Kirk Pillow, the associate dean of the faculty and associate professor of philosophy, presented a lecture titled "Lens Flare in the Age of Digital Production" on Friday, Feb. 11, in the Kirner-Johnson Red Pit.
Pillow began his lecture by showing a clip from Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report." Spielberg incorporates lens flare into his movie. According to Pillow, lens flare "is the reflection of non-image forming light off of the interior of a camera lens, and most commonly results in multi-colored spots in the image produced." However, Pillow noted, the lens flare that the audience sees in "Minority Report" is actually not true lens flare at all. It is a digital enhancement of a digital image. The use of this effect does is not supposed to undermine the reality. Instead, lens flare is supposed to enhance the realism of the image because the audience expects the realism of the cameral lens; therefore, by seeing effects "caused" by the camera, the film becomes part of the "real."
Pillow then asked, "why concoct fake lens flare to doctor digitally produced images?"
In order to answer this question, he introduced an essay by Walter Benjamin titled "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." By citing different arguments from Benjamin's essay regarding authenticity and manual versus process reproduction, Pillow argued that the use of digital lens flare "reflects a nostalgic adherence to a standard of representational fidelity inherited from the photographic tradition."
Pillow ultimately argued that digital film production must make a new tradition and "overcome this nostalgia if it is to revolutionize our sense of realism to the extent that photography and film have."
A question and answer session followed the lecture. The Faculty Lecture series at Hamilton is sponsored by The Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty.
-- by Emily Lemanczyk '05
