Practical effects in the age of post-digital cinema

Abstract

This thesis examines the aesthetic implications of using practical effects in post-digital cinema. Digital effects have become more perceptually realistic than the practical effects of the analog era and thus turned into central tools in fulfilling Hollywood’s obsession with photorealism. This study argues that digital effects’ success in imitating a photorealist style has pushed the practical effects to leave aside their obsession with realism and search for their own aesthetic, which I call “anti-realist.” Firstly, the study approaches this aesthetic difference between practical and digital effects from an ontological standpoint. By adopting Rodowick’s (2007) arguments informed by Bazinian realism regarding the digital image’s lack of indexicality, it conducts a close reading on Wes Anderson’s anti-realist practical effects. Then, through the lens of Marks’ (2000) concept of “haptic visuality,” it explores how the foregrounded materiality of these effects can engage with an embodied experience of spectatorship. Moreover, by adopting a feminist approach to film studies, it proposes the use of practical effects as a feminist tool in the French context to defy Hollywood’s standardized effects in the films of Marjane Satrapi and Chloé Mazlo. Finally, it conducts an auteur study on the French director Michel Gondry’s filmography to question the place of his analog techniques in constructing his transnational authorship. Overall, this thesis aims to uncover the meaning and significance of leaving aside the CG techniques that have revolutionized contemporary filmmaking in favor of so-called outdated cinematic techniques.