24 Temática

The designed world of a narrative becomes a super-sign in itself, as when Los Angeles connotes the American dream, New York connotes film noir

undergrounds, Paris connotes romance, and London connotes the world of

espionage. In similar fashion, the virtual world represents its own virtuality through production design, visual style, mise-en-scène and cinematography. There are general similarities between designing buildings and such for real-life usage, and for movies. But the difference in purpose creates an important difference in result. In architecture, the utilization of the building itself is the end product. In movie making, a building is just a means to an end, the end being the story (Neumann, 1999). The cityscape of Blade Runner has no other purpose then to say this is the future and it’s hell. In the diegetic world of the narrative, a whole palace might be there to make a king appear a king. In storytelling, a whole world, including its inhabitants (characters) and history (plot) is designed (LoBrutto, 1992). A common ambition is to make this world more complex and deep than what is shown on screen, both when it comes to characters and their back stories, and to

environments with a level of detail and complexity that overwhelms the viewer in order to be perceived as realistic (Bjurbom, 2005; Card, 1988; Keegan, 2009; LoBrutto, 1992).

In the studied narratives, the signs of virtuality seldom come one by one.

Usually, in movie after movie, a syntagmatic analysis reveals that the signs support each other, and that there is tight integration – what Buckland (2006) refers to as

organic unity – between style, narrative, production design and production value.53

The total sum of signs combines, and it is possible to consider a top-level super- sign in each narrative text, a top super-sign representing the fictive virtual world itself. This super-sign represents the idea of the virtual world in its entirety, a world that represents itself. The [1973 world] of Life on Mars has been discussed

previously, and another example, likewise based on a historical period, comes from The Thirteenth Floor, where the mise-en-scène and cinematography work tightly together in characterizing one of the virtual worlds (the 1990s world) as vacant, moody, depressive, stylish, and modern; one of many examples are the green and blue computer diode lights which in other shots are repeated by the green and blue lighting scheme. The 1990s is cold and modern, while the other virtual world, (the 1920s world) is warm and vintage, but also has a sense of closure and loneliness. At

the end of the movie, the supposedly real world (the 2024’s world) successfully balances between being even more futuristic but at the same time warmer and friendlier, once again seamlessly combining cinematography and production design. This contrast between worlds – their mise-en-scène and their visual style – is

frequently used as a means to distinguish between different virtual worlds and/or the actual world, as highlighted by Judith Kerman (1992) in her critical analysis of Tron. A third example of consistent world design comes from Avalon. As described by Crogan (2010), the different worlds have their fundament in contemporary and historic Poland (most of the movie was shot in Poland). The supposedly actual world is portrayed as a “drab, featureless and vaguely authoritarian … Warsaw Pact urban dystopia” (p.102) with “‘soup kitchen’ bistros, dilapidated public transport and high density cramped apartments” (p.103). The supposedly virtual war game world Avalon is represented as “a mix of World War II Eastern European

battlefields and Cold War urban spaces of resistance to Communist rule” (ibid., p.103), and the final virtual game level is contrasted with the two others by being “depicted naturalistically as a living color, buzzing, contemporary post-89 city” (p.103).

The time epochs portrayed in the virtual worlds discussed above can be

compared to the romantic convenience of placing real-life computer game worlds in medieval and other historical environments. Medieval environments in games such as World of Warcraft depend on the popularity of the fantasy genre in games. World War II and other historical settings reflect a thematic interest for re-enacting more or less historically correct world events and societal changes. Considering fictional virtualities, barely any are set in a medieval time (the Matrix franchise short movie Program being an exception), but many are set in twentieth century worlds: the 1920s of The Thirteenth Floor, the 1940s/1970s of Avalon, the 1972 of Life on Mars, and the 1990s of The Matrix. The choice of these historical, nostalgic

environments seems surprising when it comes to portraying futuristic technology such as virtual worlds. However, if we consider narrative requirements these design choices make more sense. When the virtual is conceptualized as being opposed to, or at least thoroughly separated from, the actual, then the virtual world needs to contrast with the framing actual world of the narrative. One way to create this contrast is to set the virtual world in another time epoch. Some of the studied narratives describe the virtual as highly futuristic – for example Tron Legacy and Neuromancer – but in these narratives, the protagonists are aware that they have entered a virtual world. However, in narratives where the protagonists, and partly the audience as well, need to be fooled into believing that the overt virtual world is the actual world, then historical time epochs are used, as is the case in the movies The Thirteenth Floor and The Matrix mentioned above.

The subtle world building that the above examples illustrate is not always as visually spectacular or memorable as the dense characterizing super-signs such as the Matrix [curtains of green glowing code] or Tron’s light cycles, but nevertheless plays an important role in signifying virtuality.