Resources published, collected or compiled by Barbara Flueckiger
Visual Effects and Digital Cinema
Timeline "History of Visual Effects VFX, Computer Graphics, CGI, Computer Animation" --> Link
Database on the history of inventions in the domain of visual effects, computer-generated imagery, special effects, and computer animation, with approximately 360 entries, sortable and searchable. Contains information collected within the framework of the research project on visual effects, supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Fonundation.
Text "Digital Bodies" --> Download PDF
English translation of the chapter "Digital Characters" from my book Visual Effects. "Digital Bodies" is an extract of Barbara Flueckiger's study of computer-generated images in film and explores the creation and role of digital characters in live-action movies. The text starts with an historical overview. Furthermore it investigates fundamental problems of digital character construction, namely problems of character consistency, the modeling of complexity and the interaction of digital characters with live-action protagonists. And finally it illustrates the interrelations between aesthetic, narrative, and emotional aspects of these characters and the audience's response to them.
Text "Computer-Generated Characters in Benjamin Button and Avatar" --> Download PDF
English translation of Barbara Flueckiger (2011): "Zur digitalen Animation von Kõrpern in Benjamin Button und Avatar." In: Harro Segeberg (ed.): Digitalität und Kino. Munich: Fink (forthcoming).
Links Collection "Visual Effects" --> Link
Companies, education, associations, festivals and conferences, information and downloads, color, history.
Text "Das digitale Kino. Eine Momentaufnahme" --> Download (scan PDF, German)
The paper presents results from the research project "Digital Cinema", in collaboration with the Imaging and Media Lab of the University of Basel, the Graphics Lab of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Sony Overseas SA and other academic and industrial partners, supported by a grant from the Swiss Confederation's Innovation Promotion Agency CTI. Originally published 2003 in: Montage/av 12:1, pp. 28-51. Also published in: Marille Hahne (ed.): Das digitale Kino. Marburg: Schüren, 2005, in German.
Text "Digitales Kino CH. Eine revidierte Momentaufnahme." (Digital Cinema CH. A Revised Snapshot of the State-of-the-Art) --> Download (scan PDF, German)
The paper elaborates results from the research project "Digital Cinema". Based on an inquiry with producers, cinematographers and directors on 74 contemporary films it presents the developments in digital filmmaking. Originally published 2008 in: Alain Boillat, Philipp Brunner and Barbara Flueckiger (eds.): Kino CH / Cinéma CH. Rezeption, Ästhetik, Geschichte / Réception, esthétique, histoire. Marburg: Schüren, pp. 185-202.
Film Aesthetics
Text "Lifestyle, aesthetics and narrative in luxury domain advertising" --> Download PDF
This study investigates a pattern observed in recent lifestyle advertisements. In the domain of luxury goods a certain type of advertisement has emerged that relies almost exclusively on the evocation of pure sensation. Only in part do the depicted scenes, characters or objects trigger these sensations. Rather, aesthetic features of style - such as depth of field, diffusion, colour or light - enhance the spectator's sensorial response. In the context of the avant-garde of the 1920s, similar strategies were employed. While these avant-garde films combined a modernist hope for utopia with a democratisation of aesthetics and taste for the masses, contemporary lifestyle advertisements tend to be suffused with nostalgia. However, this nostalgia is ahistoric, offering only the most pleasurable aspects of an imaginary experience.
Originally published in: Steve Spittle (ed.): Advertising as Narrative Form, Special Issue of Popular Narrative Media, 2.2, pp. 195-212
Text "Assoziative Montage und das ästhetische System von Stay. (Associative Montage and the Aesthetic System in Stay.)" In: montage/av, No. 1/2011, pp. 133-148. Read online on --> PaperC.
Archival Film
Annotated Bibliography "Digitization of Archival Film" --> Link
Compiled in collaboration with Dr. Franziska Heller, Institute of Cinema Studies, University of Zurich, within the framework of the research project AFRESA, funded by a grant from the Swiss Confederation's Innovation Promotion Agency CTI in collaboration with the Imaging and Media Lab of the University of Basel, the companies Swiss Effects Film GmbH and Sondor.
Sound and Sound Design
Text "Les Bruits de coulisses au cinéma" by S. de Serk (1914) --> Download (scan PDF, French)
A historical manual for "Foley artists", long before the term was even coined.
Text "The Unidentified Sound Object" --> Download PDF, English
Extract from the book Sound Design. Die virtuelle Klangwelt des Films
Text "Sound Effects. Strategies for Sound Effects in Film" --> Download PDF, English
An introduction to functions of sound effects in film.
Article originally published in Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: A Critical Overview, edited by Graeme Harper, Ruth Doughty and Jochen Eisentraut, 2009. Permission given by the Continuum International Publishing Group.
Last update November 6, 2011, to be continued...