New media was a term coined to represent, essentially the age of cinema that had been redefined and changed with the introduction and conversion from analogue to digital. Basically, theorists argued that new media, was not a new foreign entity in itself but rather a evolved more updated version of old cinema, and with that still adhered to some traditional “rules” of old cinema. We can look into three conditions which are, the production, exhibition and consumption of film & television. In this blog, we’ll be focusing on the production aspect.

In summary, new techniques and software’s allowed the production of film to be made not only more efficiently and quickly but in a way that non-linear and “not practical”. Denson & Leyda look into Tarkovsky’s & how he felt that abstract cinema was not possible . “But what happens to cinema’s indexical identity if it is now possible to generate photorealistic scenes entirely in a computer using 3-D computer animation” (Denson & Leyda, 2016).

For this, I’d like to look into “Toy Story” & how had a significant part in changing film history, being the first film to be made fully through computer generated imagery. Toy story was released in 1995 by Walt Disney Pictures and produced by Pixar. Despite never having had produced any feature films, the company was hired by Disney to produce one to be fully computer generated. Despite setbacks and lack of expertise to fall back to, the small group of animators were able to complete the film, learning and developing new technologies whilst doing so.

“In some ways, working with computers opened new possibilities, letting animators add details they never would be able to” (Zorthian, 2015)

With this, the movie is known for creating a new style and age of animated films but also cinema as whole as these techniques grew and evolved to provide us with the hyper realistic movies we consume now.

Going back, I’d argue that abstract cinema is possible, and not agree with Tarkovsky definition of cinema, that in itself, it can only capture what it sees in front of it.

Denson, S. and Leyda, J. (2016) Post-cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century film. Falmer: REFRAME Books. 

Zorthian, J. (2015) Toy story at 20: How the pixar film changed movie history, Time. Time. Available at: https://time.com/4118006/20-years-toy-story-pixar/ (Accessed: November 10, 2022). 

Aseel Mohamed Waheed Deen

10/11/22