This past weekend, the Times ran a feature piece with its two chief film critics, A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis, discussing the many implications of digital technology taking over in the film-making, distribution, and projection industries. If I may summarize their differing perspectives:
Scott argues, playing somewhat of a devil's advocate, that throughout the changes that have taken place in the film industry -- for example, the conversion to sound, the advancements of widescreen and color cinematography -- there have been filmmakers who have made outstanding works with the tools they have been given, and just as notable, there have been hacks who have made cliche-ridden drivel. Scott is also a realist: he prefers the image a projected film image presents, but the conditions for quality film projecting are relatively rare these days.
Dargis, not a digital-film-phobe, clearly believes in film's artistic superiority, and points out that digital projection is not always so perfect, either. (Anyone who has suddenly had an image on their HD TV set freeze for a moment and had sound and image out of sync knows what she means.) Furthermore, the film medium itself has become acknowledged as a superior form of archiving movies, so 35mm and 70mm strips of film are not going away (though manufacturers are supposedly phasing out 35mm cameras). Dargis also points out that the central motivating drive behind the various video revolutions (pre-digital and now in the digital era) has been one of cost and convenience. Converting to digital makes economic sense for the studios and the theaters. And the ability to play and replay a video -- whether on a high-def tv or an iPad -- is a major driving force for consumers, who don't have to leave their homes, even if the image quality is not as aesthetically beautiful as that of a perfectly projected image from Kubrick's 2001. (Except that it's almost impossible to see Kubrick's film in its original projection format, Cinerama, anyway, but that's another story.)
The real question that both Scott and Dargis come to is: are we on the verge of something that should no longer be called cinema? Has not digital format already changed the film medium to the point where it is not what it once was? (Keep in mind: one of the problems archivists face is that digital media formats keep changing rapidly: A video clip I have stored on my computer might not be playable in ten years, unless I can keep my computer.) The implication in Dargis's final comments is that film itself contains some kind of mystical aura, a trace of humanity left on the film strip that (presumably) is not the case with a digital image, no matter how many megapixels it contains. She evidently concurs with the famous film critic Andre Bazin, who saw film as a kind of mummification, a means of preserving life onto the strips of film. If film is poetic, then digital is prosaic, best suited for the immediate moment, especially in the iPhone age.
I would suggest indeed digital film-making is its own medium, though it is of course a hybrid one -- just as film was in its beginning and will always be. Movies began as a mix of portrait photography, cartoon panel/strip, plays, and novels. (The bulk of feature films made today are based on works from another medium, mainly novels and nonfiction books.) Film may become something of a more specialized industry, but there is clearly institutional support for the medium that is not going to shrivel up, even in this lousy economy.
It's also worth considering Marshall McLuhan's famous aphorism: what is the message of digital media? Digital media, which is so pervasive, is another of many examples McLuhan cited of a medium that extends -- or really puts outside of our bodies -- our central nervous system. The medium can function in a way that film -- still rooted very much in the mechanical age -- does not. Digital media projection and recording are instantaneous. The experience is often very immediate. Film is about sequencing, process, order. Filmmakers working with digital cameras should approach the medium in a totally different way: it's not just filming with different cameras. The best films shot on digital have makers who get this.
(Because Scott mentions P.T. Anderson's latest film, The Master, shot on 70mm film, I also thought back to Anderson's earlier film Boogie Nights, and the frustration of Burt Reynolds' porn film director when force to confront economic realities and shoot his movies on videotape. He was stuck in the "artistry" of the film medium, and could not recognize that tape was not simply inferior film -- it was a different means of communication altogether.)
I'm pretty certain that I have taught my last class where I show a projected image on the screen. College campuses under tight budgets are not able to maintain 16mm projectors, nor are they able to house 16mm prints. We don't have any movie cameras, and I can't imagine I can persuade my administration officials to invest in 16mm or even Super8mm film cameras and the necessary editing equipment for them. Is the alternative to what I teach simply NOT to teach film, but only teach other media like television? Do I not bother to introduce young people to the genius of Chaplin or the vision of Kubrick? For me, to do so would be to admitting failure. Would you ask a literature professor to give up teaching Chaucer?
You may say: but literature is not film: poetry on a printed page is the same. A film on video is not the same as a film on 70mm. True, but don't forget: poetry was once an oral medium and now it is by and large a written one, and the nature of poetry has changed. (Could Whitman's poetry been even remotely comprehended as such in an age before Gutenberg? Before writing?) Digital media will change film -- maybe to the point where we don't recognize it as such. That is something to ponder, though not necessarily to lament.
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