1. Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle

2. A Brief Summary Introduction: Reconfiguring Cinema and the Spectator Chapter 1 Looking Beyond the Gaze: The Place, Body and Context of Spectatorship Chapter 2 - Exhibiting an Immersive Spectacle: Exploiting the Dimensions of the Spectator and the Cinema Chapter 3 - An Imperfect Aesthetic: From the Look and Distance of Film to the Touch and Smell of Nostalgia Conclusion: Ways of Being in the Cinema 3. Rationale for the Project Its deals with a current issue. It will provide an examination of the current technological shifts and why cinematic exhibition is becoming more of an immersive experience. As well as clarifying the position of spectatorship amongst these changing trends. 4. Research Methods My primary form of research is Non-empirical. Pre-Christmas research was focused on sourcing academic books and articles; as well as assessing their suitability. I loaned my books out over the Christmas holiday and worked my way through them. While my academic sources are good at supplying me with the specifics of film theory, they rarely supply me with specific information in regards to the actualities of immersive cinema or definitions of the technical jargon. Therefore, I also used my Christmas holiday to research and collect together online resources. These have gone a long way in building on my original concept for this topic. Doug Trumbull a major component of my dissertation as has been a champion and innovator of hypercinema for the past forty years. 15 Academic books 12 Academic Articles 160 Online Resources Articles Essays Video essays Interviews (text, video and podcast) Technical specifications Statistical information User testimonials Diagrams Neuroscience data 5. Research Methods Ive also managed to do some Empirical research. As Im dealing with a topic which is about the spectator having an immersive engagement with the cinema, I felt it made sense for me to do just that. I feel by doing this I will give my dissertation another layer of knowledge and engagement. Ive watched The Hobbit in three different immersive formats: IMAX 3D HFR 3D D-BOX 3D (4D) - Life of Pi in Dolby Atmos. - Ive drawing on all the observations Ive made on public film exhibition and the experience Ive had of it. 6. Indicative Bibliography Allen, R. (1997) Projecting Illusion: Film Spectatorship and the Impression of Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allen, R. C. Maltby, R. Stokes, M. (2008) Going to the Movies: Hollywood and The Social Experience of Cinema. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Balcerak, S. and Sperb, J. ed. (2009) Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction, Vol. 1: Film, Pleasure and Digital Culture. London: Wallflower Press. Balcerak, S. and Sperb, J. ed. (2012) Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction, Vol. 2: Film, Pleasure, and Digital Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Berenstein, R. J. Clover, C. J. Crary, J. Friedberg, A. Gunning, T. Hansen, M. Mayne, J. Schwartz, V. R. Sobchack, V. C. Williams, L. (1994) Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin. Elsaesser, T. and Hagener, M. (2012) Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses. New York: Routledge Gregory, R. L. (1998) Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jancovich, M., Faire, L., Stubbings, S. (2003) The Place of the Audience. London: British Film Institute. Kermode, M. (2012) The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex. London: Random House Books. Klinger, B. (2006) Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and The Home. Berkeley: University of California Press. McGowan, T. (2007) The Real Gaze: Film Theory after Lacan. New York: State University of New York Press, Albany. Rombes, N. (2012) Cinema in the Digital Age. New York: Columbia University Press. Sobchack, V.C. (1992) The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Staiger, J. (2000) Perverse Spectator: The Practices of Film Reception. New York: New York University Press. 7. Three Key Texts The Place of the Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption by Mark Jancovich and Lucy Faire with Sarah Stubbs Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies and the Home by Barbara Klinger Projecting Illusion: Film Spectatorship and the Impression of Reality by Richard Allen 8. The Place of the Audience An examination of the social experience of film viewership. It demonstrates how the cultural and geographical contexts inform this experience by focusing on localised examples of film consumption. It argues that the exclusion of these is hugely detrimental to a thorough understanding of spectatorship. How the larger context of a localised film culture would go on to influence a spectators experience of a film text. 9. Beyond the Multiplex While dealing with theatrical modes, the book is primarily focused on spectatorship and film cultures centred around home film viewership and how these inform film spectatorship. This is The Place of the Audience but applied to the home cinema, opposed to the public cinema. It looks at the concepts of the home cinema, film collecting, repeat viewings, viewing classical and silent films, DVD/Blu-ray menus and special features and asks how these variables impact on our understanding of film texts and spectatorship. It provides me with a highly detailed comparison to the public exhibition of immersive cinema and illuminates what the home cinema cant offer in terms of hypercinematic filmic experience. 10. Projecting Illusion The book revises established film theory and, by re- examining the philosophy behind it, asks us to re-think and clarify what we mean when we talk about cinema as providing an impression of reality. Contemporary film theorists argue that, for a number of reasons, the cinematic image appears to spectators as if it were reality, but this appearance is an illusion. In fact, the cinematic image provides an impression of reality; it is actually an image and not the reality it appears to be. In this way the spectators response to the cinematic image exemplifies the way in which ideology in general functions. Cinema is a form of signification that creates the appearance of a knowable reality and hence confirms the self-definition of the human subject as someone capable of knowing that reality (Allen 2:1997). 11. Working with Theory: Higher Frame Rates The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has been filmed in 48 frames per second, double the industry standard of 24 fps. It has been exhibited in both its original 48 fps version and In a post- converted traditional 24 fps version. Higher frame rates are something the industry is looking to introduce because they eliminate many of the problems associated with 24 fps, such as strobing, blurring, flickering and data loss, and higher frame rates are easily achieved with digital technology. The Hobbit is being treated as the industrys higher frame rate guinea pig. Peter Jackson has commented that 48 fps: will give you an immersive sense of reality, like taking the screen away and looking into a window into the real world. 12. The Hobbit Trailer at 48 fps 13. A Window Into Reality? Most researchers agree we perceive 40 conscious moments per second, In other words: our eyes see more than that but were only aware of 40. So if a frame rate hits or exceeds 40 fps, it looks to us like reality. Whereas if its significantly below that, like 24 fps or even 30 fps, theres a separation, theres a difference and we know immediately that what were watching is not real. (Kerwin 2012). 14. New Magic 15. If frame rates over 40 so directly mimic human visual perception does this mean cinema will stop being an impression and become more of a representation? The impression concept still holds pretty strong. Even if the cinematic image becomes indistinguishable from reality I think there are other variables beyond the gaze which inform the cinematic experience as being exactly that a cinematic experience. A higher frame rate film will not fool people into absolutely believing they have left the auditorium and are in reality. A higher frame rate does create a vastly different impression of reality, compared to the traditional cinematic crude impression that is achieved with 24 fps. Higher frame rates are only one of the components of hypercinema and a step towards a form of cinema that Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses defines as a: new way of knowing the world, also a new way of being in the world, and thus demanding from film theory, next to a new epistemology also a new ontology (Elsaesser et al. 2012:12). This is not the primary focus of my dissertation but it is does comprise one of its major questions: How do these new methods of filmmaking impact on traditional film form, film theory and film perception? The HFR Impression of Reality 16. Possible Overall Argument The different ways of being in the cinema and of experiencing a film text. As exemplified both through how the spectator absorbs and adds to that experience; as well as how the film presents itself to the audience through various types of formatted spectacle. Ultimately, my argument will go on to explore the emergence of the immersive hypercinematic exhibition complex and how its emergence is affecting established filmmaking practices, modes of film exhibition and spectatorship. This line of thought will then be developed to speculate what future awaits public cinematic exhibition. 17. Whats Next? Im going to write it. Ive reached the point where I need to start writing it in order to clarify all of these ideas I want to discuss. Ive already started writing Chapter 2. For me this is the heart of the dissertation. The I can move onto Chapters 1 and 3. Then my Introduction and Conclusion. My research is not complete! Not for a second do I think it is complete. Its only once I put my research into practice that Ill be able to determine where there are gaps in my understanding and where Ill need to do more research.