Digital Technology and Its Effects on the Aesthetic of Expression in Film

The Introduction of “Computer generated Imagery” or CGI has revolutionized every aspect of motion picture special effects, creating a fantasy world which had never existed. Digital cinema has its own genealogy; giving rise to a system of simulations which is totally believable by audience. This article studies this system of simulations and shows how it came to existence. The main hypothesis is that digital technology paved the way for a world of simulations and these simulations made a system of visual codes. These visual codes sometimes had no real world referents (angels with two long wings for instance) or involved events that were not likely to unfold in front of a camera (like sinking of Titanic).
First, we provide a historical survey of digital cinema and then we can study the importance and effects of this attitude in the contemporary cinema. This article is descriptive and analytic considering documents and studying relevant feature film. Selection of the films was random, mainly based on their effect on cinema when they were released.
The result of this paper shows that a special kind of aesthetic has been created which through its simulations has an impact on audience’s perception. In a sense, thanks to digital cinema, a digital metaphysics has emerged.