As film technology continues to evolve, different creators have used these techniques to explore more of human perception. Cinema has gone from reality to exploring different times and spaces, as well as dreams. In cinema history, many films have profoundly depicted the dream world, whether it is Federico Fellini’s Eight and a Half (1963), or Andrei Tarkovsky after that. Turn to recent China, the young Chinese director Bi Gan, in his film Kaili Blues (2015) and Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018), went from a low-budget one-shot to a more immersive take on the dream world using 3D technology in the construction. This director further uses 3D technology that allows the dream to appear as a kaleidoscopic effect and build a utopian perception, supporting the idea that technological advances in digital cinema have a positive impact on the expression of different human perceptions.

The relationship between kaleidoscope and dream in cinema

Kaleidoscopes provide a kind of phantasmagoria perception which is like a dream in human life. As Scott (2003) mentioned, Modern cinema has a kaleidoscopic sensibility. So, due to numerous modern cinemas trying to bring out the complex perceptions of the real world in a richer way, digital cinemas attempt complicated skills to create the phantasmagoria experience in not only the camera movements, or special effects used, and so on. Brown (2013) claimed digital cinema attempts to build a continuous spatial space, which can break the wall and link various aspects of daily life, or even surpass that until displays the different dimensions.

Attempt in the Kaili Blue and progress in Long Day’s Journey into Night

Bi Gan has already mentioned in interviews that in Kaili Blue he could only experiment with cameras to realize the reality, but in the second part of Long Day’s Journey into Night, the director uses a 60-minute long shot to complete the real establishment of the dream space (Xiao, 2019). In contrast to the 2D of its predecessor, Long Day’s Journey into Night uses 3D technology to make the dream world a continuous space, an exploration of how media display the dream world. Space in contemporary cinema has long been made up of individual spaces rather than piecing together each unit (Brown, 2013). Hence, Bi Gan’s 3D attempt pulls digital cinema’s presentation of dreams to a new level. The dream world that does not exist in real life but only in human perception is presented in the film, allowing reality and dreams to be presented through the medium, establishing a utopian world. At the same time, the spectator is more likely to join the dream as a participant than an observer (Dennies, 2018). Digital cinema not only expands the cinematic experience in a way that transcends space, world, and even dimension but also explores more human perceptions.

References:

Brown, B. (2013). ‘Supercinema; film-philosophy for the digital age’ Reference & Research Book News. Portland: Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. 28 (5).

Dennis, L. (2018). ‘Moving Through Time’. Film Comment, 54(4), 36–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44991599

Scott, B. (2003). ‘Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century.’ Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smj1s

Xiao, J., & Gan, B. (2019). ‘Creating a Cinema of Dream and Memory: An Interview with Bi Gan.’ Cinéaste, 44(3), 17–21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26664302 

Wenyu Li 33831990