Nicola's thoughts about Avatar

Avatar, to me, is revolutionary. James Cameron epitomises some points raised by Henry Jenkins in his book Convergence Culture. For me, the film is an excellent example of the blending of old and new media in order to lure the audience back to the cinema, following a decline in dvd sales. Not only does James Cameron use performance capture to provide human emotion to CGI characters (in real time) he is one of the first directors to use a virtual camera on set (enabling him to see the performance of the "human" actors as "CGI creations" in realtime.). Cameron also, attempts to change 3D cinema and make it appear less like a feature/attraction and more like a technique to compliment the special effects and bring the world of Pandora to life. Moreover, the film converges traditional film making (costume, art, actors, reference cameras etc.) with new digital film making (pushed to it's limits - performance capture in real time, digital prosthetics).

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."

Breakdown of Movie Making in the digital age

In “ Movie-making in the new media age”, particular attention is paid to digital film or DV and its relevance to the internet (this being the digital distribution, production and consumption of digital film on the internet). With respect to Roberts, his article was written prior to the opening of YouTube (in 2006), that has to some extent seen the manifestation of this predicament by Kim Howells:

"One of the most interesting aspects of digital technology is the possibilities it presents. Films could be seen at the same time all over the world, in different types of venue or in places where there is no easy access to cinema at present. "
(Department for Culture Media and Sport, 2002: 3)

This also ties into user-generated content and the issue of distribution and copyright. In the case of distribution, the advent of the DVD and its “extra features” utility did bring a deeper dimension to the film experience in terms of interactivity and supporting features (“documentaries, director profiles” etc). For example we can see this most clearly on another film Roberts quotes later, that being Time Code (2000). It was a movie filmed on DV with four hand held cameras in one long shot, with four narratives running simultaneously on a quartered screen. Throughout the film, we are led indirectly (through lighting, sound, camera composition and screen juxtaposition etc) to pay attention to a certain screen at a certain time. Nevertheless, if one watches the DVD version, the interactive element gives the viewer control over what screen he/she wishes to watch. In effect, by giving the viewer/user more control over the content, it changes how they experience the film with less linear emphasis on the plot that the original tried to create.

When this distributive utility is applied to the web, Roberts complains that even after the “Napsterization” of video into online file sharing format, it took him 5 hours to download Martin Scorese’s “Casino”. Today it would take you less than 20 minutes (“legalized”) and in a few years to come, with the replacement of broadband, it will take less than a nanosecond, as our experiences of “download times” (and physical distribution of film itself) become mere artifacts of nostalgia.

When we consider the web in relation to digital film production, the case of “The Blair Witch Project”(1999) stands out with its innovative use of viral marketing and small budget hand held DV cameras. We are reminded that the web provides a wealth of resources to the independent film maker, in terms of community and technical help on the movie industry (we could link David Gauntlet’s theory of collaboration and Henry Jenkins’s notion of a participatory culture here). Even so, Roberts urges caution in regard to the possibilities of digital technology as a substitute to the craft of film making itself (digital or not), as good film-making still requires “talent, inspiration, knowledge, expertise and skills”. Or as Hitchcock had put it: “a great script, a great script and a great script”. (think about the documentary “capturing avatar” and what Henry Jenkins would describe as the blending of old and new media to create a different consumer experience)

Information taken and adapted from "Writing in the Digital Age"