| Following up on Lev Manovich's excellent question "what is digital cinema?" this thesis examines how the ontology of motion pictures and our relationship to them change after digitization. It posits that digital cinema is a hybrid of animation and live-action film, anticipated by the unique technology of the rotoscope, and continued with contemporary motion capture technologies. Using The Polar Express (2004) as an exemplary digital film, it demonstrates that film critics consensually characterise such films as eerie, strange, or uncanny. It attempts to explain this uncanniness, in part, using medium theory to dichotomize animation and live-action as handmade and automated techniques, respectively. It is hoped this can supplement existing groundwork to better characterise the changing nature of motion pictures in the digital era. |
