tech essay

 Digital technologies play a huge part in the production and distribution processes in film, and development in these areas has affected the way that media is produced and distributed. For example, the biggest change in the production process is digital technology which is mainly replacing the original method of shooting on film.  

Different directors all have differing opinions and feelings towards shooting digitally. For example, George Lucas, who directed Star Wars Episodes I-IV, believes that digital is the future and shot Star Wars Episode 2 in 2002, digitally. However, another director, Christopher Nolan, directed “Inception”, “Dunkirk” and the “Dark Knight” Trilogy, wants to shoot on film for as long as he can. The main conflict here is whether or not the best quality is found shooting on film or digitally. Ultimately it is to determine what will produce the best final product for distribution after production is done. 

Largely, it is agreed that film has a better look, per se, while digital production is a much faster process. With film, filmmakers cannot see their captured images straightaway, and must wait until the next day after the film is processed to see the shots. Mistakes identified after are harder to fix in a timely manner. Whereas with digital filming, the director/cinematographer can see their shots at the same time as filming, and can make sure the shots are up to par. This greatly speeds up the production process and reduces the need for pickup shots because of undiscovered errors. It is this part that digital technology plays to develop the process. 

However, directors and cinematographers like Christopher Nolan, and others do not believe that speed of production is worth sacrificing what they consider a superior image. 

Digital cameras have developed fast over the years and are also becoming more affordable. To a director like George Lucas, it is excellent news, but to others, a certain viewpoint is that the quality of media produced will go down with the rise of independent filmmaking. The more affordable a camera, the more low-budget independent films will be made available. 

Alongside filming, digital technology has also developed the post-production process significantly, particularly in Visual Effects. (VFX) Throughout the years, and definitely in recent years, VFX and Computer-Generated Images (CGI) are on the rise. For example, in Avatar director James Cameron explained that because of what they could do with VFX and CGI, not a single scene set in a jungle was actually filmed in a jungle. The setting was entirely created on computers. 

However, modern films are now being criticised for over-use of CGI, under the reasoning that it looks less real. This depends on how much time is put into it. CGI can look good or it can look bad. One of the reasons the Lord of the Rings films were so successful, is because of using as little CGI as possible. Of course CGI was still used, for example for large battle scenes or most notable with the character Gollum. But the prequels to the Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit films, which were made ten years after the original films, were criticised for the over-use of CGI, particularly for the “Orcs”, as in Lord of the Rings, they were actors in prosthetics but in the Hobbit, they were CGI and ended up looking not as good. On the other hand, Gollum looked notably more impressive than the original, which was an achievement in itself. 

Films can also use more thought-out methods. In The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves, the movie was shot digitally, but the image was processed to achieve the colour hues and cinematography. The result is very good cinematography. The film grossed about $760 million, which shows that digital is a very acceptable method to shoot a film, despite some directors’ fears. And with the passing of time, digital will continue to rise and take over film as a shooting method. 

The internet and Web 2.0 has drastically changed the way that films are distributed. Streaming services have been on the rise for some years now and the Covid-19 pandemic has led to streaming service use skyrocketing as theatrical releases had all but stopped. Now cinemas have been gaining some of the momentum that they lost as audiences begin to return. But streaming services have not lost their momentum and with cross-media convergence and synergy, coupled with the Internet and Web 2.0 has meant that distribution is now a much faster and widespread process. A stark contrast to before the capabilities of today’s internet. But with the Internet comes a rise in piracy, because now films can be more easily illegally copied and shown on pirate websites. Increased accessibility has meant that it is much harder to stop pirated films being circulated. All of these are massive changes in the pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution processes.