Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies

Linking the concept of performance to spectatorship (eg the act of screening a film before an audience) and to craftsmanship (eg the act of suturing together filmic sequences), my paper will demonstrate that digital technology's impact on time within the cinematic realm has been promoting two concurrent phenomena, over the last decade: First, the digital, in the form of covert and overt digital special effects, has been influencing movie spectators' direct relationship to narrative time and space. Simultaneously, it has, in the form of digital non-linear editing (NLE), been leading to the rise of theoretical misconceptions about film editing's effect on thematic coherence, human agency, and film aesthetic, in relation to narrative chronology.

Performance in film is more than straightforward recording of actors; performances were (and are) often constructed in postproduction by technological means. Today with digital effects, we are seeing an unprecedented degree of technological advances that allow the breaking up, recombining, and reconfiguring of actors' abilities as multiple forms of input. This essay examines the history behind the technological construction of performance, the elements which performances have been divided into, and some of the ways in these divisions redefine what we have traditionally thought of as constituting a performance, which has become in many ways a more collaborative effort instead of the work of an individual 'star' performer.

A film's visual design is increasingly determined digitally, after principal cinematography. This essay charts the nature of the digital revolution in relation to digital colour grading. Faced with the new digital devices, filmmakers are casting about for appropriate, respectable functions. The paper examines how the first two mainstream Hollywood releases to feature digital colour designs, Gary Ross's Pleasantville (1998), and Joel and Ethan Coen's O Brother Where Art Thou (2000), work as aesthetic prototypes. It argues that digital colour may not so much entail a revolution as careful and considered integration, and one role of the early digitally graded film has been to set out concrete methods for reining the technology to craft norms. Close formal analysis of colour design in these films also illustrates how the aesthetic problems of the digital age replay the dynamics of stylistic development from the classical era.

While the process of distributing and exhibiting a film has changed little over the past century, Digital Cinema, the process of using digitally stored data instead of strips of acetate, has arrived. With technology continuing to develop it is expected that d-cinema will overtake the quality of conventional cinema has within the next two years. This paper considers how the film industry might effect the transition from film to digital product.

Abstracr Digital cinema offers a high-quality image in feature film production. Moreover, it is expected to make film distribution and exhibition more efficient. Policy-makers are becoming increasingly aware of the potential of digital cinema. Among them, the European Union (EU) has an important role to play: digital cinema may be seen as providing a solution to some of the structural difficulties surrounding European cinema. Indeed, efforts have been made at the EU level to take advantage of digital technology in the cinema sector. However, there remains some uncertainty as to copyright, securing delivery, standards development and in competition matters. To unlock the potential of digital cinema, these issues must be tackled.