It is surprising to realize how much of what seems to be genuine urban (and indeed interior and other exterior) space on television and in film is either augmented or completely fabricated from green screen digital matte techniques.  Judging from the video above, even the most mundane shot was originally filmed either on a back-lot or in some un-identifiable alley, only to be labored over by digital artists until it is fit for our consumption.

Lacking strong central authority, the “heroic” redesign of the urban environment is impossible (especially when it is not inspired by rampant disease and fear of barricading revolutionaries), yet every week on every network production designers become little Baron Haussmanns, reshaping and refining Los Angeles, New York, and Vancouver into better Los Angeleses, New Yorks, and any other city in the world.  Haussmann hovered over maps, plans, and building codes as a surgeon hovers over a (presumably) sick body, his pencil a scalpel strategically excising what was seen as the cause of Paris’s disease (thanks, Anthony Vidler).  Our own Hollywood-Haussmanns are plastic surgeons who use the scalpel of the green screen to amputate the undesirable, then to stitch in digital prosthesis and implants, making our cities and urban rooms appear more vibrant and dynamic than the apparently are…

Street scenes for a tragedy and a comedy from Serlio’s Di Architettura

Of course, challenges of shooting in a “live” urban environment weighted against the restrictive budgets of television and film productions have inspired the proliferation of green screen augmentation.  All the same, I am constantly surprised when I come across an unexpected view in a city: the depth of the scene is so much more vivid, the idiosyncrasies are so much more compelling, and my heart beat is quicker knowing what I am seeing is shaped by hundreds of years and countless legal, architectural, historical, and emotional forces.  It is a composition that is a residue, accretion, and response and not a calculated, aesthetic arrangement.