The Advantages And Disadvantages Of The New Technology

From as far back as making films go the 35mm camera has always been around, for over 100 years now and if you watch a movie made on 35mm you can understand why. The effect it gives off is something else its not terrestrial TV style and it's just right, except one thing the price tag on the actual film celluloid. Unfortunately there is no substitute or cheaper equivalent to 35mm for recording a movie. However as we have advanced in the world of technology we now have a camera that is capable of recording with similar sharpness as 35mm The Digital Video Camera. The main difference between film and digital video is the cost of recording and the look it personifies. Other differences include the weight ease of duplication and transportability. For a long time digital recordings suffered from inferior sound and image quality when projected onto large screens, but recent advances in computer processing storage and projection have overcome this problem for their use in theatres. Just in terms of the equipment needed a digital production is about a ¼ less than the cost of 35mm film production. Unlike film, digital formats require very little physical storage space. One of the downfalls is they can be easily duplicated and uploaded to the internet and a good point if this was legal is the film will not lose any of its quality in the process.

This all sounds too good, however its not as easy as it looks, sure you can buy a DV camera down the road and make a half decent picture if you put your mind to it but how is it going to be screened? The problem is cinemas have and have always had projectors that play 35mm film. Too enable a cinema to show DV then it is going to have to import a lot of new technology. So to start the ball rolling cinemas around the world have to get rid of all the big projectors they have and always have used and refit the cinemas with new digital ones. The next step is they have to get online so they can stream the movie as the idea is to stream the movie which is all part of making digital films easier in all fields. However to be able to do all this will mean all different types of connections to be fitted into the cinema/multiplex. In the long run you can see this is a wise investment although it leaves a lot of people jobless such as movie distributors, celluloid companies not to mention assistant camera men/women, sound men/women and other miscellaneous workers on movie sets. Well the truth is film studios don't really care about them there not the key factors to the revolution in film to Digital Video the main factor is Piracy and at the moment film piracy can not be controlled or suppressed.1

"The US motion picture industry loses more than $3 billion annually in potential worldwide revenue due to piracy. Due to the difficulty in calculating Internet piracy losses, these figures are NOT currently included in the overall loss estimates. However, it is safe to assume Internet losses cause untold additional damages to the industry".2

Too date there is only one director that has used DV to record different shots in a movie and that is Gorge Lucas for his prequel Editions to the Star Wars trilogy. Star Wars Episode 2 Attack Of The Clones. During the filming of the film Gorge Lucas used a DV camera.3 The Sony HDC (High Definition Camera) F900 was the choice of camera, they shot at 24 progressive frames per second. The 24 frames fit in perfectly with the traditions of film projection and editing. "By not using film, the production team saved the time and money usually invested in film stock and photochemical processing, and was able to attain an image of incredible clarity already in the digital medium ready for postproduction use".4

It has also been noted that actors themselves would rather work in-front of a DVC. There reasons for this are when working with DVC there are often two cameras (whereas with 35mm there is only one) so they feel freer too work in-front of two rather than just the one. Another is that there is less pressure if they make a mistake as it won't result in a loss of money because there is no film in the camera just memory it can easily be deleted and redone in a matter of seconds. One of the flaws is because you have so much freeness and ample memory with the camera you can actually loose track of you recording and end up with to much footage. An example of this is when a documentary was being filmed there was so much space on the memory of the camera that 150hrs of memory was recorded for a 1hr documentary, it turned out that it took a whole year to edit down. This obviously seems a problem in a sense that all first time film makers are going to record hundreds of hours of footage but not necessarily because they can now have the software to edit their work on a home pc which means they can put more hours in at home to finish the job.

I think recording in DV is a great idea when you think it opens the doors to so many more different genres of people. Hollywood may be against it for reasons I can sympathies with, you only have to look at the music industry to see how much anarchy piracy has caused but I don't think they should rule it out. DV basically means anyone who has ever wanted to make a film now has the opportunity to do so and it won't cost them the earth. Cartridges for storing movie footage on, will set someone back around 19 pound for a couple of hours of memory and with a bit of time spent on lighting and sound you can produce a quality image like Dancehall Queen (Jamaican film, filmed on a DVC). Although I am quite confident to presume there will not be any Hollywood blockbuster movies being recorded via a DVC until piracy has been controlled as it is to risky to the industry of film making.5