Capturing Motion: Digital Performance in Contemporary Film, Television, Animation, and Video Games
Book in progress
This book investigates the technology of motion capture and how its growing popularity in the production of films, television, animated productions, and video games changes how we think of the changing nature of film and media today. Motion capture provides a unique crystallization of our contemporary moment in media production, as it involves old-fashioned elements (live-action performance in physical space) and new media elements (digital character construction within the computer). Furthermore, as a technique used increasingly in many forms of moving image media, it demonstrates how the lines between media have begun to blur.
The major argument of the book is that motion capture forces us to reconsider the categories of realism that have guided the scholarly and popular conceptions of moving images. Classical film theories of realism (Bazin, Barthes) focused on the indexical impression of actual objects on celluloid. The decline of celluloid and the seemingly infinite manipulations afforded by digital image-making have led some scholars (Doane, Rodowick) to consider the digital image to be a break from the analog form of representation of photography and film. This book shifts the focus from realism to authenticity. Realism involves fidelity to the actual world and involves connotations of accuracy and truth. Authenticity, on the other hand, involves a sense of acceptance or belief based on authority. Digital characters created using motion capture are authored (by the mocap performers, as well as the animators), but do not have objective existence, like a “real” object captured on celluloid. Thus, although traditional categories of realism may here be voided, the pursuit of authenticity continues. This book explores the many ways that motion capture performers and animators seek to endow their creations with authenticity. Going beyond what Stephen Prince designated “perceptual realism,” this involves tapping into discourses of race, gender, authorship, the body, and technology to persuade viewers of the authenticity of the performance on display.
Motion capture has been utilized in one form or another for more than thirty years. Today’s typical motion capture system uses cameras to track the movement of markers placed on the bodies of performers as they move through space. Recent developments have expanded this system to include “performance capture,” which involves the simultaneous capture of both bodily and facial movements, as well as voice in some situations. Other processes, sometimes dubbed “emotion capture,” also involve 3D body or facial scans of performers. Although these are newer or perhaps more extensive uses of the technology, I have retained the term “motion capture” as my primary descriptor. This is because I seek to highlight the primacy of movement, not only in the use of this particular technology (which elevates bodily movement over surface image), but also more broadly in theories of the moving image. Instead of focusing on indexicality, motion capture prompts us to return to movement as the crux of moving images, be they films, animations, interactive media, analogically created or digitally created. A crucial category of realistic impression in moving images is the perception of movement. And it was the movement of motion pictures that first distinguished and popularized the art form in the late 19th century. In this, I continue the line of thought of contemporary film scholars, like Tom Gunning, who have brought attention to the need to think beyond the indexical and to recognize the importance of movement in motion pictures.
This book investigates the technology of motion capture and how its growing popularity in the production of films, television, animated productions, and video games changes how we think of the changing nature of film and media today. Motion capture provides a unique crystallization of our contemporary moment in media production, as it involves old-fashioned elements (live-action performance in physical space) and new media elements (digital character construction within the computer). Furthermore, as a technique used increasingly in many forms of moving image media, it demonstrates how the lines between media have begun to blur.
The major argument of the book is that motion capture forces us to reconsider the categories of realism that have guided the scholarly and popular conceptions of moving images. Classical film theories of realism (Bazin, Barthes) focused on the indexical impression of actual objects on celluloid. The decline of celluloid and the seemingly infinite manipulations afforded by digital image-making have led some scholars (Doane, Rodowick) to consider the digital image to be a break from the analog form of representation of photography and film. This book shifts the focus from realism to authenticity. Realism involves fidelity to the actual world and involves connotations of accuracy and truth. Authenticity, on the other hand, involves a sense of acceptance or belief based on authority. Digital characters created using motion capture are authored (by the mocap performers, as well as the animators), but do not have objective existence, like a “real” object captured on celluloid. Thus, although traditional categories of realism may here be voided, the pursuit of authenticity continues. This book explores the many ways that motion capture performers and animators seek to endow their creations with authenticity. Going beyond what Stephen Prince designated “perceptual realism,” this involves tapping into discourses of race, gender, authorship, the body, and technology to persuade viewers of the authenticity of the performance on display.
Motion capture has been utilized in one form or another for more than thirty years. Today’s typical motion capture system uses cameras to track the movement of markers placed on the bodies of performers as they move through space. Recent developments have expanded this system to include “performance capture,” which involves the simultaneous capture of both bodily and facial movements, as well as voice in some situations. Other processes, sometimes dubbed “emotion capture,” also involve 3D body or facial scans of performers. Although these are newer or perhaps more extensive uses of the technology, I have retained the term “motion capture” as my primary descriptor. This is because I seek to highlight the primacy of movement, not only in the use of this particular technology (which elevates bodily movement over surface image), but also more broadly in theories of the moving image. Instead of focusing on indexicality, motion capture prompts us to return to movement as the crux of moving images, be they films, animations, interactive media, analogically created or digitally created. A crucial category of realistic impression in moving images is the perception of movement. And it was the movement of motion pictures that first distinguished and popularized the art form in the late 19th century. In this, I continue the line of thought of contemporary film scholars, like Tom Gunning, who have brought attention to the need to think beyond the indexical and to recognize the importance of movement in motion pictures.
