The spatial languages of virtual production: Critiquing softwarization with aesthetic analysis

Livingstone, Tom

Abstract

The chapter analyses the emergent practice of virtual production and the generation of in-camera visual effects (ICVFX), a process currently dominated by Unreal Engine. It argues that the software functionality of Unreal Engine and the logistics of virtual production have aesthetic correlates within the images they produce, specifically in the form of a stylised spatial language.

Adopting the periodising framework laid out by Scott Higgins in his work on Technicolor (2007), this chapter compares the brief history of virtual production with the aesthetic evolution of Technicolor and draws parallels between the relationship between emergent colour film technology and its aesthetic affordances and the way in which virtual production and ICVFX afford a particular stylisation of space on screen.

Adopting a broad perspective and comparative methodology develops a granular picture of the relationship between Unreal Engine’s management of multiple spaces (3D, physical, cinematographic) and the spatial aesthetics of the images it produces. It draws on the media-epistemological work of Vilem Flusser and Wendy H. K. Chun to establish the stakes of such an analysis and point towards the epistemic ramifications implicit in softwarisation. Specifically, the naturalisation of the aesthetic languages associated with creative software (such as the spatial language of Unreal-enabled ICVFX) leads to the embedding of the software’s technical defaults and functional parameters within creative practice and visual experience more broadly. Teasing out the aesthetic through-lines of a range of ICVFX-reliant productions, the chapter highlights how the cross-sector integration of VP entails an inflection of the spatial languages of screen culture. The chapter closes with a call to establish more avenues wherein a critique of softwarisation and its wider ramifications can proceed via aesthetic analysis.

• Online Publication Date: Jan 18, 2024
• Publication Date: Jan 18, 2024
• Deposit Date: Apr 25, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 19, 2025
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 47-65
• Series Title: Creative Working Lives
• Book Title: Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production
• ISBN: 9783031456923
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45693-0_3
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11735347
• Contract Date: Apr 4, 2023