The Digital Film Making Industry
Digital filmmaking is quickly changing everything about filmmaking. Everyone from professionals to amateurs are currently seeing great advancements in many aspects of the industry.
Every year thousands of independent films are made. The vast majority of these films are created using digital cameras and basic home computers. A few years ago this was impossible due the sheer cost of quality 35 millimeter cameras, and extremely expensive editing equipment. Now anyone can make a relatively high quality digital film with a 1000 dollar camera and a 2000 dollar computer. With a setup like this films can be shot and edited, also special effects and CG sequences unimaginable to even professional film studios 20 years ago can be added to these independent films.
In addition to the new production advances many distribution advances have been made as well. Ten years ago the only venue for any independent film was film festivals and private screenings. Now any one can make a film and have it seen by potentially the whole world over the internet. With the increasing speed and people that have access to the internet people are able to post their movies online for anyone to download it.
Currently most movie theaters are not equipped to show these digital films, and the films shot digitally had to have been converted to analog to be shown. However this is changing. According to an April 2003 article in Wired Magazine Online, 177 theaters in 53 of Landmark Cinema’s theaters will be equipped with digital projectors and sound equipment. With this technology it will be possible for these theatres to show many independent films, that before would have been impossible of the independent studios at such a ...
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...ters. The popular television show South Park is also made entirely form computers. Not only are film studios creating digital animated films, but also incorporating these elements in live action movies. Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hulk from 2003s The Hulk are computer generated characters playing in a movie with real life actors.
All of the before mentioned characters were non-human, but there are many CG human appearances in movies. In the two most recent Matrix films and all three Lord of the Rings films many of the fight scenes were done in CG. With the current technology, and taking into consideration the rate at which this technology is advancing, it won’t be long before entire movies will created with photo-realistic humans. Soon the technology will be so advanced that it will be impossible to differentiate between n real life and CG.
When the British passed the Stamp Act, the colonists reacted in various ways. The Stamp Act, passed in 1765, put taxes on all printed goods in the colonies. Specifically, newspapers, legal documents, dice,
The Stamp Act was passed in 1765, and placed a tax on any papered goods that were going into the colonies from Britain. This included newspapers, pamphlets, and playing cards, just to name a few (Stamp Act).The colonists had been so accustomed to their freedom from the crown at this point, that they were enraged. The relationship between the Mother country and the colonies did not get much better with the instatement of the Townshend Acts of 1767. These acts passed taxes on every day goods that the colonists needed, such as lead, tea, glass and paint(Townshend Acts).
Movies today are extremely expensive to make and are typically financed through either film studio contracts or from investors willing to take a risk. In order to be successful, movies need to be marketed and distributed either under contract by the film studios or by companies that specialize in such services. The aspects of financing, marketing and distribution of films have changed between the studio and independent systems over the years as the evolution of the film industry took place.
The Stamp Act was released to the colonists by the British Government in November of 1765; which was the day that all paper goods such as magazines, newspaper, and even playing card had to either have a British seal or stamp that was payed for. They stated, “If I can’t afford to feed my family how can I afford to pay an extra tax?” The colonists were brave to fight back against the British Government by developing the Stamp Act Congress. The Stamp Act Congress was to send a strong message of opposition to the British Government; the colonists put together a meeting to discuss the conflicts that they were having under the British Government control and what they were going to do about it. John Adams; well known Boston Patriot felt the exact same way that the colonists were feeling. His opinion states that “If our trade be taxed, why not our land, or produce… in short, everything we possesses? They tax us without having legal representation.” Adams was right. If the colonists didn’t put a stop to what the British was doing with the taxes, then the situation was going to get worse. Just by reading what...
The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 were taxes imposed on England's American Colonies to raise money that would be used to promote England's influence in the Colonies. The Stamp Act was a direct tax on many different types of printed materials such as newspapers, legal documents, magazines and playing cards. The stamped papers were produced in England and the tax needed to be paid in British currency and not colonial paper money. The revenue was to be used to pay British troops that were stationed in the Americas. Since the colonists had no representation in the British Parliament, they argued that the tax was illegal because they were being taxed without representation. This resulted in the first time the colonies had produced
In conclusion, the Stamp Act is only a debt relief for Great Britain. It is a biased and unreasonable Act that disregards anything that the colonists said or done. It takes advantages of the colonists who worked hard to meet their goals. As a result, the Stamp Act should be repealed, or at the very least, not applied to the American
Example of this were colonial merchants continuing to trade with the enemy and smuggle goods, while colonial assemblies repeatedly refused to provide military officials with men and supplies. The war left Great Britain with a considerable debt and expensive responsibilities to administer newly acquired territory in North America. As a result, Parliament in March 1765 passed the Stamp Act to raise revenue. This act required the colonists to purchase and use specially stamped paper for all official documents, deeds, mortgages, newspapers, and pamphlets. The Stamp Act provoked opposition among the colonists, who saw this as a violation of their rights. To the colonists, the Stamp Act violated the right of English subjects not to be taxed without representation; it also weakened the independence of their colonial assemblies.
This was a revolutionary step for the film industry. The first computer generated imagery in 1973 was 2D (two dimensional). Westworld featured humans digitally enhanced to look like robots. Expressions were altered to make the characters more realistic, jerking movements, and subtle inconsistencies in the characters makeup and presentation. Westworld’s sequel, Futureworld, came out in the year 1976 and used three dimensional computer generated imagery. Two dimensional computer generated imagery was used to express depth and to produce new shades that could not be depicted just through animation and drawing. 2D computer generated imagery paved the way for its 3D brother. Three dimensional CGI was used to create shapes, creatures, and settings that did not exist in the movies or real
Just like most art forms it takes practice to become really good at animating. Computers have helped to make animation a quicker and simpler process then it once was. Now computers have been used in almost every animated film that has come out in the last ten years. Because of this animation quality has improve dramatically to the point that animated characters are serving as major characters in many of the top movies today. This includes characters such as Ja-Ja Banks in Starwars, The many dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park movies, and Gollum in the Lord of the Ring movies.
In Lev Manovich’s What is Digital Cinema, he states that “traditional film technology is universally being replaced by digital technology.” (Manovich, 178) This is indeed true. Digital technology is changing video games as well. Both films and video games depend on each other. Film studios and video game developers remediate each other’s product to maximize profits. Filmmakers, cinematographers, directors, actors and composers often work on video games. The two industries use the same technology. Both medias tell interrelated stories in both narrative worlds, which Jenkins calls it, transmedia storytelling. Transmedia storytelling is an approach that reconfigures the entire media experience. Video games that are based on films allow the players to interact with the characters that are seen in the film by manipulating the console’s controller.
Dancyger, K., 2007. The technique of film and video editing: history, theory, and practice. 4th ed. s.l.:Taylor & Francis.
The final step is called rendering. During rendering, the computer calculates the effect of light, color, and texture on the model's surface. For a film or video, the computer will produce a two-dimensional digital picture of the characters for each frame of the animation. The computer artist usually adjusts many visual effects, such as camera focus and transparency, during the rendering phase.
The film industry has always been somewhat of a dichotomy. Grounded firmly in both the worlds of art and business the balance of artistic expression and commercialization has been an issue throughout the history of filmmaking. The distinction of these two differing goals and the fact that neither has truly won out over the other in the span of the industry's existence, demonstrates a lot of information about the nature of capitalism.
Offering the unique ability to visually and audibly convey a story, films remain a cornerstone in modern society. Combined with a viewer’s desire to escape the everyday parameters of life, and the excitement of enthralling themselves deep into another world, many people enjoy what films stand to offer. With the rising popularity of films across the world, the amount of film makers increases every day. Many technological innovations mark the advancement of film making, but the essential process remains the same. Pre-production accounts for everything taken place before any shooting occurs, followed by the actual production of the film, post-production will then consist of piecing the film together, and finally the film must reach an audience. Each step of this process contributes to the final product, and does so in a unique right. The process of film making will now start chronologically, stemming from the idea of the story, producing that story into a film, editing that footage together, and finally delivering that story to its viewers.
Computer Generated Imagery began with awkward and dull effects in the early 1980’s. The 1982 film “Tron” was a desperate attempt from Disney to jump on the CGI bandwagon and start a revolution in film making technologies (imdb.com). Although this film showed an attempt at something that had never been done before in the history of cinematics, it was weird and confusing. This broke the door down for other companies to start up and aid films in creating better and better effects that appealed to a larger market. Although the effects were not good in the early days, the general film going public was astonished by computer generated effects and flocked to the theaters to see these cheesy attempts to use basic technology that did not transfer well to the silver screen. It was not until later films like “Jurassic Park,” “Toy Story,” and “The Lord of the Rings” until CGI became a film making powerhouse and the killer application for high budget movies.