Digitalization

Before I begin my blog, I would just like to say that yesterdays lecture on Digital Film Production was pretty hard out! I don’t know if it was just me, but I found it hard to keep up with notes, as well as listen to every detail of information! But in saying that, I was extremely impressed at how fast Gabriel spoke and let rip with the high quality information! I don’t think I have ever had a lecture where the speaker has rattled off so much in such composure. I was wondering when he was going to ask for a glass of water though…

It seems that almost every movie you see these days has an element (or many more in some cases) of digitalisation in it. As a result, a lot of movies are progressing into the science fiction area. The human imagination has taken people to extremes with
un-human mechanical/sometimes gooey (like they have just bathed in a pool of mucus)/mutated and in most cases, realistically scary beings. Obviously we don’t believe that these beings are going to appear from under our beds or from behind blind corners on the streets, but digital workings on the computer have made it so life like, it can only make one ponder about what they will think of next.

And its not only for characters on films that digitalisation is making its mark. Some of the landscapes (as mentioned in the lecture with ‘Sin City’) are filmed on green screens then edited in the studio. Although the movie isn’t released until December, an advert (cant remember which one it is) shows small snippets of Peter Jackson’s next box office film ‘King Kong’, (the ad’s giving away a trip to New York to see the premiere) and from what you can see (and should already presume, I know King Kong isn’t a mysterious creature that’s been bred and kept hidden all these years waiting for the re-make) it looks insanely digitalised. Which leads me to ask: does the digitalisation factor make or break a film? If more and more film producers are becoming reliant on technology as opposed to the ‘real goodness of the earth’, is it going to alter the way we feel about what we see? Or is it just that producers are looking to go outside the box to bring viewers the extraordinary nature just cant provide? Perhaps all the story lines have been exhausted and the narrative factor is getting to the point where we need to become weirdo’s to keep interested. Maybe. People will continue to believe/watch whatever interests them anyway, but it will be interesting to see what new string of movies come out over the next few months that have once again, relied on digitalisation to power their narratives, and make them ‘compelling hits’.