Arkansas Society for Cinema and Television Production (ASCTP)

(a Non-Profit Education Corporation)

contact: Gary William Jones gary@jonesfilmvideo.com

RTV 3303-001 Spring 2010  Class #14  

 

2000-___________

 

David A. Cook, A History of Narrative Film, 4th Edition, New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.

 

ÒDigital Technology and the Future of CinemaÓ

 

If, in fact, the cinema can no longer be clearly distinguished from animation, then movies like Pearl Harbor cannot be judged by the same standards as From Here to Eternity or Tora! Tora! (two other films about the attack on Pearl Harbor) or, indeed, most of the narrative films described in this book.  I am not suggesting that CGI-intensive films be exempt from the laws of coherent narrative, but rather that we also give them credit for being the truly brilliant works of animation that they sometimes areÉ

 

It is easy to imagine that Griffith and Eisenstein would have readily availed themselves of CGI to enhance the scale of their very different forms of spectacle; and it is difficult to image that Welles and Hitchcock would not have done so since both directed heavily composited films well before computer graphics evolved.  Citizen Kane (1941), for example, contains more optically composited shots that any film made before Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)—over 50 percentÉand The Birds (1963) is literally a tapestry of traveling matte shots, some containing as many as 30 separate elementsÉ

 

If CGI really is a new beginning, perhaps we should look at the films of its first decade in the same way that we look at those discussed in the first three chapters of this book, when narrative cinema was being shaped and codified.  We do not valorize Cabiria, The Birth of a Nation, or Intolerance for their intellectual or conceptual content, much less A Trip to the Moon, The Great Train Robbery, or The Lonely Villa.  We prize them, rather, for meeting difficult challenges of narrative expression and coherence at a time when the medium itself was new.  Once these problems were solved and the solutions formalized, successive generations of filmmakers (aesthetic rather than chronological)—e.g. Murnau, Lang, Eisenstein, Hitchcock, Renoir, and Welles—were free to infuse the medium with their unique vision and make the cinema the most important art form of the twentieth century.  In works like Moulin Rouge and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, we can see intimations of the next generation of digital cinema and of CGIÕs potential to transform the narrative language of film into an even more powerful medium than it was during its first hundred years. (p. 927)

 

And in 2010, along came Avatar. :-)

 

Melinda Corey and George Ochoa, The American Film Institute Desk Reference, New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2002.

 

The digital revolution put the tools of cinema into the hands of the masses, even while violence and cartoon mayhem continued to saturate the box office.  But when terrorists attacked America on the morning of September 11th, 2001;, Hollywood was forced to confront a scenario that no filmmaker could have imagined.

 

As the millennium began, Hollywood faced substantial changes.  The cost of making movies was higher than ever.  The threat of simultaneous writer and actor strikes panicked the industry, inspiring a yearlong frenzy of production before both were narrowly averted in 2001.  Studios, always looking for ways to save money, began to explore the possibilities of digital exhibition and distribution.  And in an election year, Tinseltown came under heavy fire from politicians on the campaign trail, forcing studio heads to rethink practices in the marketing of its violent films to minors.

 

Meanwhile, for a growing number of filmmakers, digital video was becoming preferable to film.  Taking their cues from DenmarkÕs Dogma 95 approach, established directors such as Spike Lee, Mike Figgis, Barbet Schroeder, Richard Linklater, and Steven Soderbergh all made low budget, improvisational films shot with hand-held digital cameras.  Others directors, such as George Lucas and Robert Rodriquez, used higher quality digital camera that reproduced the look and feel of film at a fraction of the costÉ

 

For young independent filmmakers, the development of new software suddenly made it easy to create high-quality movies using a home computer.  And the increasing popularity of DVD technology, with its emphasis on high-quality presentation, director commentaries, and behind-the-scenes material, provide a greater understanding of the filmmaking process.

 

The terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, brought a different kind of change, forcing reconsideration of current projects and uncertainty about the futureÉ

 

With America on high alert, many pundits predicted a greater return of the kind of frothy, escapist entertainment popular during the Second World War, and analysts watched the box office for signs of shifting public tasteÉbut by early 2002, when Ridley ScottÕs Black Hawk Down, a blistering recreation of a failed US military operation in Somalia, opened at number one, it became apparent that the tragedyÕs true effect on the industry—if any—would not be known for many years to come. (p.133)