Rotational aesthetics: Michael Bay and contemporary cinema’s machine movement

Endnotes 1. The user-populated Cinemetrics Database (http://www.cinemetrics.lv) reports that the first film has an average shot length (ASL) of 3 seconds, and the second film an ASL of 3.4 seconds. The third film jumps to an ASL of 4.6 seconds, although this is most likely related to the fact that the third film was released in 2D and 3D, and stereoscopic presentation demanded slower cutting rates (Chang, Justin. ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon.’ Variety, July 11-17, 2011, 17). 2. French, Phillip. ‘Transformers (review).’ The Observer, July 29, 2007, paragraph 2. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/jul/29/stevenspielberg.actionandadventure (accessed 10 August, 2014). 3. Scott, A.O. ‘One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Autobots.’ New York Times June 28, 2011, paragraph 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/movies/transformers-dark-of-the-moon-theyre-at-it-again-movie-review.html?_r=0 (accessed 1 August 2014). 4. Keough, Peter. ‘A loud explosion of CGI in Transformers: Age of Extinction.’ The Boston Globe, June 27, 2014, paragraph 3. http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2014/06/27/transformers-age-extinction-review-loud-explosion-cgi/tZIusWCujRuQgQGRUHZh9J/story.html (accessed 10 August). 5. Weissberg, Jay. ‘Toys will be toys.’ Variety June 25 - July 8, 2007, 46. 6. Transformers (2007) was the third highest grossing film of its summer season; Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) was the highest grossing of its summer season; and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) and Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) were second highest grossing in their respective summer seasons. Source: www.boxofficemojo.com. 7. Cubitt, Sean. The Cinema Effect. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. Cubitt associates this with what he calls the ‘Hollywood baroque’, in which ‘[c]lassical decoupage… no longer governs because, with one swooping sequence-shot, we can establish the diegetic space without stabilising it according to the 180 degree rule’ (224). 8. Bordwell, David. ‘Bond vs. Chan: Jackie shows how it’s done.’ Observations on film art blog, September 15, 2010, paragraph 2. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2010/09/15/bond-vs-chan-jackie-shows-how-its-done/ (accessed 1 August 2014). 9. Emerson, Jim. ‘In The Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight)’ video transcript. Scanners blog, September 21, 2011, paragraph 25. http://www.rogerebert.com/scanners/annotated-transcript-in-the-cut-part-i-shots-in-the-dark-knight (accessed 14 October 2014); see also Bukatman, Scott. ‘Why I Hate Superhero Movies.’ Cinema Journal 50.3, Spring 2011, 118-22. 10. Bordwell, op. cit., paragraph 2. 11. Huhtamo, Erkki. ‘From Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd. Towards an Archeology of the Media.’ Leonardo Vol. 30, No 3, 1997, 222. 12. Parikka, Jussi. What is Media Archaeology? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012, 38. 13. Whissel, Kristen. Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema. London: Duke University Press, 2014. 14. Such mechanical architecture circulates in news reports and videos such as this one of Kismet engaged in social activities: http://video.mit.edu/watch/kismet-2850/ (accessed 10 August, 2014). 15. Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1964], 230. 16. Bukatman, Scott. Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century. London: Duke University Press, 2003, 103. 17. See Bruno, Giuliana. Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film. New York: Verso, 2002, 147-8. 18. Stafford, Barbara Maria. Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994, 195. 19. Springer, Claudia. Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age. London: Athlone, 1996, 17. 20. Marx, op. cit., 230. 21. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991, 36. 22. Bruno, op. cit., 182-3. 23. Ibid., 254. 24. Jameson, op. cit., 35, emphasis added. 25. Critiques of the accelerating speeds of modern life include Paul Virilio. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology. trans. Mark Polizzotti, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2006 [1977], and Rosa Hartmut. Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. trans. Jonathan Trejo-Mathys, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013 [2005]. 26. Dargis, Manohla. ‘Car Wars With Shape-Shifters ‘R’ Us.’ New York Times, July 2, 2007, paragraph 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/movies/02tran.html?_r=0 (accessed 10 August, 2014). We can certainly locate the franchise within an ongoing trend for heavily militarised spectacle that was already ingrained by the time the first instalment appeared (see Clover, Joshua. ‘Dream Machines.’ Film Quarterly, Winter 2007-8, 6-7, and Der Derian, James. Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network. Oxford: Westview Press, 2001. Alongside digital visual effects houses like ILM and Digital Domain, the franchise’s collaborators include General Motors and the U.S. Department of Defense (Mirrlees, Tanner. ‘How to Read Iron Man: The Economics, Geopolitics and Ideology of an Imperial Film Commodity.’ Cineaction Vol. 92, Summer 2013, 7). 27. It is no coincidence, for example, that the robots’ fighting styles and choreography draw on rotational martial arts moves (see Duncan, Jody. ‘Bots & Mayhem.’ Cinefex 111, 2007, 77), so that each film supplies the familiar sight of robot machines delivering roundhouse kicks, crescent kicks, and rotating sword slashes that are highly effective in their reach, force and capacity to slice through or destabilise an enemy. 28. Bukatman, op. cit., 107. 29. Ibid., 95. 30. Ibid., 109, emphasis in original. 31. Here I am indebted to Daniel Frampton’s notion of ‘film-thinking’, elaborated in Filmosophy. Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2006. 32. Parikka, op. cit., 36. 33. Galloway, Alexander. The Interface Effect. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012, 74. 34. Bennett, Bruce. ‘The normatively of 3D: cinematic journeys, “imperial visuality” and unchained cameras.’ Jump Cut No 55, Fall 2013, 3. http://ejumpcut.org/currentissue/Bennett-3D/index.html (accessed 14 August 2014). 35. Bould, Mark. ‘Transformers (review).’ Science Fiction Film and Television Vol. 1 issue 1, Spring 2008, 166. 36. ILM model supervisor David Fogler quoted in Kadner, Noah. ‘Unleashing CG Robots in the Real World.’ American Cinematographer, August 2007, 50. 37. Quoted in Kadner, op. cit., 50. 38. Bould, op. cit., 166. 39. For example, the way that the detailed realisation of the digitally rendered face, contemplated by a slowly circling camera, was showcased in Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005). 40. Chang, op. cit., p. 17. 41. See Galloway, op. cit., 78-100. 42. Chang, op. cit., 17. 43. Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008 [1990], 4. 44. Bolter, Jay David. ‘The Aesthetics of Flow and the Aesthetics of Catharsis.’ In Rania Gaafar and Martin Schulz (eds). Technology and Desire: The Transgressive Art of Moving Images. Bristol: Intellect, 2014, e-book location 2667-79. 45. Bolter, op. cit., e-book loc. 2667. 46. Anthony Vidler. Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture. London: MIT Press, 2000, 8. 47. Jameson, op. cit., 36-7. 48. See Galloway 2012; Galloway, Alexander. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006; Hansen, Mark B. N. Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.