The Lexicon of Film in the Digital Age

It's hard to remember a time when one couldn't locate just about any movie ever made and view it without traveling to the many film archives around the world, or if you were lucky enough to have a good art house or revival theater in your city, wait for it to screen there. We take it for granted in the age of DVDs, Netflix, a zillion cable movie channels and of course the internet that so much content is simply at our fingertips. Most of us don't seek out anything made before we were old enough to remember going to the movies. I actually have heard people say, "oh, I don't watch anything that's black and white or involves reading subtitles". What a pain! Reading while watching a movie? What work that is! That takes thought. Shouldn't I just be able to sit back and relax while the movie washes over me? I just want to be entertained. Sure. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm a sucker for the Farrelly Brothers and absolutely must sit and watch Dumb and Dumber when it comes on TV. We all like entertainment, but as makers, we have to expect so much more from film than that. 

Film is art. And in order to truly grasp that and to employ that line of thinking in our own work, we must understand where it comes from. Is it necessary for us all to have had the experience of struggling with clunky old Bolexes and cutting our own work prints from 16mm stock in order to understand how to make a film? No (though it doesn't hurt to do it once in your life). The way we speak of film today, relates more generally to motion pictures as a medium or art form than the specific technology that was used to create them. The line today is so blurred, we are hard pressed to even recognize any significant differences between something shot digitally or on film.

As both the Takashi and Belton articles point out, there are inherent differences between film and video, which should not be overlooked. However, I think the puritanical notions of superiority of one or the other are overblown. Takashi makes compelling arguments that film is here to stay, and for good reason. But as I have long believed, arguments of film's technical superiority are wearing thin, and it is those artists who desire the specific tactile and organic properties of film that will be the ones to preserve it. It should be noted of course that all of the world's major film archives, including the George Eastman House here in Rochester, still collect films on celluloid (as well as nitrate, or more favorably preserved on the modern polyester Estar base). Any film preservationist will tell you that film is still the only way we have to ensure the long shelf life for movies, which is significant when you consider that an estimated 75% of films made during the silent era from the 1890s through the end of the 1920s are gone forever because they could not be preserved properly. 

As Belton points out, there is a difference, not only in making films, but even in watching them on video. There is the factor of convenience of course. It certainly is beneficial to be able to watch films at home and to be able to control the playback. Not to mention, there are many films I would never have seen if it were not for television and DVDs. And I certainly think that DVD commentaries have offered a film education second only to, well film school, and in some ways better. It is important to recognize the differences, but only to the extent that it enhances one's understanding of how better to use all of the tools available to us.

And so it is true that even just this term "film" is problematic. But we can't get hung up on these details so much that we are prevented from just making some damn good work. If it were not for the advances in digital technology, I would not have the career that I do, nor would I be making the work that I am, and this class most certainly would not exist.