The impact of digital technologies on the production and consumption of moving images  2007-2016
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2. Emerging technologies in industry prior to research period (before 2007)


I had worked in black and white analogue 625 line video in 1976, then PAL colour video in 1979 and in 1982 started working with NTSC analogue video (525 lines). By 1986 I was regularly working in drama on first Beta SP and then DigiBeta. I had worked with early forms of high definition from 1992 and when Sony HD came along and later became Cine Alta shot test projects on that system (this was a modified DigiBeta SP unit where sensitivity had been swapped for resolution in computing terms). But I also worked on Panasonic’s 1280 line Varicam system (A Soldiers Tunic 2004 which was very sensitive in terms of low light – I actually lit a scene with one candle). Initially it was believed that online delivery systems would not support resolutions of above 720 x 1280 pixels due to the amount of data to be transmitted being limited. In fact in the USA HD was actually set for a while at 1280 pixels. However, early experiments were also going on in the USA with the newly formed Red company 4k camera (3840 x 2160 pixels) and I was in discussion with the people who were testing the new cameras (I later interviewed some of these for my online resources on the subject of HD – i.e. David Stump ASC from the AMPAS Sci-Tech Committee and SFX on X Men and Scott Billups, Cinematographer for David Lynch on ‘Inland Empire’: http://www.visualfields.co.uk/vhstumpbillups1.htm)
 
So by 2006 ‘standard definition’ television (720 x 576) was captured at 4 times less resolution than current high definition television (1920 x 1080 pixels). Through initial increases in higher resolution (HR) and gains in higher dynamic range (HDR) & higher frame rates (HFR), these three parameters grouped together provided a way of conceptualising the idea of a ‘container’ of components. This exemplified a critical phase in the transition from photo-chemical (via analogue video and digital video) to contemporary data cinematography. With the commercial availability of the ‘Red One’ camera in 2007, (4096 x 2160), and by late 2016 with Dolby Industries’ introduction of consumer HDR technology, data cinematography is now the primary form of the capture and display of contemporary cinema and television. I wrote about this in Industry Articles at the time (Lighting the Jacobean Theatre) and various presentations I made such as at the National Film Theatre in 2006.
 
It is important to recognise that within both industry and academia between the beginning of HD with Philips analogue Mac 1250 line system in 1989 and especially between the early 2000’s and the arrival of the Red One in 2007 there was much confusion as to what technical terms meant to the average television person and academic - with people who were trained in film having very little idea of the meaning of the terms such that they relied on video people for information even when they were in charge of shooting a Hollywood movie electronically (such as Zodiak 2007 - see American Cinematographer article where Savides admits relying on his Digital Intermediate Technician for information on how to shoot the movie). The reader should try to remember the use of a dial-up modem when trying to get on to the internet until quite recently and transpose that experience of waiting onto the actuality of digital video and television production at the beginning of the research period. I have had conversations with leading DP’s of the time who have spoken to me of their ignorance of any medium outside of film at the time. Film requires a radically different mindset and the unprepared film experienced cinematographer would have had problems successfully capturing Digital Cinematographic images without outside guidance. By 2017 this had radically changed due to the industry forcefully converting to Data production as the hey way forwards. Much of what I shall reveal about my research requires that constant memory of how basic the technology was when first encountering the rapid and almost monthly rdevelopments that I shall discuss. My claim to originality in my research in the presentation of new knowledge is situated within a new technological era where only standard definition images were available and my research informed the flow of dependable information.

  • For example in HD there was an interchangeable use of the two terms ‘1080p’ and ‘1080i’ – yet as is now more commonly known 1080p represents 1080 pixels delivered as a complete frame (the ‘p’ representing a reference to progressive – a definition referring to a frame of data replacing a frame in film). 1080i however represents 540 pixels because though both P and I might have 25 frames, say, in ‘I’ or interlace, those 25 frames only represent half the lines acquired in a progressive system of the same frame rate. The progressive image is constituted with 2.07 million pixels – the interlaced image with 1.03 million pixels – which is less than half of the progressive – yet in 2007 people used the terms interchangeably.
  • Another example would be the common use of ‘8 bit colour’ that might be ok for the parameters of standard definition (720 by 586 pixels) but certainly not with High Definition. The reason would be that in HD 8 bit colour creates a banding effect far more noticeable when scrutinized in a higher resolution (4 times the amount). For instance, a blue sky would be ok in standard definition but in high definition would be displayed with discrete colouration in bands across the screen) – yet the term ‘8 bit colour’ was clumsily used by all and sundry in HD. The base line today is 10 bit but shall be frist 12 then 14 bit in the next 5 years as we move towards full implementation of 4k images (4 times the resolution of HD at 3840 x 2160) in both capture and display (These terms simply speak about the veracity of reproduction of colour.
  • In 2007 Images obtained via ‘GoP’ structured compression’ were considered a  form of HD. Unlike film or Progressive electronic cinema images where every frame is a discrete image capture, ‘GoP’ (or Group of Picture Structures) create frames from the surrounding frames. Often 1 in every 7 or even as many as I in every 15 may be actual frames – the rest may be made up from the data of surrounding frames. The upshot technically is that motion becomes blurred and colours bleed beyond the boundaries of discrete objects.
 
In all the above the reader should also be aware that terms like HD and 2k are still often used in an interchangeable fashion but mean something different: HD is 1920 x 1080 pixels whereas Cinema 2k is 2048 x 1080. They are both called 2k by some, because they are both close to 2000 pixels wide. Alternatively 4k being 4 times the resolution of HD (or a doubling of the numbers involved) to 3840 x 2160 and also the cinematic version of 4096 x 2160.
 
My attitude as a practitioner/researcher
Since the beginning of my research I have tried to explore the space between experimental and industrial practices where both have co-informed one another. That consideration predicates a deep commitment to reconciling the individual specificities and affordances of craft, art and innovation and how their respective histories have intersected. These considerations can be framed by the idea of ‘technicity’, which proposes that not only do we invent tools to further our own purposes but that the tool itself epigenetically affects our cognitive and physical development. Similarly the practice as research proposition of creating experimental research artefacts might then affect the outcomes of that research in a way that standard research would not. At one point (2011/2012) my research path took me towards the more positivist ideological standpoint of Bristol Vision Institute (BVI) that argued that different disciplines which studied an individual subject area (such as vision) could contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how to manufacture an improved moving image experience if then augmented with those insights provided by those garnered in signal processing or experimental psychology. Though this sounds like an improvement on the ‘how’ of the research, from an arts perspective this lacks an interrogation of ‘why’? As an artist working between experimental and industrial practices I have been concerned with providing that additional perspective which as I will demonstrate then augmented BVI’s position with my formulation of Immersive Learning Environments (ILE’s) which brought people of different knowledge levels in the same subject area into meaningful exchange of information.
 
Themes within the canon prior to my research
As with every subject area the accepted canon of academic thinking with regard the emergence of digital media at the time of writing can be summed up from my précis of that thinking within my application for an AHRC fellowship (pitched in 2006):
 
“We are yet again at the beginning of a sea change in our imaging technologies. This technological moment thus connects us with the revival of Gunning’s ‘cinema of attractions’ as a model for understanding cinema. This implication leads us into a second contextual field of theoretical research which takes Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction as a starting point and develops through McLuhan’s Understanding Media to a series of key works such as Jonathan Crary (1990) Techniques of the Observer, Lev Manovich (2001) The Language of New Media, Bolter J and Grusin R (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media, and Brian Winston’s (1998) Media, Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. Here research questions focus on the historic claims to realism (and now hyperrealism) connected to each new wave of imaging technology and to how these claims relate to the ownership and dissemination of technologies”.
 
Research Questions
Throughout my work I have addressed three principal questions that have informed my formulation of a Research Framework:

  • how is the human need to make marks to convey meaning ‘translated’ in its passage through different media?
  • how are newly emerging media affected by the thinking that has presided over the medium that precedes them? (e.g. how still-life painting affected the first uses of photography)
  • how do technological innovations affect the production of cultural forms?
 
The primary investigative procedures of my four research portfolios emerged between 2007 and 2010 as a response the trajectory of an AHRC Creative Research Fellowship awarded to myself to take place at the University of Bristol, whilst situated in the Department of Drama, Film and Television as a Senior Research Fellow.
 

Moving Image Arts Research is concerned with exploring the histories, theories, technologies, cultures and politics of moving image art production, interaction and reception.
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​small experiments in connectivity and how drama or documentary might be enabled