The audience is interested in seeing films that they can relate to, with good acting and high quality screenplays. That can impact them instead of just distracting them for a short amount of time. As time went by, producers and directors are being able to see that the cinema consumers are more interested in good stories than in technological screenplays. The amount of money invested in technology in big productions should instead be sent to writers that have good ideas and screenplays but have no funds to produce films. The future of cinema might not be technology but, instead, the return of an essential way of making cinema; A way known to be focused in small personal dramas rather than focused on 3D technological productions. Cinema should be seen as a type of Art, in which one can experience and relate to, instead of being one more approach of the entertainment industry, in which one get distracted for a short amount of time. By making cinema a part of the junk entertainment industry the studios are degrading the film production and making it less interesting to the audience.
Technology did help the cinema industry tremendously with special effects, by making visual transformations available. Even though it made acting easier and more authentic it didn’t replace actors. Some might say that technology will be the future of cinema because actors aren’t always as writers expect them to be, while virtual actors can be shaped to perfection in order to fit to the writers will. When one writes a story, a book, or a play they have the idea of the character that they are building. That character may not exist in our world. Real actors don’t always fit perfectly to the writer’s ideas, and that is when technology can be helpful. Two of the best directors of all times have talked about the replacement of actors over forty years ago. Stanley Kubric once said “In the future, it will be easier for directors, we will be able to work with virtual actors that are certainly going to be better than the actors we have now.” (Kubric) When you create a virtual actor you are able to shape him to fit your will in order to build your movie character the exact way you want him to be. If the actors are virtually created you are able to make them do whatever you want. The world widely known Alfred Hitchcock said “All actors should be treated like cattle.” (Hitchcock) and what he meant is that directors should be able to make actors do whatever they want in their movies in order to fit to the character. Technology made it easier for an actor to be transformed trough computer technology in order to fit in the character as the producers and writers want them to do so. Technology made movies more real to the writers view. With virtual characters the science fiction movies can be done with perfection. Monsters, magical happenings, and whatever the writer wants the story to include, can be there, with the help of technology. However, after researching about cinema, it is easy to see that animations and science fiction movies aren’t only what cinema is going to be about in the future. No one can neglect that technology is and will still be a tremendous help for the cinema industry, but technological productions won’t be everything in the future, and it won’t replace actors.
By making technological productions the future of cinema, would be less reachable to the audience, since it limits the audience. First of all, not everyone likes animations, fantasy, and science fiction movies. And second of all, adults don’t consume animations as effectively as they now consume personal screenplays. A magazine article that came out last year mentioning the movies planned to be released in 2011 and 2012 argues that movies in 3D that are technological and include animations will only be common among the Cartoon Animation Industry such as Walt Disney and Pixar Studios, instead of being current in Hollywood movies like many cinema critics thought in the beginning of last year. “The plans for 2012 in film productions are focused more in Cartoon Animations including many different Disney productions. 3-D plays a very big hole in Animations, and will keep on playing.” (Rhoda 42) Differently then what Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick have said in the previous century, technology isn’t substituting actors, but instead it is helping them. The special effects are a resource brought by technology in order to help actors fit into the character in an easier way. Writers similar to them, that writes horror and fantasy films, are being able to gather a lot of help with technology. It helps them create the visual effects that they want the audience to experience. But it didn’t make actors out of a job, since society doesn’t want animations, but instead, good screenplays acted by good actors with good visual effects. Producers tried to sell Adult Animations but it didn’t work because these animations are usually just an entertainment, it doesn’t impact the audience like good screenplays do. Animations and virtual actors and productions are going to be focused on science fiction movies and cartoons, which limits the audience, because not everyone that likes cinema likes these types of films. Individuals that appreciate the art of cinema like movies that can impact them, which doesn’t happen with cartoon animations and neither with science fiction movies. Therefore if technological productions become the future of cinema it would limit the audience to those that want entertainment rather then impacting storylines.
Technological productions can also limit the audience because it wasn’t made for everyone. Experiencing 3D in some productions is incredibly pleasant, but studies show us that “there’s no pleasure without pain: Enjoying 3D material in the cinema can lead to undesired effects” (Samsung) warns the Samsung official website. Samsung introduced to the market a new TV, DVD and Blue ray that have the 3D technology in it, but the company is worried about possible side effects caused by this new type of experiencing entertainment. The symptoms could be “possible headaches, nausea disorientation, cramps, and epileptic seizures. The most vulnerable groups are young children, the elderly, those under the influence of alcohol, and pregnant women.” (Poulter) 3D is a very good way of experiencing entertainment but it filters out a lot of the people that are able to enjoy it. Not everyone is able to watch movies in 3D. People that wear corrective glasses have problems wearing the 3D glasses in front of their regular glasses. The only option they have is to wear contact lenses every time they watch 3D movies. People that suffer with Strabismus can’t experience 3D at all; their vision is incapacitated of seeing more then two dimensions. Even though 3D technological productions are a promising future for cinema it is very selective when it comes to audience, not everyone can experience 3D just like they are used to do with regular 2D films. Therefore 3D isn’t a promising future because it is very selective when it comes to audience, not everyone is able to experience it, which filters out the audience, and make the 3D movies seen by less amount of people. The cinema executives already realize that, and they created a new way of making profit with 3D movies; they charge more for them, so that they can have more profit with less audience.
Various people argue that the fact that cinema took the technological pattern in the last couple of years, is because 3D is a resource used by the movie companies to make the bad movies more profitable. Some movies used 3-D as a last option, or a resource to make the movie more lucrative and more marketable. (Guzman) Some movies that were poorly done are using the 3D technology to make it more vendible to the young cinema consumers so that the movie could sell. By doing that, they make the whole concept of 3D to be lost, since one must use 3D in order to make the movie better visually and aesthetically, instead of it being used as a last option to bad screenplays. “Young Hollywood” is corrupt, and lost the instinctive feeling for story and quality, instead, now everything is about the marketing (Ebert). What the audience is looking for isn’t technology and animations, but quality. If a movie is good it doesn’t need a big production or a lot of money to be spent. “3-D is only good for Hollywood executives because they are able to make more money with ticket prices.” (Kehr) For the cinema industry big productions bring more profit since they charge more for the ticket price. A regular screenplay done by an unknown director cost fifteen dollars in a regular movie theater while a 3D movie can cost up to thirty dollars per person in the same movie theater (AMC). It is 100% more for an individual that watches a 3D movie; which consequently makes the cinema executives to have more profit with this type of film. Therefore the cinema industry has increased the production of 3D technological films in poorly produced screenplays, so that they could make more money with ticket prices. If the movie didn’t came out as good as they expected, they make them in 3D, so that they could have the same amount of profit that they would if the movie was good. Some 3D movies had a very rich box office because they were 3D, others had a rich box office because they were well accepted by the audience (IMDB). Hence 3D shouldn’t be seen as the future of cinema, instead it should be seen with suspicion.
In the past there were some classical films that remained in the minds of people and that were good because of the originality and because of its quality rather then being famous because it was an expensive technological production. One clear proof of that are bad remakes that even with the “help of technology” didn’t impact the audience as much as the original film did. An example of that can be the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” which is a science fiction movie that came out better in 1951 without technological special effects then it did in 2008 when it was both colored and technological. The fact that the movie remake was recent, technological, and with more resources, didn’t make it a better movie. Anyone that watches both movies, the one from 1951 and the one from 2008, can easily see that the original had a better screenplay and storyline. In the past, cinema was part of the Art business, now it has become part of the Entertainment business, which made movies less affective towards the audience. Hitchcock and Kubrick were horror and fantasy movie directors, and they produced movies that were remarkable such as “Psycho” and “The clock work orange.” They invested more in other parts of the production of a movie, such as good acting, soundtrack, scripts, scenario etc. Now that the producers and directors show the audience exactly what they want with the help of technology and special effects, the movies became more trivial, since we don’t even have to reflect or to use our imagination in order to understand the content of the movie. Technology distracted the audience taking all the attention that in the past was directed to other parts of the Art of cinema. When one is experiencing a 3D movie they get so into the technological side of it that they aren’t able to analyze the other aspects that make a good movie. People just go to the cinema, watch the movie in 3D, and when they leave the cinema, the only thing they are able to comment on are the visual effects that have distracted/entertained them.
One can easily see that the studio productions shifted the last year. The Academy Awards last year had a very promising technological movie called “Avatar” but the one that actually won the Best Picture Academy Awards in 2010 was “The Hurt Locker” which is a movie about war, focused on the personal drama of a soldier. A movie that had actual actors instead of virtual actors. A movie that according to the New York Times coasted 479 million dollars less then “Avatar” (Cieply) The major problem of producing low cost and personal screenplays such as “The Hurt Locker” is that the Film Industry money doesn’t go to these writers. The challenge for Hollywood directors and producers has been to stop pleasing the studios by resisting towards themes that would both sell well and make a lot of profit (such as 3D). Instead, please themselves by shooting original/personal screenplays. (Luiz Henrique) The studios can do that by directing the money towards writers that are trying to film screenplays but have no funds to produce them. That is what the studios did in the Academy awards this year, after realizing that these types of movies are the ones that impact the audience the most, they directed the money towards less recognized authors and directors that had original ideas and invested on them. The movies that were invested in last year were movies that did use the help of technology, but also incorporated the essential way of making cinema with good soundtrack, acting, scenarios, storylines and screenplays.
One year ago everyone would say that the future of cinema was technology and virtual actors, because of the promising “Avatar” uber production. An expensive, 3D, millionaire production. But this year producers and directors satisfied themselves, and the Oscar nominees were a lot more promising then last years “Avatar”. Two of this year most promising movies were “The Fighter” and “The Black Swan” and they were both personal screenplays. Written by people that aren’t well known in the movie market and that simply found someone that wanted to fund them and help them produce their stories. That is what Hollywood needs. Personal dramas done by writers that want to see their stories in the big screen. “Avatar” was a very good movie but it didn’t begin a revolution in the cinema market as everyone thought it would. It actually showed the audience that a cheaper and more personal film won over it and encouraged other writers to produce films in the same pattern as “The Hurt Locker” movies that cinema consumers can easily relate to. Movies that are both cheaper and have a bigger impact on the audience, that are more artistic then distractive. The objective for the next productions are to direct founds towards good ideas instead of directing them to technological ideas. Many cinema critics claimed that James Cameron revolutionized the Art of making cinema with his “Avatar” (Dalmazo), but what we saw two years after the release wasn’t that. Two years after “Avatar” what actually came out were personal screenplays, rather then technological screenplays.
Technology isn’t going to be the future of cinema, the future of cinema will be films that we can relate to, that have good acting, high quality screenplays, and good soundtrack. Movies that can impact the audience, instead of distracting them. We, the audience, are the ones that shape the future of cinema, we are the ones that can change it in order to fit what we expect of it. What scares me isn’t technology being the future of cinema, but instead, the future of cinema being a junk entertainment industry focused only in distracting us. The essential way of making cinema is broader, smarter and more affective towards the audience. If cinema is a part of the Art industry it can be compared to a book, or a play, or a story instead of being compared to a tv show. “Technology isn’t the worse thing that can happen to the movie industry. being digital becomes no big deal.(118) It is just another in a series of technological shifts in the history of the media” (Crofts) the problem is the technology affecting the cinema history and reputation. “Digital technology is not the demon here, we are. If we don't say something, it will be too late for film preservation.” As a cinema lover, I say that we should fight for good cinema preservation. “Maurice Thornton, retired projectionist, points out, "It's like everything else heritage, if you don't preserve it it's gone and unfortunately it's gone forever because it cannot be recreated, not in the same way. So, that's why I'm a film man. Because I know everything's done digitally now, and I know it's done on video cameras [gesturing towards my HDV camera] and DVD cameras and that, but I don't want to see the old film go." (126) (Crofts) The old/essential way of making cinema won’t go away because we, the audience, are the ones that shape the future of cinema, and we in the last couple of years, showed the Academy that we want stunning and affective storylines.
