TECHNOLOGY — footnote episodes

Footnote #73 - Rotoscoping

Footnote 73 looks at animation’s historical relationship to the body and how physicality was transcribed via the rotoscoping process as part of the construction of the earliest animated characters. From the Fleischer Studios pioneering the technology for use in their Out of the Inkwell series of shorts (1918–1927) and later feature films Gulliver's Travels (David Fleischer, 1939), and Mr. Bug Goes to Town (Dave Fleischer, 1941), through to Bob Sabiston’s digital homage to rotoscoping when developing the Rotoshop tool during the 1990s, this episode has Chris take Alex through the mechanics of projecting performances onto glass to be be traced by the animators to craft their animated performances.

Footnote #71 - Synthespians

Listen as the brand new Fantasy/Animation Footnote tackles the complexities and contradictions of digital performance and cyber stardom via this discussion of synthespians, a term very much anchored to early-2000s concerns around the future of acting, agency, and authenticity whose popularisation was largely prompted by the rise of motion capture and other forms of computerised intervention.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantJanuary 19, 2026PERFORMANCE, TECHNOLOGY, DIGITAL, CHARACTERComment

Footnote #67 - Pepper's Ghost

Inspired by the recent podcast episode on Casper (Brad Silberling, 1995) that featured a conversation with the film’s lead animator Mark Austin, Chris and Alex maintain the Halloween theme for this latest Footnote instalment that examines the spectacular imagery of “pepper’s ghost” - an illusion technique dating back to the earliest forms of stage magic that also found a home across multiple popular entertainment spaces and attractions.

Footnote #66 - Enviro-Toons

The first Footnote podcast of the new season kicks off with this discussion of enviro-toons, a category - perhaps even sub-genre - of animation that speaks to the complex relationship that exists between the representations of (and labour processes behind) the animated medium and the environment.

Footnote #49 - Cyborgs

Footnote 49 looks at the fascinating figure of the cyborg as an embodiment of hybridity, resistance, and rebellion, interrogating the role of cyborgs as surrogate figurations that representing disparate forms of identity within both popular media culture and social reality.

Footnote #48 - Visual Effects

Having already tackled the topic of special effects in an earlier Footnote, this latest episode instead focuses on visual effects (VFX) as a way to think through the practical/digital distinction that has come to culturally and industrially define the specificity and spectacle of VFX imagery.

Footnote #47 - Aura

Art’s relationship to the auratic is the focus of Footnote #47, which engages cinema’s historical relation to ‘aura’ via the foundational work of Walter Benjamin who argued for technology’s “withering” of art’s uniqueness of space and time thanks to the potential for the creation of a “plurality of copies” that shift art’s “unique existence.”

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantApril 29, 2024SPECTACLE, AURA, SPECTATORSHIP, TECHNOLOGYComment

Footnote #46 - Multiplanarity

Footnote #46 responds to a listener email by focusing on the speeds and spaces of the “multiplanar” image, a term theorised in Thomas Lamarre’s writing on anime and its techniques which looks at how motion is able to divide animated landscapes into different planes of action.

Footnote #40 - Puppetry

What is puppet animation, and are puppets a form of animation? The historical and theoretical implications of fantasy and animation’s relationship to puppet performance are the focus of Footnote #40.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantJanuary 22, 2024PUPPETRY, LABOUR, TECHNOLOGY, BODY, ARTISTComment

Footnote #39 - Special Effects

What is so special about special effects? What role does technological innovation play in their convincing construction of illusion? What distinguishes ‘special’ from ‘visual’ effects? In this Footnote episode, Chris and Alex play with ideas of special effects in relation to fantasy and animation.

Footnote #37 - Silent Cinema (with Lawrence Napper)

Special guest Dr Lawrence Napper, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London and expert in early silent and British cinemas, joins Chris and Alex once again - this time to talk about silent cinema in this Footnote episode of the podcast.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantNovember 13, 2023SILENT CINEMA, FILM HISTORY, TECHNOLOGYComment

Footnote #32 - 3D (with Nick Jones)

Fresh from their discussion of Spider-Man: No Way Home (Jon Watts, 2021), Chris, Alex and special guest Dr Nick Jones (Senior Lecturer in Film, Television and Digital Culture, University of York) return for this short Footnote episode on the marvel and magic of 3D technology.

Footnote #26 - The Cinema of Attractions

The tension between spectacle and narrative is investigated through the seminal work of Tom Gunning and his formulation of the “cinema of attractions” in this latest Footnote episode, in which Chris and Alex hold cinema’s propensity for exhibitionist visual display and its later development of story in delicate balance.

Footnote #25 - Photorealism

Fresh from their discussion of hyper-realism in the previous Footnote episode, Chris and Alex discuss ‘photorealism’ in this latest instalment - a term that denotes the aesthetic mimicking of lens-based media to create the appearance of a world as viewed through a camera.

Footnote #24 - Hyper-Realism

The podcast's first engagement with questions of ‘realism’ in animation takes centre stage in Footnote #24, where Chris and Alex historicise and interrogate the function of realism and hyper-realist traditions within a multitude of media and aesthetic traditions.

Footnote #15 - Motion Capture

The Fantasy/Animation Footnotes return with a new podcast episode on the form and function of motion capture as mode of computerised performance in an era of digital mediation.

Footnote #10 - Hybridity

The mixed media potential of animation is the subject of Footnote #10, which takes on hybridity via the combination of multiple animated styles, as well as the spectatorial effects that such blended images might conjure.

Footnote #8 - Plasmaticness

Footnote #8 offers a brief detour to the abridged and incomplete animated writings of Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein from the 1940s, and in particular his notorious concept of “plasmaticness” that he argued was a way of understanding the appeal and attraction of Walt Disney’s cartoon images