The emergence of “New media” has preserved some aspects of older media while transforming them in some ways. The shift from analogue to digital technologies is significant in production, exhibition, and consumption.

The digital cinema from the 70S/80S had multiple inventions leading to the innovation of the “new media”.

But more specifically, the innovation of technologies, examples:

For example, a computer animation research division to develop special effects for motion pictures was established by Lucasfilm Ltd in 1979.

With the rise of digital image processing and synthesis, Industrial Light and Magic emerged as forward-thinking producers of digital imaging for motion pictures—80s sci-fi films relied heavily on analogue effects in the 1980s.

In the late 80s, The mechanical Steenbeck and Moviola tables were quickly replaced as the industry standard by digital non-linear editing systems.

The ‘Pseudopod’ from James Cameron’s The Abyss is the first convincing digitally animated character in a live-action film.

In the 1990S, digital media became in trend because of the new technology, and In the release of a few popular films, such as Star Wars 1, all the montage and special effects were post-cinematic. “The combination of “the digital projection and distribution are combined as Titan A. E. is transmitted live over the Internet and in an Atlanta movie theatre in June 2000” (lecture PowerPoints). 

The post-cinema “According to the editors of the Post-Cinema reader, “post-cinema asks us to think about new media not only in terms of novelty but in terms of an ongoing, uneven, and indeterminate historical transition. The post-cinematic perspective challenges us to think about the affordances (and limitations) of the emerging media regime not simply in terms of radical and unprecedented change but in terms of the ways that post-cinematic media are in conversation with and are engaged in actively re-shaping our inherited cultural forms” ((Denson and Leyda, 2016, 2) lecture PowerPoint) 

The necessary screening detention is an example of digital or post-cinema because the multi-layered post-ironic, referential construction is both new and old, and layers and references to a range of specific films and genres across horror, science fiction and comedy. 

Aixi Fu