NEW MEDIA & CINEMA

BY: MINNA YUNGSHAN PENG

INFO 303 New Media Theory

What is New Media?

The shift of all culture to computer-mediated

forms of production, distribution and

communication

Affects all stages of communication and all

types of media

What’s so “new” about new media?

Digitization Web 2.0

Or…maybe there’s nothing so new about it after all?

Cinema as New Media

The film making process is being redefined with the widespread use of special effects

Digital film = live action material + painting + image processing + compositing + 2D computer animation + 3D computer animation (Manovich, 301)

Production has become the first stage of postproduction

Computer Techniques

Traditional Cinema:

Analog

Linear editing

Photochemical

Process

New cinema: Shot on film and

transferred to digital intermediate

Some are shot digitally (Red camera)

Non-linear editing (fcp)

CGI:Computer Generated Images

Video compositing software (Flame, Nuke)

Set extension

Filming v.s. Post-Production

Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace (1999) Filming Dates: 65 days Production Time: ~2 years

Transformers (2007) Filming Dates: Apr – Oct 2006 Production Time: 2006 – 2007

Avatar (2009) Filming Dates: Apr – Dec 2007 Production Time: ~2 years

New Techniques and Technologies

1. Blue-Screen/Green ScreenKeying:  compositing (layering) two

images or video streams together, used heavily in many fields to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video

Example: Hugo

Before

After

New Techniques and Technologies

2. Rotoscoping

the technique of

manually creating a

matte for an element

on a live-action plate

so it may be

composited over

another background

New Techniques and Technologies

3. Motion Capture

(Motion Tracking)

recording actions of

human actors, and

using that information

to animate digital

character models in

2D or 3D computer

animation

Visual Effects Breakdown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi0NUlR6A0k&feature=youtu.be

What do we think of all these new technologies?

New technologies are changing the way cinema is being

produced.

Cinema undergoes major changes every few decades, and

right now we are in the middle of that phase.

New technologies do not affect the extent to which cinema

is more or less “authentic”; they are simply an extension

and improvement from older techniques such as painting.

James Cameron

“We are moving

toward a time when

the only limitation on

a filmmaker is his or

her imagination.”