Vanishing Point: Spatial Composition and the Virtual Camera

Abstract

This article examines new aesthetic modes of cinematic space. Specifically, the author examines the 'virtual camera' (in practical and technical terms derived from animation born of computer-generated 3D graphics, layer-based motion graphics and most distinctly from computer and video gaming) as a construct for spatial composition, scenic depiction and viewer immersion that possesses distinct and unique qualities of engagement. The article argues that under the influence of the virtual camera, both a hybridized and re-mediated means of moving-image acquisition, cinema aesthetics are shifting; from the duopoly of composition in the frame and the staging for the camera, to a new mode entailing a composition of space and a staging of the camera. This article also examines the virtual camera in the framework of three key, oppositional, cinematic animation and narrative concepts -diegetic positioning; mediated and unmediated engagement; and diegesis and mimesis in narrative and perspective condition. This examination also scrutinizes the impact of the virtual camera on the production process and conceptual assembly of cinematic media.

The Afterlife as Emotional Utopia in Coco

“…Mike Jones (2007: 237), in his work on the concept of the ‘virtual camera’ in animation, sets out the idea of mediated and unmediated viewing. The physical camera used in live-action filmmaking can never fully escape its role as mediator between viewer and film due to its mechanical nature.…”

Seasons change, so do we

“…The functional shift of the camera eye can be termed a 'mise-en-space' (Jones, 2007: 227) in order to distinguish it from the traditional cinematic art of mise-en-scène. As a result of this shift, the camera evolves from being a creative element to a primal tool of creativity itself (Jones, 2007). With the interactive virtual camera, framing is no longer delegated to an authorised alliance of operator and apparatus.…”

Massive movie waves and the anthropic ocean

“…After the first appearance of a shark, Brinkema writes: a wave flows over the camera lens, and the film for the first time since the couple has risen to the surface dips below the level of the water … Although an ontological break in the sea surface line has been signaled in the appearance of the fin that rips through it, the breach's more radical form involves the camera dipping underwater in an unattributable shot, an image completely delinked from even an approximation of a character's (limited, partial) vision. (Brinkema, 2014: 228) Though abundantly more chaotic in form, in the 2015 disaster film San Andreas, which features an immense wave coming to wipe out much of California, we have a similar moment when the wave, arriving into San Francisco's Chinatown with a large cruise ship on its crest, plunges the 'camera' underwater (see Figure 6, which offers a street-level view at the moment just before the audience's vantage point is pushed underwater) (and see Jones, 2007;Pierson, 2015). 8 Though there is a fantastical perceptual realism at play here, it is clear that we have left the analogical or indexical promise of old-fashioned film.…”