Collaboration without Representation: Labor Issues in Motion and Performance Capture

Abstract

Classical film theory topics, such as the divide between live action and animation, the definition of cinematic performance, and the configuration and impact of the star system continue to shapewhile also being reshaped by -discourse on animation labor in the digital age. Focusing on motion capture in contemporary Hollywood, the first part of this article historicizes and examines the diminishment of the animators' contribution to this filmmaking process in promotional materials and public discussions, and the accompanying overemphasis on the star persona's performance. In doing so, it aims to contextualize and shed light on the practices and imperatives that determine current labor policies and power dynamics in the industry. The second part introduces questions of gender relations and gender-based hierarchies of representation into the discussion of motion and performance capture's labor climate. In order to highlight and reflect on the ambivalence of the motion capture industry's labor politics, it offers a feminist reading of a distinct, yet related form of disenfranchisement in motion-capture filmmaking, namely digital voyeurism and the objectification of the female performer in films such as Beowulf (Robert Zemeckis, 2007) and Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), and video games such as Beyond: Two Souls (Quantic Dream, 2013). Finally, by highlighting such interrelated policies of marginalization and erasure of labor, the author aims to emphasize the inadequacy of describing motion capture as a collaborative process and to call for a reconceptualization of the critical approaches towards its study.

Uploading the Archive, Copy/Pasting the “Classical”

“…Following Mihaela Mihailova, this archive-informed style of production should raise "concerns about the gendering of digital labour along familiar patriarchal power structures," such that, "as novel and exciting as creative possibilities opened up by digital technologies may be, they continue to be shaped by sexism and capitalist exploitation." 7 With this in mind, the co-opted voices of Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, Kim Novak, and even the racialised Alec Guinness, as Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962), echo across the robots' repetitions as a gendered, racialised, and capitalist appropriations. This narrow archive also communicates compulsory heterosexuality, transposing sexist film grammars, including the male gaze and objectifying fragmentation of female-presenting bodies, into the imagined future.…”

Virtual Production and the Transformation of Cameras Mechanical, Virtual, and Actual

“…Usually, these descriptions give little thought to the intervention of anything or anyone other than the performers. As Mihaela Mihailova (2016: 43) summarizes, then, motion capture has often been grossly oversimplified, to the point of presenting it as a ‘technological miracle capable of directly translating an actor’s performance into a digital creature, as if by magic’.…”

Introduction: “Fully Nonlinear”

“…Nonlinear animation might seem to be furthering the trend of obfuscating the work of animation workers (especially international ones) behind seemingly automated technologies, much the way depictions of performance capture elide the work of animators. 19 Focusing on the technical work integrated into production helps to reveal this labor though. Indeed, it may even help reveal some of the labor obfuscated by performance capture.…”