Making Believe

Screen Performance and Special Effects in Popular Cinema

By Lisa Bode

SERIES: Techniques of the Moving Image

Rutgers University Press

In the past twenty years, we have seen the rise of digital effects cinema in which the human performer is entangled with animation, collaged with other performers, or inserted into perilous or fantastic situations and scenery. Making Believe sheds new light on these developments by historicizing screen performance within the context of visual and special effects cinema and technological change in Hollywood filmmaking, through the silent, early sound, and current digital eras.

Making Believe incorporates North American film reviews and editorials, actor and crew interviews, trade and fan magazine commentary, actor training manuals, and film production publicity materials to discuss the shifts in screen acting practice and philosophy around transfiguring makeup, doubles, motion capture, and acting to absent places or characters. Along the way it considers how performers and visual and special effects crew work together, and struggle with the industry, critics, and each other to define the aesthetic value of their work, in an industrial system of technological reproduction. Bode opens our eyes to the performing illusions we love and the tensions we experience in wanting to believe in spite of our knowledge that it is all make believe in the end.

This is one of the best and most nuanced discussions of performance and acting in the digital era that I have read or will ever hope to read. Adrienne L. McLean, author of Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema

In this expansive and historically-informed study, Lisa Bode provides a wise and illuminating account of the intersection of actors with cinema technology in all its myriad forms. Stephen Prince, author of Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality

It isn’t just the makeup that Bode wipes off the face of Hollywood. It’s the secrets behind choosing the perfect stunt double, the reality of using a green screen, and the authenticity of portraying another culture. Making Believe is just that. A book on the reality of all of Hollywood’s most famous illusions, and it’s not all smoke mirrors. This book takes readers through the history of the film and media to prove just how far the entertainment industry has evolved. Lisa Bode definitely let the cat out of the bag, and I don’t believe it’s going back in. Communication Booknotes Quarterly

Making Believe expands our understanding of the developmental history of screen acting practice by analyzing the intricate interplay between human performer and digital/non-digital production techniques in various time periods. Film Critcism

This will be an excellent volume for those interested in film and media studies. Recommended.' Choice

This is one of the best and most nuanced discussions of performance and acting in the digital era that I have read or will ever hope to read. Adrienne L. McLean, author of Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema

In this expansive and historically-informed study, Lisa Bode provides a wise and illuminating account of the intersection of actors with cinema technology in all its myriad forms. Stephen Prince, author of Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality

It isn’t just the makeup that Bode wipes off the face of Hollywood. It’s the secrets behind choosing the perfect stunt double, the reality of using a green screen, and the authenticity of portraying another culture. Making Believe is just that. A book on the reality of all of Hollywood’s most famous illusions, and it’s not all smoke mirrors. This book takes readers through the history of the film and media to prove just how far the entertainment industry has evolved. Lisa Bode definitely let the cat out of the bag, and I don’t believe it’s going back in. Communication Booknotes Quarterly

Making Believe expands our understanding of the developmental history of screen acting practice by analyzing the intricate interplay between human performer and digital/non-digital production techniques in various time periods. Film Critcism