CREATIVE INVESTIGATION

For my creative investigation I will be researching the concept of teleportation within the science fiction genre, and how it has evolved in terms of special effects. In order to effectively answer this question I will need to look at how cinematically it is and has been presented and how it can be applied within a genre.

Fortunately there are several sources and texts that display and relate to my investigation. The primary texts are as follows; The first film is X-Men 2 (2003, Bryan Singer) A comic book adaptation following the story of various protagonists called mutants as each has a unique power due to an advancement/ mutation in their genetic structure.Singer, Bryan, 2003. X-Men 2, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. The second primary text that I chose, Jumper (2008, Doug Liman) Another adaptation from the acclaimed novel ‘Jumper’. When David Rice gains control of his teleporting ability he claims not to harm anyone with his powers. Liman, Doug, 2008. Jumper, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. And finally in terms of primary texts I am going to be looking at Star Trek: The Motion picture (1979, Robert Wise) A cinematic feature length film for the popular television show Star Trek. A cult science fiction film that focuses on space crafts and travel features the advancement in technology that allows the user to teleport to various places using the device on the space craft.Wise, Robert, 1979. Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Paramount Pictures.

In terms of other texts I will be referencing from various sources as well as other forms of media that can help inspire and develop my understanding for creating my creative product. films I shall also look at other films such as Chronicle (2012, Josh Trank), and X-Men: First Class (2011, Mathew Vaughn) as these films may not display directly the concept of teleportation but they do however display supernatural powers very creatively through micro elements and are great influences to refer to when developing my product.The show that I am mentioning is The Tomorrow People, the advancement of humans who gain the ability of telekinesis, telepathy and more importantly teleportation. There are two variations of this show the original show from 1973-1979 created by Roger Damon Price and the recent reboot from 2013-2014 created by Phil Klemmer.Trank, Josh, 2012. Chronicle, Twentieth Century Fox.Vaughn, Matthew, 2011. X-Men First Class, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

DESCRIPTION OF KEY TEXTS

My chosen three films are Jumper, X-Men 2 and Star Trek: The motion picture.All three display various forms of visual effects and a representation of Teleportation as well as other effects. They all are examples of the science fiction genre alongside other genres such as action and adventure. The only thing about these texts is whether or not they should be seen as fantasy rather that science fiction as the factors defining the genre is subjective.Jumper is an adaptation based on the best selling novel, Jumper where a teenage boy with teleportation abilities suddenly finds himself in an ancient war between those like him and sworn annihilators.X-Men2 is part of the Marvel franchise based on the comic books and animated series that looks at the evolution of humans and how a new gene gives them an individual ability.The third text Star Trek: The motion picture, based on the popular TV series looks at alien invasion and space travel.Judith Merrill said that science fiction is the “use of the traditional ‘scientific method’ to examine some postulated approximation of reality.” The plot for all three of these texts are arguably fantasy depending on your views what can be considered reality. I feel as though X-Men and Star Trek are viable contenders for the science fiction genre, however Jumper doesn’t really follow the conventions and is subjectively fantasy.

LOOKING AT KEY TEXTS

After looking at Jumper the 2008 American sci-fi film loosely based on the 1992 science fiction novel of the same name written by Steven Gould. The film stars Hayden Christensen as David Rice, Jamie Bell as Griffin O’Connor, Samuel L. Jackson as Roland Cox and Rachel Bilson as Millie Harris.An interesting line from the film when Cox says “Only God should have the ability to be everywhere at once” which implies the belief of God yet the film is a Sci-fi. Although the concept of teleporting was not clarified in this film it is still the relevant key text that I have. During the film David develops his powers when he is 15 and begins to panic as he falls into an icy lake but then somehow ‘jumps’ into the school library saving himself. After this he begins to use his power for self gain until he meets another ‘Jumper’ like himself who says there are others like them and are hunted down by Cox. In terms of the special effects within Jumper the studio had over 100 people working on the effects within the film, it had visual effects for 300 out of the total 600 shots in the film and over 100 ‘Jumps’ in the film. The difference between a large production such as in the film Jumper the effects have to be to a standard that represents the budget ($85,000,000) and production of the film. This is why each jump within the film was modified based on the distance and location of the character. To develop the jump effects they used a combination of Nuke and Shake software. For other effects such as scenery such as the Big Ben and the sphinx they used a 3D modeling software known as Maya. The VFX effects supervisor Erik Winquist explained how the jumps were created “The concept of what a jump looks like changed and evolved a little over the course of the post production. There are shots in the film that use still array footage but not in the same way that we saw in the Matrix. The Matrix was largely about stopping time whereas this was about using slow shutter speeds on those still array cameras to end up with a streaky motion blurred image as the perspective was changing, which is a pretty interesting look.” This was very interesting to see how the whole of the visual effects where not only post production but also a conscious factor during production.

LOOKING AT KEY TEXTS

The second key text that I looked at was X Men: United the second movie within the series. It was labeled as one of the greatest science fiction films within my secondary text (http://www.filmsite.org/sci-fifilms7.html). According to the same source the film was upon the graphic novel X-Men: God loves, man kills. The film was a blockbuster with a budget of $110 million and received box office gross receipts of $215 million (Domestic) and $407.7 million (Worldwide). The concept of evolution is why this film is seen as a sci-fi as it implements an unlikely yet possible and situation. The film reminds the audience of this by various quotes within the film. The quote concluding the film by Jean Grey’s (mutant) voice over “Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. The process is slow, normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forwards.” By using scientific explanations and processes it suggests and enforces how this is a SF and not a fantasy. The character within this film that I was focusing on primarily was not the protagonist but one of the minor roles and characters, Night crawler. Due to large range of special effects and various powers included in the film it display a lot of special effects using a number of techniques. The production of the film was said to have used over sixty four sets within thirty eight different locations. The effects were credited by both Singer and Newton Thomas Sigel (Cinematographer) to Road to Perdition as this was a large visual influence. Sigel shot the first X-Men movie using an anamorphic format, which is the widescreen picture within a non widescreen native aspect ratio (standard 35 mm film). However due to improvements within film stocks and optics, the benefits of using a spherical lenses instead of digital editing was more practical. He said that “every anamorphic lens is simply a spherical lens with an anamorphizer on it. They’ll never be as good as the spherical lenses that they emulate.” The film had Oscar winner Mike Fink as the visual effects supervisor.

LOOKING AT KEY TEXTS

The same supervisor that they had for the first film, had a larger scope for the second movie as he was said to unsatisfied with the effects within the first film. Although the first film received an academy award nomination. He had commissioned roughly 800 shots featuring special effects. Using a new computer program (called ‘Houdini) created by Rhythm and Hues a visual effects academy award winning company just so they could create the dogfight tornado scene (Link here). Rhythm and Hues was awarded with around 100 shots initially but actually was responsible for the effects for 303 shots. Within the film they used a combination of effects from 3D rendering to 2D integration as Mark Rodahl the R&H digital effect supervisor said “There was definitely more than meets the eye. Colossus started out as a Cyber-scan of the actor, Daniel Cudmore, which was match-moved to his performance, then lit and rendered in 3D with a Houdini based reveal effect that did the wiping on of the armour over the top of the actor’s skin. Then it went to 2D in order to integrate it into the scene.” Cine Stine another visual effect production facility company were responsible for the effects of the character night crawler and his teleporting ability. Stephen Risenbaum the visual effects supervisor went ton to say “One new effect, in particular, posed several challenges. That effect involves the special power of the character Night crawler — a demonic mutant with the ability to teleport. Night crawler's teleports— referred to as the “bamf” effect, based on the sound his teleports made in the original X-Men comic book— are central to the opening sequence.” Greg Anderson also said that “The dynamic smoke is based on fluid dynamic algorithms, coming from code written by[former Cinesite engineer] Dr. Jerry Tessendorf for renderingwater.” From looking at these sources I feel as though in order to create and effective visual effect also relies on things such as sound as it becomes more immersive and adds a sense of realism even though the audience know it is fiction.

LOOKING AT KEY TEXTS

Star trek is according to my source(http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/T/teleportation.html) is the main reason teleportation is so well known within science fiction, most famously in the form of the transporter in Star Trek. The motion picture was released in 1979 and cost an enormous, considering the year of release $35 million to make. This is mainly due to the large scale and magnitude of effects that the franchise boasts. World-wide it made $139 million and became the focal point of the franchises new found success. From watching the motion picture I noticed the range of mise-en-scene that they used in order to achieve the visuals/ costumes for aliens and creatures that today would be done using motion tracking and CGI. Although the film features a numerous visual effects that are themed with the science fiction genre, the most relevant to my research is the transporter, this is the device and concept they used in order to achieve teleportation. Admittedly it seems less farfetched than the other texts that I researched which don’t use a technological device. The well known phrase from the series is “beam me up, Scotty” is directly referring to the use of this device. Since realistic computer graphics was still over a decade away, they used a lot of ingenuity and improvisation in order to achieve the effect. To create the sparkling effect they simply dropped tiny pieces of aluminum foil and aluminum perchlorate powder against a black sheet of cardboard, and began to take photos of them from the side as a bright light would illuminate them. This is used in conjunction with superimposing and fading the actors in the scene as well as overlays and illuminated computer effects, creating the shown effect within the film. Looking at my secondary source (http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/T/transporter.html ) it says how, according to the official bible of Trekana, which essentially due to the series large and involved fan base the supposed workings of the fictions science. the transporter "briefly converts an object or person into energy, beams that energy to another location, then reassembles the subject into its original form."

EVOLUTION OF EFFECTS

The very first science fiction film was created by George Melies a stage magician that demonstrated his magic in outlandish ways that were a marvel to the audience at the time. He used what would now be considered simple photographic effects such as introducing multiple exposures( seen in the Star Treks transporter), time-lapse photgraphy, dissovles amonst other effects. His major movie, Trip to the moon was a well known blockbuster and is seen as the first science fictiom evermade. The film was 14 mintues long and ran at 16 fps; at the time films generally ran for around 3 minutes. (http://youtu.be/7JDaOOw0MEE ).

After this film began to be seen as an art form as directors were experimenting in cinematic style and became a form of expressionsm. A well known director for his expressive work was Fritz Lang known for the film Metroplolis which looked at a dystopian future set in 2026, the film was released in 1927. With a budget of 7 million Reichsmayk (equivelent to around $200 million in 2005). This is considered the most influential film within science fiction. (http://youtu.be/ekL3VBD00W0 )

King Kong is another film that is the result of special effects today as the movie not only popularized the giant monster genre, it features innovative special effects and stop motion animation created by Willis O’Brien. Willis pioneered stop motion techniques that later special effects artists would honor him and dubbed him as the founder and father of CGI animation as it can be traced to this specific film. King kong was released in 1933 and saved the producing studio, RKO studios from bankruptcy.

BOOKS

I looked at a number of books in order to gather information for my investigation, these books looked at various aspects relating to my question. The first book is Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film a book that looks at science fiction as a genre as well as the topics featured within the genre. It was written by Vivian Sobchack. From looking at definitions, Iconography, characters and visual functions/ features. The chapter that I found most informative and useful was the section on Images of Wonder: The look of science fiction. Within this section there was text on visual functions within science fiction. Relating to my question this will help with my understanding of iconography and conventions for my creative product. The text discusses how the iconography fluctuates in visual representation it still remains to have a particular “look” and “feel” to its visual surfaces. The book quotes “The major visual impulse of all SF films is to pictorialize the unfamiliar, the non existent, the strange and the totally alien- and to do so with verisimilitude which is, at times, documentary in flavour and style.

The next book that I am going to focus on is Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality by Christine Cornea. I chose this book as from looking at films featuring teleportation it is hard to define the difference between the genre fantasy and science fiction. This book also looks at the history and evolution of SF (science fiction), from the 1950’s until late 2000’s. The author looked at numerous writers and critics in order to develop her understanding, like myself. However she quoted one definitive writer and critic Judith Merrill who suggests SF is “speculative fiction “ and as literature that “makes use of the traditional ‘scientific method’ to examine some postulated approximation of reality.”

Another book I looked at was Robert Edgar Hunt’s Basics Film-Making Directing Fiction slate 3 take 1. I chose this book due to the impact it can have towards my creative product and how to effectively direct my product. The book looks at all aspects of production form post, pre and general production. From the post-production text I found the finishing touches section (page140-141) somewhat useful if not relevant as it mentioned various visual effect forms as well as examples. The book mentions how “historically, visual effects were tied to genre, mainly in the creation of setting or characters, and are particularly noticeable in science-fiction, horror and action films.” The book also features a quote fro Laurence Fishburne “Special effects are characters. Special effects are essential elements. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.” The book also enlightened me on various film terminology. CGI (computer generated imagery): the use of 3D computer generated effects in live action film. Models: small scale models that are represented in and as the scale of the film world. Rotoscoping: where the film is traced and represented as animation. This is now done using digital technology, such as in A Scanner Darkly (Richard Larklater 2006). It can be used for an aspect of film. Animation: where the complete scene is created as an animated form. May be used as a scene, for example in Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994)Matte: the creation of a backdrop, either as a painted, photo-generated, animated or CGI 3D backdrop. Finally Compositing: Drawing together multiple effects.

BOOKS

One of the secondary sources that I looked at, known as The screenwriter’s roadmap, 21 ways to jumpstart your story written by Neil Landau. The book looks at theories, current sources and existing products and analyses how they use things such as characters and other things needed to compose a film. However the main feature that the book included that was the most helpful and relevant to my research was the interviews which the book contained. More directly there was an interview with the screenwriter/ director David S.Goyer. He has worked on many blockbuster, the majority of which were very successful. The reason I am looking at this interview is because he was the screenwriter for the movie Jumper, one of my key texts. He mentions his screenwriting process and how he begins typically planning the script chronologically. He mentions how he will “tend to write anything that comes to mind. I’ll start researching, and then on a legal pad or computer, I’ll write down everything in no particular order: cool ideas, snippets, or dialogue. After a week or so, I’ll sit down and look at what I’ve got and then start writing an outline, which is normally for myself.”.

The final book that I looked at was John Sanders The film genre book, although this book looks at specific movies within the chosen genres it can still be useful to identify the themes within the films thus establishing the theme within SF and why the films are so iconic. The films listed within the SF section are as follows; Metropolis, Things to come, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, ET The Extra-Terrestrial, The Matrix and finally Children of Men. The book looked at the films over the years within science fiction 1920’s to 2000’s. The book does mention how CGI can effect film in this case The Matrix (1999) “... It is also a defining moment in CGI, which was able to create worlds and images that left the audience in awe of the films spectacle.” Due to SF surreal potential the opportunity for effects is almost limitless.

BOOKS

INTERNET SOURCES

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/T/teleportation.html

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/T/transporter.html

https://www.sfsite.com/columns/amy26.htm

http://www.filmsite.org/sci-fifilms.html

http://variety.com/2008/film/news/a-look-at-liman-s-filmmaking-process-1117981300/

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/X2XMenUnited

http://www.writingclasses.com/WritersResources/AskTheWriterDetail.php?ID=335

HYPOTHESIS AND AIMS

My hypothesis investigates the concept of teleportation within the science fiction genre and how it is presented visually. The purpose of this is due to my creative product and how I can effectively portray a teleporting ability with some form of verisimilitude and appropriate visual effects. Due to this my essay becomes a study of genre and representation (editing).In terms of genre I have to look at the conventions within science fiction and the required steps in order to make my film relatable and not a fantasy; as the two genres are hard to compare. I plan to look at various articles scaling in time as genres are always progressing and developing new conventions.In terms of representation, like mentioned earlier I need to develop a concept of teleportation that relates to science fiction and not fantasy. I also need to look at how to present my concept in terms of micro elements for example X-Men 2 the Whitehouse scene with Night Crawler (Link Here) there are dozens of camera angles and compositions you can use to portray teleportation.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, I feel as though the evolution of science fiction is very constant and changing in terms how it is portrayed and presented; especially the visual effects within the genre as they are constantly finding innovative technology to improve what is already impressive. Speaking in terms of technology in order to achieve the visual effects simply the resolution of the device used to display the film can add verisimilitude and in many cases go beyond reality as the colours are brighter and as precise as looking at the physical object. An example is LG’s Ultra High Definition television, a 98-inch 8K TV (7680 x 4320 pixels) boasting 16 times the resolution of a normal 1080p HD television and four times that of the latest 4K sets that few people own yet. From looking at the three key texts I notice how there are two main variants of teleporting within science fiction like the internet source (http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/T/teleportation.html ) mentions psychic teleportation (X-Men, Jumper) and quantum teleportation (Star Trek). I also noticed that the era and budget can often limit the not only the effects but the plot as within the Star Trek franchise as Gene Roddenberry said “It wasn't feasible, in terms of budget or sixties-level special effects, to show convincingly a spacecraft landing on a different planet every week. Much easier to have a crewmembers shimmer out in one scene, then twinkle back an instant later someplace else”. Whereas the more recent texts X-men and Jumper used computer programs to efficiently using post production, create an effect. Due to the ability of CGI a lot of the effects can be made using the computer and only require the cost of the program and commission an SFX editor to create the sequence. In terms of a blockbuster budget this is more than feasible as the X-Men had over 50 SFX artists. In terms of relating my research to my creative product I am going to use a similar effect to the X-Men and Jumper as this will not only be easier and more practical using Adobe After effects but it will also look more contemporary. As well as this I realise how the effects also rely heavily on all aspects of micro elements in order to be effective.