Contemporary cinema always aims to capture the viewer, engage with them on either an intellectual level or an emotional one and aim to take them on a journey that leaves them in awe and wanting more. Many films considered “The Greatest of All Time” are powerful pieces of work that either capture the viewer on a level that aims to entertain, as well as aim to engage with the audience on an intellectual level. Films such as “The Shawshank Redemption”, “The Godfather” and “Citizen Kane” blend two things that are the core essential to contemporary cinema: The Spectacle and The Story.
The Spectacle is one of the main ways in which to capture the attention of an audience. The aim is to visually entertain them, if the film is lacking in an engaging storyline, visual elements can be used to keep the audience’s attention. “During the early years of cinema, its status as an attraction rather than an art form meant that the presence of commercial advertising was irrelevant to a public eager to see the moving image in its own right. (Gurevitch, 2010). This show that during the early years of cinema, due to the development of new technologies, the aim of going to the cinema was to be visually entertained. This made the prospect of going to the cinema become an ‘experience’ and how “The process of experiencing the attraction was a publicity generating event in which early film viewers queued, as much to participate in a shared, much talked about and publicized experience as to see specific films.” (Gurevitch, 2010). Gurevitch goes on to say that “spectacle, in all its many forms, has long been the means through which Hollywood advertised itself to its spectators before, during, and after the cinematic experience itself.” (Gurevitch, 2010). This shows that the main core of Hollywood cinema is the visual element, aiming to capture your attention and keep you visually entertained for approximately two hours and appreciate the film due to its technical abilities of capturing and editing a visual piece of art.
As the visual element of cinema was present before the arrival of sound, the visual element remains a key factor in creating a spectacle. Even in the present day, with the advancement of digital technology, the audience expects a high form of visual entertainment. With the ability to create a variety of images and scenes through computer technology, “film makers construct set piece special effects sequences that can operate as digital attractions across a range of platforms that ultimately promote the feature film itself.” (Gurevitch, 2010). This shows that a general population seek a form of escapism and now film-makers have a dedication to create what is now seen as realism. “It seems that the aim toward grandeur and scale goes hand in hand with the desire to achieve the maximum level of “realism” possible.” (Gurevitch, 2010).
For example the film Gladiator had to digitally reconstruct the famous Coliseum to allow the audience to fully engage in the story that the action in the film was indeed taking place in Ancient Rome. This shows that for period films such as Gladiator, Titanic and Troy the use of computer generated images (CGI) is now a key element in modern cinema to induce a greater sense of realism, as this seems to be the only way for a contemporary audience to fully engage with the film. It is now see that “the computer-generated (CG) attraction is the audiovisual form both promoted by and promoting whatever textual form it is embedded within.” (Gurevitch, 2010). Ever since the digital reconstruction of Titanic in the film of the same name, CGI has become a key element of cinema in restoring ancient wonders and locations to create a more realistic sense of the period in which the film is being set.
Now with the addition of High Definition (HD) and 3D technology, the visual element is now seen to be a solid necessity in a ‘blockbuster’ movie. Looking at the film Avatar, the use of computer technology allowed the ability of a complete virtual world to be created and for visual elements to captivate the audience, allowing the audience that escapism that is the key ingredient to contemporary cinema. Ever since its release back in 2009, cinema goers have now expected a visual stimulus of this high calibre. The release of Avatar was played upon the fact that it would be in 3D and also would show off the latest in computer technology. It now appears that “CGI acts as a kind of sales pitch, “selling” the diegesis of the film to the audience and securing their attention for the rest of the film.” (Gurevitch, 2010).
This shows that now in modern day cinema that “cyber-phobic films overstress the power of the visual in their reliance on digital technology to produce spectacle at the expense of narrative” (McQuire, 2000). The narrative is often now overlooked within the eyes of modern contemporary cinema, as the narrative is not the way to create a spectacle which captures the attention of the modern day audience. McQuire goes on to say that “Spectacle’, it seems, is winning the war against ‘narrative’ all along the line. Even a brief statistical analysis reveals that ’special effects’ driven films have enjoyed enormous recent success, garnering an average of over 60 per cent of the global revenue taken by the top 10 films from 1995-1998, compared to an average of 30 per cent over the previous four years.” (McQuire, 2000). But let us not forget that the narrative in cinema has a powerful effect on the popularity of movies. It is through memorable quotes and dialogue that a film is remembered as the purpose of dialogue is to emotionally connect with the viewer; whether it is to make them laugh, make them cry or make them scream.
When sound was first introduced, “the arrival of narrative form marked the end of overt forms of the cinema of attractions…it did not disappear altogether; it merely went underground…” (Gurevitch, 2010). This means that the early visual reasoning for going to the cinema became secondary, as viewers could be taken on an emotional journey as now the audience could fully engage with a character. With the addition of sound, dialogue was able to be created, which meant that characters could have an emotional drive to do the things they did in movies, emotionally connecting with the audience. This is how memorable dialogue and quotes were able to be created. Now in cinema, films with dialogue are created for a specific genre of film, usually drama or romance as the dialogue created is targeted to create an emotional response within the audience, which creates sympathy for the character, an example being the final major scene in Jerry Maguire.
Few histories fully address the question of why narrative became the driving force of cinema and whether this may itself be subject to change. (McQuire, 2000). From what has been shown, it appears that the future of cinema is the domination of the spectacle. McQuire goes on to state that “the decay of familiar narrative and performance values in favour of the qualities of the blockbuster’.” (McQuire, 2000). However the narrative is not lost. In the cinematic spectacle, audio is now proving to be a vital element in adding a form of narrative as the soundtrack of a film helps convey to the viewer the mood of the story and may aim to engage the emotions within the viewer. “The enhanced role of sound in cinema is even more marked for large format films which, because of their high level of visual detail, demand a correspondingly high level of audio detail.” (McQuire, 2000). An example is the final scene of The Shawshank Redemption, in which the score adds to the emotional power of the narration to emotionally capture the audience.
To conclude, “theatrical display dominates over narrative absorption, emphasizing the direct stimulation of shock or surprise at the expense of unfolding a story or creating a diegetic universe.” (Gunning, 1994). With computer technology being such a driving factor behind modern day cinema, it is hard to negotiate away from creating a visual spectacle in order to engage an audience. Narratives and a good script can be seen, but it is more dominant in genres such as romance, musical scoring being the new age form of narrative, adding a layer to the visual element to create an overpowering experience for the viewer. McQuire talks of “a visible sign of this shift is the new role which computer generated special effects have come to play in the Hollywood industry in the last few years. Many recent blockbusters have been driven by special effects; feeding on their popularity” (McQuire, 2000). This is true since the success of Toy Story, as from there Hollywood found that there was a market to be discovered with creating full CGI animated films, which then led to creating movies that were surrounded by CGI in order to create a true spectacle. Finally, “the transition to digital imaging marks a new moment in which processes of imaging across all platforms and processes of promotion are both practically and discursively less determinate than they previously had been.” (Gurevitch, 2010), which shows that the power of the visual spectacle is a force to be reckoned with for all ages and will continue to be for a long time.
REFERENCES
GUNNING, T., 1994. The cinema of attractions: Early film, its spectator and the avant-garde. In Early cinema: Space, film, narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser, 56–62. London: BFI.
GUREVITCH, L., 2010. The Cinemas of Transactions: The Exchangeable Currency of the Digital Attraction. Television & New Media,11(5), pp. 367-385.
MCQUIRE, S., 2000. Impact Aesthetics: Back to the Future in Digital Cinema?: Millennial fantasies. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 6(2), pp. 41-61
