| 3.4 GLIDING: FROM FILM FLIGHT TO COSMIC FLIGHT
In 1895, novelist H.G. Wells and the British film pioneer Robert Paul took out a patent on a device that, following the blueprint set out in Wells’ science fiction novel, The Time Machine, offered a simulated journey through time and space. The public was intended to sit on a series of moving platforms, which moved sideways, forward, and backwards in front of a screen onto which both films and photographs would be projected. Unfortunately Wells and Paul’s plans to build this cinematic spaceship were never carried out due to the costs involved. A few years later, on the occasion of the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, Raoul Grimoin-Sanson designed a circular building whose 100-meter inner circumference formed a huge uninterrupted screen. The Cinéorama, as he called his invention, consisted of a room housing the giant gondola of a hot-air balloon. A cloth similar to that used in manufacturing such balloons covered the ceiling. Ten synchronized projectors were placed under the gondola. At the start of the show an actor wearing a captain’s uniform would solemnly announce: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to take off from the Tulleries … Lift-off! The lights would dim and ten synchronized films would be projected on the circular screen simultaneously thus surrounding the audience completely. After the initial take off, panoramic aerial views of Paris, Nice, Biarritz, Tunisia, Southampton and Barcelona were shown. The effect was so real that many viewers even got dizzy. Unfortunately the projectors gave of so much heat that the interior temperature climbed as high as 46 degrees, causing the exhibit to be closed as a fire hazard. In 1902 the film Voyages dans la lune was shown for the first time. This pioneering science fiction film was written, directed, and interpreted by the magician turned filmmaker George Méliès. The film, which was 14 minutes long, was inspired by Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon. The film, making use of special effects, depicts a futuristic space trip and an encounter with aliens. These three examples demonstrate how from the very beginning the film industry was closely linked to the idea of air travel.
fig. 3.1 Raoul Grimoin-Sanson’s Cinéorama at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair was the first cinematic panorama, opened scarcely two years after cinema came into being.
In 1990 historian Tom Gunning wrote: “The history of the early cinema, like the history of cinema generally, has been written and theorized under the hegemony of narrative films. Early filmmakers like Smith, Méliès, and Porter have been studied primarily from the viewpoint of their contribution to film as a story-telling medium, particularly the evolution of narrative editing. Although such approaches are not totally misguided, they are results are one-sided, and potentially distort the work of these filmmakers and the actual forces shaping cinema before 1906”1. In those early years most productions were travel and actuality films, attempting to depict the world as it was and not very concerned with story telling. Even so, Méliès himself, who is so often presented as the grandfather of narrative film, said: “As for fables or stories, I only think about them at the end. I can even go as far as to say that a story put together this way is of no real importance since I merely use it as a pretext for ‘effect’ in a scene, for ‘tricks’, or just to make the staging more pleasant.”2. This filmmaking magician thinks of the cinema in terms of trickery or special effects, and therefore his work is connected to the long tradition of pre-cinematic devices that were so important throughout the 19th century. Among these devices we can include the panorama, the diorama, the phantasmagoria or stereoscope pictures. All of these popular devices dazzled the public, not so much for the stories they told but rather for the degree of reality they managed to convey. Understanding this type of entertainment, which someone living at the end of the 19th century was well accustomed to, is essential if we want to understand the social climate in which cinema was born. The narrative tradition that predominated later, especially after the works of Griffith, has to be contrasted with the work of Méliès and his contemporaries. These early films had almost no storyline and simply showed a series of unconnected visual transformations. If a storyline existed at all, it simply served as a framework for demonstrating the magical possibilities of film. Little critical attention has been paid to this cinema of spectacle. It’s only been in the last few years that a handful of American theorists are beginning to discover the underlying importance that these anti-narrative films had in creating the spectator of today. Amongst such theorists, Tom Gunning, mentioned earlier in this text, coined the term “cinema of attractions”, which captures perfectly the proximity of this type of filmmaking to the sense of fright and visual excitement produced at small-town funfairs and amusement parks. Other theorists such as Scott Bukatman, Lauren Rabinovitz, Mary Ann Doane and Lynne Kirby have also explored this type of cinema, pointing out the kinetic and sensory effects it has on the viewer. In the process of their research they are rediscovering interesting filmmaking experiments that had been practically forgotten. Hale´s Tours is one such experiment. In 1904 a fire chief called George C. Hale created, along with two other partners, a show consisting of a simulated train journey. There were several variations of this show but the most successful one was a room in the shape of a train car that could seat up to 144 people. The front part of the car was open and faced a screen where ten-minute sequences were shown. These films had been shot from the front of a train in motion. To add to the realism the train car-theatre swayed slightly and the characteristic clacking of a train moving down the track was heard. The show was so successful that by 1907 more than 500 concessions had been opened all over the United States. The significant thing about Hale´s Tours is that the train trip is presented as a paradigm of cinema. In her essay, Male Hysteria and Early Cinema, Lynn Kirby writes: “Film finds an apt metaphor in the railroad. The train can be seen as providing the prototypical experience of looking at a framed moving image, and as the mechanical double of the cinematic apparatus. Both are a means of transporting a passenger to a totally different place, both are highly charged vehicles of narrative events, stories, intersections of strangers, both are based on a fundamental paradox: simultaneous motion and stillness. These are two great machines of vision that give rise to similar modes of perception, and are geared to shaping the leisure time of mass society”3
Both the cinema and the railroad share responsibility for what Wolfgang Schivelbusch referred to as the “panoramization of the world”4. Distant places now seemed close and both train and filmmaker framed them for the passenger-viewer’s pleasure. The similarities between the two technologies are surprising: even the fleeting glimpse of rapidly passing telegraph posts as seen from the window of a train coincides with the flickering of a film’s 24 frames per second, something which is detected subliminally by the viewer. Like the mechanical rides mentioned in the previous chapter, cinema thus becomes a medium that trains the viewer for the sensory and psychological rigors of modern forms of transportation. Film projections literally bombarded the viewer’s retina, providing the phenomenological training necessary to better withstand the intense stimulation of contemporary forms of mechanical transportations. With the standardization of movie theatres in the second decade of the 20th century many of the early experiments involving the medium disappeared until after the Second World War. Nevertheless, the spirit of the cinema of attractions remained alive, albeit disguised, in some film genres. Among them we can include adventure films, physical comedies and musicals. These genres favoured visual “punches” that physically affected the viewer. Buster Keaton’s acrobatic manoeuvres, Zorro’s high-speed racing, or the visual excess found in Busby Berkeley’s musicals are just some examples of how the medium favoured sensorial bombardment over narrative structure. However, in the 1950’s new forms of the cinema of attractions arose. Rocket to the Moon presented at Disneyland in 1955 consisted of a room that reproduced the interior of a rocket with seats arranged concentrically around two circular screens. These screens, one on the floor and the other on the ceiling, were the portholes of the spaceship: the screen on the floor showed views of the progressive distancing from the Earth, the one on the ceiling the approach to the moon. This type of simulated experience helped create the American public’s acceptance of space travel, which a few years later would put a man on the Moon. The fifties was also the decade when the film industry tried to compete with television. In order to entice average Americans out of their homes new film formats were invented that intended to give the viewer the sensation of being part of the action on the screen. Among these formats the more important ones were Cinerama, Cinemascope, and Todd-AO. These systems had screens that practically took up the viewer’s entire field of vision, thus better incorporating them into the filmic fantasy.
fig. 3.4 The Circarama was presented at the U.S. pavilion at the 1958 Universal Exposition in Brussels. Nine screens forming a circle completely surrounded the audience. It was the world’s fairs and universal expositions that became the most fertile ground for testing new projection systems. The nine-screen circle of Circarama (also from Disney) located in the United States Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair (1958) was the latest version of the cinematographic panorama invented by Raoul Grimion-Sanson in 1900. A few years later, at the Montreal World’s Fair in 1967, Roman Kroitor put together the Labyrinth, a pavilion with an interesting cinematic architecture comprised of multiple projections. The public moved through several different rooms following a story that captured the distinct stages of a human being’s life from birth through adolescence. Kroitor was one of several filmmakers who created a series of interesting audiovisual experiments for the Montreal Fair. They later joined forces to form the Multiscreen Corporation with the aim of creating a single gigantic projection rather than using the multi-projection systems that existed at the time. They reached their goal with Tiger Child, a film ten times larger than the traditional 35-millimeter format and of sharpness unseen up to that point. The film made its debut at Fuji’s pneumatic pavilion for the Osaka World’s Fair (EXPO 70), delighting the Japanese public with its size. Thus the IMAX Corporation was founded, one of the fundamental stars of today’s cinema of attractions.
Since its beginnings in the sixties, the IMAX Corporation has grown tremendously. At present there are 230 theatres using the system in 32 different countries, 60% of which are in the U.S. and Canada. To date more than 700 million people have experienced the IMAX effect. The company offers constant innovation in both filming and projection technology. IMAX films tend to be shown in tourist attraction areas, natural science museums, theme parks and planetariums. Their catalogue of films consists mostly of documentaries, but always with a very staged aesthetic, theatricalizing events in such a way that they could easily be called contemporary “tableau vivants”. Screens of up to eight stories high practically fill the viewer’s field of vision, who has the impression of entering into the virtual space of the screen. To intensify this somatic experience, IMAX films often incorporate flying sequences; shots taken from helicopters flying through canyons, or just barely clearing mountain peaks, delighting the audience, who feels they have temporarily been released from the force of gravity. The realistic effect of such experiences has been increased through the use of other systems developed by the company; IMAX Dome, which is projected on a dome up to twenty-seven meters in diameter, IMAX ·3D DOME, a system using liquid crystal stereoscopic glasses synchronized with the projector by infrared rays, and IMAX Magic Carpet, during which the audience views the film, not only in front of themselves, but underneath their own feet through transparent floors. Faced with the hyper-cinematic experience IMAX Dome offers, Paul Virilio wrote that “now we can no longer separate the film from the auditorium”5.
At Poitiers, two hours south of Paris, we find Futuroscope, a theme park dedicated to cinematic experiences. One is surprised by the silence when exploring the grounds. Compared to traditional amusement parks, where shouts and shrieks of excitement are heard everywhere, here a surprising emptiness predominates. The reason can be found in the fact that IMAX films have replaced all the traditional amusement park rides. This phenomenon is an authentic post-modern twist in the historical development of theme parks: there are no longer any rides, but rather visual images that behave like rides. At Destination Cosmos we come across an important sub genre in the cinema of attractions: the planetarium. Its dome-shaped screen takes the viewer to the far ends of the cosmos. At T-Rex the public has to put on 3D glasses to travel through time and return to the age of dinosaurs. As is traditional in 3D cinema, viewers are frightened through the classic special effect of having objects thrown right at their faces. Plongeurs sans Limite is an IMAX film that allows the viewer to dive into the depths of the sea. These three shows, among the many others that Futuroscope offers, are true virtual journeys that carry the viewer away to remote places and times.
Spectators in the IMAX Dome theather feel they are taking off with the Space Shuttle One of the largest pavilions at Futuroscope houses the film Race for Atlantis. Upon entering the theatre the public must don liquid crystal 3D glasses, climb up to a platform, and buckle themselves into their seats. A dome-shaped screen completely fills the spectators field of vision. When the show begins the platform starts to move in sync with the action of the computer-generated film. The storyline takes us to the depths of the sea where we, the viewers, are made passengers on underwater vehicles whose mission is to save the city of Atlantis. The public, rather than get involved in the details of the story, is immersed in the powerful sensorial effect achieved by the synchronization of the platform’s physical movement with the movement suggested in the film. Made in 1997 by a company called Rhythm and Hues in cooperation with IMAX, Race for Atlantis is Europe’s only dynamic 3D cinema. It belongs to a new generation of the cinema of attractions, the ride film, that makes use of flight simulation technology used to train civilian and military pilots.
fig. 3.9 The reality effect of ride films in Futuroscope blurs the line separating the film from the auditorium. The flight simulator as a training tool has evolved tremendously over the last 90 years. In the 20’s simulators already existed to train pilots for flying blind at night or in difficult weather conditions, otherwise known as instrumental flight. Link simulators became the standard of the simulator industry until after the Second World War. It was this war that provoked a development of simulation technology. Analogue computers were used to solve equations related to airplane movement, thus allowing the vehicle to respond to aerodynamic forces. However, up until the mid-fifties almost all simulators were static and couldn’t reproduce the movements of the fuselage. In 1958 the British airline BOAC asked a company called Redifon to build a simulator with a movable platform that could be used to train pilots flying the Comet IV. From that point on the simulation of cockpit movement became essential to enable a pilot to become used to the movements of real flight. In the sixties the first systems with computer-generated images were used in simulators built for the space program. Due to the development in computer technology over the last three decades we are achieving ever better responses in real time during practice manoeuvres; up to six different types of degrees of freedom can be reproduced. As for the computer graphics pilots see from their cockpit windows, today both day and night conditions are reproduced, with the landscape of cinematographic resolution and the simultaneous calculation of the positions of 256 moving objects.
As illustrated by Hale’s Tours from the beginning of the 20th c0entury, simulating a journey is not a new idea. What is new however, and represents an important innovation, is the application of flight simulation technology to the entertainment industry. In 1986 Star Tours was inaugurated at Disneyland, California. George Lucas took part in the creation of this ride which follows the storyline set out in his Star Wars trilogy. The cabins, the so-called Starspeeders, can hold up to forty people. The ride lasts four and a half minutes and recreates a tourist trip to Endor’s moon. The spaces the public passes through prior to boarding the simulator are designed to give the impression of an intergalactic airport. Once seated in the simulator, with seat belts fastened and doors closed, the lights are dimmed and a robot named Rex, the ship’s pilot, is activated. After explaining that this is his first time piloting a spacecraft, a curtain is raised revealing a window, which is actually the screen on which a high definition 70-millimeter film will be shown. Thanks to the inexperience of the pilot, Rex the robot, the “spaceship” takes a wrong turn and bumps around the galactic airport, a visual event accompanied by abrupt movements of the simulator’s cabin. Finally the ship leaves the claustrophobic space of the airport behind and begins to fly through space. In conjunction with this moment of liberation, the cabin sways gently, creating the sensation of flying. The storyline moves constantly between two opposing poles: freedom of flight and the danger of being ensnared. Whether it’s a meteor shower or an attack by enemy ships (from Darth Vader’s evil empire) the public experiences the contrast between the calmness of weightless flight and the abrupt movements of the ship as it jolts to avoid a collision. In Star Tours the public cognitively processes the contradictory experience contemporary air travel represents: on one hand there is the euphoric sensation associated with weightlessness, on the other there is omnipresent fear of an accident. Airplane accidents have a significant presence in the collective subconscious and inspire a mixture of fascination and horror. The violence they unleash in the instant annihilation of passengers make them unlike any other accident. Star Tours lasts only four and a half minutes, yet the thousands of spectators that experience this ride every year connect with the deep fears that all airborne passengers harbour. In the Star Tours simulator what we learn is not how to fly a spacecraft but rather how to trust the complex technologies of air travel.
From its beginnings in the mid-eighties, the industry producing film-based rides using moving platforms has grown enormously. The nineties represented a boom for this type of ride with a 15% average annual growth rate. It is estimated that there are currently more than 2,000 simulators operating all over the world and more than a dozen companies build and sell not only the cabins themselves but also the software that runs them. Many of these companies, such as Reflectone and Flight Avionics who moved into the entertainment industry to increase the potential sales markets, previously supplied simulators to military and civilian aviation training centers. Other manufacturers come from the film world. Showscan, for example, was created by Douglas Trumbull, the special effects genius responsible for, among many other productions, the classic star-corridor sequence at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A third group of companies, like Intamin, are the manufacturers and designers of mechanical rides and roller coasters for amusement parks. All of these companies have come together to create a new film genre that currently enjoys tremendous popularity. There are three different types of simulators. The first is the cabin simulator like those used to train pilots. Hydraulic systems are the standard for such cabins, but recently electric and pneumatic systems are coming into use. This group includes two types: closed-cabin simulators where screen and vehicle move simultaneously, and open cabin simulators that move facing a static wrap-around screen. Examples of cabin simulators include Disney’s Star Tours, Back to the Future at Universal Studios in Orlando and The Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. The second group of entertainment simulators is a variation on the traditional movie theatre. The theatre itself doesn’t move but the seats do. Iwerks, recently associated with Simex, uses this model for its turbo-ride. They have equipped movie theatres seating up to 140 people with seats that move in sync with the action on the screen. The third group of simulators combines the cabin simulator with the traditional amusement park ride in the dark. Among this last group is the recently inaugurated The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman at the Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios, Orlando. Wearing liquid crystal 3D glasses the public is moved along a circuit passing from one screen to another while at the same time the cars tilt and sway independently to increase the movement suggested in the films. One of the more interesting professions that the film ride industry has generated is that of the motion programmer. The process of motion programming begins with the programmer watching the film several times in order to become completely familiar with it. After this initial step the film is projected in the simulator and the programmer tries to intuitively coordinate the movements happening on screen with those of the platform by using a joystick. This can be quite dangerous for the programmer. As opposed to a videogame where the player can have a virtual crash repeatedly without experiencing physical damage, the simulator can throw the programmer violently across the cabin. After repeating the process of synchronization several times, comparable to taming a wild horse the programmer begins to coordinate more accurately the movements on screen with those of the cabin. At this point the sequence of movements is recorded by the computer, allowing the programmer to fine-tune before the final sequence is set. It is essential that the programmer properly coordinate the simulator’s movements with those of the film, otherwise the resulting imbalance could cause nausea and dizziness in the audience the programmer begins to coordinate more accurately the movements on screen with those of the cabin. At this point the sequence of movements is recorded by the computer, allowing the programmer to fine-tune before the final sequence is set. It is essential that the programmer properly coordinate the simulator’s movements with those of the film, otherwise the resulting imbalance could cause nausea and dizziness in the audienceThe work of the motion programmer exemplifies how the bouncing, shaking, and bumping of the cabin has been edited as if it were a film. The individual who goes on these rides experiences programmed movements that differ radically from those of regular daily events. The movements themselves are fabricated, an artful illusion that immerses the audience in an increasingly powerful simulated experience. For theorist Lauren Rabinovitz these simulator films “develop a triangulated relationship among a compressed version of travel, heightened and intensified relations between the body and the machine, and the cinematic construction of hyper-realism. They do so by appealing to multiple senses through experiences featuring forward movement, wrap-around screens, objects or lights flashing in one’s peripheral vision, subjective camera angles, semi-sync realistic sound, seat or floor movement, and narratives that combine danger and control. They foreground the bodily pleasures of the cinematic experience, pleasures already inherent in cinema itself and important in such ‘bodily-oriented genres’ as pornography, action adventure, horror and melodrama”6. Indeed, these film genres seem to be aimed not only at the viewer’s gaze but at the body as well, which responds physically to the visual stimulation it receives. The films shown in simulators only serve to emphasize the carnal aspect inherent to film. They use an understanding of the physiological functioning of the organs of perception to effectively elicit somatic responses in the spectator. This is especially evident in relationship to peripheral vision. We have developed this ability genetically as a defence mechanism in order to detect the movement of intelligent predators, who usually attack from behind. In projecting moving images on the sides of the screen physical mechanisms deeply connected to responses to hostile environments are triggered in the viewers. The body is aware of danger, even though it is only simulated. Adrenaline is released, setting off a chain of perceptual and motor responses designed to move the individual to a safer place. The spectator longs to be released from the everyday confinement of existence in labyrinthian cities and complex technological systems that constantly observe and restrict movement. In the case of ride films, the spectators enter the screen without leaving their bodies behind, but rather become more strongly aware of them. In 1962, the noted philosopher Merleau-Ponty stated that we need to launch our bodies into the space that we are cognitively trying to perceive7. On these rides we manage to make our bodies penetrate the film space, not as seen by a disembodied eye but rather with a body that perceives. A recurrent motif in ride films is a subjective point of view of a roller coaster ride, causing in the spectator the sensation of being sucked into the screen, dragged towards a moving visual whirlwind. However it is the metaphor of flying that best captures the desire for physical liberation. Space travel or similar simulations of the experience of flight are the references that most frequently appear in these hyper-cinematic experiences. The Korean video-artist Nam June Paik was right when he said that the cinema is not “to see” but “to fly” Through the cinema of attractions we area able to become experienced flying beings. If there is a film that has made us fly, it has to be Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. This film, a landmark in the history of cinema, explores in an especially incisive way the relationship between cinema and flight. The first hour of the film pays special attention to the disorientation life in space produces in our bodies. The pen floating in the ship that takes Dr. Haywood Floyd to the space station, the flight attendant that climbs the curved wall of the ship until she is completely upside-down, or Dave in training - running along an endless circular corridor within the Discovery I, are moments that describe a world in which there is neither up nor down. These sequences were made using the magic of cinematographic special effects. Cameras fastened to enormous sets that turn like a wheel allow the director to produce these fascinating shots. The result is a bodily sense of disorientation in the viewer. In 1969, the theorist Annette Michelson published an article in Artforum on the carnal aspects of cinema after having seen 2001: A Space Odyssey nine times in a row. In her article she writes: “Navigation – of a vessel or a human body – through a space in which gravitational pull is suspended, introduces heightened pleasures and problems, the intensification of erotic liberation and the difficulty of purposeful activity. (…) Viewing becomes, as always but as never before, the discovery, through the acknowledgement of disorientation, of what it is to see, to learn, to know, and of what it is to be, seeing. Once the theatre has been transformed into a vessel, (…) one discovers, through the shock of recognition, ones own body living in its space. One feels suspended, the mind not quite able to ‘touch ground’”8. According to Michelson, the disorientation experienced when watching the film makes us aware that the act of seeing is a physiological experience of discovery. The instability and disorientation that we experience as viewers while watching 2001: A Space Odyssey reminds us that we have a body. This rediscovered body comes into contact with the seemingly impenetrable cinematographic space, which has become a metaphor for cosmic space. Cinema of attractions connects our physical space with aerial space. It invites us, through a cinematographic disorientation, to feel weightless; but this pleasure-producing physiological dislocation has its risks: the mechanically induced accident. The cinema of attractions, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and any other hyper-cinematic experience trigger a dialectics of freedom and threat. Its storylines incorporate the menace of technological disaster, which is nothing more than a reflection of our contradictory feelings toward space flight. Through cinema we come to feel both the pleasure and the terror of the life of an astronaut..
fig. 3.12 Scenes from Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey . The film’s depiction of weightlessness disorients the audience. The theatre seat becomes a spaceship Notes
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