Why do we imagine spaces?
Is it a political act? Is it an act of foretelling the future?
Is it an act of escape? Or is it resistance?
Conjuring up lush underwater topography, zero-gravity azure skies or a Gothic post-Apocalyptic cityscape isn’t a logistical nightmare for filmmakers anymore. They needn’t wait for weeks to see raw footage transformed with visual effects. The canvas for their superhero story, or sci-fi roller-coaster or gritty Web series can be created on an LED wall. Virtual production can help a director create an imaginary place, in a studio.
Why do we imagine spaces? Is it a political act? Is it an act of foretelling the future? Is it an act of escape? Or is it resistance?
For Outlook’s special 30th anniversary issue, the magazine looks at the act of imagining places within and without. We have been to some of these places in films and in books, in poems and in our dreams. Real is unreal and all tenses and places could be many elsewheres, like how a studio in Chennai becomes a space for creation of places beyond geographies and galaxies.
‘Imagined spaces’ was also the leitmotif and the central theme of our January 1, 2024 issue on Virtual Production. To begin with, films came into being with suspension of disbelief. In a piece titled ‘Unwilling Suspension of Disbelief,’ Editor Chinki Sinha looked at how virtual production has created a hyper-real world. In the 1979 film Stalker, director Andrei Tarkovsky even developed a theory of cinematography called “sculpting in time” where cinema was an environment. With virtual production that uses computer-generated imagery and special effects, filmmakers can set their stories in other galaxies, deep seas, or any fantasyland.
AI-backed tech can forever alter the essence of filmmaking as we know it.
The cover story, by Tanul Thakur, forayed into the magical world of Annapurna Studios, Hyderabad. Technology can help the director shrink a mountain, brighten the sun, whip the wind. It can make the cacti eucalyptus, the golden sky blue, and the triangular flags rectangular. For another story, we asked whether virtual production democratises filmmaking.
This is a question that Ojas Kolvankar and Tanul Thakur posed to celebrated production designer and artist Aradhana Seth. She opined that virtual technology could help film crews slash schedules. Virtual production can help one capture sunrise and sunset in an eight-hour or a 12-hour shift, which used to take a few days before.
In a guest piece in the same issue, economist Karthik Kalyanaraman chronicled the evolution of technology in cinema.
He wrote virtual production was akin to mandatory suspension of disbelief, unlike any other innovation filmmaking had seen. In another interesting section of the issue, filmmaker Q and film editor Hina debated the commonalities between immersive video games and the advent of technology in cinema. Academic Sayandeb Chowdhury predicted that cinema and technology were destined for a split in the long run.
The imaginary often emerges from the real. Outlook’s new issue on the theme ‘Imagined Spaces’ dissects the urge to create imagined spaces as acts of transition, prophecy and resistance. How does the architecture of an imagined building reflect politics, society and us? Is it a premonition? Are dystopian spaces prophetic? Is it the urge to belong and negotiate with modernity, as in Malgudi? Or an escape into magic, like Macondo? It is your ticket to thrills and chills, imaginary and real. Are you in?
