LAMBlogathon: Digital Cinema

Over at the LAMB, a question has been asked: What do I think of digital cinema?

Aesthetically, I hate it. Economically, I understand it. Inevitably, film projection will be as dead as Pontiac, the Pinto, and the EV-1. That's the way it is, and it makes me a little sad thinking about it, now that every other movie will not only be digital, but blown up to fake-IMAX size and filtered through Real/Disney Digital 3D glasses.

The pros are somewhat obvious - digital filmmaking is incredibly cheap, in all phases of production. If you want to zoom in unnecessarily on the situation, the start of digital filmmaking, Terminator 2 aside, was the dawn of the inkless word processor - the personal computer. The transition from analog to digital made sense - it saved screenwriters time (not to mention ink and paper and white out). Time, as they say, is money.

CGI, as it turns out, saves both time and money. Instead of having to relentlessly plan out stunts, hoping beyond hope that a scene plays exactly as put to paper in the first three takes, you can do basically everything on a computer, if that's what you desire. Some, like George Lucas, do just that. Watching those documentaries on the process behind the Star Wars prequels is somewhat strange - two actors playing at Jedi in front of a green screen like they were children in an invisible park.

And digital projection, it is surmised, means that more movies will be playing in more locations than ever before possible. Roger Ebert, in one of his many posts on the subject, guessed at a future where movies are beamed down to multiplexes from a satellite, which is certainly possible but begs the question: What need is there for movie theaters?

And another question: If you can play more movies in more theaters due to digital projection, how come movies like Synecdoche, New York and Rachel Getting Married (to name two movies I missed because of extremely limited engagements at the local art house, a luxury many don't even have) don't get a chance at the AMC? If one digital projector is running Terminator: Salvation to a half-empty theater at 7:45 and another is playing the same movie to a half-packed theater at 8:15, why can't one showtime get axed in favor of playing some plucky indie comedy that might just win an audience?

The obvious answer is that theater franchises are incredibly lazy, greedy things, but it defeats the argument that there's a chance for more niche movies to play in smaller markets with a resounding "So what?"

The Oscars last year brought in increased crowds for exactly one movie last year: Slumdog Millionare. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button didn't need the help, and while every movie (except Button) played in more theaters post-nomination, the only other movie that enjoyed any sustained Oscar-related success was The Reader. I don't want to guess how many times poor Milk was playing at any given theater, or why it never broke the 1,000 theater mark.(No word on how AMC's one day Oscar marathon ($30 at 99 theaters) went, though it's in it's third year running.) Not only does that speak against the drawing power of the Oscar, it speaks out that the freedom being offered by digital distribution isn't being used to nearly its full potential.

All of that doesn't even speak to my personal preferences. I own more LPs than CDs, the last video game system I bought was an SNES, I like the smell of old books, and when I went to see Dinosaurs Alive! at an Omnimax Theater, my one lasting impression (aside from how headache-inducing the Omnimax format is) was how much I missed the sound of film.

I know that I'm a very strange 21-year-old, but it can't be helped - I just prefer film.

So much so that I think I may respect those filmmakers who still shoot using celluloid more than their digital counterparts.

Maybe I'm a tad misguided, but I consider movies to be a form of art. And while I can certainly accept a digitally shot film like Slumdog Millionaire as artwork, with that has come a bunch of trends that make the Film Is Art crowd look slightly foolish.

Shaky-cam, Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer, Disney movies with computer generated animals occupying real time, Baby Geniuses, McG, Beowulf, Paul WS Anderson's post-Mortal Kombat career, the Alien vs. Predator franchise, direct-to-DVD ripoffs of all of the above, and Uwe Boll.

I don't care how undemocratic of me it sounds: The digital revolution has allowed more shit onto the screen than any other idea in Hollywood history - even the great spec script boom of the 90's.

Of course it has its advocates, Robert Rodriguez chief among them, but the parts of Grindhouse that were most exciting featured real cars smashing into real cars, and his best movie might still be the one where scrambling to complete the thing because most of its meager budget was spent on film forced the guy to rein it in a little.

I think Ebert once said something like this, maybe in his review of the finished version of The Brown Bunny: Editing is where a movie finds its soul. I buy that. A reel of unedited footage is like a block of marble. The finished product is the statue. Sure using film runs the risk of releasing something that isn't perfect, but in an era where most movies are scrubbed and polished to the point where I can see a reflection of myself in the screen, movies could use a little more dirt, a little more uncertainty. Besides, a flop is a flop - no matter what computer you rendered the graphics on.

Take risks. Isn't that what art is supposed to encourage you to do?