The influence of video games in cinematographic language:

the “300” case and the Playstation aesthetic

Abstract

This essay analyzes the growing influence of the aesthetics and narrative components of videogames in contemporary movies, using the film “300”, by director Zack Snyder, as a case study. Editing, sound design and large-scale narrative – the division in three acts becomes more fragile, shifted by a structure in which the hero needs to overcome successive obstacles with a growing degree of difficulty – are some of the standards of what we could call Playstation Aesthetics. This variation of the poetics of cinema intensifies the so-called MTV Aesthetics, which was based in accelerated editing techniques and electronic-modified sounds, and has been prevailing since the 1980’s.