The Empire of Effects

Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism

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by Julie A. Turnock

Type: Studies
Subject: Studio > Industrial Light and Magic
Keywords: special effects, digital
Publishing date: 2023
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 368 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4773-2897-2

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Book Presentation:
How one company created the dominant aesthetic of digital realism.

Just about every major film now comes to us with an assist from digital effects. The results are obvious in superhero fantasies, yet dramas like Roma also rely on computer-generated imagery to enhance the verisimilitude of scenes. But the realism of digital effects is not actually true to life. It is a realism invented by Hollywood—by one company specifically: Industrial Light & Magic.

The Empire of Effects shows how the effects company known for the puppets and space battles of the original Star Wars went on to develop the dominant aesthetic of digital realism. Julie A. Turnock finds that ILM borrowed its technique from the New Hollywood of the 1970s, incorporating lens flares, wobbly camerawork, haphazard framing, and other cinematography that called attention to the person behind the camera. In the context of digital imagery, however, these aesthetic strategies had the opposite effect, heightening the sense of realism by calling on tropes suggesting the authenticity to which viewers were accustomed. ILM's style, on display in the most successful films of the 1980s and beyond, was so convincing that other studios were forced to follow suit, and today, ILM is a victim of its own success, having fostered a cinematic monoculture in which it is but one player among many.

About the Author:
Julie A. Turnock is Professor of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Technology, and the Emergence of 1970s Blockbuster Aesthetics.

Press Reviews:
Turnock finds new ground to cover in The Empire of Effects...a captivating look at digital realism and the success of ILM.
— The Film Stage

Turnock’s expansive study of Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and by turns of the wider special effects industry provides insight, nuance, and practical reactions to an industry that often dominates the filmmaking process and erodes the elements of story, direction, or performance...Highly recommended.
— CHOICE

As a close study of [Industrial Light & Magic], the book is enlightening. But it’s also about far more: Turnock chronicles the rise of the contemporary effects industry in the 1970s and ’80s, the emergence of an oligopoly of studios based in California, and the way that mega-budget franchises like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter came to shape the effects industry of today...By tracing the history of special effects since the 1970s, Turnock shows readers how the tools that shaped the counterculture’s alternative visions lent themselves to a new set of labor relations in which a stronger, more concentrated corporate bloc took more and allowed less.
— The Nation

Any historian of merit would commend and envy her usage of these primary source materials.
— The Journal of American Culture

Both scholars and 'lay' readers will certainly benefit from this...instructive and original volume that will change the way we look at films.
— Journal of Popular Film and Television

See the publisher website: University of Texas Press

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