Conclusion

This conclusion considers the larger set of changes confronting cinema and its siblings at this juncture between the analog and digital eras. Restating the book’s central argument that special effects play a central role in negotiating this transition, the conclusion argues in addition that many of these behaviors pass beneath conscious observation, in an ideological effect unique to engineered spectacle. In addition to noting areas the book wasn’t able to touch on for reasons of length, the conclusion discusses questions for further study, sketching a foundation for special-effects scholarship that attends both to their industrial and discursive dimensions as they forge a transmedia landscape.

Used Universes and Immaculate Realities

One of the biggest changes in franchise building has been the refinement of digital tools for previsualizing special effects. This chapter explores the creation of the original Star Wars (1977), focusing on George Lucas as a techno-auteur whose use of animatics was central to creating the film’s world. Beyond production design, however, previz enabled Lucas to extend his authorial brand to encompass the contributions of other artists and pop-culture influences, minting originality out of appropriation. The chapter considers Lucas’s “Special Editions” of the late 1990s as examples of the previz mind-set, noting parallels with the design networks and creative fan productions around Star Trek.

Microgenres in Migration

The movement of special effects among media texts is the focus of this chapter, which argues that certain well-known special effects should be approached as “microgenres” that emerge, evolve, and die out at accelerated timespans. Using The Matrix franchise and its signature “bullet time” special effect as a case study, the chapter relates the digital environment of contemporary transmedia to an analog history of borrowings and citations of special effects in film and television. The chapter concludes with a discussion of migration in digital visual culture, expanding the book’s scope to include videogames.

That Which Survives

This chapter explores the creation of Star Trek in the 1960s, tracing its history from preproduction to cancelation and through the subsequent decade, as the series evolved into both a fan phenomenon and a nascent film franchise. Arguing that both paths were facilitated by the emergence of a “blueprint culture” oriented around the creation of reference materials, the chapter suggests that franchises such as Trek are built on a “design network” allowing both fans and producers to extend the fictional storyworld infinitely yet systematically. The chapter concludes with a discussion of fan films and copyright legislation around contemporary Trek productions, suggesting the continued copresence of fannish and authorial interests in the technical dimensions of Trek’s future history.

Chains of Evidence

A certain class of film acting has always depended on special effects for its realization. This chapter traces the history of augmented performance from its roots in cel and stop-motion animation to the digital “synthespian,” using the case of Gollum in the Middle Earth trilogy to argue that the sense of life for these characters relies on a “chain of evidence” through which the animator’s (and later actor’s) performance is channeled into the artificial screen body. Willis O’Brien’s creation of King Kong receives extended scrutiny, as does the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Ultimately, the chapter argues that augmented performance is central to the transmedia presence of virtual actors across media and platforms.

Introduction

This introduction lays out the case for approaching special effects from a transmedia standpoint, focusing on the unexpected roles they play in building and maintaining the storyworlds of fantastic media franchises and redefining traditional notions of media authorship, performance, and genre. Relevant scholarship on spectacle, film technology and narrative, and transmedia storytelling is reviewed, with an emphasis on the gap between studies of special effects and convergence culture, which this book seeks to fill. An extended discussion of preproduction practices in early cinema and Classical Hollywood provides an alternative framework for understanding special effects as designed imagery. Previews of the book’s chapters conclude the introduction.