Digital Visions: Visual Realisations. Mediating image fidelity and digital decay in the cinematographer’s process. A study interrogating digital technologies, agile working and craft knowledge in cinematographic practice.

Abstract

Digital Visions: Visual Realisations. Mediating image fidelity and digital decay in the cinematographer’s process. A study interrogating digital technologies, agile working and craft knowledge in cinematographic practice. By Mark Anthony Bond. This is a practice led PhD, consisting of a series of practice artefacts and an accompanying written exegesis. The artefacts include digital films, Outside In, The Garden and a film and photography installation, Digital Visions. The research aims to understand the role of the cinematographer at this point in time in the digital evolution. The enquiry examines tacit skills and embodied craft to appreciate agility of thinking and doing in the cinematographic image construction process. The research adopts a creative approach to practice embracing poetic sensibilities to serve the enquiry. The Garden film and Digital Visions exhibition feature images of elemental decay in the forest environment, a metaphoric mirroring of entropy evident in the digital image medium. The metanarrative alludes to the interconnectedness of decay, nature and technology inherent in the digital ecology. The methodology employs autoethnographic methods drawing on ethnographic interviews to inform the approach to practice and reflective analysis. This is a qualitative research enquiry employing reflective empirical methods of investigation. Schon refers to this reflection as a ‘reflective conversation with the materials of a situation’ (1983, p.78). Experiential learning is a salient feature of the reflexive methods, including the Practice as Research model, Nelson (2013) and the Artistic Research model, Frayling (1993). The methodology employs critical dialogue and analytical contextualisation to substantiate the findings (Bell 2019). Significant in this enquiry is the cinematographer/image relationship where the cinematographer is positioned as the creator and guardian of the image in the filmmaking process. Visual understanding requires an energetic engagement, contingent on deep image knowledge and contextual situation. The research practice framework validates the poetic rendering of key themes facilitating a discourse that would be impossible to articulate by text alone. The research outcomes provide a valuable insight into the cinematographer’s human process and foregrounds the next cycle of research in the digital evolution, virtual production.