This course examines the impact that digital technologies have had on
various aspects of Hollywood cinema. We will consider this impact in
terms of the aesthetic issues it raises in relation to theories of the
visual image, film narrative, and performance. We will also study how
the so-called "digital revolution" has affected the film industry,
specifically in relation to filmmaking, film marketing, and film
exhibition.

Among aesthetic questions we will explore are: How is the digitally-
rendered image different aesthetically and experientially from the
photographic image upon which cinema has been based since its
invention in the late 1800s? How have filmmakers used digital video (
DV) as an alternative to celluloid? How have computer games and other
forms influenced the way stories are constructed in Hollywood films?
Has the domination of special effects in action and science-fiction
blockbusters altered classic-era storytelling priorities, as well as
the expectations and experiences of viewers and critics? Since digital
capabilities enable the creation of more life-like characters (such as
Dr. Aki Ross in Final Fantasy and Gollum in Lord of the Rings), as
well as the dramatic alteration of a star's appearance and the
resurrection of dead stars, how does this capability affect notions of
performance and celebrity?

While films themselves have been changed by the arrival of digital
technologies, the computer-era has had a dramatic effect on the film
industry as well. To understand how the industry has responded to new
technologies and media, we will investigate the phenomenon of "
Siliwood"–the alliance between Hollywood, the Silicon valley, and the
military in the creation and employment of technology. As new
technologies have transfigured the practices of marketing and
exhibition, we will also analyze the use of the Internet for selling
and exhibiting films and constructing fan bases, changes in motion
picture exhibition that have and will occur through the "digitization"
of movie theaters, and the rise of DVD as the technology of choice for
movie playback in the home. In addition, since new information
technologies have changed the circulation of Hollywood films across
the planet, we will address the contemporary globalization of
Hollywood and the particular problem of international piracy.

Rather than asking, as some critics do, whether digital technologies
signal the end of cinema, we will explore this newest relationship
between Hollywood and technological change looking for both
continuities and ruptures with cinema's past. In the process, we will
screen a broad array of contemporary films that have been
substantially affected by the arrival and development of digital
capabilities for the screen.