Film, Video and Digital Cinema

The impact the digital technology has and will have on film, video and digital cinema is an area that I am sure will continue to evolve as the world continuously upgrades their computer technology. Although there are many aspects to digital cinema, I have decided to focus on one part of creating that is probably overlooked by most. The documentary "Digital Dark Age: Gambling with Human Kind's Knowledge" looks at some of the negative aspects of relying on computers to store knowledge and information:

http://digital.films.com.library.esc.edu/PortalViewVideo.aspx?xtid=33079

The directors point out that unlike books which have a storage capacity of decades if not centuries, the problem with computers is that if there is no computer to decode the data, the data will be useless. With the amount of computer upgrades that occur, data from a computer can quickly become obsolete. As an example, floppy disks are computer technology that is virtually obsolete. I have a few photographs on floppy disks and I am sure I will never be able to retrieve them. 

Another problem that this documentary points out which I found disconcerting is the vulnerability that CD's have to deterioration due to fungi . As they are plastic, I am sure that most people do not think that information on CD's could be compromised in as little as 15 years. 

While digital technology makes creating easier, at that same time there are some downsides to it. Many people feel that analog photography is better than digital photography. Having developed photographs in a darkroom, digital photography is certainly easier and it is great to see photographs as they are taken as opposed to waiting until they are developed. But knowing that one's photographs could be unintelligible simply because the computer equipment can't decipher the computer code or fungus ate the CD the photos are stored on makes me want to print out copies of all my work. 

I feel that this is a serious issue which most people do not consider when they use digital media. Most people find that convenience and ease of creating work to be their primary focus without really thinking about long term accessibility and storage. 

In the paper, "New-media art and the renewal of the cinematic imaginary", Jeffrey Shaw discusses how digital media has opened up media creation to new possibilities both in the way that media is made as well as where it is viewed. No longer are directors constrained to showing films in movie theaters, digital technology allows the freedom to show work in many different venues including the internet: "The euphoric advent of the Internet and of related low- and high-bandwidth intercommunication technologies have already had enormous impact on the cinematic imaginary. All the unique qualities of this new medium, including its economy of individual production, its open distributed modalities of consumption, its ideological freedom and its idiosyncratic formal characteristics, has led to the proliferation of what is clearly now one of the major forces driving new cinematic configurations." (Shaw, 2012)

Unless people consider the problems of storage, their work in digital format will become obsolete. If one has to constantly reformat their work, I wonder if people will see this as a necessity or just decide that the work is not relevant because it belongs to a version of a computer that no longer exists. That would be sad. Even silent films that were made in the early 20th century are interesting to watch.

With that is mind, I have been following the work of some adventure sports film makers for about a year. I originally found out about Xavier De Le Rue, a multiple Olympic medal snowboarding champion when I came across a photo of his foot on Google. He had stepped on a sea urchin while on vacation in the Maldives and had many sea urchin spines in his foot. I researched how to get rid of the spines and messaged him on Facebook. Not sure if it helped but I started to follow his work.

He has a film production company, Timeline Missions: http://www.timelinemissions.com/ Digital film has really opened up the opportunity for recording video footage which was not possible before. His films are pretty spectacular. And terrifying. The opposite of CG and the green screen:

http://www.timelinemissions.com/work/

White Noise is very interesting personal film.He also designed a drone with engineers in California which films athletes in action so it captures video of action which is mind boggling. (Timeline Missions)

The film by French skier Candide Thovex is also a very interesting personal account:

http://quiksilver.com/blog/snow/20150313075647NEWS493640854532.html

Digital film has opened up a lot of possibilities. I just hope that the videos can be preserved.

References

Hissen, J, Moers, P., 2002," Digital dark age? Gambling with humankind's knowledge" [Video file]. In Films On Demand. 

Retrieved March 9, 2015, from http://digital.films.com.library.esc.edu/PortalPlaylists.aspx?aid=1667&xtid=33079

Shaw, J., 2012, "New-media art and the renewal of the cinematic imaginary", Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research Volume 10 Numbers 2 & 3.

Thovex, C., "Few Words" posted on Snow blog, Quiksilver.com retrieved from

http://quiksilver.com/blog/snow/20150313075647NEWS493640854532.html

Timeline Missions website, retrieved from http://www.timelinemissions.com/