The Impact of Digitalization on Cinematic Aesthetics and The 'Spectrum of Cultural Representations': The Case of Hong Kong.

摘要

Cinema, as a complex social and cultural phenomenon, has been recently challenged by digital media cultures and aesthetics since the 1990s. In this study, Hong Kong cinematic productions, blending the West and the East, and flexibly manoeuvring production and post-production with limited resources, are used to demonstrate the advent of new digital cinematic aesthetics and productions in the era of globalization and digitalization. The production culture and aesthetics of local cinema has been, to a great extent, internally modified by the impacts of digital media cultures and technologies, especially digital effects and computer animation of unprecedented imaginary spaces and perspectives for creative productions. The increasing complexity of digital cinematic productions and the rapidly changing cultural production systems bring in newcomers of alternative modes/choices of thoughts and interpretations, thus facilitating production/product differentiation and de-differentiation to cater for the increasing and changing demands of active audiences. The vigorous struggle for cultural representations in digital cinematic aesthetics by producers and consumers of disparate repertoires is the focus of analysis in this research. Empirical evidences suggest a new paradigmatic model to study cultural representations of digital cinematic aesthetics within contemporary creative systems of production and consumption.;This study is a multidimensional investigation of the moments of creativity and struggles over organization cultures and representational practices by both cultural producers and audiences. There are case studies of the general trend of digital cinematic productions in Hollywood and the specific development of digital cinema in Hong Kong, as well as in China. From these empirical analyses, ten new characteristics of digital cinematic aesthetics are generalized. They include (l) amplification, (2) free referencing, (3) seamlessness and believability, (4) multiple-layered composition, (5) patterning, (6) imaginary perspectives, (7) collective imaginative inputs, (8) cross-fertilization with comic, (9) cross-fertilization with video game, and (10) cross-cultural, cross-historical, cross-genre production. Such inductive findings are also deployed to study the social functions of both producers and audiences in the meaning construction of digital cinematic aesthetics and productions within the dynamics of digitalization and globalization. Eighteen in-depth interviews of production insiders, five focus groups of disparate generations of movie audiences and amateurs, and eleven case studies of Hong Kong digital cinematic productions have been examined. The empirical validity about the ten new forms of digital cinematic aesthetics and their production and consumption is investigated, and also achieved by intensive and interactive case studies, production studies and audience studies, combining textual and discourse analyses and production and reception analyses.;The findings generally support the advent of the ten new aesthetics of digital cinema as a global trend as well as a new glocalism in the Hong Kong cases. While most interviewed producers and audiences articulate the new characteristics of digital cinematic aesthetics, many audiences show disjunctive judgments toward those local filmmakers' treatments to cross-fertilize video game with their cinematic productions. This reveals the inevitability of internal modifications of organization cultures and representational practices to create new digital cinematic aesthetics and productions within new dynamics of digital media cultures and technologies in the fast changing media ecology. Hong Kong filmmakers and computer animators show their strength and flexibility to glocalize digital cinematic aesthetics and productions by integrating digital visual effects with local film and production cultures, especially in comedic and martial arts cinematic productions. However, it seems that there are larger discrepancies concerning the tastes and aesthetic judgments toward cultural representations in digital cinematic aesthetics by cross-fertilization with video game between general audiences and professionals. This study reflects that the rigid, director-oriented Hong Kong film production system is too demanding on the film director's independent ability of coordination and greatly influences the development of cultural representations in digital cinema by collective imaginative inputs of increasing complexity and flexibility. Producers and consumers of disparate repertoires of cultural practices contribute to the meaning construction of multiple layers of digital effects and computer animation by systematic coordination and collaboration. In other words, the "spectrum of cultural representations", as a framework, helps us understand the complexity and creativity of the new digital cinematic aesthetics from production to consumption practices.