Digital Storytelling

How digital visual effects in film can be used to support storytelling: a guide for scriptwriters and students.Computer-generated effects are often blamed for bad Hollywood movies. Yet when a critic complains that technology swamps storytelling (in a review of Van Helsing calling it an example of everything that is wrong with Hollywood computer-generated effects movies) it says more about the weakness of the story than the strength of the technology. In Digital Storytelling Shilo McClean shows how digital visual effects can be a tool of storytelling in film adding narrative power as do sound color and experimental camera anglesother innovative film technologies that were once criticized for being distractions from the story. It is time she says to rethink the function of digital visual effects.Effects artists saycontrary to the criticsthat effects always derive from story. Digital effects are a part of production not post-production; they are becoming part of the story development process. Digital Storytelling is grounded in filmmaking the scriptwriting process in particular. McClean considers crucial questions about digital visual effectswhether they undermine classical storytelling structure if they always call attention to themselves whether their use is limited to certain genresand looks at contemporary films (including a chapter-long analysis of Steven Spielberg''s use of computer-generated effects) and contemporary film theory to find the answers. McClean argues that to consider digital visual effects as simply contributing the wow factor underestimates them. They are she writes the legitimate inheritors of film storycraft.