From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age

From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age uncovers the early history of cinema and computers and looks at how filmmakers first encountered the defining technology of the digital age. In this original study, author Andrew Utterson charts the beginnings of digital cinema, addressing both how filmmakers used new digital technologies and how attitudes and anxieties about the rise of the computer were represented in films such as Walter Lang's Desk Set, Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Michael Crichton's Westworld. At once both timely and historically-grounded, From IBM to MGM focuses on cinema's earliest encounters with computers, as filmmakers like John Whitney, Stan VanDerBeek and other pioneers responded to the flurry of digital devices that emerged in the post-war decades.

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From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age

From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age uncovers the early history of cinema and computers and looks at how filmmakers first encountered the defining technology of the digital age. In this original study, author Andrew Utterson charts the beginnings of digital cinema, addressing both how filmmakers used new digital technologies and how attitudes and anxieties about the rise of the computer were represented in films such as Walter Lang's Desk Set, Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Michael Crichton's Westworld. At once both timely and historically-grounded, From IBM to MGM focuses on cinema's earliest encounters with computers, as filmmakers like John Whitney, Stan VanDerBeek and other pioneers responded to the flurry of digital devices that emerged in the post-war decades.

46.95 In Stock
From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age

From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age

by Andrew Utterson
From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age

From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age

by Andrew Utterson

Paperback(2011)

$46.95 
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Overview

From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age uncovers the early history of cinema and computers and looks at how filmmakers first encountered the defining technology of the digital age. In this original study, author Andrew Utterson charts the beginnings of digital cinema, addressing both how filmmakers used new digital technologies and how attitudes and anxieties about the rise of the computer were represented in films such as Walter Lang's Desk Set, Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Michael Crichton's Westworld. At once both timely and historically-grounded, From IBM to MGM focuses on cinema's earliest encounters with computers, as filmmakers like John Whitney, Stan VanDerBeek and other pioneers responded to the flurry of digital devices that emerged in the post-war decades.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781844573233
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 02/15/2011
Edition description: 2011
Pages: 184
Product dimensions: 6.70(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Andrew Utterson is Senior Lecturer in Film and Digital Media at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. He is the editor of Technology and Culture: The Film Reader (Routledge, 2005), an anthology concerned with cinema and technology, and co-editor of Film Theory: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies (Routledge, 2004), a four-volume anthology of more than a century of film theory. He has published in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film Quarterly, and elsewhere.

Table of Contents

Introduction.- Computers in the Workplace: IBM and the 'Electronic Brain' of Desk Set (1957).- From the Scrap-Heap to the Science Lab: The Pioneers of Computer Animation.- Tarzan vs. IBM: Humans and Computers in Alphaville (1965).- Digital Harmony: The Art and Technology Movement.- 'I'm Sorry Dave, I'm Afraid I Can't Do That': Artificial Intelligence in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).- Expanded Consciousness, Expanded Cinema: A Techno-Utopian Counterculture.- To See Ourselves as Androids See Us: The Pixel Perspectives of Westworld (1973).- Conclusion.- Filmography.- Bibliography.- Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

...a stimulating and very engaging read.' - Illuminations

'Utterson adroitly draws out the tensions between 'technophobic' film portrayals of computers and an avant-garde of digital utopians engaged in computer-aided art (spare a thought for the sad fate of the 'lightpen'), who tempted directors to adopt their technology, as with Westworld's pixellated point-of-view shots. Quirky techno-anecdotes abound: the hacking of scavenged second-world-war ballistics computers; the origin of ASCII art; talk of a computer that makes a 'Freudian slip'; and even an evocative appeal to 'robotic ontology'. Is it time to watch The Matrix again yet?' - The Guardian

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