Digital Production in the 21^^ Century
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Film itself will be confined not only to the era of the 20“’ century; motion
pictures shot and mastered on 35mm or 16mm film will now be relegated to the
realm of the revival house and/or museum, curiosities from a by-gone age. Indeed,
in the 21"' century, when we speak of film studies, we may well be referring to a
uniquely 20'’’ century art form, when moving images were actually captured on
photographic stock, as opposed to being created from pixels and electron beams.
Digital is taking over. Already, Sony Pictures has produced an entirely digital feature
by Mike Figgis, whose film Leaving Las Vegas (1995) was shot on Super 16mm.
Entitled Time Code 2000, Figgis’s new film was shot in a mere nine days, starring
Holly Hunter, Kyle MacLachlan, Salma Hayek and Jeanne Tripplehorn in a
completely improvised comedy lampooning (appropriately enough) the traditional
Hollywood filmmaking system. And Bernard Rose, director of Immortal Beloved
(1994), a somewhat over-the-top film starring Gary Oldman as Beethoven, has
just completed a new fully-digital feature ivansxtc (2000), which Rose is publicizing
on his own web site, filmisdead.com. Notes Rose, “the advantages are so many.
They start multiplying exponentially when you start with the big one: you don’t
need to light if ’ (Ansen 63).
As David Ansen notes, this “means no electricians, grips, makeup
department, generators. Digital is going to mean speedy productions, small crews,
low budgets. And the small cameras are so inconspicuous, filmmakers can shoot
on the street without a location permit.” Actor/director Ethan Hawke is yet another
digital convert: as of this writing, Hawke has Just finished production on The Last
Word on Paradise (2000), an entirely digital film shot on location at the Chelsea
Hotel in New York, more than three decades after Andy Warhol immortalized the
hotel in his epic 16mm feature. The Chelsea Girls (1966). Hawke feels that digital
cinema “will raise the talent bar of filmmaking. It’ll make filmmaking more like
painting or the novel, in which case you need to be immensely more talented to do
it. This is going to let the future James Joyces work in this medium” (see Ansen,
61,63-64).
But while digital imaging makes films easier and cheaper to produce, the
late-century demand for spectacle (which will certainly continue for some time)
ensures that only those films produced by the dominant cinema will reach a truly
international audience, in stark contrast to the situation that prevailed only 40 years
ago, when a resolutely non-commercial film such as Michaelangelo Antonioni’s
L 'Avventiira could still be certain of a theatrical release