Film History (2012) - Analog Circuit Palettes, Cathode Ray Canvases: Digital's Analog, Experimental Past
Details
- article: Analog Circuit Palettes, Cathode Ray Canvases: Digital's Analog, Experimental Past
- author(s): Gregory Zinman
- journal: Film History (2012)
- issue: volume 24, issue 2, pages 135-157
- journal ISSN: 0892-2160
- publisher: Indiana University Press
- keywords: "Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic" - by Dan Auiler, Alfred Hitchcock, Analog to digital converters, Artists, Avant-garde, Cathode ray oscilloscope, Chicago, Illinois, Computer film, Dan Auiler, Digital cinematography, Digital video, Filmmakers, Forecasts and trends, Georges Braque, Innovations, John and James Whitney, John Whitney, Sr., Lewis Jacobs, London Film Society, Mary Ellen Bute, Motion pictures, Nam June Paik, New York City, New York, Norman McLaren, Painting, Paul Thomas, San Francisco, California, Saul Bass, Scott Bartlett, Vertigo (1958), Works
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Abstract
This paper contends that the development of digital filmmaking can, in part, be traced back to the efforts of experimental filmmakers seeking to make abstractions in time. In other words, the advent of computer-generated and computer-assisted filmmaking occurred via analog means, beginning in the early 1950s, in the oscilloscope films of Mary Ellen Bute. These ideas were expanded and refined by John Whitney in his work on the title sequence for Hitchcock's Vertigo. Whitney continued to develop analog computer technologies to make wonderfully rigorous and colorful non-objective films, as did the first generation of video artists, who developed artisanal analog devices to create new ways of synthesizing imagery.