The New Horizon of the Moving Image:
Digital Production in the 21** Century
As we approach the 21st century, the filmic medium itself is about to
undergo a complete transformation. Video imagery is becoming cheaper and more
pervasive, increasing the ease of both production and exhibition. At the same time,
the portability and flexibility of low cost video production gives new voice to
those ignored by the mainstream cinema, yet, paradoxically, the increased costs of
distribution make it ever more difficult for alternative cinema/video works to reach
an international audience. 16mm film is dead as a production medium; 35mm will
almost certainly follow, perhaps within the next three to five years, signaling a
significant shift in the production and reception process of that which we call the
cinema.
Editing of film is no longer done on film itself; that vanished in the 1970s.
For ease, cost effectiveness, and for its multiple capabilities, the AVID system,
among others, has become the new standard for film editing. Indeed, many new
films are being shot entirely on digital video, such as Thomas Vinterberg’s brilliant
film Celebration and Bennett Miller’s The Cruise (both 1998), and then blown up
to 35mm for theatrical distribution. Soon 35mm projection may well become
obsolete, leading to an entirely new digital video era of image production and
exhibition, almost precisely 100 years after the birth of cinema.
In the early years of the 21st century we will finally do away with film
altogether, replacing it with a high-defmition matrix of dots and pixels laserprojected on to a conventional theater screen, and audiences will overwhelmingly
accept this transformation without comment. The cinematograph, after all, is
essentially an extension of the Magic Lantern apparatus — light thrown on a screen
— and it has had dominion over the entire 20th century.
Now, in the new millennium, different systems of image storage and
retrieval will replace the allure of film as surely as magnetic tape replaced optical
soundtracks as a vehicle of cinema production. We will be witnessing a silent
revolution of images, in which the digital creations of a new breed of “directors”
will be as real and substantial to us as Humphrey Bogart, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bela
Lugosi and Jean Harlow are to 20th century audiences and archivists. This, indeed,
is the “holy grail” of many industry executives and computer imaging technicians;
the creation of an entirely synthetic “personality” for the screen, whose image can
be entirely controlled by the needs of corporate desire.
The future of the moving image as nanative entertainment, independent
art form, and/or commercial message itself is not in doubt, although what form the