3|Towards a Digital Cinema |
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Preface
To ease the interpretation of the Rebel Alliance Business model for a sustainable competition in the industry of digital content, in this preface we refer to the “Cinema” segment which represents the sector (together with the audiovisual one) in which we highlight, more than in others, the need of realizing policies capable of innovating the organizational processes to ease the intercultural and intergenerational paths in planning and productive approaches which are becoming necessary with the advent on these segments of a much more massive use of the digital technologies [1]
Towards a Digital Cinema
Cinema was originally created as a technical mean: the cinematographer.
After some time, an artistic intuition was added to the technical side, giving birth to the so-called Seventh Art.
Its dual nature kept going peacefully for some time, although technological innovation wasn't always welcome by its artists and authors. However it is the actual innovation of technology that is a fundamental aspect for the evolution of cinema, sometimes even helping it to reborn after its worst periods of crisis.
Cinema is the only art that constantly changes, because it contains within itself all the other arts (music, painting, writing, etc.), supported by the always growing technology following new scientific discoveries.
Considered by historians as the greatest technical and aesthetic improvements interesting the seventh art, the advent of sound and colour was initially a shock for film workers used to black and white and no sound. However, after a while these new inventions were essential to model what we presently know as the industry of dreams.
The same phenomenon is happening at the present time with digital.
On one hand it is changing the way of shooting, threatening the long life of film stock. On the other hand it supports the film shooting and the artist's creativity by innovating the post-production process up to the point that the two separate phases of production and post-production will be joined together in the near future.
But the future is already the present!
Although post-production is considered as a single process of the whole production, in constant change since the beginning of the digital era, in Italy (and in other culturally outdated countries with no consideration for the digital means) post-production is merely considered as an accessory to complete the work.
Thanks to computer graphics, Cinema began to gain the possibility of going beyond reality, gaining the ability to create “things” that it would normally be possible to achieve with the aid of extremely expensive conventional means, often limiting the authors' creativity.
With the release of James Cameron's “Avatar”, 2010 is the year of the definitive revolution. Digital is officially integrated into Cinema.
Techniques, technology, means and processes involved in production have definitely changed. With the introduction of virtual cameras and simul-cam technology for the application of augmented reality [2], we barely understand the boundaries between production and post-production.
Starting from this point, cinema can gain brand new creative life, bringing into the industry new themes such as the binomial: science fiction and philosophy, as well as impossible and unlikely film characters.
This coincides with the need for a technique for ideas and contents, not the other way round.
But this is only a primordial phase. The concept of post-production, therefore the concept of Cinema, is already moving on.
Almost seventy years ago, René Barjavel, in his essay “Cinéma Total” (1944), theorised about “cinema as a mean capable of introducing us to fully realistic characters entering our homes. A cinema that will not replace traditional arts but instead will use them as communication in which images are transported by waves: this will happen in a world where millions of spectators can enjoy a show of sounds, colours and scents.”
Some statements by Barjavel on Total Cinema, seem to prophesy the path where cinema is heading with the advent of digital: “…it will be completed when it will be able to bring us three-dimensional, coloured and maybe even scented characters; when these characters will step out from the screen and from darkness and will start walking in our own homes and public places.”
This is not about a cinema based on flat realism tending to “represent to perfection a father's moustache”, but it is a sum of all the arts joined together. It is a cinema made of colours and sounds, but not based on dialogues. Words are not the only sounds in Barjavel's point of view. Dialogues destroy the sounds. It is a three-dimensional cinema, even if Barjavel cannot figure out what technology is capable of such skills. He theorises about solid images made of “waves”. He thinks of replacing the screen with a “waves' screen”, and by saying so he is not far from the theory of holographic cinema.
James Cameron will in fact be known as the first screenwriter and director of digital thought! His first creation is totally thought and realised digitally, confirming Barjavel's prophecy.
Barjavel was blamed for emphasising technology's role instead of the work of the author. Instead he criticises those who step back horrific because of “mental laziness” in front of new technological inventions such as colour and three-dimensions. It is not a mere enhancement of technology itself, because the French writer notices the great power that cinema would gain from it. Power would be the first quality: total cinema, powerful as a “ten ton tractor”, can demolish “the physical world of bodies and things and enter it with its double fantasy”. Total cinema plays with reality. It will make use “of these misleading materialistic appearances in order to carry the spectator into the world of illusion, of absurd, of marvellous”. It is really worth quoting another paragraph of his essay: “Animals, men, objects, the entire world with all of its creatures, and all of its dreams, all of the wonderful or horrendous living beings that can be generated by the imagination of poets, will come to life in front of the spectator. They will swarm about next to him, around him, shining, making noises, vivacious, real and yet they disappear. Colour will materialise in vortex, in veils, in volumes, in explosions. All the blue from the sky will suddenly slip into the virgin's eye. From the heart of a rose, clouds of spring will rise. Sound will be real, words will explode, trumpets will open galleries made of brass, the nightingale's song will dance in multicoloured flames. Real volume will give to total cinema its last chances, which will go further that the craziest surrealist mind...”
We get the impression that criticisms of Barjavel's theory seem to be present in many people. But we're convinced that this is only due to the cultural gap created by new technologies.
Total cinema takes up again Wagner's concept of the “Gesamtkunstwerk”, which consists in the unification of single arts “in the monadic perfection of an independent language”.
Wagner states that “only revolution (…) can give us back that supreme work of art”, which from his point of view was taken from Greek Theatre, intended as a multimedia example, uniting singing, recital, movements and images. Greek Theatre, which can be defined as 'total', was also one of the first examples of research for interaction, ending in catharsis, in the collective effect of purification.
In cinema “the creation of the image is historically and technically accidental”. Total cinema aims for a complete recreation of sensitive experiences that the spectator has to feel while at the same time changing its role, implying a strong emotional movement: in other words, it is the effort of reaching “Interaction”.
The inevitable advent of digital in both cinema and television, from the first pioneering experiments with holography to the recent commercial achievements with films shot in stereoscopy with 3D cameras, but most of all the other future scientific achievements about to come into the audio-visual in general, are all aiming to the real third dimension, moving us closer to this final goal.
This is another essential aspect of the constant mutation of the technological means, viewed by many experts as: a shift from the two-dimensional recent commercial cinema to three-dimensional technology, could even bring our brain to a more realistic assimilation of images, consequentially amplifying emotions and self-identification.
Today's cinema seems to be at a turning point. Over the last few years cinema is going through a declaration of its own death, or at least of its unease, because of both an economic crisis (caused by the constant threat posed by television, home video and internet) and a lack of contents. This applies in particular to Italian cinema.
Because of this situation, some directors are today hoping in the use of digital technology.
They also wish that the application of digital will help the film industry grow, thanks to a progressive cooperation between cinema and new media. The tendency is leading to a conversion into digital of all phases of film production, also according to many of the production companies with which we are working at the moment.
All hopes and criticisms are related to the use of digital technology in the film shooting and post-production phases.
The boundaries of digital production give us two options: shooting almost in a traditional manner (new means suggest different ways of realising a film), using digital cameras instead of film cameras, or directly creating images on a computer without the need for re-acting real events, using virtual spaces and characters. The history of the so-called “digital cinema”, a definition which is still hazy, is fairly recent and studies on the subject are currently just a few.
Today's definition of “digital cinema” generically involves all those films produced with digital means such as cameras or computers. Therefore the images that belong to it are virtual. The discussion on digital is therefore a complex theme which needs clarification and differentiation: it has to be kept safe from “misbelief” and stereotypes.
Nevertheless every study on digital is destined to quickly become obsolete.
Supporters and detractors of the new technology are today in favour or against technical, economical and aesthetic innovations brought by it. While those who are engaged in studying its characteristics and evolution are trying to predict, through a more profound analysis, what new scenarios lie ahead for “digital cinema”.
Cinema is essentially an industry.
The cultural digital division in the Italian audiovisual industry
Is it possible that a large number of professionals in the Italian audio-visual industry, all belonging to a particular age group (mostly over 45), suffer from a cultural gap towards the new concept of digital?
We're convinced it is so!
Could this be one of the reasons why Italian cinema suffers a crisis based on what national and international audiences recognise as the Italian cinema of a few decades ago, an example of high quality and style, compared to the recent national productions lacking in the stylistic and narrative quality which attracts the audience/consumer, who instead prefers north American productions?
We're convinced it is so!
Could it then be true that the wise application of creative digital technologies could help Italian cinema to renew itself maintaining its traditional narrative style (therefore without renouncing the distinctive features typical of the Italian school of film), focussing on public needs, open to foreign audiences and not merely stuck in a niche of market?
We think this is true!
Is it true that creative digital technologies can only be used in high-budget productions and for this reason Americans can use them and only they know how to use them?
No!
It's essential to dismantle this myth! A myth which seems to be frequent in the imagination of most of the representatives of the Italian film industry we met until now. Since technology and economic change seem conspiring to create a new cultural elite and a new cultural underclass. We must tackle myths and false beliefs enabling social inclusion policies and life-long learning programme to reduce the cultural digital gap.
The American entertainment industry represents the second/third national industry in their country, just behind the army industries.
In 2000 Hollywood produced almost 385 films. Of these films, only a small amount were high-budget films.
The analysis of the film industry in the USA, shows that the strength of the industry depends on low and medium budget films (Hollywood's “bread and butter”).
It is our opinion that they have understood that the key is to “think” and then to “build” (with all possible means) low-budget films with high-budget values will be the new frontier!
Obviously it will not only be knowledge of digital creative technologies or understanding how and when to use them (with a wise balance between costs and benefits) that is going to simplify the process of restyling Italian cinema in order to internationalise its productions.
Many and new factors (such as the ability to optimise financial resources e.g. tax shelter and tax credit), the capacity to operate, networking in international co-production circuits, or even the definition of product placement strategies to apply at the beginning of project development (necessarily in close contact with advertising agencies), today are all part of the financial side as well as the creative side [3] of the projects that follows this reform.
To make these processes easier, it is necessary to research and use new and/or revised professional competences that will work together with who actually makes cinema and audio-visual products.
To ease the interpretation of the Rebel Alliance Business model for a sustainable competition in the industry of digital content, in this preface we refer to the “Cinema” segment which represents the sector (together with the audiovisual one) in which we highlight, more than in others, the need of realizing policies capable of innovating the organizational processes to ease the intercultural and intergenerational paths in planning and productive approaches which are becoming necessary with the advent on these segments of a much more massive use of the digital technologies [1]
Towards a Digital Cinema
Cinema was originally created as a technical mean: the cinematographer.
After some time, an artistic intuition was added to the technical side, giving birth to the so-called Seventh Art.
Its dual nature kept going peacefully for some time, although technological innovation wasn't always welcome by its artists and authors. However it is the actual innovation of technology that is a fundamental aspect for the evolution of cinema, sometimes even helping it to reborn after its worst periods of crisis.
Cinema is the only art that constantly changes, because it contains within itself all the other arts (music, painting, writing, etc.), supported by the always growing technology following new scientific discoveries.
Considered by historians as the greatest technical and aesthetic improvements interesting the seventh art, the advent of sound and colour was initially a shock for film workers used to black and white and no sound. However, after a while these new inventions were essential to model what we presently know as the industry of dreams.
The same phenomenon is happening at the present time with digital.
On one hand it is changing the way of shooting, threatening the long life of film stock. On the other hand it supports the film shooting and the artist's creativity by innovating the post-production process up to the point that the two separate phases of production and post-production will be joined together in the near future.
But the future is already the present!
Although post-production is considered as a single process of the whole production, in constant change since the beginning of the digital era, in Italy (and in other culturally outdated countries with no consideration for the digital means) post-production is merely considered as an accessory to complete the work.
Thanks to computer graphics, Cinema began to gain the possibility of going beyond reality, gaining the ability to create “things” that it would normally be possible to achieve with the aid of extremely expensive conventional means, often limiting the authors' creativity.
With the release of James Cameron's “Avatar”, 2010 is the year of the definitive revolution. Digital is officially integrated into Cinema.
Techniques, technology, means and processes involved in production have definitely changed. With the introduction of virtual cameras and simul-cam technology for the application of augmented reality [2], we barely understand the boundaries between production and post-production.
Starting from this point, cinema can gain brand new creative life, bringing into the industry new themes such as the binomial: science fiction and philosophy, as well as impossible and unlikely film characters.
This coincides with the need for a technique for ideas and contents, not the other way round.
But this is only a primordial phase. The concept of post-production, therefore the concept of Cinema, is already moving on.
Almost seventy years ago, René Barjavel, in his essay “Cinéma Total” (1944), theorised about “cinema as a mean capable of introducing us to fully realistic characters entering our homes. A cinema that will not replace traditional arts but instead will use them as communication in which images are transported by waves: this will happen in a world where millions of spectators can enjoy a show of sounds, colours and scents.”
Some statements by Barjavel on Total Cinema, seem to prophesy the path where cinema is heading with the advent of digital: “…it will be completed when it will be able to bring us three-dimensional, coloured and maybe even scented characters; when these characters will step out from the screen and from darkness and will start walking in our own homes and public places.”
This is not about a cinema based on flat realism tending to “represent to perfection a father's moustache”, but it is a sum of all the arts joined together. It is a cinema made of colours and sounds, but not based on dialogues. Words are not the only sounds in Barjavel's point of view. Dialogues destroy the sounds. It is a three-dimensional cinema, even if Barjavel cannot figure out what technology is capable of such skills. He theorises about solid images made of “waves”. He thinks of replacing the screen with a “waves' screen”, and by saying so he is not far from the theory of holographic cinema.
James Cameron will in fact be known as the first screenwriter and director of digital thought! His first creation is totally thought and realised digitally, confirming Barjavel's prophecy.
Barjavel was blamed for emphasising technology's role instead of the work of the author. Instead he criticises those who step back horrific because of “mental laziness” in front of new technological inventions such as colour and three-dimensions. It is not a mere enhancement of technology itself, because the French writer notices the great power that cinema would gain from it. Power would be the first quality: total cinema, powerful as a “ten ton tractor”, can demolish “the physical world of bodies and things and enter it with its double fantasy”. Total cinema plays with reality. It will make use “of these misleading materialistic appearances in order to carry the spectator into the world of illusion, of absurd, of marvellous”. It is really worth quoting another paragraph of his essay: “Animals, men, objects, the entire world with all of its creatures, and all of its dreams, all of the wonderful or horrendous living beings that can be generated by the imagination of poets, will come to life in front of the spectator. They will swarm about next to him, around him, shining, making noises, vivacious, real and yet they disappear. Colour will materialise in vortex, in veils, in volumes, in explosions. All the blue from the sky will suddenly slip into the virgin's eye. From the heart of a rose, clouds of spring will rise. Sound will be real, words will explode, trumpets will open galleries made of brass, the nightingale's song will dance in multicoloured flames. Real volume will give to total cinema its last chances, which will go further that the craziest surrealist mind...”
We get the impression that criticisms of Barjavel's theory seem to be present in many people. But we're convinced that this is only due to the cultural gap created by new technologies.
Total cinema takes up again Wagner's concept of the “Gesamtkunstwerk”, which consists in the unification of single arts “in the monadic perfection of an independent language”.
Wagner states that “only revolution (…) can give us back that supreme work of art”, which from his point of view was taken from Greek Theatre, intended as a multimedia example, uniting singing, recital, movements and images. Greek Theatre, which can be defined as 'total', was also one of the first examples of research for interaction, ending in catharsis, in the collective effect of purification.
In cinema “the creation of the image is historically and technically accidental”. Total cinema aims for a complete recreation of sensitive experiences that the spectator has to feel while at the same time changing its role, implying a strong emotional movement: in other words, it is the effort of reaching “Interaction”.
The inevitable advent of digital in both cinema and television, from the first pioneering experiments with holography to the recent commercial achievements with films shot in stereoscopy with 3D cameras, but most of all the other future scientific achievements about to come into the audio-visual in general, are all aiming to the real third dimension, moving us closer to this final goal.
This is another essential aspect of the constant mutation of the technological means, viewed by many experts as: a shift from the two-dimensional recent commercial cinema to three-dimensional technology, could even bring our brain to a more realistic assimilation of images, consequentially amplifying emotions and self-identification.
Today's cinema seems to be at a turning point. Over the last few years cinema is going through a declaration of its own death, or at least of its unease, because of both an economic crisis (caused by the constant threat posed by television, home video and internet) and a lack of contents. This applies in particular to Italian cinema.
Because of this situation, some directors are today hoping in the use of digital technology.
They also wish that the application of digital will help the film industry grow, thanks to a progressive cooperation between cinema and new media. The tendency is leading to a conversion into digital of all phases of film production, also according to many of the production companies with which we are working at the moment.
All hopes and criticisms are related to the use of digital technology in the film shooting and post-production phases.
The boundaries of digital production give us two options: shooting almost in a traditional manner (new means suggest different ways of realising a film), using digital cameras instead of film cameras, or directly creating images on a computer without the need for re-acting real events, using virtual spaces and characters. The history of the so-called “digital cinema”, a definition which is still hazy, is fairly recent and studies on the subject are currently just a few.
Today's definition of “digital cinema” generically involves all those films produced with digital means such as cameras or computers. Therefore the images that belong to it are virtual. The discussion on digital is therefore a complex theme which needs clarification and differentiation: it has to be kept safe from “misbelief” and stereotypes.
Nevertheless every study on digital is destined to quickly become obsolete.
Supporters and detractors of the new technology are today in favour or against technical, economical and aesthetic innovations brought by it. While those who are engaged in studying its characteristics and evolution are trying to predict, through a more profound analysis, what new scenarios lie ahead for “digital cinema”.
Cinema is essentially an industry.
The cultural digital division in the Italian audiovisual industry
Is it possible that a large number of professionals in the Italian audio-visual industry, all belonging to a particular age group (mostly over 45), suffer from a cultural gap towards the new concept of digital?
We're convinced it is so!
Could this be one of the reasons why Italian cinema suffers a crisis based on what national and international audiences recognise as the Italian cinema of a few decades ago, an example of high quality and style, compared to the recent national productions lacking in the stylistic and narrative quality which attracts the audience/consumer, who instead prefers north American productions?
We're convinced it is so!
Could it then be true that the wise application of creative digital technologies could help Italian cinema to renew itself maintaining its traditional narrative style (therefore without renouncing the distinctive features typical of the Italian school of film), focussing on public needs, open to foreign audiences and not merely stuck in a niche of market?
We think this is true!
Is it true that creative digital technologies can only be used in high-budget productions and for this reason Americans can use them and only they know how to use them?
No!
It's essential to dismantle this myth! A myth which seems to be frequent in the imagination of most of the representatives of the Italian film industry we met until now. Since technology and economic change seem conspiring to create a new cultural elite and a new cultural underclass. We must tackle myths and false beliefs enabling social inclusion policies and life-long learning programme to reduce the cultural digital gap.
The American entertainment industry represents the second/third national industry in their country, just behind the army industries.
In 2000 Hollywood produced almost 385 films. Of these films, only a small amount were high-budget films.
The analysis of the film industry in the USA, shows that the strength of the industry depends on low and medium budget films (Hollywood's “bread and butter”).
It is our opinion that they have understood that the key is to “think” and then to “build” (with all possible means) low-budget films with high-budget values will be the new frontier!
Obviously it will not only be knowledge of digital creative technologies or understanding how and when to use them (with a wise balance between costs and benefits) that is going to simplify the process of restyling Italian cinema in order to internationalise its productions.
Many and new factors (such as the ability to optimise financial resources e.g. tax shelter and tax credit), the capacity to operate, networking in international co-production circuits, or even the definition of product placement strategies to apply at the beginning of project development (necessarily in close contact with advertising agencies), today are all part of the financial side as well as the creative side [3] of the projects that follows this reform.
To make these processes easier, it is necessary to research and use new and/or revised professional competences that will work together with who actually makes cinema and audio-visual products.
[1] Recent studies show that the efficiency of the American Cinema Industry, notoriously owned by Hollywood, is “short-circuiting” because of the exaggerating insistence of stand-alone technologies without a side-by-side work with the experienced generation of knowledge holder, as an example, film-makers and DoPs (DoP= Director of Photograpy) .
The scrip development, as a major example, must work on the same unconditioned interconnectivity line for its digital implementation up to the final production and post-production. In the same Hollywood, nowadays, were’re attending at the development of the new and best solutions (New Generation Production Workflows – NGP Workflows), in which Rebel Alliance ( through Rebel Alliance Los Angeles hub professionals) is already active in collaboration with major Studios and Production Designers, for the definition of best practice for the actual production of cost-effective productions.
[2] Augmented Reality: definition of emerging applications able to enrich the public's physical space through the mix of virtual images and real footage. The visualised reality will then be “augmented”, through digitally created synthetic data added to real world images. These technologies are used in many other sectors of society such as the Health-care system (e.g. Telemedicine, surgery, radiological), archaeology, aeronautical industry and national defence [e.g. Military training through Virtually Simulated Enviroments (scenarios) played in real life places].
[3] In the analysis by Derrick de Kerckhove (former Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology), the concept of the sensorial explosion offered by new digital instruments is particularly important, and it becomes a “technological extension” of our body. De Kerckhove writes about “psycho-technology” defining “a technology that emulates, extends or amplifies the sensorial, emotional, psychological and cognitive functions of the mind”. We reckon that the possibility of defining instruments capable of facilitating the development of digital creative thought in a screenwriter could be one of the main approaches in reaching the objective of digital cinema's growth. In this year Rebel Alliance has learned that a screenwriter that has the basic knowledge of what can be made through computer graphics, faced with its commitment and difficulties, could express all of his potential imagination during the first creative process, organising it in function of what will be the possible financial resources the production is willing to invest for the realisation of a film. It is clear that this approach, which needs constant cooperation between the creative humanist and the technologist, could revolutionise the method of film production, helping to virtually bring down the production costs from the early stage of creative writing. With this goal in mind, Rebel Alliance wants to create partnerships starting a process of spreading of Digital Culture for Cinema, in order to cancel the cultural Digital Divide that could delay this new philosophy until the natural generational change in screenwriters.
