Introduction 
A Historical Snapshot - Early Years - Visitors - Diversity
Modern Culture - South Beach - Pop Culture
The Art and Architecture - Art Deco A Tourist's Perspective
Works Cited |
 | What is it about Miami that has captured the imagination of the public in popular culture? Not only is the physical city important but many of the popular culture references have their roots in the photographed representations of the city. A person can analyze the "studium" aspects of the photograph, as Roland Barthes points out, but the "punctum" of the photograph (that which captures the imagination of the viewer) is what is used in popular culture. The colors of this website come from my personal "punctums" of Miami Beach photographs. The neons of the hotels along Ocean Drive have captured my imagination (which is discussed furthur in The Tourist's Section). In this section various themes and images from television and video games will be related to photographs of locations and events in Miami.  Premiering in 1985 the NBC hit series Miami Vice "permanently altered the city's image of itself," leading more Art Deco style buildings to be constructed and renovated (Bush 185). The show tried to highlight the beautiful areas of the city. Location scouters took photographs to give the director and cinematographers some of the most impressive scenes that could deliver high impact visuals. According to an article in the Tampa Tribune, "Mann said that when he was shooting the pilot and the first couple of episodes, 'a few staffers would wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and go out nightriding--just looking at things in Miami... They would come back with a great bridge, and this bridge had the most fabulous vantage point of the Indian River with these three hulks sticking up and one strip of neon in the background.'" (Bush 186) While this isn't the real Miami, it is Miami in the popular image. Miami Vice had the effect of giving the general population a way to visualize the city, and during times of turmoil and degeneration this type of press was needed. The results of these scouting trips give Miami Vice a photographic feel. While watching it a viewer could almost imagine Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas acting in front of a blown-up photo. Picturesque, to say the least.  Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for the Playstation 2 is a video game that takes place in a Miami-like city called Vice City. If fact, it is so similiar that basically the only difference is in the name. The game takes place in the 1980s and is about a small-time down-on-his-luck gangster's rise to the top. Aside from the gameplay and the story the most important aspect of the game is the environment. Creating such a detailed world would have been impossible without the influences of photography. In an interview on Gamespot.com Aaron Garbut of Rockstar Games art department discussed the world design of the game: "...The entire team flew out to Miami to recover and soak in the atmosphere of the area. While the rest of the team sunbathed or propped up the News Bar, the ever-industrious art team headed out onto the baking hot Miami streets armed with digital cameras. We split up and covered every area we were interested in using for Vice City... we'd amassed countless hours of video and close to 10,000 digital photos." When playing the game it is interesting to see which details from the photos that the designers took made significant visual contributions.   The areas of South Beach and Miami Beach were obviously well photographed with the intentions of including the famous hotel fronts that line the road. The neon signs and sidewalk cafes must have been part of the "punctum" of the photographs while the building shapes and relative architecture was part of the intented "studium" of the trip to Miami the designers took. If a person is to look at a video game and describe it as a set of interactive elements displayed visually then photography fits perfectly into game development. Many video games are said to use cinema elements, but cinema is just rapidly moving still images with sound. Since film is constantly moving from one point to the next linearly there is not as much time for interaction. If this is the case then it seems to be that video games take more from photography then cinema. Roland Barthe's described part of the "attraction certain photographs exerted upon [him] [as] advenience or even adventure (Barthes 19). While the processes to create photographs and video games are very different one can't help but see how the visual effects of photographs carry into this new interactive medium. |
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