Why are filmmakers such as J.J. Abrams, Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino continuing to shoot their movies on celluloid in the digital age of cinema? Are these filmmakers choosing the photochemical process of celluloid images purely for aesthetics purposes? Or could their preference for celluloid have something to do with analogue's intimate connection to the subject of lack and desire? Capturing Digital Media: Perfection and Imperfection in Contemporary Film and Television examines the relationship between the perfection of the digital form and the imperfection of the human subject in recent film and television. Using a number of key psychoanalytic terms and new media concepts, Capturing Digital Media shows that the necessity of imperfection is where we locate the human subject of desire within the binary logic of the digital. It argues that the perfection of digital must be wounded by forms of imperfection in order to make media texts such as film and television desirable. But even as films and television texts incorporate forms of imperfection, digital perfection remains a powerful attraction in our engagement with moving images, such as high definition screens, spectacular digital effects, and state-of-the-art sound.

AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Analogue and Digital Forms and Star Wars 1. Perfecting the Imperfect: Children of Men and War of the Worlds2. Time-Looping Narrative: Source Code, Looper and Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow3. The Database, Gaming, and First-Person Shooter Perspective in Gus Van Sant's Elephant4. Subjective Vision and The Intimate Spectacle: Cloverfield 5. Making Sense of Mumblecore6. The Politics of Homemade Filmmaking: Y Tu Mamá También and End of Watch7. Time-Shifting, Dreams, and Uncertainty in The Sopranos 8. Please Set Your Belief to 16x9ConclusionNotesIndex