Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality

Notes

INTRODUCTION 1. Dan North, Performing Illusions: Cinema, Special Effects and the Virtual Actor (New York: Wallflower Press, 2008), 6. 2. Ibid., 10. 3. Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” in Sigmund Freud: Collected Papers, vol. 4, trans. Joan Riviere (New York: Basic Books, 1959), 368–407. 4. Kristen Whissel, “The Digital Multitude,” Cinema Journal 49:4 (Summer 2010): 90–110. 5. Jody Duncan, “The Seduction of Reality,” Cinefex 120 (January 2010): 146. 1. THROUGH THE LOOKING GL ASS 1. Barbara Maria Stafford and Frances Terpak, Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2001), 112. 2. Scott Bukatman, Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003), 91. 3. Michele Pierson, Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 93–136. 4. Charles Csuri, “Panel: The Stimulation of Natural Phenomena,” Computer Graphics 17:3 (July 1983): 137. 5. Herbert Freeman, Interactive Computer Graphics (Los Alamitos, Calif.: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1980). 6. Charles Csuri and James Shaffer, “Art, Computers and Mathematics,” AFIPS Conference Proceedings, vol. 33 (Washington, D.C.: Thompson Book Company, 1968), 1293. 7. Wayne Carlson, A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation (2003), http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/lessons.html. 8. John Whitney, Digital Harmony: On the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art (Peterborough, N.H.: Byte Books, 1980), 123. 9. Michael Noll, “The Digital Computer as a Creative Medium,” IEEE Spectrum 4:10 (October 1967): 90. 229 N O T E S 10. Ibid., 95. 11. Ivan Sutherland, “Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System,”AFIPS Spring Joint Computer Conference, Detroit, Michigan, May 21–23, 1963, 329. 12. Alvy Ray Smith,“Digital Paint Systems: Historical Overview,” Microsoft Technical Memo 14, May 30, 1997, 2. 13. Steven Coons,“Surfaces for Computer-Aided Design of Space Forms,” MIT/LCS/ TR-41 (June 1967), http://publications.csail.mit.edu/lcs/pubs/pdf/MIT-LCS-TR-041. pdf. 14. Lawrence Roberts, “Machine Perception of Three-Dimensional Solids” (1963), http://www.packet.cc/files/mach-per-3D-solids.html. 15. Robert Rivlin, The Algorithmic Image: Graphic Visions of the Computer Age (Redmond , Wash.: Microsoft Press, 1986), 30. 16. Estelle Shay, “Company File: Pixar,” Cinefex 55 (August 1993): 23–24. 17. I thank Joe Fordham for pointing this out to me. 18. Smith, “Digital Paint Systems,” 5. 19. William T. Reeves,“Particle Systems—A Technique for Modeling a Class of Fuzzy Objects,” Computer Graphics 17:3 (July 1983): 359. 20. Ibid., 367. 21. Loren C. Carpenter,“Computer Rendering of Fractal Curves and Surfaces,” Computer Graphics 14:3 (July 1980): 109. 22. Personal communication to the author, December 14, 2010. 23. Alan Fournier, Don Fussell, and Loren Carpenter, “Computer Rendering of Stochastic Models,” Computer Graphics 25:6 (June 1982): 383. 24. Pierson, Special Effects, 136. 25. Ibid., 155. 26. For details, see Joe Fordham, “In Dreams,” Cinefex 123 (October 2010): 38–69. 27. Personal communication to the author, December 14, 2010. 28. Jody Duncan provides a comprehensive portrait of the film’s effects techniques in “The Beauty in the Beasts,” Cinefex 55 (August 1993): 42–95. 29. Personal communication to the author, December 14, 2010. 30. Duncan, “Beauty in the Beasts,” 91. 31. Jody Duncan, “On the Shoulders of Giants,” Cinefex 70 (June 1997): 81. 32. Mark Cotta Vaz, Industrial Light and Magic: Into the Digital Realm (London: Virgin Publishing, 1996), 123. 33. Warren Buckland, “Between Science Fact and Science Fiction: Spielberg’s Digital Dinosaurs, Possible Worlds, and the New Aesthetic Realism,” Screen 40:2 (Summer 1999): 185. 34. Tom Gunning, “Gollum and Golem: Special Effects and the Technology of Arti- ficial Bodies,” in From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, ed. Ernest Mathijs and Murray Pomerance (New York: Rodopi, 2006), 347. 35. Bukatman, Matters of Gravity, 90. 230 notes to pages 15–32 36. Stephen Prince,“True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images and Film Theory,” Film Quarterly 49:2 (2006): 27–37. 37. Personal communication to the author, December 14, 2010. 38. Richard Rickitt, Special Effects: The History and Technique (New York: Billboard Books, 2007), 188–190. 39. Quoted in Duncan, “Beauty in the Beasts,” 92. 40. Ibid., 66. 41. Ibid., 64. 42. Personal communication to the author, December 14, 2010. 43. Pierson, Special Effects, 120. 44. Ibid., 124. 45. Geoff King, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the...