Complicated views: mainstream cinema’s representation of non-cinematic audio/visual technologies after television

Abstract

This thesis examines a number of mainstream fiction feature films which incorporate imagery from non-cinematic moving image technologies. The period examined ranges from the era of the widespread success of television (i.e. the late 1950s) to the present day. The films featured in the study emerge from a variety of genres, countries and budget, while remaining within a “mainstream” classification, by which I mean films which generally secured a significant theatrical release. Across four chapters I examine films which feature the following non-cinematic moving image technologies: “sub-gauge” film; “live” video, including CCTV and television; “home” or analogue video; digital video.
Each chapter briefly outlines the origins, standard usages and aesthetic characteristics of the technology, before progressing to case studies of individual films which utilise or reference these technologies to a significant effect. Each considers the ways in which films and filmmakers utilise characteristics of “alternate” media to transform narrative delivery and development, or to comment on some of the aesthetic aspects of either the incorporated medium, or film itself. The thesis argues that such films incorporate media in ways which either remediates or transforms their products, through film, or in doing so, comments on cinema.
The technologies featured have been chosen as significant contributors to the emerging total image economy of developed societies throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. The study examines the ways in which their impact on society, culture and media industries is framed within films which feature their products and/or practices. In the final chapter this analysis is applied to the contemporary debate regarding the destabilising effect of digital image technologies on the ontology and long-term viability of cinema, by placing such debates with a longer-term context of a debate within film regarding the impact a variety of alternate image technologies.

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