The New Language of the Digital Film

Article. — Journal of Popular Film and Television. — 2014 — 42:1 — pp. 47-58. DOI: 10.1080/01956051.2012.759898The language of the digital film entails an intermediation process between new technological capacities that provide the infinite potential to control cinematic manifestations, and new expressive intentions on the part of the digital filmmaker to produce an invented realism that suggests an auratic power. The unique aesthetics of the digital film reflect this power, expressing the ways digital filmmakers envision or shape invented worlds rather than striving to reproduce an actual and physical world. The characters in digital action films reveal this new determination in ways that have been equated with avatars in the video game context. The journey of the digital heroic action-body through spectacles of physical endurance evidences his manipulation from a position of control and mastery aimed mainly at heightening the impact of the action and functions on an expressive rather than a realist level.