Post-cinema explores ‘new media’ and diverts from the centuries-long legacy of what film has always been. According to Denson and Leyda, in exploring 21st-century media, post-cinema becomes a lens to observe how these new technologies and stylistic techniques aid us in understanding, shaping, and reflecting “new forms of sensibility.” 

The Tunnel is a 2011 horror, found footage, film of a group of journalists investigating a series of government cover-ups all centered around a blocked-off underground tunnel system. Within the film there are a series of mixed media used to tell the story, indicating a post-cinema regime. From CCTV, to film cameras to microphones and news media, the editing used for such material explores what Steven Shaviro’s “post-continuity”, defined as the concept that the audiovisual no longer follows all rules of composition and editing in what is known as classical cinema. The post-continuity can then be seen in the montage-like scenes of the mixed media, and the interviews in between stitching the story together.

Camera 1: Digital Film Camera – main camera used in The Tunnel

Camera 2: Digital Camcorder – bad quality, used in film for BTS of research

This new strategy is then seen to change the viewer’s experience as well, having this new aesthetic that Denson and Leyda describe uses “digital camera and editing technologies, incorporating the aesthetics of gaming, webcams, surveillance video…”. 

surveillance video in film The Tunnel

The way the spectator reacts to the post-cinematic mixed media technique and editing is then called the Post-cinematic affect. This is a concept that preceded subjective awareness and emotion. Shaviro describes viewers being “overwhelmed and traversed by affect” and reacting to it and personalizing it then as emotions. These emotions then testify to the affect out of which they are created, Massumi and Shaviro claiming that “Behind every emotion, there is always a certain surplus of affect that “escapes confinement”.

Bibliography:

Shaviro, Steven. Post Cinematic Affect. 1st ed. Lanham: John Hunt Publishing Limited, 2010. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/goldsmiths/detail.action?docID=664329 Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

Denson, Shane and Julia Leyda. Post-cinema: Theorising 21st-Century Film, Falmer:REFRAME Books, 2016. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325250717_Post-Cinema_Theorizing_21st-Century_Film Accessed 13 OCt. 2024.

Ledesma, Carlo. The Tunnel. Distracted Media. 2011.

By: Costanza Maria Santacroce