Film The G2 section of today's Guardian was given over to an amazing collection of essays suggesting "the events, objects and trends that will come to define the first decade of the 21st century." Since it doesn't include the subject I'd be most interested in and I've decided to try and fill in the gap. Sadly, I fear, I'm no Jess Cartner-Morley but I've tried my best. And so...
The movies
Stuart Ian Burns
Wednesday January 2, 2008
the feeling listless blog
Future cineastes will remember the noughties as the digital decade. Computers have not only changed the way that films are made but also delivered. Clearly the roots of this transition can be traced back to the eighties when music could be bought on shiny disc rather than relatively reflective black plastic and into the nineties with Jurassic Park resurrecting the dinosaurs albeit without actually cloning anything. But it’s in this decade that these innovations have flourished and changed the way that popcorn chompers interact with movies.
During the commentary for his extended edition of King Kong, the film’s direct Peter Jackson, having already brought some of the decades most potent images during his Lord of the Rings adaptation, marvels at how anything is now possibly visually when pixels are engaged. Not quite – as Final Fantasy and Beowolf have demonstrated convincing photo-realistic actors in close-up from scratch are yet to come and Joanna Cassidy’s head still needed to be engaged to replace the visage of the stunman who blundered through the windows during her character’s death scene in the redux of Blade Runner.
But as this illustrates there’s no denying that the acronym CGI is now used throughout the industry as almost every film, and not just in the fantasy and science fiction genres are taking advantage of artificial ways of manipulating the image to the point that it’s almost impossible to believe anything we viewers are see anymore and arguably judging by some of summer’s threequel offerings far from releasing creativity, it’s stultified the narrative impulse to an embarrassing degree, making the foregrounded images more important than story.
Digital colour timing also means that a cinematographer no longer has to rely upon their camera when painting with light – and the use of digital cameras during the process makes this transition even easier. Star Wars: Episode Two: Attack of the Clones was arguably the first film shot, edited and in some place projected totally digitally and this process is slowly becoming the norm; as the price of blockbusters overinflates, the biggest cash suck – literally the negative and also the duplication of prints -- is being removed from the equation.
Nay-sayers (sounding not unlike vinylists when criticise cds and mp3) argue that digital films are too static and lack the warmth of their analogue cousins. But directors from Michael Mann to Robert Roderguez and even Steven Spielberg promote the flexibility of digital shooting and its ability to inspire young filmmakers who can now apparently make and edit movies in their bedrooms. All is not lost though – the new Indiana Jones adventure is being shot on film.
Yet like music since the eighties, the audience’s interaction with film has been led by something small round and circular. Whilst television and then video undoubtedly opened-up the ability of the viewer to see material which otherwise would have become lost in the mists of old Hollywood, the relative cheap to reproduce dvds have made large sections of the history of cinema almost instantly accessible for the first time. Unlike tv and tape we no longer even have to wait for a film to be broadcast or turn up amongst the limited stock at the local video emporium – the likes of Lovefilm (or Netflix in the US) can deliver every disc ever released through the letterbox – presuming they’re in stock at the time.
Whilst the core audience predominantly continue to watch new releases, they’re still vastly more cineliterate than ever before and the quality of presentation has improved with films appearing in the home much as they are in the cinema – correct ratios and five channels of stereo and with high definition discs with an even better picture quality. Even if the pictures themselves are fake, we’re able to see them with unprecedented clarity and strangely unlike those vinylists, few say they prefer video – except film study students having to present a particular scene to their classmates. No doubt though by the end of the next decade, dvds will look rather quaint to the teenagers who’re having the Star Wars trilogies, released on yet another format, being projected directly onto their retinas.
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