As the introduction of sound technology changed cinema from end to end, digital 3D now deeply impacts the movie making process. Considering the reciprocal relationship between technology and style, the arrival of sound and the advent of 3D suggest themselves for comparison: both required high-tech investment, both used specific business models for exhibition – and both necessitated a rethinking of creative filmmaking techniques such as script writing, production design, cinematography, acting style, and editing.

To understand digital 3D not as an additive device but as a generic principle, we must learn to enter film. In digital 3D, the viewer does not merely look at a picture but shares its space. Thus, digital 3D does not only render space visible, it makes it accessible. It diminishes distance, it increases involvement. D3D makes it possible to produce filmic space as perceptive experience as well as stylistic expression: wide-ranging and flexible.

My presentation attempts to provide an assessment of the conditions and possibilities of D3D movie aesthetics. Examples include questions of narration and visual register, form and content, movement and perspective.

Curriculum Vitae

Lisa Gotto is a Professor of Film History and Film Analysis at the ifs International Film School. She received her M.A. from the University of Cologne and her Ph.D. from the Bauhaus University Weimar. Since 2001, she has taught at a variety of institutions, including universities and film academies in Munich, Vienna, Cologne, Regensburg, Weimar, Lüneburg and Mannheim. Lisa Gotto’s major research interests are in media theory and popular culture, in film history and film aesthetics. She has published books and articles on technological and cultural transitions in film history, on television culture, gender topics and alternative cinemas. Currently, she is developing a book project on visuality and tactility.