Call for Papers
"The 'Science' of Special Effects: Aesthetic Approaches to Industry" Area
2008 Film & History Conference
Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008

AREA: The "Science" of Special Effects: Aesthetic Approaches to Industry

This area examines the industrial, technological, theoretical, and
aesthetic questions surrounding special-effects technologies.
Presenters may investigate historical changes in special and visual
effects, as in the gradual switch from physical to digital
applications; they may focus on the use of visual effects in film or
television texts that do not fit into typically spectacle-driven
genres (i.e., effects in drama, comedy, and musical narratives instead
of in action-adventure, science fiction, or fantasy); they may
consider the theoretical implications of special/visual effects and
technology on texts; or they may concentrate on neglected historical
and aesthetic values of effects development.

Possible papers or panels might include the following:

-- An investigation of the terms "Special Effect" and "Visual Effect,"
what they constitute, and how their definitions have been delineated
and complicated by changing technologies.

-- Special/visual effects "stars" such as (Keynote Speaker) Stan
Winston, Douglas Trumbull, or Richard Edlund, and their impact on the
construction and application of visual effects images for
mainstream/non-mainstream cinema.

-- The changing relationship between visual effects technologies and
pre-production, i.e. looking at "previz," at the development of films
"around" their effects sequences, or at the use of physical materials
such as maquettes as templates for eventual CG elements.

-- How contemporary visual-effects practitioners negotiate and
incorporate real world "physics" into their design of digital
characters ("synthespians") and environments.

-- How visual effects contribute to the formation of complete
"environments" on screen, how they are incorporated into narratives,
and how meaning is affected when a physical environment is entirely
fabricated.

--The implementation of special/visual effects by costume and
motion-capture "artists" and actors, and how studies of these
practices can offer insight into classic and contemporary working
relationships between effects practitioners, actors and crew.

-- The Visual Effects Society and its impact on the industry and
filmmaking throughout the organization's history.

-- How directors or other creative personalities use physical and
digital effects in their projects (e.g., Robert Zemeckis' application
of digital technologies or Guillermo Del Toro's proclaimed interest in
keeping a 50/50 balance between physical and digital effects).

Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to the area chairs:

Michael S. Duffy, Bob Rehak, Area Chairs, "The 'Science' of Special Effects"
Email: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]

Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each
presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for
proposals: May 1, 2008.

This area, comprising multiple panels, is a part of the 2008 biennial
Film & History Conference, sponsored by The Center for the Study of
Film and History. Speakers will include founder John O'Connor and
editor Peter C. Rollins (in a ceremony to celebrate the transfer to
the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh); Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of
Visions of the Apocalypse, Disaster and Memory, and Lost in the
Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood; Sidney Perkowitz, Charles
Howard Candler Professor of Physics at Emory University and author of
Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, & the End of the World; and
special-effects legend Stan Winston, our Keynote Speaker.  For updates
and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film
& History website (www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory).



-- 
Iain Robert Smith
Institute of Film and Television
School of American and Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham
University Park
NG7 2RD

Head of Communications,
MeCCSA Post-Graduate Network
website: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn/

Articles Editor,
Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies
website: http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/