| Summary: | This thesis offers a reading of the relationship between the cinematic image and the promotional process in the context of emerging digital technologies. Asserting that computer generated image forms now function as a single currency across multiple audiovisual economies, this thesis posits a new understanding of digital attractions as constituting a 'cinemas of transactions'. Neither a singular, unitary'cinema' nor a singular 'transaction', the cinemas of transactions constitutes a complex and multiply interrelated system of textual, technological, aesthetic and economic developments whereby computer generated attractions and promotional practices span many media and textual forms. While Anglo-American film theories of the twentieth century separated the study of film form from those of spot advertising, the contemporary context, characterised by a wane in Marxist aesthetic discourse and a rise in theories of converging new media, offers a moment in which to question this separation. In this theoretical context, the relationship between the computer generated attraction and the promotional process is explored through the analysis of a broad range of media texts which all feature spectacular digital special effects. Through case studies of Hollywood films, trailers, net attractions and spot advertisements this thesis expands the work of film theories conducted in the 1980 and 1990s into the expanding domain of new media discourse.
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