Biological Body vs Screen Body – The Dynamics of Tensions in Special Effects Cinema

Jan Stasieńko

kwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
DSW University of Lower Silesia (Poland)

Abstract

From its very beginnings trick cinema permitted the modifications of the human (and non-human) body and expand its range of properties. That which in the final film image became the body of superhuman heroes, the hybrid of human and inhuman elements, the multiplied body as well as the mutilated body, was in the cinema of the past and in its modern digital practice a construction of complex technical and biological apparatuses in which the bodies of actors and other living creatures taking part in the rea- lization of the film were subjected to various reconfiguration, the absorption of virtual elements, and a kind of pressure and tension. These tensions required biological bodies and their agents to adapt to the camera, develop negotiation techniques, and sometimes involved a variety of constraints, and even suffering. The dialectic of the screen and biological body is presented in the article in the historical per­spective, with particular focus on the cinema of modern digital effects. Stasieńko discusses selected imaging techniques that reveal the tension between technology and the body, such as selected prosthetics and characterization, actor immobilisation technologies, alternative models of creating the bodies on screen (virtual and biological equivalents).


Keywords:

body, special effects, technology

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Published
2017-09-30

Cited by

Stasieńko, J. (2017) “Biological Body vs Screen Body – The Dynamics of Tensions in Special Effects Cinema”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (99), pp. 143–160. doi: 10.36744/kf.2043.

Authors

Jan Stasieńko 
kwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
DSW University of Lower Silesia Poland

Profesor w Dolnośląskiej Szkole Wyższej we Wrocławiu, kierownik Centrum Badawczo-Projektowego Gier i Animacji „Digital Masters”. Jest autorem książek Alien vs. Predator? Gry kompu­terowe a badania literackie (2005) oraz Niematerialne Galatee w wehikułach rozkoszy i bólu. Technologie mediów jako aparaty kreowania posthumanistycznej intymności (2015). Jest członkiem sieci naukowej Beyond Humanism Net i Polskiego Towarzystwa Ba­dania Gier. W pracy naukowej koncentruje się na posthumanistycznych kontekstach technologii medial­nych, narracyjnych oraz na edukacyjnych aspektach gier wideo, historii i antropologii nowych mediów, w tym efektów specjalnych.



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