Watching the film Jurassic Park, one may ask themselves how moving from analog cinema to digital influences issues of realism. 

David Rodowick, film theorist argues there is a huge distinction between analogue and digital and that the indexical and ontological qualities of analogue vanish when transformed into digital. He states that digital images lack some key qualities of analog ones in their lack of indexicality, of the trace of the real and therefore in their emotional impact they have on their audience. They become less able to convey a sense of durational realism because there is no necessary relationship between digital images and prior pro-filmic reality. 

(Source: Time) 

The film Jurassic Park employs cutting-edge special effects, animatronics, and CGI to create realistic and lifelike dinosaurs, thus captivating the audience’s imagination, suspending their disbelief and giving them a heightened sense of realism. This meticulous construction of the prehistoric creatures is designed to immerse the audience in the film’s narrative, blurring the lines between fiction and reality and potentially impacting the audience’s perception of realism.

While David Rodowick, has expressed concerns about the impact of digital technology on the ontology of cinema. Lev Manovich has argued that instead, he sees digital technology as a catalyst for the reimagining and redefinition of realism in contemporary cinematic practices. He says that digital cinema offers unprecedented creative freedom and flexibility, allowing filmmakers to experiment with innovative techniques and visual aesthetics that were not easily achievable with analog technology.

(Source: Youtube)

Manovich insists that the shift to digital media has expanded the possibilities for constructing and experiencing reality in cinema. Through techniques such as digital compositing, computer-generated imagery (CGI), and virtual reality (VR) (seen in Jurassic Park), filmmakers can create complex and visually captivating worlds that can engage audiences in new and compelling ways. Manovich emphasizes that digital technologies have the potential to redefine the boundaries of realism and enable the construction of hyper realistic and fantastical cinematic environments that were not feasible with analog techniques alone.

References:

Jurassic Park: Meeting the Dinosaurs HD clip (2021) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bi0n04pm3A (Accessed: 25 October 2023).

Manovich, L. 2002, ‘What is New Media’, The Language of New Media, pp.18-61

Shane Denson and Julia Leyda, ‘Perspectives on Post-Cinema: An introduction’, Post-Cinema: Theorising 21^st Century Film, pp. 1-19, Available here: reframe.sussex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/POST-CINEMA_LO_RES.pdf]

Rodowick, D. N. 2015, , ‘What was cinema’ The Virtual Life of Film pp 25-88

By: Octavie Drevon