Reinventing Cinema

Reinventing Cinema: An Interview with Chuck Tryon (Part One) Chuck Tryon is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Fayetteville State University, where his teaching and research has focused on various aspects of film, television, and convergent media, including digital cinema, documentary studies, political video, and on using technology in the language arts classroom.

Read the whole article here: http://henryjenkins.org/2010/07/throughout_the_book_you_addres.html

Below i have taken what i believe to be the key points.

"what happens when these tools become democratized so that "anyone" has access to tools that allow them to make professional-quality films?"

"Within the broader film industry, I think the response has been a perpetual cycle of adjustment and innovation. Studios have succeeded by promoting new films in terms of spectacle and visual novelty, as we saw with the success of James Cameron's Avatar and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, while also seeking to exploit all of the new platforms where films can be viewed."

"Mark Gill, a former president of Miramax, worried that digital cinema was leading to a glut of "flat-out awful" films competing for limited screen space, while adding that social media tools have the potential to sabotage a studio's marketing efforts, arguing that in an age of texting, "good buzz spreads quickly, bad buzz even faster."

"others including indie film producer Ted Hope, have celebrated the democratizing potential of digital tools by defining cinema as an experience. Some studios and entertainment journalists have expressed concern about the power of social media in spreading "bad buzz" about a film. In particular, there was a brief discussion of a "Twitter effect" that was helping to amplify negative word-of-mouth about some poorly-performing films. But for the most part, there seems to be widespread acceptance of the role of social media in shaping how audiences consume films."

When discussing the future of the film industry

" think there are a number of continuities between past and present. After all, movie theaters still play a vital cultural role, with teens and young adults continuing to see movies in significant numbers. The excitement over the Twilight films, to focus on the most recent example, shows that audiences still crave the opportunity to share in a significant experience with a wider moviegoing public."

"we will continue to see the window of time between the theatrical debut and the DVD (or streaming video) release of a movie, with the dual hope of curtailing piracy and of increasing DVD sales. Within a few years, Hollywood films may even follow the logic of many independent filmmakers in releasing their films available theatrically and online simultaneously. DVD sales will likely continue to decline as consumers become more selective about the movies they buy, in part due to the cheap availability of streaming video. And we will continue to see cases of filmmakers and studios experimenting with versions of transmedia storytelling. We will see occasional cases of crowdsourced or crowdfunded films break through into theatrical distribution, even if those instances are relatively rare. And this is probably obvious, but I think we will continue to see an incredibly vibrant fan culture expressed via blogs, YouTube, and other social media tools."

Discussing why filmmakers are making more bold and elaborate films (Alice in Wonderland, Avatar - using the medium of 3D)............

"With DVD sales declining, studios seemed to be embracing 3D as a means of attracting audiences back into the theater, and a number of high-profile directors, including James Cameron, saw 3D as potentially offering deeper immersion into cinematic narrative."

"Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland was converted to 3D in post-production, to find a wider-than-expected audience."

"More recently, however, there appears to a critical and audience backlash developing against 3D, especially for "fake 3D" movies such as Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender that were converted to 3D in post-production, a backlash that was exacerbated when a number of theaters significantly increased ticket prices for 3D films, making it more expensive for a family of four to go out for a night at the movies."