This book puts forward a more considered perspective on 3D, which is often seen as a distracting gimmick at odds with artful cinematic storytelling. Owen Weetch looks at how stereography brings added significance and expressivity to individual films that all showcase remarkable uses of the format. Avatar, Gravity, The Hole, The Great Gatsby and Frozen all demonstrate that stereography is a rich and sophisticated process that has the potential to bring extra meaning to a film’s narrative and themes. Through close reading of these five very different examples, Expressive Spaces in Digital 3D Cinema shows how being sensitive to stereographic manipulation can nuance and enrich the critical appreciation of stereoscopic films. It demonstrates that the expressive placement of characters and objects within 3D film worlds can construct meaning in ways that are unavailable to ‘flat’ cinema.

Digital 3D has become a core feature of the twenty-first-century visual landscape. Yet 3D cinema is a contradictory media form: producing spaces that are highly regimented and exhaustively detailed, it simultaneously relies upon distortions of vision and space that are inherently strange. Spaces Mapped and Monstrous explores the paradoxical nature of 3D cinema to offer a critical analysis of an inescapable part of contemporary culture. Considering 3D’s distinctive visual qualities and its connections to wider digital systems, Nick Jones situates the production and exhibition of 3D cinema within a web of aesthetic, technological, and historical contexts. He examines 3D’s relationship with computer interfaces, virtual reality, and digital networks as well as tracing its lineage to predigital models of visual organization. Jones emphasizes that 3D is not only a technology used in films but also a tool for producing, controlling, and distorting space within systems of surveillance, corporatization, and militarization. The book features detailed analysis of a wide range of films—including Avatar (2009), Goodbye to Language (2014), Love (2015), and Clash of the Titans (2010)—demonstrating that 3D is not merely an augmentation of 2D cinema but that it has its own unique properties. Spaces Mapped and Monstrous brings together media archaeology, digital theory, and textual analysis to provide a new account of the importance of 3D to visual culture today.

This book examines 3D cinema across the early 1950s, the early 1980s, and from 2009 to 2014, providing for the first time not only a connection between 3D cinema and historical trauma but also a consideration of 3D aesthetics from a cultural perspective. The main argument of the book is that 3D cinema possesses a privileged potential to engage with trauma. Exploring questions of representation, embodiment and temporality in 3-D cinema, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, offering a compelling analysis to a combination of box office favorites and more obscure films, ranging across genres such as horror, erotica, fantasy, science fiction, and documentaries. Weaving theoretical discussions and film analysis this book renders complex theoretical frameworks such as Deleuze and trauma theory accessible.

This book argues that 3D films are becoming more sophisticated in utilising stereoscopic effects for storytelling purposes. Since Avatar (2009), we have seen a 3D revival marked by its integration with new digital technologies. With this book, the author goes beyond exploring 3D’s spectacular graphics and considers how 3D can be used to enhance visual storytelling. The chapters include visual comparisons between 2D and 3D to highlight their respective narrative features; an examination of the narrative tropes and techniques used by contemporary 3D filmmakers; and a discussion of the narrative implications brought by the coexistence of flatness and depth in 3D visuality. In demonstrating 3D cinematic aesthetics and storytelling, Yong Liu analyses popular films such as Hugo (2011), Life of Pi (2012), Gravity (2013), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013, and The Great Gatsby (2013). The book is an investigation into contemporary forms of stereoscopic storytelling derived from a unique, long-existing mode of cinematic illusions.

A History of Three-Dimensional Cinema chronicles 3-D cinema as a single, continuous and coherent medium, proceeding from 19th-century experiments in stereoscopic photography and lantern projection (1839–1892) to stereoscopic cinema’s “long novelty period” (1893–1952). It proceeds to examine the first Hollywood boom in anaglyphic stereo (1953–1955), when the mainstream industry produced 69 features in 3-D, mostly action films that could exploit the depth illusion, but also a handful of big-budget films—for example, Kiss Me Kate (George Sidney, 1953) and Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)—until audiences tired of the process; the anaglyphic revival of 1970–1985, when 3-D was sustained as a novelty feature in sensational genres like soft-core pornography and horror; the age of IMAX 3-D (1986–2008); the current era of digital 3-D cinema, which began in 2009 when James Cameron’s Avatar became the highest-grossing feature of all time and the studios once again stampeded into 3-D production; and finally the future promise of Virtual Reality.

Ten years ago, a technological revolution swept through cinemas around the world, as analogue projectors were replaced with digital equipment. It was not just the plastic medium of film that was removed from projection boxes during this transformation; most cinemas took this opportunity to also evict the human projectionists who were hitherto in charge of screenings. Projectionists had been hidden from the sight of audiences for most of the history of photographic moving image projection, and their redundancies went largely unnoticed and unremarked upon. This book focuses attention on what has been happening behind film spectators' heads for the past 130 years, and attempts to write the history of cinema in Britain from the perspective of its habitually overlooked and undervalued projectionists, beginning in the silent era and continuing to the present day. Drawing upon extensive archival research and lengthy interviews with former projectionists, it documents the key facets and challenges of their work, and how these evolved in response to previous waves of significant technological change. It evaluates how projectionists helped to design and maintain key aesthetic characteristics of the 20th century big screen experience. It shows how the institution of cinema in Britain has been historically underpinned by the harsh exploitation of projectionists by many employers, detailing inadequate wage levels and poor working conditions that formerly provoked government investigation, and explaining why these problems were never successfully ameliorated by trade unions. It also charts in depth the recent fateful transition to digital projection, delineating how and why projectionists were so swiftly and ruthlessly consigned to the past, and assessing whether this form of entertainment should be considered diminished by their super session.

A Dictionary of Film Studies covers all aspects of its discipline as it is currently taught at undergraduate level. Offering exhaustive and authoritative coverage, this A-Z is written by experts in the field, and covers terms, concepts, debates, and movements in film theory and criticism; national, international, and transnational cinemas; film history, movements, and genres; film industry organizations and practices; and key technical terms and concepts. Since its first publication in 2012, the dictionary has been updated to incorporate over 40 new entries, including computer games and film, disability, ecocinema, identity, portmanteau film, Practice as Research, and film in Vietnam. Moreover, numerous revisions have been made to existing entries to account for developments in the discipline, and changes to film institutions more generally. Indices of films and filmmakers mentioned in the text are included for easy access to relevant entries. The dictionary also has 13 feature articles on popular topics and terms, revised and informative bibliographies for most entries, and more than 100 web links to supplement the text.