Digital Filmmaking
iView Author: Sukhada Gokhale (USA)
Email: Withheld
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Digital Filmmaking And What We Make Out Of It?
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Stores around my suburban neighborhood have slowly started to fill up with eager holiday shoppers. Teenagers pestering parents for new iPhones, iPods or these little things called Flip Cameras. They are small cameras with rechargeable batteries, with touch sensitive buttons that allow you to capture 60mins of video that can be easily downloaded onto your computer. And I must confess I find the Flip a bit irresistible myself.
But all this new technology has got me thinking, and I thought a lot. Big studios with their even bigger productions is not the only way to make films in this day and age. Anyone who can get their hands on a camera-any camera at that, rally up a relative or two who has been secretly fancying an acting career, manage to hook up a basic editing software, can now be a filmmaker. And you don’t have to stop at that, you can become your own distributor too. All you have to do is, get on You Tube and follow the instructions and get your film to be circulated through millions for computer screens worldwide. And just like that, you will be a filmmaker. And to think that it all started with your Christmas gift!
But on a more reflective note, what is this digital revolution really doing to us? Is it as good as the price at which we can buy it? Is it really going to benefit film as an art form? I guess in some ways it might. There is a sense of liberation with the idea that just as a writer or a painter can pick up a pen or brush, a filmmaker can pick up a little digital camera and create with the same ease as any other artist. Our need for expression can no longer be suppressed because of the lack of a big production. So there is certainly some merit to this technological revolution. But it would be naive and even false for me to assume that the accessibility of these cheaper cameras has lead to better filmmakers. Maybe this same liberation is not so good after all. The convenience of producing moving images comes with a greater impatience to use the medium to serve quick and hasty expressions. There is far less thought or attention given to the purpose or aesthetics of these images. Maybe it is not enough to choose these images for economic reasons alone. Maybe film students and aspiring filmmakers such as me need to take a closer look at the potential of this digital image instead of using it only because film was too expensive.
The overload of such digital images has already numbed our visual sensibilities and we might find ourselves being pushed further away from the predicted path of film as an artistic medium. But if we are prepared to pause a little and take stock of this new technology, we could reconstruct this image with care and thought. We could predict a direction that could help us truly develop a new aesthetic for this digital image. So maybe we can start by asking, what can this small video camera do that a film camera cannot? Apart from the obvious differences in the way these cameras record and reproduce images, there might be something fundamentally different in the way in which these productions work. The fact that a video camera is often smaller, more portable, allows us to work more intimately. It can create more personal expressions. This idea can change the nature and content of these films. They can get more reflective, more experimental and more intimate just as painting or a poem. You and your little handy camera can be ready at all times to capture anything and everything that might catch your fancy, unlike the laborious preparation for a film shoot.
Being a realist myself, I also find that the video lens is far less intimidating than the film lens, providing an opportunity to capture the unprompted world. Just as mobile cameras and sensitive film stocks led to the development of the neo-realist movement, digital cameras can lead to the emergence of a cinema whose content is driven by the ease and economy of its technology. Maybe we will find stories that can only be told with our video lens. Maybe our voices will find new expressions and the artificial, plastic, granny looking, shallow dept of field video image might find its perfect match in a story or idea that is worthy of its aesthetic. This marriage will then be a perfect match and not just a compromise because film was too demanding.
So for all you digital filmmakers out there, let’s pick up our cameras and tell it like only video can. Let’s dazzle the world with our digital images and let’s truly find a new expression for our medium.
Good luck.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Digital filmmaking is, as you rightly point out, a double edged sword, but more freedom and flexibility (as well as lower costs) can only lead to more benefits for those who use it well. Sure, so there will be an exponential increase in the number of shoddily-made digital movies, but there will be a small but significant number of films that exploit the medium well (and hopefully the former group will learn from their mistakes and improve).
It took decades for film camera-work to reach the stage we take for granted today (and film hasn’t reached its limits yet), and we’re only at the cusp of the digital revolution. I’d point to something like Cloverfield as a good example of a film that could only be done with a ‘video’ look. Its impact would have been lessened had it been shot on film.
Who knows what the future will bring? I for one am excited to find out.
Fab article!!! It explains so well the digital revolution and use of the digital cameras.
This is a transition. This is entering into web 2.0 technology. Agreeing with Sukhada, we should welcome this, and learn about it. Not only in Film Making, this digital revolution is playing the role of a catalyst in social development projects majorly in Africa and South America.
Remember in 1985, one scientist in MIT said, Internet will fizz away.
So they say, don’t push the river. It flows by itself.
Nice article, very friendly language, really enjoyed !!! Very informative and live. Good job Sukhada.
Thanks,
I am no filmmaker but sure am a movie-buff! I agree with most of your writing but what really worries me is “The overload of such digital images has already numbed our visual sensibilities”…..it really has!!
Also, anyone can be an actor and produce movies like legally desi (Don’t even bother to watch it!)
Capturing videos for family-fun is different but the satisfaction that you get watching a professionally done visual which is called film-art is beyond words…….
Sukhada,
Very nicely put, man. As a Guerilla-type filmmaker using the digital medium to dish things out, I confess that more often than not I look to capture that “film” look while shooting and try to edit like a film-editor would. I have never given video (analogue or digital) any serious thought as an art form, which I suppose is just me being insensitive. Every art form develops into its own sooner or later and I am sure video will catch up someday. Having said that, I am sure I read, or saw, or heard, something about “Video-Artists”, who use video as a means to create video loops that are more like moving versions of paintings (or stills). Also, back when Star Wars EPII was coming out and the whole film vs. digital debate was given a new life, I remember seeing interviews with cinematographers, some of whom called video “modern art”, but dismissed it by and large. George Lucas also said something along the lines of “The whole point is to make it look like film with the way you shoot. Digital is not going to change the way we tell stories, it will just change the way we make them.” I guess he wasn’t looking very far when he said that. Anyway, good post, man!
Copolla said this decades ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zui4s0aLpr4
The instances of somebody unkown taking my breath away with an intensely personal film has been few and far between but I reccomend a few
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLDQL23nutw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njU5CsrYfKM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxLGFlyZuwk&feature=related
Nice article, very friendly language, really enjoyed !!! Very informative and live. Good job.
Thanks,
Dear,
Thanks for taking pain to write such informative and encouraging article. Industry hasn’t embrassed digital fully cause it do have its pifalls. But i am sure as time passes by this technology will grow and will accepted as faithful companion of Cinematographers.
allVishal, thank you for your feedback. i agree
Ravi M, Manasi, Namrata, Jagritee…thank you so much for kind remarks.
ture. nilankur
Vishesh Mankal i liked the george lucas quote.
and i tottaly get your pain. I am struggling with many of the same issues myself. its nice to able to connect fellow filmmakers and film enthusiasts.
Thnaks for the links Mitch
i think i am going to write something about film and the graphics world……someday
awwww Vishal Jaiswal, thank you.
Very informative article!