Abstract
<jats:p>Inspired by Williams’s examination of melodrama's transition from the French stage to become the foundational fabric of American cinema, this chapter argues that melodrama—in ways not acknowledged—has also informed our experience of cinema’s analog-to-digital transition. Echoing concerns around embodiment central to the melodramatic aesthetic, motion capture technology (mocap) inscribes the movements of the physical body to create a digital one—both registering and erasing the human body and providing a bridge between analog and digital forms of capture. While often overlooked in discussions about special effects, melodrama negotiates anxiety around the disappearance of the physical, human body from the screen. The character of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films offers an example of how mocap pushes digital cinema to intersect with melodramatic tropes, staging a revolutionary narrative that references the foundational conditions in which melodrama was consolidated while also indirectly invoking the film medium’s technological transformation.</jats:p>