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Spectacular Digital Effects
CGI and Contemporary Cinema
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2014
About this book
<Spectacular Digital Effects</I> examines contemporary films, including <I>Avatar</I>, <I>The Matrix</I>, and <I>The Lord of the Rings</I> movies, revealing the films astonishing computer-generated visual effects as central to their narratives.
Author / Editor information
Kristen Whissel is Professor of Film and Media at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Picturing American Modernity: Traffic, Technology, and the Silent Cinema, also published by Duke University Press.
Reviews
“The narrative is engaging, and Whissel's analysis of the effects emblem makes a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature of the field. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.”
-- B. H McMillin Choice
“Spectacular Digital Effects seeks to redeem oft-maligned computer-generated imagery in blockbuster cinema, arguing that the spectacle of digital effects enhances rather than detracts from the narrative. This aim is a much-needed move for balance in the field of media studies, and the conceptual framework, based in the historical study of emblems used in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, is a new and interesting way to think through digital effects.”
-- Laura Felschow Velvet Light Trap
“[B]y offering a focused analysis of the allegorical potential of effects sequences, Spectacular Digital Effects does more than expand a field that has recently received a great deal of attention in film and media studies. The book makes a valuable contribution to developing a new conversation about the complexities of spectacular effects in the cinema.”
-- Colin Williamson Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
"Whissel’s book is an illuminating study and a reminder that onscreen spectacle can deliver philosophical as well as visceral heft."
-- Ben Kooyman Media International Australia
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Acknowledgments
ix -
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Introduction
1 -
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Chapter 1. The New Verticality
21 -
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Chapter 2. The Digital Multitude as Effects Emblem
59 -
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Chapter 3. Vital Figures
91 -
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Chapter 4. The Morph
131 -
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Conclusion
171 -
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Notes
185 -
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Bibliography
199 -
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Index
207
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
March 7, 2014
eBook ISBN:
9780822377146
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
224
Other:
55 photographs
eBook ISBN:
9780822377146
Audience(s) for this book
Professional and scholarly;
