Double Take: Rotoscoping and the Processing of Performance
Abstract: In 1915 the Fleischer brothers developed a “rotoscope” which allowed the artist to trace over the original film footage to make more life-like drawings. Rotoscoping’s digital descendent, “Rotoshop” was used to style Richard Linklater’s animations Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, but whilst rotoscoping may originally have been developed to help animators achieve greater realism, it has never just been about verisimilitude. The paper will consider two questions: What have been the consequences of this digital animation technique for screen performance, and what spectatorial pleasures does this means of storytelling afford its audience?
Biographical Statement: Kim Louise Walden teaches digital culture and discourse in the School of Film, Music and Media, in the Faculty for the Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. Currently her research interests revolve around the impact of new media on film. To date, she has presented conference papers and published articles addressing the following areas: the impact of computer games on cinema’s action heroines; the changing narrative habitats of film examining film web sites; the first generation of films made for mobile phones and most recently the consequences of digital technologies in animation for screen performance.
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