My friend and I were having a conversation the other day about a new feature being offered to her by her Internet company. Her cable and Internet are provided by the same company, this new feature makes it possible to download data from the television to her computer. This means ordered movies or shows recoded from the TV can now be viewed on a person’s computer. The more I thought about it the more I realized how much of the film industry was being dominated by computers. The merging of film and computer impacts the entire movie experience. How a movie is made, advertised and viewed has been altered by advances in computer technology.
Take for instance the different between older children’s movies, Beauty and the Beast or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, to a newer one such as UP or Toy Story. In older films each panel had to be drawn and colored by hand, an arduous and time consuming task. The movie Nightmare Before Christmas is a wonderful example of the hand crafting labor movies required. Each scene was crafted from clay, filmed, redone and filmed again. Comparatively, newer films shy away from such elaborate handmade work; both Up and Toy Story were created entirely by computer animation. Today most movies are done with CGI or other computer programs. The first three Star Wars movies and Avatar are perfect examples of computers making films. The fourth through sixth Star Wars (three original) were mostly done sans computers. Shooting took place in different locations for the multitude of terrains the movie required. Sets were built and actually blown up. One the other hand, the newer movies were mostly done in front of a green screen, and there were no ornately constructed puppets or costumes. Personally this was a huge disappointment, half of the wonder of the original three movies was watching all the action and thinking about how people were able to make the movies; there was such a feeling of movie wonder. Not to say this wonder has gone away, something like Avatar, which was done almost completely with computers, has its own sense of magic. However, this magic is computer based.
Advertising has a whole new medium, the Internet. Trailers now appear on YouTube exciting people and generating interest. One person can find a trailer for a new movie, and send the link to all their friends with similar taste is films. Instead of relying on traditional forms of advertisements, movie makers can put a trailer online and rely on word of mouth to get their movie out. The Internet has also cultivated our love for celebrity gossip. If Mel Gibson pulls a crazy stunt before one his movies is released and his actions are captured online, his new movie receives a lot of press. After a film has been made and advertised, it is finally time for viewing, another process impacted by computers. The theater is a dying experience; most people prefer to watch movies at home, more than likely on their computers. Movies can be instantly viewed on a computer, either legally or illegally. Sites such as Netflix have made this an extremely easy process. Now information can even be taken from the television and watched on a computer. Overall, the world of movies has been forever changed with the introduction of computers.
No comments:
Post a Comment