things I discuss
in this project. There is a strong force of reflexivity that exists between both projects and
26
People like me have something inside… something to do with film. This is a hugely personal
dissertation and that is the point - “sometimes a man rises from the darkness” (The Dark
Knight Rises, 2012) - that is exactly the point. When I am talking about films, I am talking
about humanity’s need for narratives and immersion in fantasy; its need for reflexivity and
rationality; its need to expand, to explore and to extrapolate. These are fundamentally
ancient yearnings and, when properly understood, they will reveal fundamental insights
about reality, human nature and our continually changing ways of being therein.
Understanding the spectator, the spectacle and their ways of interfacing is how we decode
27
While I sit here writing this, I feel absolutely confident about the progressive endeavour this
dissertation has set me on and I now know why I have always enjoyed films so much!
However, have I now said everything I want to say on Film Studies and the subject of film?
Peter O’Brien,
17/09/2013,
Bristol, UK
28
Acknowledgements
Fundamentally, the research project that finds its culmination in this dissertation is my
attempt to rationalise why I have always enjoyed films so much. Additionally, I wanted to
know why I enjoyed the experience of a film in IMAX more than the experience of the same
film in a conventional cinema. While these yearnings formed the subconscious incentive for
the project, the initial conscious embodiment of it was a vague notion of wanting to ‘look at
the gaze’ and explore ‘how we feel films’. When I said these two statements back in
October 2012, not only did I have essentially zero prior knowledge of the gaze as it exists in
film theory, but I knew little more about the study of film spectatorship in general.
Appropriately for this paper’s content, I had a very strong feeling for the direction of the
project and a belief that I had something deeply significant to say on its subject, even if I
could not adequately put that something into words. Considering there is not yet a single
unifying presence writing on the areas I deal with in the paper, this was probably just as
well. Accordingly, the majority of the project’s research has involved the connecting of a
very disparate range of dots; as well as an equal amount of deduction, imagination and
original thinking over the past seven months. The whole endeavour has been a hugely
level and through the process of which I have acquired a completely new way of enjoying
films. In this dissertation, I believe that I have orchestrated a highly complex explanation for
the project’s original incentives; that covers much more than what I set out to do, with still
However, this project was not a sole venture and, as such, I would like to thank:
29
My guiding tutor, Dr Suman Ghosh, for sitting through many of my incoherent ramblings
and who had the patience to endure my nonlinear writing style for an exceedingly long
time. Most of all, though, I would like to thank him for his sense of humour, words of
Dr Terrance Rodgers for letting me change to the dissertation module a week before it
initiated, for allowing me to submit an increased word count and for authorising a deadline
extension so that I could rework the paper to satisfy the new word count.
Stephen Manley for pointing me in the direction of the seminal Film Theory: An Introduction
Nic Driscoll (my sister), Tim Bradshaw and Matt Coot for their proofreading services.
My friends and family for their continual assistance, support and understanding.
Simon Callow’s highly articulate and overly indulgent prose style in his masterfully written
biography Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu. Now that I have completed this dissertation, I
The Dark Knight Rises at the BFI IMAX on the 20th July 2012, the subconscious progenitor
for this project as a possible dissertation subject. The event was a hugely enjoyable and life
changing filmic experience; the full implications of which this dissertation should go some
way in expressing.
30
Notes on the Text
I feel that some clarification is required. The sheer amount of data that I unearthed as a
result of my research led to me writing a first draft that was nearly 20,000 words long,
double the acceptable amount for a submission! As such, this was followed by a second
draft in which I aimed to decrease the word count, but only managed to get it down to
around 17,000 words. These excessive word counts were not an agenda on my part, as I
had always fully intended to submit an 11,000 word paper, with some potential appendix
items. However, the breadth of my research, my passion for the subject and the fact that I
had written each section of the first draft largely in isolation caused the overall word count
to sky rocket. Ultimately, my dissertation developed to the point where it seemed the
integrity of the argument was reliant on all the contents of its text. It would have been a
deplorable mess, if I had just simply disbanded half of its contents and been done with it!
Therefore, a word count expansion to 15,000 words was authorised, as was a deadline
extension in which I could re-work the excessive contents of the first and second drafts into
appendix materials. As I had put a great deal of planning into building a strong, logical and
multi-layered structural spine for the dissertation, the re-working of its content was not just
material and then reconfiguring the main body to compensate for their omissions, often
this had a ripple effect that required the re-working of multiple points from multiple
sections.
The new word count of 15,015 stated on the front cover, excluding titles and subtitles,
refers to the primary content of the main body of this volume: Introduction, Chapter One,
31
Chapter Two and Conclusion. Originally the primary content also had a third chapter, but
that has been removed to satisfy the new word count, it now exists as Appendices F and I.
Appendices C, D and E were originally components of Chapter Two. Minus titles and
subtitles, the Appendices have a word count of 6,053. The unified word count for the entire
guidelines. However, there are two instances when text alignment has not been justified:
the quoted text in Appendix G and in the reference details sections. The result of justifying
these pieces of text led to a very unpleasant aesthetic result that, due to the amount of
white space generated in the text, actually made the text harder to read! Unfortunately, my
edition of Microsoft Word does not allow me to edit text alignment beyond justifying it or
aligning it left, right or centre. Therefore, these sections of text remain aligned left.
There is a difference of page numbering that exists between the two hard copies and the
digital submission. As with the text alignment, my edition of Microsoft Word does not allow
me to utilise multiple types of page numbering in the same document. As the hard copies
were created from three different documents, I was able to present the initial pages
without numbering, the front matter pages with lower case Roman numerals and the bulk
of the volume (the primary content, appendices and reference sections) with regular Arabic
numbering. However, as the digital copy is contained within one document it utilises only
the Arabic page numbering on all of its pages. Therefore, the sequential numbering of its
pages is different to that of the hard copies and its contents pages has been adjusted
according. Additionally, the digital version of the Declaration is a photograph of the hard
copy counterpart, as this enabled me to include my signature in the digital copy. Aside from
32
these two differences, the digital and hard copies are identical in their content and their
presentation.
Also, I have endeavoured to format the images and the text into an aesthetically pleasing
whole as best as I can, but there are some instances where substantial areas of white space
Aside from the Harvard referencing guidelines already requiring a major overhaul in regards
to the range of reference sources that now exist, as there is no dictated way to present
image sources, I have endeavoured to present the required information based on what the
guidelines already state for other types of content. However, the image sources have not
been presented in alphabetical order; rather, they are presented in the same order that
they appear in the List of Illustrations and their linear order throughout the main body. This
has been done as it is more logical and makes the referencing of the image sources a much
easier process.
The creation of this final submission draft has required a great deal of my time and effort,
almost equivalent to formulating the original structure and writing the first draft! However,
I am grateful for the extended opportunity that has enabled me to complete the
(originally Chapter Three) formed integral components of my original argument and I was
very hesitant to disband them from the primary content. However, through the process of
re-affirming the contents of the Introduction, Chapter One and Chapter Two as expressing
what has always been the essential focus for this thesis, I can now say that while the
contents of Appendices F and I are relevant to the overall subject, they are not integral to
the essential focus of it. Additionally, with the appendices as a whole, while there are
33
indications at various points throughout the main body to reference them, this is by no
means essential. The logic of the appendices inclusion is discernible by reading them in a
In regards to the Conclusion, as it always existed in a very fluid, proto-form throughout the
first and second drafts, I do not believe my original aim for its direction has been
compromised; rather, the re-affirming of the Introduction, Chapter One and Chapter Two
satisfactorily say that the 15,015 word primary content of this volume absolutely expresses
Finally, as much as this piece of work does adhere to the lethargic conventions of academic
writing, I have endeavoured to make it progressively engaging, entertaining and above all
enlightening.
34
Declaration
I hereby declare that this dissertation is my own original work and that it has not been
submitted for assessment at any other institution. Where other sources of information
06/06/2013
Bath, UK
35
Introduction
The study of the relationship between the spectator (film viewer) and the spectacle (film
text/event) is film theory’s primary concern. Film consumption and film presence are
integral components of contemporary culture; the fact that the academic discipline of Film
Studies developed out of cultural studies and has become an equally diverse field, with ever
more emerging avenues of thought, is testament to this: “In order to understand today’s
world, we need cinema. Literally, it is only in cinema that we get that crucial dimension
which we are not able to confront in our real reality. If you are looking for what is in reality,
more real than reality itself, look into the cinematic fiction” (Žižek, 2006). While Žižek is
speaking from a psychoanalytically and ideologically motived point of view, the study of the
cinematic medium can offer us additional ontological and epistemological insights into
reality and our very nature of being in that reality. However, before we can adequately
attain this knowledge, first, we need to thoroughly understand the cinematic medium itself;
we need to understand how the spectator views, absorbs, receives, engages, experiences,
recreates and integrates with the cinematic fiction. The problematic nature of terminology
and diversity in film theorisation goes to the very heart of this thesis’ focus. This
spectator and the spectacle for application in a new, diversified and deeply integrated age
of cinema.
36
Conceived two-and-half-thousand years ago, Plato’s allegory of the cave is one of the first
situation. Naively, it has often been compared to the archetypal cinema viewing situation:
“Imagine an underground chamber like a cave, with a long entrance open to the
daylight and as wide as the cave. In this chamber are men who have been prisoners
there since they were children, their legs and necks being fastened that they can
only look straight ahead of them and cannot turn their heads. Some way off, behind
and higher up, a fire is burning, and between the fire and the prisoners and above
them runs a road, in front of which a curtain-wall has been built, like the screen art
puppet shows between the operators and their audience, above which they show
their puppets… Imagine further that there are men carrying all sorts of gear along
behind the curtain-wall, projecting above it and including figures of men and
animals made of wood and stone and all sorts of other materials, and that some of
these men, as you would expect, are talking and some not.” (2003:241).
While it is tremendously clumsy to apply Plato’s cave as a direct representation of the film
viewing situation, the cave can tell us a great deal about film theory’s treatment of it.
Plato’s cave conceives of an ideal spectator – a prisoner bound in the cave from childhood
to observe the shadows on the cave wall. Therefore, Plato’s prisoner/spectator is just an
absorber of what is presented before him. The prisoner/spectator has no other existence
and knows of no other ideology, aside from the one he experiences in the cave – the cave is
37
Figure 1. Plato’s simile of the cave.
When considering the relationship between the spectator and spectacle, this is the problem
with much of the thinking in film theory – every argument conceives of an ideal spectator
(Elsaesser et al., 2010:4). As with the heavily criticised film theories of the 1970s where the
spectator is a slave to the dominant ideology of society, Plato’s spectator is devoid of a life
outside the cave/theory in which the spectator’s body is relegated to a position where it is
beyond the thinking of the 1970s, while all film theories are not guilty of employing the
by only ever considering ideal spectators – spectators made to fit the theory. As such, ideal
spectators are problematic as they are not thoroughly representative of actual audience
members (Williams, 1994:3). To say nothing of the corporeal influence, every audience
member willingly enters a film viewing situation with a plethora of preconceptions and
38
other unrelated mental data drawn from an individual life experience which they
cognitively apply to the film experience – every audience member experiences a film
Any cave-like theory that presupposes an ideal spectator, while always well intentioned:
“No amount of empirical research into the sociology of actual audiences will displace the
desire to speculate about the effects of visual culture, and especially moving images, on
ignorant of the larger and unified contextual, cognitive and corporeal relationship that is
actually at work:
spectator are each considered individually, as isolated entities separate from one
another. One needs to enlarge the frame of description and know how to draw –
behind the back of the spectator, so to speak – a second screen on which the
osmotic exchange between the so-called spectator and the events on the primary
Therefore, the phenomenological and wider philosophical aspects of film theory and how
one half of this dissertation. While re-asserting the roles vision and cognition fulfil in
relation to their respective film theories, Chapter One: Looking Beyond the Gaze will use
demonstrate why the body of the audience member is a required phenomenological and
39
“The idea of the body as sensory envelope, as perceptual membrane and material-
is thus more than a heuristic device and an aesthetic metaphor: it is the ontological,
Following on from this, in order to be specific about what is actually happening in the film
viewing situation, Chapter One will also assert a need to reclassify the spectator and
However, when dealing with the problem of terminology, film theory is only half at fault,
the film industry is equally to blame! Currently, the film industry is experiencing a
technological shift in the manufacturing and exhibition of its products; which, in turn, has
led to a plethora of new technical terms and differing processes of producing, exhibiting
and streaming film content. Equivalent only to the introduction of sound in the 1920s, the
2000s saw the rise of digital filmmaking and the 2010s will see digital filmmaking become
“Did you read the obituary for film? No, me neither, but the movies you see at your
local cinema, whether they’re blockbusters or smaller works, have probably been
made without the use of that plastic material that comes in reels. The stuff that
captured light and movement for filmmakers from the Lumières to David Lynch”
(Sweet, 2013).
40
35mm analogue filmmaking, the means by which films have been produced and exhibited
since their infancy, is being assigned to the museum. Fujifilm recently announced that it has
ceased production of celluloid film (Fujifilm, 2013); which comes as no surprise considering
analogue motion picture cameras have also ceased production (Seitz, 2011). Certainly,
when you take celluloid film out of the equation, what right do digitally produced films still
filmmaker Douglas Trumbull and, looking at the current growth of IMAX, the chapter will
components of what we once called “cinema” persist, and may endure. But they’re not
quite what they were in the analog cinema era. They’re something new, or something else”
(Seitz, 2011). The aesthetic reconsiderations hypercinema is encouraging towards how films
themselves are exhibited, how this form of exhibition is experienced by the spectator as a
hyper-real impression and even how it may alter climatic language will be explored.
Furthermore, this will provide additional evidence as to why the reconfiguration of the
spectator and spectacle in relation to film theory’s venture to gain an understanding of the
of illusion by means of and in the cinema thus leads to a new, expanded concept of
cinema itself that includes the spectator’s body – a concept of cinema that
these sensations, for the aesthetic experience of the medium.” (Voss, 2011:139).
41
The aesthetic experience of the medium is something that has suffered from a great deal of
ignorance by film-goers, filmmakers and film theorists alike. In the first forty years of its
existence the film industry was a hive of innovation; it underwent many changes as new
techniques and technologies were introduced to better handle the medium. Since the
stabilisation of sound and, aside from the introduction of colour, widescreen and television,
from the 1930s to the 2000s, the industry has found itself in a largely undisturbed
aesthetically and financially secure comfort zone. This was a result of the dominant
ideology of the film industry - to generate profits (Figgis in Sweet, 2013)! Accordingly, this
complacent and cave-like attitude has migrated into the majority of the audience and a
large part of the theoretical thinking of Film Studies. Film-goers, filmmakers and film
theorists were happy to submit themselves to the shackles of this cave-like scenario
precisely because it provided a comfort zone that seemed to be aesthetically perfected and
42
Figure 2. The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in France has some of the earliest recordings of cave
Indeed, there is something deeply poetic about a conception of the cinema residing in a
cave-like scenario, as the cave wall is where we can find the first recorded instances of
what is a fundamentally ancient language – the cave holds a integral link to our very nature
of being.
Figure 3. “we should note the artist painted this bison with eight legs suggesting
43
However, evolution forced us to leave the cave behind and adopt new canvasses for our
artistic expressions; in turn, these new canvasses have expanded our ways of thinking. As
such, digital evolution is doing the same with the cave-like comfort zone of cinema; it has
disrupted the tranquillity of cinema and is forcing us to take notice of its imperfections.
Sweet, 2013). Equally, there is also a great deal of optimism (Figgis in Sweet, 2013), as
digitalisation came about precisely to ensure the longevity of the cinematic medium. We
live in the age of the upgrade and now cinema too possesses that ability; therefore, it will
continue to be in state of developmental flux for the foreseeable future. It seems cinema
has returned to its roots of innovation and coupled with the diverse means through which
film content can now be accessed, understanding its ways of being is paramount.
Ultimately, the topic to be discussed is vast and this dissertation cannot hope to cover the
However, it will provide a broad overview and bring particular attention to elements that
are key in relation to how the experience of films can reveal insights into our ways of being
in the world. Far too long now a cave-like comfort zone has engulfed the film industry and
film theory based on a complacent assumption that filmmaking, film exhibition and film
theory had reached their optimum form. However, the ripples created by digitalisation are
revealing otherwise and the pressing need for a major reconfiguration has become
apparent:
“Today, many see the moving image as our most precious (and endangered)
historical heritage, a unique ‘archive’ of life and of things over the past 120 years.
Some have argued that cinema is the key and template for our cultural
understanding of the new (digital) media; and, for yet others, the cinema
44
constitutes a material-mental organism in its own right, a new and vibrant
articulation of matter, energy and information, and thus a ‘thing’ that ‘thinks’,
which philosophy can help us understand. This is why it makes sense to speak of
questioning how the cinema knows what it claims to know) and ‘ontologies’ (ways
of being, as well as ways of classifying what is and exists) as the proper domain of
45
Chapter One
The position of the gaze in relation to the spectator and spectacle has been a problematic
subject of film theory for some time now. The very definition of the gaze invites
misconception from its outset. If you were to ask a layman to define the gaze as it exists in
the film viewing situation, then they would probably reply that it is the spectator passively
looking on as the film unfolds before them. While this statement is correct, according to the
most basic understanding of the definition of the gaze: “look steadily and intently,
explorations of the gaze as a construct have been central to film theory’s understanding of
the spectator and spectacle relationship. However, the gaze is only one component of what
46
Theories of the gaze and the spectator’s relationship to the spectacle were developed for
an academic grounding in the 1970s. The conception of the gaze in film theory signifies a
significant shift when the thinking of many film theorists aligned to establish and contest
theories that attempted to decode the spectator’s relationship with the film text. However,
the thinking behind these ideas are largely drawn from thinkers outside of Film Studies:
“John Berger’s Ways of Seeing could stand as the earliest and most accessible single
Figure 5. “Perspective centres everything on the eye of the beholder” (Berger in Dibb,
1972).
47
In addition to Berger’s groundbreaking thinking, film theorists employed concepts from
essential point of Berger’s Ways of Seeing: “that there is a ‘way of seeing,’ structured into
visual representations and the way those presentations address spectators” (Williams,
1994:1). Key to this process of elaboration was Louis Althusser’s assertions on the nature of
ideology:
“the theory of ideology he proposed seemed to offer film theorists the basis for a
film theorists argued that the kind of deception that cinematic illusion wrought
upon the film spectator was a precise instantiation of the kind of deception
Not only did the adoption of Althusser’s ideological theory serve to elevate the importance
of Film Studies as an academic means by which the status quo could be deconstructed:
“Since cinematic illusion seemed to demonstrate his theory so well, the analysis of
cinematic illusion promised to play a central role in bringing to fruition the Marxist project
of explaining and criticizing the function of ideology in society” (Allen, 1998:7), it also
enabled film theorists to begin to grasp the information processing that occurs from film
text to film spectator: “they wanted to understand how the filmmaker’s (and by extension
the culture’s) view of the world became confused with, or displaced by, the spectator’s
view; that is, they asked, how does ‘their view’ become ‘your view’ without provoking any
48
“Lacan argues that infants acquire their first sense of self-identity (the formulation
bodies. For Lacan, this experience metaphorically captures a stage in the child’s
development when the child anticipates a mastery of the body that she/he lacks in
Therefore, the basic premise of classical film theory is that the cinema affords the passive
spectator only an illusionary sense of mastery over the ideology conveyed in the film text:
“the spectator inhabits the position of the child looking in the mirror. Like this child, the
spectator derives a sense of mastery based on the position that the spectator occupies
relative to the events on the screen” (McGowan, 2007:6). By combining the thinking of
Althusser and Lacan, a theoretical construct of a cinematic apparatus was established and
seemed to account for how the ideological transference between spectacle and spectator
took place:
apparatus’ which in and by itself already predicated and circumscribed the effects it
the impression of mastery when such mastery was the mere effect of the
2010:68).
In the apparatus’ conception of the film viewing situation, the film text and the physical
cinema location form one systematic apparatus (the fire, the road, the puppeteers, the
cave wall and the cave itself) and the spectator is the subject component of that apparatus
49
(the chained prisoner in the cave). The gaze (the arrangement of visual material as an
ideological construct on the cave wall) is what supplies the spectator with a sense of
mastery over the filmic experience: “in the most seemingly natural or beautiful of visual
images, there is an invisible ideology that affords the gaze that surveys it both mastery and
equilibrium” (Williams, 1994:1). Phallocentric and monolithic leanings sum up much of the
thinking in regards to the gaze: “that is, the cinema works to acculturate individuals to the
structures of fantasy, desire, dream, and pleasure that are fully of a piece with dominant
ideology” (Mayne, 1998:18). Therefore, the gaze, as it exists in film theory, is less about the
physical, voyeuristic action of the spectator sensing the film text through their eyes and
more about a specific ideological construct which the spectator becomes subject to while
performing that ocular process: “The process of seeing paintings, or seeing anything else, is
less spontaneous and natural than we tend to believe. A large part of seeing depends on
habit and convention” (Berger, 1972). The gaze is a pre-packaged ideology that the
50
Figure 6. Feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey famously and controversially postulated that
classical Hollywood cinema possessed a dominant male gaze. Rear Window (Dir. Alfred
While every cinematic image does embody a way of seeing, as determined by the audio and
visual construction of the film text by the director, this pre-packaged mindset is always
participation of the spectator, as the cognitive film theory of the 1980s and onwards
demonstrates:
“Viewers cannot absorb cinematic images any more than they can absorb reality.
Instead they undertake a perceptual dialogue, seeing in part what their schemas
51
encourage them to seek out, and in part what the artist’s shaping of cinematic form
encourages them to see. If the viewers were studying a painting, their schemas
would accommodate to the work over a period of time (and the longer the time,
the more thorough the understanding, as any educator will attest)” (Nadaner,
1984:126).
Cognitive theory is a reaction to the shortcomings of the earlier film theory and disregards
its attitude of free association; it favours empirical explanations over the ideological
theory is able to factor in a spectator that is more than a passive, disembodied voyeur;
understanding the text” (Allen, 1997:4) and, as such, has a conception of a spectator much
“In explaining viewers’ responses, [cognitive theory] looks first to features of the
human mind. This doesn’t mean that researchers study minds cut off from society;
rather, the emphasis is on the mental activities tied to all sorts of experience,
the spectacle we need to look beyond the gaze – we need to look beyond looking: “One of
the major fallacies of contemporary film theory has been to imply that spectatorship in the
cinema is inherently voyeuristic. This emphasis on the cinema’s voyeuristic character results
from an overvaluation of the role that vision plays in determining the emotional responses
of the spectator” (Allen, 1995:133). The experiencing of a film is achieved by more than just
an ocular process - film viewership has never just been about viewing; in fact, film viewing
52
is not even an accurate term for it: film sensing or film experiencing would be better
descriptions of the process by which a spectator absorbs a film text and then collaborates in
“We watch films with our eyes and ears, but we experience films with our minds
and bodies. Films do things to us, but we also do things with them. A film pulls a
Certainly, beyond the ocular, the aural elements of a film play a huge role in the creation of
a film experience; even more so with the monumental presence afforded by surround
sound: “sound ‘embodies’ the image – seeing is always directional, because we see only in
creates an acoustic space, because we hear in all directions” (Elsaesser et al., 2010:129-30).
53
Figure 7. Dolby Atmos, the next generation of surround sound will allow you to hear the
Sound has always been an integral component of the film experience; not even silent films
were silent, all silent era cinemas had some form of in-house foley and musical
accompaniment (Brownlow et al., 1980). The role of sound in film cannot be understated as
54
the physical presence of sound allows the spectator to be: “bodily enmeshed acoustically,
However, the human body as a complex organic whole comprises a major variable that has
been missing from all film theories’ understandings of the spectator and spectacle
relationship: “the inclusion of the body in film theory is a way of overcoming the deadlocks
of the representational model and of calling for a more diverse set of approaches to
conceptualise the cinematic experience” (Elsaesser et al., 2010:131). Perhaps the reason
previous film theories have been unable to adequately factor actual audience members
into their paradigms is precisely because they have deprived their ideal spectators of a
physical presence and a body that can influence the filmic experience! Cognitive theory
only incorporates the body as far as being an experience simulator driven by perceptual
data sourced via the eyes and ears. However, what if the body was actively influencing the
filmic experience as a perceptual membrane on a basis equivalent to the eyes and ears?
What if the body was just as cognitively involved in the filmic experience as the brain
proper:
“Dr. J. Andrew Armour, introduced the concept of a functional ‘heart brain’ in 1991.
His work revealed that the heart has a complex intrinsic nervous system that is
sufficiently sophisticated to qualify as a "little brain" in its own right. The heart's
proteins and support cells like those found in the brain proper. Its elaborate
55
The implications of the heart brain should be apparent, as only considering the neural
activity of the cranial brain holds many, if you like, narrow-minded parallels with the 1970s
treatment of the spectator as being only discernible with the gaze! The heart brain’s
presence is even more important when it is realised that, while it does act independently in
regulating itself, it also influences and sometimes overrides the cognitive processes of the
cranial brain (Salem, 2007:4). However, the body’s role in our cognitive processes does not
end with the influence of the heart brain, human beings also possess a stomach brain
(Watzke, 2010)!
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The stomach brain is comprised of five hundred million nerve cells and one hundred million
neurons (equivalent to a cat’s brain) and it plays a significant role in emotional regulation:
“The gut is connected to our emotional limbic system and the two speak to each other and
make decisions” (Watzke, 2010). The signals the stomach brain sends to the cranial and
heart brains: “directly affect feelings of sadness or stress, even influence memory, learning,
and decision-making” (Hurley, 2011). The cranial brain, the heart brain and the stomach
brain all work in conjunction as one complex interconnected neural network, inherently
influenced by the larger nervous and sensory systems of the human body: “Throughout the
1990s, the view that the brain and body work in conjunction in order for perceptions,
thoughts, and emotions to emerge gained momentum and is now widely accepted”
(McCraty, 2003:3), the terms ‘gut feeling’, ‘follow your heart’ and many alike all seem to
have a logical scientific basis. While the fields of neurocardiography (study of the heart
brain) and neurogastroenterology (study of the stomach brain) are still very much in their
infancy, the findings already compiled are highly suggestive of a deeper and vastly more
complex role for human cognition. Therefore, beyond being an experience simulator, it can
be speculated that the entirety of the human neurobiological system acts as a perceptual
influencer in the film experiencing situation. We do not just watch films, we feel, simulate
Further research even suggests that we may not only neurobiologically experience and
simulate data from a film individually, but are influenced by our fellow spectators as they
57
‘magnetic’ attractions or repulsions that occur between individuals, and also affect
social relationships. It was also found that one person’s brain wave can synchronize
This research has a lot to say for intuition and could account for something film critic Mark
“it’s like there’s a temperature change in the room and I know there’s not
physically a temperature change, but you can tell how a film is playing and it’s not
because I can hear people sighing. No, it’s nothing that obvious. You can be in a
room with a bunch of critics and you can tell how a film is playing.” (2013).
However, there are doubtless many other potential ways the body can play an active role in
the film experiencing situation; one such under studied area is the body’s consumption of
food (see Appendix B). However, this is precisely why further research and consideration
needs to be directed towards the body to ascertain just how involved it actually is in the
creation of the filmic experience. Ultimately, integrating the body into film theory will
enable the discipline to access a wider field of knowledge and, accordingly, will generate a
number of new problems! Indeed, as has already been highlighted in this chapter’s diverse
use of terminology in regards to the various attributes of cinema, e.g. ‘spectator’, ‘viewer’,
“What’s interesting about this habitual slicing vernacular, with its constant
references to scissors, knives, cuts, trims and so on, is that it makes no sense
58
whatsoever in the modern digital era. You try editing a digital movie with some
form of physical blade and see how far you get. The very idea of anyone merrily
setting about a movie with a pair of scissors is rooted in the age-old physicality of
celluloid, and harks back to a time when ‘film’ was a physical entity rather than a
reformatted and adjusted to fit your screen. If you’ve been to the cinema in the
past few months, chances are that what you were watching wasn’t even a ‘film’ at
and then beamed on to the screen by a digital projector without ever having passed
through the translucent celluloid that once gave the medium of ‘film’ its very
Philosophy, then, is another required variable in film theory that can and has been
providing clarification. Essentially, philosophy has always formed the essential purpose of
film theory (Mullarkey, 2009:6-7), but only in the last ten years has it gradually found its
way to the surface as a prominent force and as a means of rationalisation (Elsaesser et al.,
2010:185-6); thanks in no small part to the digitalisation of cinema and the diversification
of film exhibition:
“Cinema is a world of its own – whether a grey soundless shadowy world or a fluidy
that is subtly, almost invisibly organised. A world that is a cousin of reality. And the
multiplicity of moving-image media in the twenty-first century means that this film-
world has become the second world we live in. A second world that feeds and
important that we get to grips with the moving image, that we came up with a
59
sufficient range of conceptual frameworks by which to understand it” (Frampton,
2006:1-2).
The terminology of film is problematic as there are many redundancies and contradictions
inherent in the definitions of the words that make up the film vernacular. With terms like
‘spectator’, ‘viewer’, ‘audience member’ there is too much emphasis on passivity and the
concept of gazing. On the other hand, with terms like ‘spectacle’, ‘film’, ‘cinema’, ‘film
viewing situation’, ‘film experiencing situation’ there are a great deal of redundancies and
ambiguities. Beyond celluloid film being discontinued, does ‘film’ refer to just theatrically
produced entities or does it also refer to entities produced for television and the internet?
Likewise, what is ‘cinema’ referring to: the physical cinema location, an artistic
temperament or the industry as a whole? Certainly, when dealing with audio-visual content
‘spectacle’ seems suited to cover both theatrically and non-theatrically released content, as
all audio-visual content is designed to create a spectacle. Without even moving onto the
passivity inherent in ‘spectator’, ‘spectacle’ alone does not adequately begin to cover the
empiricism also enables it to work with differing film theories. This chapter has presented
overviews of psychoanalytical and cognitive film theory – two theories that represent a
major polarisation in Film Studies and, as such, are highly critical of each other:
“Psychoanalytical readings are especially targeted for being ambiguous, equivocal and
limited to emotive, irrational aspects of films (sexuality, fantasy, surrealism). For the
60
psychoanalytical reading” (Frampton, 2006:107-8). However, philosophy offers a means
through which both of their lines of thought and other contradictory/isolationist theories
can be combined:
artists’ and audience’s psychologies, the cinematic ‘raw data’, the physical media of
the film, the varied forms of its exhibition, as well as all the theories relating
material artefact, visual cognition and ontological world-view. As such, each partial
view will also be partially accepted and incorporated into the meaning of film
(without exhausting it, however), but each one’s own partiality for its own view – in
other words, each theory’s attempt to totalize and reduce film entirety to itself as
trend in film philosophy, reconfigures the film as an entity that can think:
images and sounds we experience, and ‘film-thinking’ is its theory of film form,
Filmosophy proposes that seeing film form as thoughtful, as the dramatic decision
of the film, helps us understand the many ways film can mean and affect”
(Frampton, 2006:6).
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Therefore, if both films and their spectators can think, not only has film theory come a long
way from its disembodied, ideologically based thinking of the 1970s, but it is now in a
position where its status as an essential academic discipline has been established.
spectacle, Film Studies as a whole now serves the purpose of being able to reveal
fundamental truths about reality and human nature. Likewise, by realising that the filmic
cognitively understanding the world, film theory will be better equipped in its endeavour to
understand the spectacle’s appeal to the spectator. Looking is only one part of the filmic
experience; to understand it fully we need to explore its larger ways of being. Embarking on
this endeavour means not only that we are leaving the cave behind, but that we are better
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Chapter Two
Hypercinema
The Implications of the Spectacle as a Hyper-Immersive Commodity
If there is one leading figure that epitomises the desire to move away from the cave-like
comfort zone, then that person is Douglas Trumbull. Renowned for his special effects
wizardry and various entrepreneurial efforts, in 2011 Trumbull announced his active
process of producing a 3D science fiction film to be filmed at 120 frames per second (fps).
This is hugely significant as the 24fps frame rate has been one of the fundamental
components of the film industry since the introduction of sound in the 1920s: “the standard
speed was increased to 24fps to accommodate sound… Over the years, we’ve come to
associate 24fps with the cinema experience. The look of Hollywood feature films is
Figure 9. Usually one second of film is comprised of twenty four separate still images; when
presented together in a one second sequence, the succession of still images create the
63
illusion of motion. Therefore, increasing the frame rate means you increase the amount of
Furthermore, if the frame rate is increased it will convey an impression of motion closer to
words: our eyes see more than that [66] but we’re only aware of 40. So if a frame
rate hits or exceeds 40 fps, it looks to us like reality. Whereas if it’s significantly
below that, like 24 fps or even 30 fps, there’s a separation, there’s a difference —
and we know immediately that what we’re watching is not real” (Kerwin in
O’Connell, 2012).
As a result the Hollywood/traditional filmic look is lost, as the recent case of The Hobbit: An
Unexpected Journey (Dir. Peter Jackson, USA, 2012) has demonstrated in its 48fps version:
“There are scenes when it causes the images to be crisper and brighter but, especially in
instances of high CGI content, it creates a non-cinematic picture. That may be the primary
reason why isolated moments feel like video game outtakes.” (Berardinelli, 2012).
However, increasing the flow of motion closer to how our brains process visual information
is not the only factor at fault. Doubling the amount of visual information in every second of
film allows twice as much detail to be captured and this can bring attention to artificial
elements, such as studio lighting and make-up (Kosner, 2013) - elements that have been
refined over the last eighty years precisely to make up for the visual inadequacies of 24fps:
“The text-book reason filmmakers add makeup to actors and then light them brightly is that
64
Figure 10. An effort to educate a confused and paying public, this is the higher frame rate
The Hobbit’s higher frame rate marks the first time a different frame rate has been
commercially exhibited worldwide and the critical reception has been largely negative.
65
While the negative attitude does have some ground, as with citing the artificial elements
the higher frame rate reveals, it also epitomises the cave-like comfort zone of the cinematic
conventions of the past eighty years - the attitude of not wanting to move away from what
inherent part of the cinematic experience. It’s the way we accept cinema. It’s the way we
suspend our disbelief” (Kerwin in O’Connell, 2012). However, Trumbull has argued that due
to the industry going digital the introduction of new technologies and filmmaking
techniques is inevitable (Trumbull in Gilchrist, 2012). As such, filmmakers are not only going
to have to rethink how they make films, but the audience is going to have to re-learn how
“My guess is that people are going to go through the same experience that he
[Peter Jackson] and I have been through, which is that once you sit in an editing
room or screening room and start looking at stuff at 48fps, you get to really like it.
And then when you go back and look at 24fps you say, “Oh my God, how did we
stand that for so long?” It’s a really interesting phenomenon. You kind of have to
go there and be in it for a while. And so I think the audience is going to have that
This ‘interesting phenomenon’ holds many parallels with the introduction of sound into the
film industry (see Appendix C). As with the addition of make-up and lighting to make up for
the visual inadequacies of 24fps, sound technology was very quickly adapted into a process
that not only allowed the filmmakers to work efficiently with it, but enabled them to
discover a whole new way of telling stories. The filmmakers found a way to use sound as
another storytelling tool to add an additional aesthetic dimension to their films (Elaesser et
66
Therefore, in light of this thinking, higher frames rates can be seen as just another
filmmaking tool that filmmakers and the audience will eventually become accustomed to.
Also, thanks to the diverse options afforded by digital filmmaking, there is a choice as to
which frame rate filmmakers want to utilise (Showscan Digital, 2010); in the same way that:
“you don’t have to use 3D and you don’t have to use colour…” (Scorsese in Stock, 2011).
Regardless of the negative critical reaction to The Hobbit’s higher frame rate, there
continues to be strong enthusiasm for higher frame rates from filmmakers and spectators
alike. James Cameron is going to capture and exhibit his Avatar sequels in 60fps, Andy
Serkis will be doing likewise at 48fps for his adaptation of Animal Farm (2014) and there are
now online communities, such as hfrmovies.com devoted to: “news, info, downloads &
discussions” (hfrmovies.com, 2013) on the subject. However, probably the biggest incentive
pushing for the use of higher frame rates is their ability to eliminate the motion blurring of
3D.
many parallels and problems with higher frame rates, and the introduction of sound. The
introduction of 3D has proven to be much more turbulent than sound. 3D first appeared
commercially in the 1950s and very quickly fell out of circulation due to technical neglect
(Burns in Skal, 2000), and it has reappeared and just as quickly disappeared in brief revivals
since then. However, now in the 2010s, it looks set to stay having grasped a foothold where
rewarding thanks to the fact that most blockbusters are either filmed digitally in 3D or post-
converted into it (Sharp, 2012). As with sound and colour before it, there is now a growing
trend among filmmakers to use 3D as a storytelling tool, as films such as Avatar (Dir. James
Cameron, 2009), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Dir. Werner Herzog, 2010), Hugo (Dir. Martin
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Scorsese, 2011), Prometheus (Dir. Ridley Scott, 2012) and Life of Pi (Dir. Ang Lee, 2012) have
demonstrated:
"Every shot is rethinking cinema… rethinking narrative – how to tell a story with a
picture. Now, I'm not saying we have to keep throwing javelins at the camera, I'm
not saying we use it as a gimmick, but it's liberating… But it has a beauty to it also.
People look like… like moving statues. They move like sculpture, as if sculpture is
Figure 11. The introduction of 3D in the 1950s was envisioned to pry audiences away from
However, while 3D is still generating profits since its widespread re-introduction in 2009,
3D is quickly losing its unique cinema attraction value (Sharp, 2012). As with widescreen,
high definition resolution and surround sound, you can now experience 3D in your living
68
room thanks to 3D televisions and 3D Blu-rays; in addition to this, 3D will soon form a part
of television production and broadcasting, as the BBC’s upcoming 50th anniversary episode
of Doctor Who (Dir. Nick Hurran, 2013) will demonstrate (Plunkett, 2013). Ultimately, this is
“I think the movie industry really needs a shot of excitement now because people
are streaming their movies, downloading their movies and the phrase I use now:
‘the multiplex is in your pocket’ – convenience, low cost, ease of use, any time you
want, anything you want and so the rationale for the multiplex theatre cinema
which was all about that is now changing… movie-going attendance is at a 16 year
This has been an increasing problem for cinema exhibition since the widespread
introduction of television in the 1950s and earlier with the popularity of radio in the 1920s.
How do the film exhibitors keep the audience coming to the cinema, when the audience
can just as easily sit at home or delve into their pockets and have a ‘similar’ experience?
This is where Trumbull steps in as the industry’s champion: “For movies to survive as a
business, we have to make it better” (Trumbull in Giardina, 2012); he has been advocating a
new type of cinema for some time now, a type of cinema that will break away from the
cave-like complacency of the last eighty years and bring the audience back to a revitalised
auditorium: “I’d like to break ground on what I think will be a really powerful new kind of
cinema experience that you cannot get on your tablet, computer, or your cellphone, or
even in a regular theatre” (Trumbull, 2012g). Trumbull’s 3D 120fps science fiction project is
his demonstration of this powerful new of kind of cinema, a kind of cinema in which 3D and
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“it’s now possible with this new high frame rate, larger screens, higher reflective
screens and 3D. There are so many things now available to make a new kind of
Figure 12. Douglas Trumbull has been innovating and advocating a new type of cinema for
Thus far, Trumbull has described himself as a lone wolf in this area (Trumbull in Variety,
2012), but the fact of the matter is a widespread technological transformation of cinematic
exhibition is already taking place and it is not too far from what Trumbull is proposing. The
technology to make it a reality already exists, all Trumbull is suggesting is unifying all of
these disparate technologies into a form of cinema that is aesthetically pleasing and that
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“I’ve come to the conclusion that if your objective as a studio producer is to make a
another world or [to see] vicious monsters that come out of the screen and eat the
A more powerful medium that any piece of consumer hardware outside of the auditorium
will have a hard time matching: “I’m trying to bring to cinema this spectacular illusion of
immersiveness. The spectacle of 2001 [: A Space Odyssey (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968)] and
better than that” (Trumbull, 2012c). Until a better name comes along, Trumbull has
The practice of what Trumbull envisions is very different, but in essence what he is
describing is the digital version of large format cinema. Up until recent years, large format
cinema has existed only as the occasional novelty and has always been overshadowed by
conventional film exhibition (see Appendix D). The promise of a large/enhanced format
cinema was first established concurrent to the introduction of sound: “There is colour to
give [movies] vividness and life. There is widescreen projection just out of the laboratory to
bring you the spectacles of nature and art in their true majesty. There is the promise too of
three dimensions to give lifelike perspective.” (Will Hays in Merton, 2011). Aside from the
widescreen, surround sound and 3D technologies that have ended up becoming a part of
conventional cinema exhibition, there have been two prominent forms of large format
cinema that have not: Fox Grandeur, a 70mm widescreen process, and Cinerama, a highly
praised widescreen process projected onto a 146° panoramic screen that closely mimics
human peripheral sight enabling a highly immersive experience (see Appendix D).
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Figure 13. The highly immersive quality of Cinerama caused a sensation when it was first
released.
However, unlike Fox Grandeur and Cinerama, a large format process that has persisted
financially since its infancy in the 1960s is IMAX. Image Maximum, a.k.a. IMAX, currently
boasts the highest resolution imagery of any image capturing and exhibiting process; the
IMAX celluloid image is equivalent to 18K digital resolution (see Appendix E), around
eighteen times the resolution of current high definition displays and superior to what the
Human eye is actually capable of perceiving: “IMAX doubted if the viewer can see 18K
projected, estimating that 12K might be a more accurate guess” (Wilson, 2009)!
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Figure 14. Larger formats call for bigger cinema screens.
IMAX captures onto horizontally aligned 70mm film and, as such, is able to hold a great deal
more detail than standard vertically aligned 70mm film: “IMAX 70mm standard is three
times bigger than normal 70mm and nine times bigger than 35mm [conventional analogue
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Figure 15. “In an IMAX you feel everything more: you feel the picture, you feel the sound”
(Anon, 2010).
Like Cinerama (see Appendix D), due to its various logistical problems, IMAX was not a
process that was quickly embraced by the mainstream film industry and, as such, the
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majority of IMAX’s initial output was documentaries. However, in the last ten years, a
radical shift has occurred thanks in no small part to Trumbull’s influence: “I was one of the
team who took IMAX public. We took IMAX from a sleepy little museum company into the
mainstream of movie business in a pretty short period of time” (Trumbull, 2012c). This
transition began with the introduction of the IMAX Digital Re-mastering process (IMAX
DMR): a top secret algorithm that allows 35mm, conventional 70mm and digitally captured
films to be upscaled into IMAX resolution. Essentially, the DMR process copies and pastes
the pixels that are already in every single frame to increase the image resolution; as such,
the DMR films do not have the same image vibrancy and detail diversity as a true 70mm
IMAX image. Regardless of this separation, the number of feature films being released in
IMAX venues has been on an upward curve as a result of the DMR process: “often resulting
2010).
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In addition to upscaling films into IMAX resolution, filmmakers have also started to shoot
segments of their films in true 70mm IMAX. Christopher Nolan started this tradition when
he captured 38 minutes of The Dark Knight (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2008) in true 70mm
IMAX (with the remainder of the film’s 35mm footage being upscaled); with The Dark
Knight, Nolan proved that it could successfully be done and could reap huge financial
rewards. Since then, other films have followed: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Dir.
Micheal Bay, USA, 2009) features 9 minutes of IMAX, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
(Dir. Brad Bird, 2011) features 30 minutes and The Dark Knight Rises (Dir. Christopher
Nolan, 2012) features 72 minutes. Upcoming true 70mm IMAX releases are: Star Trek Into
Darkness (Dir. J.J. Abrams, 2013), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence, USA,
2013), Transformers 4 (Dir. Michael Bay, 2014) and Interstellar (Dir. Christopher Nolan,
2014).
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Figure 17. With 72 minutes of IMAX footage, The Dark Knight Rises is currently the longest
IMAX feature film; the film played for over three months at the BFI IMAX, this was
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considerably longer than its multiplex engagement! IMAX releases also receive additional
promotional materials targeted at highlighting the film’s unique IMAX engagement. These
experience opposed to their multiplex counterparts, as the poster above demonstrates (for
On the whole, though, there is a strong aversion to filming in true IMAX as the system only
allows you to capture for 3 minutes, it takes 20 minutes to reload the camera, the cameras
are very cumbersome and sound has to be recorded separately, due to the unwanted noise
created by the workings of the IMAX camera (Sciretta, 2008). This also accounts for why
there has not yet been a complete feature film captured in the process. However, logistical
problems aside, this sudden in-rush of true IMAX and IMAX upscaled films accounts for the
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Like The Dark Knight Rises before it, the online IMAX box office crashed when the tickets for
Star Trek Into Darkness went on sale (Enk, 2013); there appears to be a definite demand for
IMAX films, especially 70mm IMAX films and large format IMAX-like cinema experiences. In
an age where high resolution images are easily accessed on a variety of displays, IMAX
offers a level of image detail that just cannot be achieved on consumer devices or in
multiplex theatres: “given that IMAX is non-conventional and extremely immersive [I think]
you're going to have a hard time creating the same immersive experience in a home”
(Bonnick in Lowe, 2013). As such, IMAX currently holds a unique profit producing novelty
factor and it is a profit producing novelty factor the film industry very much wants to be a
part of:
“Exhibitors and critics even suggest IMAX leads the industry rebound in theatrical
home. The money tells the story. In its June 2012 quarterly report, IMAX
announced 22.7 percent revenue growth over the preceding year. Moreover,
profits climbed 80 percent, reaching $15 million… IMAX tickets typically cost 30%
more than standard admission, roughly $15 or more in America’s more expensive
markets. Moreover, ticket sales for IMAX films tend to drop less week-to-week
Dodona Research, revenue from large-format surcharges, including IMAX, will inject
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Figure 19. Do the immersive aspects of IMAX qualify it as hypercinema?
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However, IMAX’s financial success is not just produced by its ability to offer the best image
quality on truly monumental screens: “usually in the range of 70 feet by 50 feet” (Solis,
2012). Beyond this, IMAX has a continuing investment in maintaining high exhibition
standards, something that the majority of multiplexes are currently falling short on:
“Right now, in the movie industry, we are at an all-time low in technical quality of
theatres. Not all theatres, some theatres are very good. But we’re taking 3D
movies; we put a filter in front of the projector to get 3D – it cuts the light in half!
You put your 3D glasses on – cuts the light in half again! So you’ve got a quarter of
the light. The average being measured out in theatres now is two and half
there are some theatres which are one footlamberts.” (Trumbull, 2012a).
IMAX compensates for the 3D filter light loss by appropriately increasing the brightness of
the image during the IMAX post-production process. Furthermore, all IMAX releases are
incredibly vivid in terms of their brightness thanks to the highly reflective screens, 15,000
watt projector bulbs and increased shutter opening times that all 70mm IMAX venues
utilise.
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Figure 20. An IMAX performance of The Dark Knight Rises, notice the level of illumination
In addition to the high image clarity, all IMAX releases have uncompressed sound that
output through IMAX’s patented surround sound system, which they claim is superior to
Dolby Atmos (Lowe, 2013). Each film has its soundtrack calibrated by the technical staff of
each IMAX venue to ensure that the film’s soundtrack is exploited to the full potential the
structural dimensions each IMAX venue can afford it. IMAX auditoriums have specially
housed cameras next to the projector to monitor the image on the screen during a
performance and this allows the projectionist to make any required adjustments (Marshall,
2013). However, probably the most significant difference is the standard geometry of an
IMAX auditorium:
“Most movie auditoriums are long and narrow, to get the most people in, with the
screen way off at the far end. The distinctive shape of an IMAX theatre is designed
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to bring the audience not only closer to the screen, but better-positioned in relation
Figure 21. The auditorium of the BFI IMAX, London. The venue houses the largest screen in
The stadium seating of the IMAX auditorium and the fact that the screen itself is curved
ensures that every seat offers an almost equal viewing experience: “The result is an image
that’s wider and higher than your field of view; a picture that’s immersive because you’re
not aware of where it ends. And that, in turn, is what gives you the feeling you’re part of
the action, out among the stars, not just peeking into a scene” (IMAX, 2013a).
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Figure 22.
As was the case with Cinerama (see Appendix D), if a cinema screen can occupy your
peripheral vision it will create sensations of motion, balance and depth in your
Figure 23.
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While an IMAX screen fills considerably less of your peripheral vision than a Cinerama
screen (146°), its increased width and curvature means it still occupies a greater degree (70°)
than a standard multiplex screen (54°). In addition to this, and unlike Cinerama’s screens, an
Figure 24.
Cones and rods, the two types of receptors housed within the human eye, are exploited
even more so in an IMAX venue: “Cones are a part of your central vision and allow you to
focus on detail. Rods are important to your peripheral vision” (IMAX, 2013a). Therefore, the
more of your eyes’ receptors that are stimulated by the visual information on the screen
the greater the neurobiological activity there will be in your body. Together with the higher
resolution imagery that can transcend the level of detail the human visual system can
process in the real world (when viewing 70mm IMAX) and the specially calibrated,
uncompressed surround sound: “This increased sensation of motion is one of those things
that makes you believe you’re in that world you see on-screen” (IMAX, 2013b). Therefore,
when viewing the 70mm IMAX prologue to Star Trek Into Darkness as when Captain Kirk
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(Chris Pine) and Dr McCoy (Karl Urban) leap over a cliff edge there is a reason a vertigo-
Figure 25. The first 9 minutes of Star Trek Into Darkness were screened before showings of
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Imagine experiencing this on a screen that is at least
While you are consciously aware that you are watching a movie, on an instinctual level,
thanks to a considerable part of your peripheral vision being occupied by the IMAX screen,
your neurobiological network gets tricked into thinking that it too is about to go over the
cliff edge: “if the edge of the cliff scene is registered by rod cells in your eye your brain cells
are going to tell your body to watch out for that cliff. This makes your experience at the
movies more than just popcorn and snacks, it's an adventure to another world” (IMAX,
2013b) – this is the IMAX experience and its innovation is a far cry from the cave-like
comfort zone. In comparison to the mediocre experiences that multiplexes are currently
offering (Pledger, 2012; see Appendix G), it is no wonder the public are willing to pay the
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extra money for an IMAX ticket. After viewing the IMAX upscale of Skyfall (Dir. Sam
Mendes, 2012), director Sam Mendes commented: “IMAX is the most well perfected
However, the type of immersive spectacle Trumbull is proposing as hypercinema goes way
beyond what IMAX is currently offering and, as Trumbull points out, it needs to transcend
IMAX because: “The problem is that all [IMAX is] doing is blowing up conventional movies
on to a larger screen. No one's still thinking about it as a different medium. I think it's a
completely new thing. And I think the audience that pays for movies is completely ready for
a new thing” (Trumbull in Leopold, 2013). To fully understand what Trumbull is envisioning,
was a filmmaking process Trumbull innovated in the late 1970s and early 1980s: “A film
process whereby 65mm film is photographed at 60 frames per second, and projected using
70mm prints at the same rate. The result is unsurpassed image clarity and realism made
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Figure 26. One of the Showscan installations built to demonstrate its proportions and to
Showscan was incredibly similar to IMAX; the only major difference was that it used a
considerably higher frame rate. This was the result of a series of tests (a surprising rarity for
this field of study) Trumbull conducted to ascertain what qualified as the optimum film
viewing experience:
“We did tests at 24, 36, 48, 60, 66 and 72fps. We filmed a first person point of view
shot in a car driving down a winding road. We brought in people to look at these
the scalp], galvanic skin response [measures electrical conductivity of skin], and
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physiological stimulation levels would rise tremendously as a result of frame rate. It
showed a perfect bell-shaped curve that peaked around 66 frames per second”
These results are not surprising, if we follow Kerwin’s comment in regards to the human
brain being able to process 66 moments in every second, then it is only logical that
Trumbull’s results peaked at 66fps. Furthermore, this accounts for why Showscan: “stopped
looking like a screen and started looking like a window” (Gerrold, 2010). This window effect
was exceptionally illustrated in one of Trumbull’s experimental short films New Magic (Dir.
Douglas Trumbull, 1983). The film itself starts off as a documentary that very quickly
encounters technical problems, so the projectionist stops the film and heads around the
auditorium to the backstage area behind the screen to grab the other print of the
documentary. As the projectionist has put the lights on behind the screen, and because
cinema screens are perforated, the audience can see him fumbling around through the
screen:
“and so people like, seasoned movie professionals – like Steven Spielberg, he’s a
really good example – he’s a friend of mine – came to see my demo film. And so
when that happened, he got up out of his seat, shook my hand and said, “Doug, you
know, call me when you get it fixed”. And then he just started walking across, and I
was just waiting: “He’s going to understand this in a minute” – and he got to the
door and looked sideways to the screen and realised it was just a two-dimensional
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Figure 27. From the filming of the breakdown sequence in New Magic or from when it was
Aside from the similar instance of the Lumière’s Arrival of a Train at the Station (Dir.
Auguste Lumière et al., 1896) supposedly causing patrons to flee in fear because they
feared they were going to be run down by a train (Gunning, 1994:116), New Magic is
certainly a first for cinema – an experience where the audience were absolutely fooled into
thinking they were seeing reality. Trumbull was even able to use Showscan to hypnotise an
audience by having a hypnotist perform directly into the camera (Trumbull, 2012f).
However, the higher frame rate was not the only factor responsible for these tricks, the
increased image brightness and higher resolution of a 4-5K 70mm Showscan image would
have added to the visual authenticity of the image’s portrayal of reality. Currently IMAX
only captures and exhibits in 24fps, but it can only be imagined the type of hyperrealistic
experience that would be created if the IMAX frame rate was increased to 60fps or more
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(see Appendix E). This is what Trumbull is proposing with hypercinema and why it can
In terms of its aesthetics, though, for Trumbull, hypercinema is not just about creating truly
monumental immersive experiences: “there’s plenty of the normal stuff, I want to do the
hypercinematic film, that fully exploits the potential of a hyper-real cinematic experience:
“No one in the industry has seen a 3D movie at 30 foot Lamberts at 120 frames per
second… What happens when you get into this hyper-real realm of a movie, that seems to
be a window onto reality, is that the entire cinematic language begins to change” (Trumbull
in Variety, 2012).
Figure 28. In Brainstorm (Dir. Douglas Trumbull, 1983) a procedure is created which allows
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other users. As a means of further audience immersion into the film experience, the
recorded perceptual experience segments of the film were originally going to be captured
and exhibited in Showscan. This would have made the neurobiological processes of the
spectator a much more intimate part of the film’s narrative and would have been a
Cinematic language (the means by which subject matter and meaning is expressed in film
form) was refined throughout the silent film era, but has not progressed much since then,
directly as a result of the cave-like complacency: “we can’t, as an industry, say that we got it
right in 1927, don’t change a thing… at some point you have to look at ways that you can
increase that experience” (Jackson, 2012). Certainly, there is nothing wrong with the
already established cinematic language; the reason why it has lasted for so long is because,
as with basic grammar, it assigns rules and meanings that everyone can understand.
However, if filmmakers want to use a higher frame rate or they want to use 3D, those
filmmakers need to ask themselves how this will impede on the parameters of the
traditional cinematic language with which they are already familiar. Precisely one of the
reasons 3D has earned the stigma of a gimmick is because the majority of filmmakers have
not used it as a storytelling tool. In most cases, 3D has mostly been implemented as a
financial selling point that worked against the visual aesthetic and integrity of the film.
Using 3D to its full artistic potential requires a filmmaker to rethink the entire presentation
of what would otherwise be a 2D image: “It's literally a Rubik's Cube every time you go out
to design a shot, and work out a camera move, or a crane move” (Scorsese in Kermode,
“It’s a new cinematic language, which calls for different kinds of camera angles and
movements, different selection of lenses, different kinds of action and framing, and
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a different editorial pace, because the result of 120 frames in 3D on a very bright
screen is like being inside a movie rather than looking at a movie… It’s a very
In addition to exploiting the scale of IMAX, the type of hypercinematic aesthetic paradigm
Trumbull is proposing would be something closer to a theme park ride: “when you get into
an immersive experience like this – it’s like you’re in the movie, not looking at a movie. You
become a participant in the movie, like in a theme park ride” (Trumbull, 2012a).
Figure 29. In 1990 Trumbull was given the challenge to create Back to the Future: The Ride,
a theme park attraction ride that: “blends breakthrough simulator technology with a
cutting-edge Omni-max 70mm film to create a total sensory experience” (Sciretta, 2007).
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The attraction has consistently been described as: “the best ride on the planet” (Olson,
1998).
However, while it would employ a monumental theme park ride aesthetic, hypercinema
could also encourage a greater intimacy with the subject matter. In this respect Trumbull
has been experimenting with something that is akin to the television show Peep Show
(2003 – present): “It’s breaking the fourth wall, the forbidden fourth wall, which may
include… an actor actually turning to the camera and acknowledging the presence of the
Figure 30. Peep Show is a television show presented exclusively through character point of
view shots, making the spectator feel like they are the characters. Trumbull has a similar
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vision for hypercinema: “I can hire a really beautiful actress to look in the lens and seduce
second movies on normal movie screens is a wonderful, beautiful, long-lasting art form that
will go into the future and it is completely appropriate for most films, actually.” (Trumbull in
Variety, 2012) Therefore, hypercinema is not a replacement of the current film exhibition
sector; in the same way that you do not have to use, colour, sound, 3D or different frame
rates, hypercinema would be just another means through which film content can be
has already demonstrated, an exhibition paradigm such as hypercinema could very well
New Magic, that makes the spectator a part of the spectacle, then it has larger
implications! Hypercinema will put many of the traditional assertions of film theory into
question: “No one would ever think of touching the figures of light on the film screen in
order to test in this way their degree of reality.” (Voss, 2011:142). Certainly, hypercinema’s
ability to present reality to a level of detail equivalent to how the brain processes it requires
film theory to reassess one of its most fundamental understandings of film’s status as only
“the experience of the impression of reality in the cinema takes the form of a
benign disavowal where spectators entertain in thought that what they see is real
in a manner akin to the experience of a conscious fantasy. The difference lies in the
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fact that in the cinema this conscious fantasy is fully realized for the spectator in
the form of projective illusion. Thus I argue that while I know that what I see is only
a film, I can experience this film with the kind of realization that occurs in dreams”
(Allen, 1995:5).
While moving forward, the digital re-forging of cinema is reviving fundamental questions of
how to define reality. As with the bodily implications in the creation of the filmic
hypercinema becomes an actuality as Trumbull envisions it, all the new filmmaking
techniques and technologies present huge potential implications for the spectacle’s and the
spectator’s ways of being in reality (see Appendices I and J). Therefore, in light of these new
industry paradigms and fundamental questions they raise, the reassessment of film theory
and the reconfiguration of the spectator and the spectacle (see Appendix A) are all the
more warranted.
However, beyond the neurobiological implications of the spectator’s body and the
relationship of the spectator and the spectacle in reality becomes even more problematic
when it is considered that film exhibition is not only getting bigger, but it is also getting
smaller. Crucially, we now live in an age where film content can be accessed in any context.
As Trumbull has already pointed out, while larger forms of cinema promise to dominate the
public exhibition sphere (see Appendix F), the multiplex is finding its way into our pockets
(see Appendix I). All of these innovations and diversifications of film content are further
strengthening embodiments of the fundamentally ancient truth that lies at the heart of the
film medium’s continual ways of being a dominant financial and artistic presence - a truth
of transcendence.
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Conclusion
Deshi Basara
A Pressing Need to Understand the Ancient Language of the Spectator and
the Spectacle
Film viewership is far more than precisely that – viewing. Never in its one-hundred-and-
eighteen years of existence has film experience been a purely passive activity (Butsh,
2007:297); on some level, it has always encouraged the participation of the audience
(Nadaner, 1984:126). The only difference that exists in the current digital age of cinema is
that the participatory aspects are being encouraged even more so, due to cinematic
The growing trend to commoditise all types of film experience is emblematic of concurrent
questions being asked in regards to film experience – if films are about more than looking,
then what do they qualify as? What constitutes film experience? While heavily resisted, the
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incentive to move away from the cave-like comfort zone is the result of the digital re-birth.
For eighty years, there has existed a supposedly accomplished business and aesthetic
model for the entire paradigm of the film industry. However, the ongoing digitalisation of
the film industry has exposed the inadequacies of the supposedly perfected analogue era:
“Then think what would naturally happen to them if they were released from their
bonds and cured of their delusions. Suppose one of them were let loose, and
suddenly compelled to stand up and turn his head and look and walk towards the
fire; all these actions would be painful and he would be too dazzled to see properly
the objects of which he used to see the shadows. What do you think he would say if
he was told that what he used to see was so much empty nonsense and that he was
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Figure 32. Older still than the cave paintings of the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in France, are
the paintings of the El Castillo cave in Spain. These paintings are 40,800 years old, the
oldest yet discovered (Than, 2010)! Cave paintings demonstrate that cavemen understood
visual representations as being about more than the process of looking. Perhaps even more
so, cavemen understood that visual presentations were also absorptions into something
bigger: “If memory is our means of preserving that which we consider most valuable, it is
also painfully linked to our transience. When we die, our memories die with us. In a sense,
the elaborate system of externalized memory [of cultural artefacts] we’ve created is a way
experience is just an updated version of the cave painting and what has always been a vital
the language of human nature as entwined with narratives: “Life is cognitive, not narrative.
We need narration to understand it, but we live it cognitively” (Reygadas in Stock, 2013).
Narratives are intimately linked to the human intellect because they offer us explanations
of a world that does not make sense; through the mutual dialogue between spectator and
the protagonist commented that: “The soul's made of stories, not atoms” (Dir. Farren
Blackburn, 2013). Films are currently the most successful means of expressing this ancient
language of transcendence because the film medium is currently the only art form that
comes close to mimicking the human cognitive process; hence the medium’s more intimate
connection with humanity and further validation as to how the medium can have a
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“Since its invention film has been compared to the mind, whether through analogy
with human perception, dreams or the subconscious. The shock of seeing a world
‘freed’ by man’s imagination caused many early writers to see a profound link
between the mind of the filmgoer and the film itself, leading them to understand
film as a mirror of mindful intent. In a sense film offers us our first experience of an
our perception of the film, and the film’s perception of its world. Thus our
understanding of our world can be informed and changed by this other way of
Figure 33. In The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) readies himself to climb
out of his prison - an underground cavern supposedly impossible to escape from: “my soul
Whether it is the sensory overload of the IMAX or the intimate experience of the smart
phone, the diversifying means through which film content can now be experienced are
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greater than ever before. These diversifications are fuelling the largest ongoing dialogue
that has ever existed between content and consumer, spectacle and spectator. The
into everyday life has created a scenario where the fundamental dialogue between the
spectator and spectacle is becoming more widely acknowledged. While it is not widely
understood, the dominating presence of film-like content and the increased opportunities
created for transcendental potential, now that film content can be accessed in any context
(see Appendix I), greatly intensifies the inherent religiosity of film experience:
“I believe there is a spirituality in films even if it’s one that can’t supplant faith. I
find that over the years there are many films that address themselves to the
spiritual side of Man’s nature… It is as if movies answer an ancient quest for the
common unconscious; they fulfil a spiritual need that people have to share a
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Figure 34. A film that superbly demonstrates this transcendental religiosity of the dialogue
between spectator and spectacle is Berberian Sound Studio (Dir. Peter Strictland, 2011). It is
a film in which the film itself becomes sentient and, by merging with its protagonist, folds
over into itself. The film and protagonist ascend beyond each other and the transcendental
result is the filmic experience. Ultimately, the spectator leaves the film with a unique filmic
experience that is different to the filmic experience of any other audience member,
precisely because the spectator would have been a collaborator in its creation; the filmic
a larger narrative, as the spectator lives his or her life (Sobchack, 1992:5; see Appendix A)!
As much as it is a result of the digitally-orientated times it was made in: “It seemed kind of
perverse in a sense that we’re making a film about analogue but by digital means”
spectator’s relationship with the spectacle: “It’s not about understanding it so much… it’s
It is this type of meditation, film theory and Film Studies as a whole, would do well to
“call it a double movement: from the disembodied but observing eye, to the
privileged but implicated gaze (and ear); from the presence of the image as seen,
felt and touched, to sense organs that become active participants in the formation
of filmic reality; from the sensory perceptual surface of film that requires the
neurological brain, to the unconscious that registers deep ambivalences in the logic
of the narrative, where rational choice or rational agency theories see merely an
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alternating succession of action and reaction. At the limit, film and spectator are
like parasite and host, each occupying the other and being in turn occupied, to the
point where there is only one reality that unfolds as it enfolds, and vice versa”
Figure 35. His fellow prisoners urge him on: “Deshi, deshi, basara, basara. Deshi, deshi,
basara, basara” (The Dark Knight Rises, 2012), a chant of an ancient language that beats like
a pulse beneath the surface of the film. Throughout his career as Batman, Bruce Wayne has
developed a fearlessness of death: “The leap to freedom is not about strength… fear is why
An attitude of indifference has largely found its way into Film Studies, as it puts too much
emphasis on the past, it is an academic subject that is increasingly feeling very dusty. It
does not invest enough energy into progressive thinking or into examining the practical
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aspects of how film entities are constructed: “Film also possesses unique representational
capacities that enable it to present additional aspects of the artist’s world view. The
temporal and sequential nature of film allows it to organize images in a pattern that
simulates the pattern of the artist’s perception and thought.” (Nadaner, 1984:125).
However, this result is not surprising when it is considered that nostalgia is an integral
through new eyes” (Singh, 2012:192); considering film content’s dominating presence, it is
not surprising the current age is saturated in nostalgia. The problem with nostalgia, of
course, is too much of it leads to a cave-like complacency. Like Douglas Trumbull, the
figures that have the power to make changes are few and far between, but the digital re-
birth is nurturing new champions and new paradigms. Frampton’s Filmosophy, the seminal
Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses (Elsaesser et al., 2010) and its championing
of the body as a unifying means through which film experience can be understood are
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Figure 36. In Douglas Trumbull’s directorial debut Silent Running (1972) the protagonist
sacrifices everything to protect the Earth’s last forest from the destruction of a human race
that has become indifferent towards preservation. The film is about what happens when
In short, there is too much indifference in Film Studies. The discipline is too focused on
cave-like thinking and film theory of the past; a pantheon of knowledge that is becoming
continuously outdated and finding itself at odds with new advancements and
diversifications, such as the digital re-birth and large format hypercinema. Film scholars
have always sought to understand the spectator’s and spectacle’s mutual pursuit of
enlightenment; while they have uncovered aspects of it, there still does not exist a single
“The universalizing claims about the cinematic experience made by figures such as
Sergei Eisenstein, Andre Bazin, Christian Metz and Laura Mulvey have disappeared.
Contemporary film scholars are increasingly content to make local, particular claims
about film. This focus on particularity – that is, the analysis of isolated phenomena
landscape, proffering a universal claim and totalizing theory of the filmic experience
We need to move beyond the particular claims and look to how a unified understanding
can be reached, because it is all very well encouraging diverse studies (see Appendix B) but
at some point they have to be unified. This is something that Elsaesser and Hagener do with
the variable of the body in Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses: “the inclusion
of the body in film theory is a way of overcoming the deadlocks of the representational
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model and of calling for a more diverse set of approaches to conceptualise the cinematic
experience” (Elsaesser et al., 2010:131). Following their lead, this dissertation has
endeavoured to take their concept one step further by speculating on the wider
disbanded; Film Studies needs to move beyond wholly cave-like thinking and the study of
ideal spectators: “film studies needs to be seen as more than the analysis of film texts, or
even the study of their industrial production and of their interpretation by audiences.”
(Jancovich et al., 2003:3). In the current digital transition where many of the assumptions of
previous thought are having their validity questioned, as has already been discussed with
the potential of hypercinema, a leap into the unknown is not only inevitable, but is
required!
Figure 37. In order to gain the strength required to ascend from the pit, Bruce Wayne needs
to lose his fearlessness of death – his ignorance of life is keeping him from enlightenment.
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He needs to change his attitude; he has to want a new lease of life: “Make the climb… as
the child is, without the rope” (The Dark Knight Rises, 2012)!
This dissertation was written for a Film Studies course entitled ‘Film and Screen Studies’
and, therein with the addition of ‘Screen’, lies an acknowledgement of the need to study a
much wider field, e.g. television, video games, internet content, etc. Therefore, while
progressive thinking is not dominant, it is something that is gradually being nurtured. The
plethora of audio-visual content that now exist means that Film Studies is no longer just
about films. It can be speculated that as Film Studies developed out of Cultural Studies, a
new discipline will develop out of Film Studies to focus on the wider areas that are much
more widely linked with the cultures of humanity. Certainly, one such academically driven
proposal already exists: Interface Studies (Dieter et al., 2010; see Appendix I).
Judging by humanity’s increasing interactions with film-like content, if Film Studies is: “a
subject that is studying a medium that [increasingly] permeates and mediates on every area
of human existence” (Mullarkey, 2009:6), then it is highly probable it will become one of
the more important academic disciplines of the twenty first century: “In order to
understand today’s world, we need cinema. Literally, it is only in cinema that we get that
crucial dimension which we are not able to confront in our real reality. If you are looking for
what is in reality, more real than reality itself, look into the cinematic fiction” (Žižek, 2006).
However, if Film Studies is ever going to stand a chance of uncovering the meaning of the
increasingly multifaceted relationship of the spectator and the spectacle, it will need to
nurture progression and it must not be afraid to ask naïve questions. Children are very good
at asking fundamental questions and a child-like curiosity is exactly what film theory
requires:
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“this simile must be connected throughout with what preceded it. The realm
revealed by sight corresponds to the prison, and the light of the fire in the prison to
the power of the sun. And you won’t go wrong if you connect the ascent into the
upper world and the sight of the objects there with the upward progress of the
mind into the intelligible region… the final thing to be perceived in the intelligible
region, and perceived only with difficulty, is the form of the good; once seen, it is
in the visible region light and the source of light, and being in the intelligible region
itself controlling source of truth and intelligence. And anyone who is going to act
rationally either in public or private life must have sight of it” (Plato, 2003:244).
As an introductory speculation, this paper has endeavoured to uncover some of the hidden
aspects of the relationship of the spectator and the spectacle. Drawing on the largely
knowledge caused by large formats and hypercinema-like paradigms, this paper has gone
some way in expressing the pressing need to move away from ignorant thinking (Mullarkey,
2009:23) and has endeavoured to provide some clarity on the true complexities of what
constitutes the experiencing of a film (see Appendix A). In order to understand how the
addresses, recreates and integrates with the spectacle, and vice versa, a major
Ultimately, our ways of being the spectator and the spectacle can reveal fundamental
truths about the realities we occupy, but only if we care enough to want to find out in the
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first place. In order to ascend from the cave and to attain enlightenment on our true ways
of being – we need to break free from the shackles of our comfort zones and disband
ignorance. Only then we will be able to decode the intimately woven and transcendental
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Appendix A
theorisation that is concerned with the study of spectators and spectacles, it is at this point
that a speculative reclassification will be ventured: “I’ve suggested that despite the
insistence on ‘real viewers’ as distinct from the ‘subject,’ the place of the ‘spectator’ in film
studies is not easily or readily defined as ‘either’ a real person ‘or’ a position, a
construction” (Mayne, 1998:36). While this paper cannot propose a whole new language
through which film could be discussed, it will demonstrate this need by proposing new
terminologies for its primary focus: the spectator and the spectacle.
With terms like ‘spectator’, ‘viewer’ and ‘audience member’ there is too much emphasis on
passivity and the concept of gazing. Therefore, instead of ‘spectator’, something along the
lines of ‘perceiving participator’ should be used as it indicates everything Chapter One has
already ventured in regards to the function of a film spectator; through the perceptual
membrane that is the audience member’s physical body, a spectator perceives the film text
and, on a neurobiological and cognitive basis, actively collaborates in the creation of the
filmic experience. A film is unique to each audience member precisely as a result of that
active collaboration.
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On the other hand, with terms like ‘spectacle’, ‘film’, ‘cinema’, ‘film viewing situation’, ‘film
experiencing situation’ there are a great deal of redundancies and ambiguities. Beyond
celluloid film being discontinued, does ‘film’ refer to just theatrically produced entities or
does it also refer to entities produced for television and the internet? Likewise, what is
‘cinema’ referring to: the physical cinema location, an artistic temperament or the industry
as a whole? Certainly, when dealing with audio-visual content ‘spectacle’ seems best suited
to cover both theatrically and non-theatrically released content, as all audio-visual content
is designed to create a spectacle. However, ‘spectacle’ alone does not adequately cover the
means by which a perceiving participator is able to engage with it. As such, the terms ‘film
viewing situation’ and ‘film experiencing situation’ have already been used a number of
times throughout this paper to refer to the situation (inside and outside the cinema
auditorium) where the spectator engages neurobiologically and cognitively with the
spectacle content. As has already been pointed out ‘viewing’ needs to be discarded in
something that is created from collaboration between the spectacle text and the perceiving
participator. However, the perceiving participator does not collaborate in its creation based
solely on the data provided by the primary spectacle text; rather, there are additional data
inputs, e.g. websites, adverts, filmmaker interviews, previous life experiences, original
source material, posters, repeats, memes, apps, franchises, similar spectacle texts, etc. that
are added into the mix by the perceiving participator. Ultimately, the perceiving
participator is the author of their own individual experience of a spectacle text. As such, the
spectacle experiencing situation is an ongoing experience that can begin long before the
perceptual participation with the primary spectacle text has even taken place. Likewise, its
ability to transpire at any time and in any place emphasises the use of ‘situation’, the
‘situation’ refers to the two necessary attributes: the opportunity where the primary or
secondary spectacle text data arises and the active engagement of the perceiving
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participator. In light of this, ‘spectacle experiencing situation’ seems best suited to discuss
the situation where active cognitive and neurobiological engagement of the perceiving
Complicated? Yes, but so is the truth of spectator’s relationship with the spectacle and it is
only when sufficient conceptual frameworks are conceived will film theory be in an
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Appendix B
Considering the monumental physical and financial presence they occupy, cinema snacks
are surely another empirical and body-related area crying out to be studied. Aside from the
disruptive noise these snacks produce, we have known for centuries that food can affect
our moods and physiological state. Sugary snacks create opiate-like effects in the brain
(Dailey, 2009) and fatty foods elevate our mood as well (Hurley, 2011); even more so when
Figure 39. The gauntlet that is the multiplex food and drink counter.
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Cinema snacking could also be one of the variables that accounts for why general audiences
tend to enjoy films that are otherwise critically panned, as Mark Kermode has commented:
“No one enjoyed Pirates at the Carribean: At World’s End… some of them may claim to
have enjoyed it. But they didn’t. Not really. They just think they did” (2011:65), or, rather,
their stomach brains (in conjunction with their larger neurobiological networks) think they
did. Beyond this speculation, it would be interesting to see how the film experience differs
between audience members who eat snacks and audience members who do not.
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Appendix C
The ability to reproduce sound existed before the first mechanisms of cinema and it took
thirty years to bring the two mediums together in a way that offered the best logistics in
after this had found validation in the huge commercial success of The Jazz Singer (Dir. Alan
Crossland, USA, 1927), the initial phase of sound films or ‘talkies’ are often accused of being
aesthetically regressive (Cousins, 2011). With the introduction of early sound equipment
came many restrictions for filmmakers: it created a necessity for the camera to be encased
in a soundproofed booth to eliminate the mechanical noise of the camera (crane shots and
moving camera shots in general were out of the question), the director could no longer
direct the action while a scene was being filmed, early microphones were largely immobile
requiring the performers to go the ‘hidden’ microphone on set, films lost much of their
visual action in favour of long static aural speeches and the microphone put many
prominent silent film actors out of work due to ‘undesirable’ voices (Brownlow et al.,
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Figure 40. The introduction of sound changed everything.
The fear of the microphone was born out of the fact that it so fundamentally changed the
production process and the artistic impression of a film’s final result. However, as with the
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addition of make-up and lighting to make up for the visual inadequacies of 24fps, sound
technology was very quickly adapted into a form that not only allowed the filmmakers to
work efficiently with it, but enabled them to discover a whole new way of telling stories.
The filmmakers found a way to use sound as just another storytelling tool to add an
additional aesthetic dimension to their films (Elaesser et al., 2010:129-31; Scorsese in Stock,
2011).
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Appendix D
Developed by the Fox Film Corporation and débuted in 1929, Fox Grandeur, a 70mm
widescreen format, marked the first time that the industry tried to establish a larger form
Figure 41. Fox Grandeur was the first commercially available form of what is today being
available.
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Unlike the majority of analogue films from the last eighty years that captured onto and
projected from 35mm film prints, Fox Grandeur captured and projected from 70mm film
prints: 70mm has an image resolution equivalent to about a 4-5K digital image (5000
horizontal lines of resolution/pixels; see Appendix E), around four times the resolution of
current high definition television and roughly equivalent to the current resolution of higher-
end multiplex digital projection. However, the Great Depression and the cost of sound
Figure 42. Aside from finding a brief peak period during the 1960s and 1970s, The Master
(Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012) is a very rare example of a whole feature film being
filmed in 70mm.
In 1952, Cinerama, an image capturing process that projected onto a 146° panoramic
screen that closely mimicked the peripheral range of human sight, was introduced to
widespread enthusiasm, much critical acclaim (Strohmaier, 2002) and a great deal of
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financial profits: “when they opened the first Cinerama theater in Hollywood called This Is
Cinerama, they made more money in that one theater in one year than in the rest of the
The Cinerama process was praised for its heightened immersive quality: “Since peripheral
vision is responsible for our visual perception of motion, balance, and depth, the Cinerama
Figure 43. Cinerama was designed to match the peripheral vision range of human sight. It
Originally captured on and projected from three separate strips of 35mm celluloid,
Cinerama later photographed onto a single 70mm strip of celluloid and projected from a
single 70mm strip of celluloid. This was necessitated by the technical difficulties of
photographing and projecting from three separate strips, the high costs of doing so and the
logistical problems associated with using the three strip camera: “the three-camera
Cinerama rig had plenty of limitations: an extraordinary weight (all metal – no plastic parts),
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an excessive power source (three automobile batteries kept it running) and a single lens
Figure 44. If one of the three projectors went out of sync, the 146° illusion would be
destroyed (this was one of the technical problems that plagued analogue 3D projection).
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The majority of Cinerama films were documentaries and travelogues, as its laborious and
costly system was not logistically appealing to the mainstream film industry. However,
there were two exceptions: The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (Dir. George Pal et
al., 1962) and How The West Was Won (Dir. John Ford et al., 1962), these were captured in
Figure 45. Filming How The West Was Won in 3-strip Cinerama created countless logistical
Ultimately, after twenty years of commercial exposure, Cinerama was discontinued due to
its high production and exhibition costs; as well as the industry’s dominating competition in
the form of its CinemaScope and VistaVision widescreen formats. Unlike Fox Grandeur and
Cinerama, the financial and logistical success of the widescreen formats enabled
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Appendix E
Resolutions
Image Resolutions, Higher Frame Rates and the Standardisation of Film Exhibition
RED, a major digital camera manufacturer, recently announced their new digital camera
sensor which captures images at 6K resolution (RED, 2013), so digital cameras can now
capture images superior to conventional 70mm film. The digital camera has entered the
large format arena and, theoretically, digital cameras will one day be able to capture
a continuing endeavour to do just that (Lowe, 2013). This current digital IMAX development
has come as a result of competition, but also of the growing attention being directed
towards higher frame rates. Higher frame rates are something true 70mm IMAX struggles
to cater for; in the 1990s, IMAX HD was a brief attempt at filming and projecting in 48fps,
but the constant ‘wear and tear’ breakdowns of the system and high costs of each reel of
film lasting half as long caused it to be largely discontinued. Therefore, IMAX can only
exhibit higher frame rates via a digital system, which at 8K resolution is considerably less
than its analogue counterpart. However, Japan’s national broadcaster NHK, the developers
of an 8K prototype television have argued: “8K is enough for the human eye. That is why we
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Figure 46. Resolution parameters are determined by the number of rows of pixels that run
horizontally across an image; therefore, 2K refers to 2000 lines of pixels: the more pixels,
the more resolution. 1920x1080 - current High Definition Standard for consumer displays,
transitioning to using, 8K (Digital IMAX) – what everyone wants to be using, 18K (70mm
IMAX) – this is off the perceptual scale! When viewing an 18K IMAX image only 12K
IMAX is currently in the process of introducing its new digital laser projection system which
will mean that, in accordance with its digital camera, IMAX has to downgrade its resolution
from 12K to 8K (Lowe, 2013), at least when screening digitally. Therefore, until 8K
televisions are available on the consumer market, 8K looks set to be the standard
resolution for large format exhibition. However, the problems of 4K have to be embraced
first and industry experts have commented that, aside from digital IMAX, 8K is still a few of
years down the line for all other exhibition outlets (Shapiro, 2013).
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Figure 47. This one of only a few 8K display prototypes that are currently in existence. It is
Additionally, an 8K digital IMAX will go a long way in reducing the backlash the IMAX
Corporation is currently receiving as a result of its lieMAX installations (see Appendix F).
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Appendix F
Picturehouse, a UK based company formed: “to challenge the multiplex model and provide
cinemas that serve their communities in city-centre locations” (Picturehouse, 2009) caused
a great deal of consternation in December 2012 when they made the announcement that
they had been purchased by multiplex chain Cineworld (Pierrot, 2012). However, after the
dust settled on the announcement, the acquisition itself proved not to be the most
surprising part; rather, it was the reasons Cineworld highlighted for the acquisition, as
"I don't want to make any changes. It's a profitable organisation and I want to leave
it alone and let it continue making a profit and entertaining the public… The
demographic profile of people that go to the cinema is getting older. They like
arthouse cinemas, and we wanted to have a piece of that” (cited in Tobin, 2012).
Cineworld's finance chief, Philip Bowcock elaborated further: "We're going to keep the
quirkiness. It's a very different customer set – a little bit older, more discerning, more
experienced. To lose that would be to lose the raison d'être of Picturehouse." (cited in
Kollowe, 2012).
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Figure 48. Picturehouse enables each of its cinemas to operate themselves and maintain
their own distinct ‘quirky’ identities; The Little Theatre Cinema in Bath, UK is one such
cinema.
However, beyond the profits generated from Picturehouse’s customer set, further
speculation was raised after a conversation on Mark Kermode’s Twitter profile provoked
the following response from Cineworld: “Picturehouse bought by Cineworld. ‘We'll help
them grow & learn from them too!’ say @cineworld ‘Not change ..just grow’” (Kermode,
2012b). Furthermore, Cineworld’s wish to: “learn from” Picturehouse caused Kermode to
produce a video blog in which he asked his followers to comment on what they thought this
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Figure 49. Like all multiplex brands, each individual Cineworld cinema complex adheres to
streamlined corporate branding. The City Centre Cineworld in Glasgow, UK is currently the
In contrast to the independents, IMAX exhibits films that largely cater for the whole family
and that are all very big-concept immersive spectacles. On the other hand, the small
independents are able to cater for the types of films that would not really be served in an
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transcend the multiplexes. Indeed, a grey pound film, such as Quartet (Dir. Dustin Hoffman,
UK, 2013), a film that is targeted at an older demographic (Stock, 2013a) would have been
Figure 50. “Quartet is a lovely little charm bracelet of a film, a fairy tale for the geriatric set
Aesthetically, it just is not the type of film that would warrant from an upscale into IMAX;
precisely because it is a small, character driven piece – the spectacle of this film is the
while it is an equally character driven film, Les Misérables (Dir. Tom Hooper, 2012)
absolutely benefitted from an upscale into IMAX because the audio and visual spectacle
created from its status as a musical gave it the impression of hyper-reality and, as such,
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required a bigger format to showcase it: “The extraordinary power of Les Misérables and
the epic nature of the storytelling and yet the intimacy are things that IMAX do better than
However, following on from this and Trumbull’s wish to introduce a new type of hyper-
cinematic film as part of hypercinema, the types and varieties of films that can be
major factor in the film exhibition sector. In light of the growing presence and market
domination of large format cinema, one can speculate that Cineworld’s acquisition of
per-second movies on normal movie screens is a wonderful, beautiful, long-lasting art form
that will go into the future and it is completely appropriate for most films, actually”
(Trumbull in Anon, 2012). Therefore, it can be argued that what Cineworld wants to learn
the area of the market and the types of films that would be wasted in a larger format. The
years they have discovered a very big niche market with the grey pound demographic
(Stock, 2013a). In addition to this, the independents are supplying a cinematic experience
that still offers a high level of showmanship/customer care, something most modern
memory of the past, no human interaction, no history, no soul. We did away with
celluloid because it needed too much care and replaced it with a stream of digital
information about which no one cares. We handed the control of our ticket
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actually running the whole cinema. And while we were all so busy squinting at
pointy digital images through smudgy 3-D glasses we didn’t notice the lights going
While there have been many professional figures bemoaning the state of multiplexes, these
negative rumblings can best be summed up by a complaint an Odeon patron, Matt Pledger,
posted on Odeon’s Facebook page in August 2012 (Pledger, 2012; see Appendix G).
Bemoaning the high costs and the low quality experience, it was a complaint that very
quickly went viral and gained widespread media attention (Kelly, 2012). As of May 2013 the
compliant has received just fewer than three hundred thousand likes!
The added problem of movie piracy and film content being more widely available on a
number of diverse consumer devices thanks to services like LOVEFiLM and Netflix, the
multiplex really needs to rethink its whole approach and offer their own type of cinematic
experience that will bring the audience back. It is not that the public does not want to use
the cinema anymore, as the growth in IMAX and independent attendance has shown:
“while many people claim to prefer television to the cinema because they can watch films
in the comfort of their own homes, this preference is only a general one. Many still have a
firm commitment to going out, even if only every now and then” (Jancovich et al,
2003:232), it is just multiplexes have a lot to answer for with their low quality customer
“The problem is not digital projection per se, but the lack of human accountability
that the rise of digital has facilitated. In the past year I have sat in a UK multiplex in
which a digital image simply froze – something which we are assured cannot
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happen, but an error with which many multiplexes patrons will be familiar, and
There is no doubt that the growing market presence of large format cinema is creating
ripples in the multiplex community. While it can be argued multiplexes are trying to better
begun to transition themselves into the large format arena: “The widespread take-up of
new exhibition technologies hinges not only on the seamlessness with which they are able
to assimilate the viewer into their onscreen worlds, but their cost and ease of
implementation” (Sharp, 2012). Some multiplexes have even partnered with IMAX and
offer IMAX exclusive screens. However, these IMAX installations have only added to the
multiplex’s low quality image, as much criticism has been raised against what have has
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Figure 51. The Cineworld in Crawley, West Sussex, UK has a lieMAX screen. Notice how the
The multiplex IMAX screens claim to offer the same IMAX experience of genuine IMAX
venues, such as the BFI IMAX, and even charge the same ticket prices. However, the
multiplex IMAX installations use digital projection and, as such, are only able to exhibit films
for which IMAX and the partnered multiplex companies have been heavily criticised for
(Ebert, 2009).
every multiplex is now able to screen stereoscopic 3D, Cineworld’s cinemas are currently in
the process of having D-Box moving seat technology installed in all of its venues and Odeon
has introduced isense a large format audio-visual system that they say closely mimics IMAX
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Figure 53. Is it worth the extra money?
As these new installations are still fairly recent there is not yet enough feedback to
determine whether they have been successful, but from what feedback there has been
they appear to be making a positive impression (Young, 2012; O’Keeffe, 2012; Neish,
undated). However, when speculating on how the multiplex will position itself in the
exhibition community, the safest assumption to make is that multiplexes will follow the
example set by the South Korean 4DX cinemas: “In a 4DX presentation, the film is
fundamentally the same as one can see in any other venue, albeit accompanied by chair
motions and the other environmental additions created by the CJ 4DPLEX programmers”
(Strong, 2012).
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Figure 54. 4DX has already started to target the multiplex chains of the USA (Giardina,
2013).
Certainly, a system that puts the spectator at its centre can not be a bad thing for an
exhibition service that is being constantly criticised for its lack of consumer consideration;
whether or not this expanded format/immersive type of experience will make up for the
current aesthetic failings of the multiplex model remains to be seen. Financially, the
multiplexes are still making a profit and a steady yearly growth (Thomas, 2013), but when
considering the yearly growth and increasing market domination of IMAX (Vanderhoef,
2013), the necessity for multiplexes to rethink their strategy in the exhibition sector
becomes pressingly apparent. However, there is a key irony and a hugely significant point
to be realised at the end of all this: a major contributing factor as to why IMAX is becoming
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a dominating exhibition presence is largely down to the profits generated from the
multiplex lieMAX installations! The multiplex is in trouble, but it is by no means dead in the
water.
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Appendix G
A Lousy Experience
The Consumer’s Multiplex Complaint that went Viral
While there have been many professional figures bemoaning the state of multiplexes, these
negative rumblings can best be summed up by a complaint an Odeon patron, Matt Pledger,
posted on Odeon’s Facebook page in August 2012. Bemoaning the high costs and the low
quality experience, it was a complaint that very quickly went viral and gained a great deal of
media attention (Kelly, 2012). As of May 2013, Pledger’s Facebook post has received just
“Dear Odeon,
I went out last night with friends to see Ted. I'd not been to the cinema for a long
Firstly, £21 for 2 tickets and a medium 7UP! I don't know who you expect to get
into your cinemas but they must have more money than sense as this is ludicrous. I
could go onto Play or Amazon and buy myself about 12 DVD's for that price!
Secondly, the place was dead. I can only attribute this to your insane ticket prices.
There were more staff than paying customers. "You'll have been served quickly
then" you may ask. Well, no. There were 4 staff behind the counter, 2 of whom I
can only assume we're there to play with a cloth and talk about pointless crap with
their teenage colleagues whilst watching 4 people becoming more and more irate
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in the queue. Even more annoying was, despite the plethora of school-drop-out
'staff' that were milling about trying to look busy and achieving the square root of
nothing, no-one came into our screen so we had to pull the doors shut ourselves.
Trivial you may think but, hey, I shelled out £20 for the 'cinema experience' so I
Thirdly, I think it's ever so nice of Odeon to give their cinema goers 2 movies for the
price of one because, whenever there was a part in Ted that has little or no
dialogue, we were all treated to the wall shaking sound of Batman being played in
the next screen but, come on, why not charge half as much and we could SEE both
Your little advert about piracy killing film was the final straw though. Between us in
the group we paid you over £45 so four of us could get the 'cinema experience.'
Considering the way the country is don't you think this is excessive? Especially
when I could go out, by a DVD, buy a lot of 7UP, buy everyone food and have
change for the same price, AND I could watch the DVD over and over to my hearts
content. I know that I wouldn't get the whole 'experience' but I'm sure I could pay a
spotty teenager to ignore me and leave my lounge door open so I at least feel little
If you want to see more people in your cinemas and actually put a dent in film
piracy you should really try and cut your prices, hire decent staff and forget the
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You are putting plenty of nails into the cinema coffin Odeon. I won't be back in a
hurry” (2012).
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Appendix H
Highlighting IMAX
Comparisons of Conventional and IMAX Film Posters
A further separation IMAX has from conventional exhibition is its unique advertisement
materials. The designs of these advertisements emphasize IMAX as a heightened and more
prestigious experience – the promotional materials have a special edition feel to them
Figures 55 & 56. The Dark Knight Rises – one of the conventional multiplex posters next to
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Figure 57. Skyfall – one of the conventional multiplex posters.
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Figure 58. Skyfall – the IMAX poster.
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Figure 59. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – one of the conventional multiplex posters.
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Figure 60. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – one of four IMAX character posters.
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Appendix I
The diversification of the spectacle through various types of content, its diverging means of
exhibition and its ever complicating relationship with the spectator extends beyond the
cinema. Smaller modes of exhibition: home cinema systems, desktop computers and
laptops, have become integral components of the consumer’s lifestyle in the last ten years.
Figure 61. “What a difference 8 years makes: St. Peter's Square in 2005 and yesterday”
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However, even smaller modes, such as the smart phone and the touch screen tablet, have
become just as integral and have even deeper implications for the spectator’s and
Everyone now has the ability to access a wide plethora of film content and to do so in any
location. Unlike large format cinema, the smartphone and the tablet are not about
immersion, they are more about intimacy: “Certainly the big screen fascinates, but it cannot
compete with the potential control over and immersion in favourite titles that home-based
playback technologies… afford” (Klinger, 2006:136). The frequency at which consumers use
their handheld devices in the everyday situations of their lives (frequencynews.com, 2010;
Perez, 2012) should qualify these devices as extra bodily limbs. Viewing film content and
146
any audio-visual content on these devices fundamentally changes the meaning of those film
texts:
screen. The painting enters each viewer’s house. There it is surrounded by his
wallpaper, his furniture, his mementoes. It enters the atmosphere of his family. It
becomes their talking point. It lends its meaning to their meaning. At the same time
it enters a million other houses and, in each of them, is seen in a different context.
Because of the camera, the painting now travels to the spectator rather than the
spectator to the painting. In its travels, its meaning is diversified” (Berger, 1972:13).
These meanings are again diversified by the type of interface through which the spectator
experiences the content: “different media not only have different meanings but they do so
because they offer different types of experience. While a new media may become
dominant, it does not follow that it will render the experiences offered by other media
undesirable” (Jancovich et al., 2003:232). In addition to this, having the multiplex in your
pocket not only allows you to access content anywhere, but it is also offers the potential for
content customisability. The spectator’s unique filmic experience, which is the result of an
interfacing collaboration between spectator and spectacle, now has an overtly outward
expression with the promise of even more innovations for film content. In addition to the
innovations that have already been explored in regards to revitalising cinema exhibition,
trials are currently taking place for a ‘second screen’ cinema paradigm, a form of cinema
that would enable greater participation for the spectator due to the use of tablet-like
devices (Macaulay, 2013). Likewise, there are trials being done for ‘subconscious cinema’, a
cinema experience paradigm where the outcome of the film content is determined by the
147
spectator’s emotions (BBC News, 2013). Could these form additional components of
hypercinema?
However, the promise of greater diversification comes with the Google Glass, a device that
will fundamentally integrate the interface, the spectacle and spectator into the most
intimate union that has ever existed between content and consumer.
Figure 63. Google Glass is worn like a pair of glasses and projects an interface image directly
into the eye. In addition to this it is able to use the user’s skull as a conductor for sound that
the ear drums are able to pick up. The device is mostly voice controlled.
148
Figure 64. The age of the cyborg is fast approaching as the National Intelligence Council
have predicted in their 2030 Global Trends publication (2012): “Brain implants will also
allow for advanced neural interface devices — what will bridge the gap between minds and
Google Glass is no work of science fiction, currently it is being trialled and should be widely
commercially available within a year: “Currently, Google Glass is only available to the hand-
picked group of testers who shelled out $1,500” (Crabbe, 2013). Google Glass is only the
implications of this symbiosis are too vast, too speculative and too tantalising to be
149
explored here, but it is further validation as to why a major reconfiguration of thinking
However, what should be realised is the inherent spiritual relationship that has always been
present between the spectator and spectacle is now becoming much more apparent
through its diversifications and greater integration into our everyday lives: “users will have
Figure 65. Google Glass turns Human sight into an interface. Regardless of the potential this
offers for new types of immersive and participatory content, where does this position the
gaze? Where will this take the relationship of the spectator and the spectacle?
Ultimately, the modes through which content can be experienced are continuously
diversifying, as are the scales on which that content can be experienced. From the Google
Glass to the IMAX screen, the spectator and the spectacle have never had so many ways to
exist together. To say that films are just entertainment content cut off from our daily lives
150
that can not influence and explain our place in the world is cave-confined nonsense. We are
highly personal way to match and express the experiences of the room’s inhabitant.
Everything that has been presented throughout this paper is representative of the shift in
thinking that is slowly taking place alongside the digitalisation of cinema and needs to
continue to take place! In moving away from the cave, we have stopped viewing spectacle
content on a screen, and we now experience and interact with it via an interface. If there is
perhaps this offers a more accurate way to talk about the process by which the spectator
interfaces with any type of film spectacle. While this section can not hope to provide many
answers to the questions it has raised, one obvious conclusion should be apparent - all
these diverging means of experiencing the world will continue to have huge implications on
151
Appendix J
When you consider that a system equivalent to hypercinema can fool the human
neurobiological system into thinking it is sensing reality, then the implications of the
“I’m a member of a new group called the Overview Institute [2012] – there’s a thing
called the Overview Effect, it’s a book written by a man named Frank White, who
was interviewing astronauts coming back to Earth… their minds were expanded by
looking at the Earth from Space. And they said, “Woah, we’re on this planet that’s
in the middle of nowhere, and it’s very precious, and it’s very beautiful – so why are
we having all these wars; why do we have borders; why do we fight over
everything? They just came back with this changed view of Mankind, of Earth as an
issue.
And Edgar Mitchell, who was one of the Apollo astronauts, formed this thing called
the Noetics Institute [2013], and he’s on the Board of the Overview Institute. Our
experience of our planet as a precious jewel, in the void – and see if that will help
warming, or all the other things that we’re doing to basically use up this planet”
152
Figure 66. Imagine being able to view/sense the Earth in a hypercinema installation with
the same impression and level of detail as reality itself, as if you were actually looking at the
planet in the void of space. Surely, seeing the whole of your everyday reality suspended in a
single sphere would have fundamentally profound and life-changing implications on your
ways of being after that experience: "When we look down at the earth from space, we see
this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet. It looks like a living, breathing organism. But it
also, at the same time, looks extremely fragile” (Garan in Bhasin, 2013).
153
To find out more about the ongoing nature of this research project and if it is something
154
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Discography
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Filmography
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Animal Farm (2014); directed by Andy Serkis. Duration unknown. Production companies
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Brainstorm (1983); directed by Douglas Trumbull. 106 minutes. USA: AJF Productions,
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010); directed by Werner Herzog. 90 minutes. Canada, USA,
France, Germany and UK: Creative Differences, History Films, Ministère de la Culture et de
Cinerama Adventure (2002) DVD; directed by David Strohmaier. 93 minutes. USA: Warner
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954); directed by Jack Arnold. 79 minutes. USA: Universal
170
Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Special (2013); directed by Nick Hurran. 90 minutes. UK: BBC
Doctor Who: The Rings of Akhaten (2013); directed by Farren Blackburn. 44 minutes. UK:
Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Episode 1: The Pioneers (1980a); Dir.
Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. 60 minutes. United Kingdom: Thames Television [online].
Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Episode 13: End of an Era (1980b);
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How The West Was Won (1962); directed by John Ford, Henry Hathaway and George
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171
Interstellar (2014); directed by Christopher Nolan. Length to be confirmed (currently in
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172
Master of Fantasy – Douglas Trumbull (1998); directed by Lee Olson. 25 minute episodes.
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New Magic (1983); directed by Douglas Trumbull. 23 minutes. USA and Canada: Showscan
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Paul Merton’s Birth of Hollywood (2011); directed by Paul Merton. 180 minutes. UK: BBC
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173
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174
The Dark Knight Rises (2012); directed by Christopher Nolan. 165 minutes. USA and UK:
The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk (2007); directed by Robert Bader and Tim
This is Cinerama (1952); directed by Merian C. Cooper and Gunther von Fritsch. 115
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and New Zealand: New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Warner Bros. and
WingNut Films.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013); Francis Lawrence. Length to be confirmed
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The Making of Berberian Sound Studio (2012) Blu-ray; directed by Anon. 46 minutes. UK:
Warp X, Illumination Films, the UK Film Council and Artificial Eye (2012).
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175
The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011); directed by Mark Cousins. 900 minutes. UK:
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177
Illustration Sources
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178
Figure 7: Dolby Atmos auditorium layout schematic [online]. Available from:
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179
Figure 11: An Illustration demonstrating the 3D stereoscopic effect, featuring Creature from
images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2010/9/1/1283365897216/3D-FILMS-006.jpg
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Figure 12: Douglas Trumbull directing an experimental test shoot [online]. Available from:
http://digitalcinemasymposium.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/dt-directs-1a2.jpg [accessed
22/04/2013].
Figure 13: An Illustration demonstrating the enormity of Cinerama, from an edition of Life
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Figure 14: Film format and screen size comparisons. A diagram demonstrating the
differences between 70mm IMAX, conventional 70mm and 35mm [online]. Available from:
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Figure 16: The number of films released in IMAX venues between 2009 and 2012 [online].
180
Figure 17: The IMAX poster for The Dark Knight Rises (see Filmography) [online]. Available
from: http://www.scifinow.co.uk/wp-
Figure 18: The number of IMAX venues worldwide between 2008 and 2012 [online].
Figure 19: ‘Take in a Movie or get taken into one’. ‘IMAX is believing’ advertisement poster
tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQssoDvfRbd4dwUxgsmk8YP5sZcyNZujAiXqu-
Figure 20: A photograph of an IMAX performance of The Dark Knight Rises (see
images/Film/Pix/pictures/2012/7/23/1343040706215/Imax-screening-of-The-Dar-008.jpg
[accessed 29/12/2012].
Figure 21: A photograph of the auditorium of the BFI IMAX venue [online]. Available from:
http://cdn.londonandpartners.com/asset/e050a52959f71947e94a338f5e40263c.jpg
[accessed 13/04/2013].
Figure 22: A diagram demonstrating the peripheral vision’s role in the perception of motion
http://static.imax.com/media/filebrowser/uploads/imax_101___theatre_005.jpeg
[accessed 27/03/2013].
181
Figure 23: A diagram demonstrating the different peripheral occupation range
of IMAX and conventional cinema screens of IMAX and conventional cinema screens
http://static.imax.com/media/filebrowser/uploads/imax_101___theatre_006.jpeg
[accessed 27/03/2013].
Figure 24: A diagram demonstrating the human eye’s rods and cones receptors and their
http://www.imax.com/community/blog/imax-101-theatre-geometry-video/ [accessed
27/03/2013].
Figure 25: Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) jump for their lives. A
screen capture from the 9 minute IMAX preview of Star Trek Into Darkness (see
[accessed 25/05/2013].
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTE35F0Tm3WCXJhSJu-
Figure 27: A photograph of the production of New Magic (see Filmography) [online].
Available from:
http://www.in70mm.com/news/2012/trumbull_interview/images/new_magic_01.jpg
[accessed 05/03/2013].
182
Figure 28: A poster for Brainstorm (see Filmography) [online]. Available from:
http://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/85/MPW-42890 [accessed
06/03/2013].
Figure 29: A photograph demonstration of the in-ride experience of Back to the Future: The
http://ssheltonimages.com/img/43/434/Back_to_the_Future_The_Ride.jpg [accessed
28/04/2013].
Figure 30: Nancy (Rachel Blanchard) allures Jez (Robert Webb). A screen capture from an
http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/JQL0IWbNaWQ/hqdefault.jpg [accessed28/04/2013].
Figure 31: ‘See a movie or be part of one’. ‘IMAX is believing’ advertisement poster [online].
Available from:
https://www.empiretheatres.com/files/movies/2012/09/IMAX_Image2012.jpg [accessed
27/05/2013].
Figure 32: A hand print cave painting from the El Castillo cave in Spain [online]. Available
from: http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2012/06/120614-neanderthal-cave-
Figure 33: Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) prepares for his ascent from the pit. A screen
capture from The Dark Knight Rises (see Filmography) [online]. Available from:
183
Figure 34: A poster for Berberian Sound Studio (see Filmography) [online]. Available from:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sq79yEUFSA0/UDIo_V2ZeuI/AAAAAAAAAj4/-
Figure 35: Bruce Wayne climbs up the cavern. A screen capture from The Dark Knight Rises
Figure 36: A poster for Silent Running (see Filmography) [online]. Available from:
https://encrypted-
tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSZmEJMEbEk_nM2maQO85nA6j1xnFBgyaqypTGT
Figure 37: Bruce Wayne contemplates his leap. A publicity photograph for The Dark Knight
http://images.fandango.com/MDCsite/images/featured/201211/Christian-Bale-in-The-
Figure 38: Bruce Wayne - risen from darkness. A screen capture from The Dark Knight Rises
Figure 39: A photograph of the food and drink counter of a Vue cinema [online]. Available
from: http://www.familycomms.com/site/wp-content/uploads/cinema-image1.jpg
[accessed 11/03/2013].
184
Figure 40: ‘The Microphone – the Terror of the Studios’, the cover of Photoplay (see
tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSHAnxzzJ1jDVSZZewK7q6IiZ3XcoSuxI5duLTMNpX0
Figure 41: A screenshot of ‘The Future of Film’ article from Photoplay (see Bibliography),
Figure 42: A 70mm advertisement for The Master (see Filmography) [online]. Available
from: https://encrypted-
tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR3RX2hpnWxb62ynwzjhUxOBhMz6RZEucQMMJR4
Figure 43: A point of view roller coaster sequence from This is Cinerama (see Filmography).
A smile box re-creation of what the 3-strip Cinerama version of This is Cinerama would have
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/Roller-coaster-400.jpg [accessed
27/05/2013].
Figure 44: A layout demonstration of the workings of a Cinerama theatre [online]. Available
from: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/Cinerama-setup-new-
Figure 45: Linus Rawlings (James Stewart) greets the native Americans. A smile box re-
creation of what the 3-strip Cinerama version of How The West Was Won (see Filmography)
185
would have looked like in a Cinerama venue [online]. Available from:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6qgeWVXWLfY/TH3ZtvAgUYI/AAAAAAAAA7A/A8gFuz6tMw4/s1
Figure 46: A diagram illustrating the parameters of different image resolutions [online].
http://images.pcworld.com/images/article/2012/04/panasonic_145_tv-11353149.jpg
[accessed 17/03/2013].
Figure 48: A photograph of The Little Theatre Cinema, Bath, UK [online]. Available from:
http://www.cotswolds.info/images/Bath/buidings/little_theatre_cinema.jpg [accessed
22/03/2013].
Figure 49: A photograph of the city centre Cineworld, Glasgow, UK [online]. Available from:
Figure 50: A poster for Quartet (see Filmography) [online]. Available from:
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQNeLDlOOZckrVnlwXu1xs9QGEWxKlb9Vnwur
Figure 51: A photograph of the Cineworld in Crawley, West Sussex, UK [online]. Available
from:
186
http://www.midsussextimes.co.uk/webimage/1.4598384.1355837479!image/1588000340.
Figure 52: A resolution comparison of LieMAX and IMAX [online]. Available from:
http://www.metalsucks.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/IMAX-vs-LIEMAX.jpeg [accessed
26/04/2013].
Figure 53: An advertisement poster for Odeon’s isense [online]. Available from:
Figure 54: A photograph of a 4DX cinema entrance hall [online]. Available from:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/image/4DX-2012-001-superheroes-launch.jpg
[accessed 21/04/2013].
Figure 55: A conventional poster for The Dark Knight Rises (see Filmography) [online].
[28/04/2013].
Figure 56: The IMAX poster for The Dark Knight Rises (see Filmography) [online]. Available
from: http://www.scifinow.co.uk/wp-
Figure 57: A conventional poster for Skyfall (see Filmography) [online]. Available from:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-
a_q_7l6Jrwo/UJe_KBnqJAI/AAAAAAAACMw/TNYk2Zkn_xU/s1600/Laying_Quad_SKYFALL.jp
g [accessed 28/04/2013].
187
Figure 58: The IMAX poster for Skyfall (see Filmography) [online]. Available from:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-
a_q_7l6Jrwo/UJe_KBnqJAI/AAAAAAAACMw/TNYk2Zkn_xU/s1600/Laying_Quad_SKYFALL.jp
g [accessed 28/04/2013].
Figure 59: A conventional poster for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (see Filmography)
Figure 60: One of four IMAX character posters for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (see
Figure 61: “What a difference 8 years makes: St. Peter's Square in 2005 and yesterday” (see
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=555336131153088&set=a.162132393806799.
Figure 62: Netflix account homepage. Created from my own Netflix account and screen
captured on my iPad.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-
images/Guardian/About/General/2013/3/6/1362575657501/Googles-Sergey-Brin-weari-
188
Figure 64: Google Glass technical schematic [online]. Available from: https://encrypted-
tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRNa7cdNCVmxfWHHfe7no8Bb0t7KPHa6mJ9eVVjfE
Figure 65: Glass Glass - a user’s point of view. A screen capture from How it Feels [through
it-feels/
Figure 66: ‘The blue Marble’. A photograph that is currently the highest resolution image of
[accessed 24/05/2013].
189
“I’m a pioneer. Okay, that’s my life, I’ll just keep doing it until I do it…”
190