Stuart Bender

Blood in the Corridor: The Digital Mastery of Hero Run Shoot-outs in Kick-Ass and Wanted

ABSTRACT: This article examines the significance of the digital aesthetic of violence in the uniquely contemporary action-film “hero run” shoot-out sequences. By using the case studies of Kick-Ass (2010) and Wanted (2008), the article focuses on how the particular stylistic tendencies of these sequences display a link between the onscreen, digital-enabled mastery of the shooter with the offscreen digital mastery of the visual-effects artist.

Headset attentional synchrony: tracking the gaze of viewers watching narrative virtual reality

ABSTRACT Eyetracking studies of traditional movies have shown that although viewers are free to look at any part of a film or television clip, the gaze behaviours of viewers predominantly cluster around predictable features. This phenomenon is called attentional synchrony. Virtual Reality (VR) hype promises viewers to choose their own viewpoint on scenes regardless of directorial intention. This article is the first scholarly work to examine attentional synchrony in the so-called Cinematic VR. The study uses a hybrid creative-practice research model to test the extent to which attentional synchrony is achieved in two VR productions. The videos present the same dramatic narrative from two optical and narrative viewpoints: a ‘first person’ point of view and a ‘third person’ perspective. After testing on audiences using VR headsets, the results of the research show that attentional synchrony was achieved in both productions. The result is slightly stronger in the first person point of view production, and the expected difficulty of the increased editing pace in the third person point of view did not result in substantially lower levels of attentional synchrony. The article discusses practical and theoretical considerations of editing 360-degree VR in order to synthesise industry heuristics with testable hypotheses.

They Shoot Pixels Don’t They? Killing Pixels from Patriot Games to Collateral Murder and Call of Duty

This chapter uses two case studies to explore the impact of digital images in which pixelation inhibits clear viewing of the violence depicted. First, WikiLeaks release of Collateral Murder (2010), actual US Apache helicopter gun camera footage in Iraq in which the crew attack civilians, is compared with the fictional depiction of virtualized combat in the satellite sequence from Hollywood spy-thriller Patriot Games (1992). Second, videogames—including Call of Duty and Spec Ops: The Line—are examined as interactive fictional texts that function to defamiliarize audience understanding of remote warfare. The chapter argues that rather than creating a desensitized and entertaining experience of killing, the low-grade imagery of these texts has a strong impact on the audience’s cognitive and ethical engagement with the material.

Rethinking the Aesthetics of Terror Videos

The violent propaganda videos released by Islamic State (IS) in 2014 were framed by many news outlets as having a ‘Hollywood’ slick aesthetic. This chapter demonstrates that such media framing is false: Although the material is of higher aesthetic quality than earlier terror videos, it simply does not resemble blockbuster production values in any meaningful way. It is argued that audiences are so accustomed to the poor image aesthetic in representations of real-world violence that when these expectations were abruptly challenged by slightly more ‘professional’ videos produced by IS, the quality was taken to be unreasonably significant. The misleading framing is dangerous as it intensifies the cultural impact of the videos by invoking ‘clash of civilizations’ view that has dominated the Western perception of IS.

Splats and Splashes: The Drone Warfare Genre and Digitally Mediated Trauma

The drone warfare genre has emerged as a significant new type of combat film which depicts military killing by remote-controlled Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The chapter uses Good Kill, Eye in the Sky, and Five Thousand Feet is the Best as case studies to explore how the mediated image of UAV combat is depicted in this genre. It is shown that the genre tends to depict pilot trauma as a key component of the narrative. One of the sources for potential trauma is identified as related to the mediated images of violence to which the operators are persistently exposed. Thus, these films depict fictional dramatic scenarios as a means to engage with the ethical and legal debates of drone warfare currently circulating in the culture.

Performing Murder on Live Television and Social Media

Social media video streaming and cheap digital technologies enable what Raymond Surette calls ‘performance crimes’ which, linked to Majid Yar’s account of the ‘will-to-representation’, involve people conducting criminal acts simultaneously with the purpose of recording and sharing video of themselves in the process. This chapter addresses the impact of the typically low-grade aesthetic inherent to this material. This primary case study is the murder video created by Vester Lee Flanagan in 2015 when he shot two reporters during a live television broadcast, simultaneously recorded by his cell-phone camera and uploaded to social media. It is argued that the poor quality of the imagery is emphasized by the often amateur video skills of the criminal; thus, the degraded aesthetic adds to the expressive effect of the material.

The Aesthetics of Sousveillance: Redacted (2007)

Brian de Palma’s Iraq war film Redacted (2007) represents a found footage depiction of rape and murder in war and relies significantly upon an extremely degraded visual style to enhance its affective impact. This chapter shows how the film uses poor image media as integral components of its formal strategy to depict the aesthetic of sousveillance—or ‘surveillance from below.’ The argument draws upon a cognitivist account of spectators’ cerebral responses to defamiliarizing scenes of extreme violence to account for the way in which the film encourages the audience to continue viewing the violence whilst simultaneously being repulsed and ethically engaged. Thus, the chapter demonstrates how difficult it is to apprehend aspects of low-grade real-life imagery can be adopted by Hollywood for creative poetic purposes.

The Digital Aesthetic of Violence: Introducing the Special Issue

This special issue presents five scholarly perspectives on the aesthetic of digital violence in contemporary media. Why dedicate study to the purely aesthetic properties of violence, and why the specifically digital character of this? after all, as William Brown notes: “it is no doubt beneficial for academia to respond only slowly to new developments in any field; it is important properly to perceive whether or not the changes wrought by computers on cinema are real or simply media-inspired fads” (Brown 226). however, we should recall David Bordwell’s indication that there are some quite subtle influences on media aesthetics from the digitalization of editing, which enables the editor to work quicker and thus enables frames to be “shaved” much more easily (see Bordwell, “intensified continuity”). in addition, it is worth recalling that the earliest digital manipulation of film is the cyborg vision in Westworld (Dir. Michael crichton, 1973) as Yul Brynner’s psychotic cowboy hunts for prey (see prince). Thus, digitally manipulated images have their origin in images of violence. it is also possible, as some of the articles presented here show, to identify some very specific alternatives to photorealistic representation that are afforded to contemporary cinema thanks to digital tools. against this background we believe that it is significant to consider the impact of digital technologies on the production and post-production practices and aesthetics of violent narrative media. certainly, on the one hand it may seem to be a purely academic question in our contemporary context where popular attention to violence is often focused on whether or not our media is too violent, or whether the Mpaa ratings board is too permissive on violence in contrast to its strict position on sex. But on the other hand, such arguments ought to be grounded in understandings of the actual appearance and depiction of violence. Therefore, we want this issue to critically engage with the aesthetic patterns of violence in popular media. The intenBy Stuart Bender and Lorrie Palmer