The Future of Cinema

[kerowo]

It can change your perception of the movie but not the movie itself. I'd say that the audience is one of the least important aspects of a movie while in a live perforrmance it is one of the most important aspects. The point is that there will always be a market for movies so saying Cinema is Dead is a bit too artsy fartsy to not set off my BS detector.

[thecincykiddo]

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I'd say that the audience is one of the least important aspects of a movie while in a live perforrmance it is one of the most important aspects.

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i doubt that.

every filmmaker who makes films worth watching is an audience member, and most of them still prefer to watch a film on the big screen. That's not to say that at some point they can't afford their own projection rooms and don't have to deal with mass audience spectacles, but the point remains the same.

You can't have filmmakers who don't regularly viddy films any more than you can have writers who don't read. That's just not the way it works; and, while you might have a whole lot of filmmakers who only watch small screen stuff, they won't be making the same kind of films because they won't be thinking along the same proportions.

I have yet, though, to meet an emerging filmmaker who didn't fall in love with the medium on the big screen first.

[pryor15]

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I have yet, though, to meet an emerging filmmaker who didn't fall in love with the medium on the big screen first.

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[thecincykiddo]

have we met? jk.

so you fell in love with tv?

[pryor15]

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have we met? jk.

so you fell in love with tv?

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i fell in love with DVD and the process of filmmaking at the same time. i actually made a film before i fell in love with the medium, which is certainly rare.

the thing is, i've never been all that fond of mainstream American cinema post-1980 and where i grew up there were no rep theatres where i could watch Citizen Kane or anything like that and there certainly weren't any theatres showing foreign stuff.

as a result, i never really got into film until the end of my college days b/c it never was part of my childhood...there was Star Wars and Disney movies and whatnot, sure, but nothing all that exciting to peak my interest.

Dom and i have talked previously about how i was really born on the wrong continent. by all rights i should have been European--that's where the bulk of my influences are. and that stuff is pretty scarce on the big screen unless you happen to be in one of the major cities (NYC, LA, SF, etc), so i had to find it on DVD. video, maybe, but it would have been a lot of legwork

i honestly think if i had been born 5 years earlier i would have never been a filmmaker. DVD (and Netflix) would have come around too late.

and maybe it's just been my bad luck, but when i go to the cinema, more often than not the film is not even being projected correctly, so it's hard to fall in love with something that's so frequently frustrating.

[thecincykiddo]

we have similar tastes, not too surprisingly. i have often thought that I really am European and that somehow, somewhere, a huge mistake occurred to end me up where I am.

But at least in my hometown, the local television stations played a lot of different films when I was young. Not a lot of foreign films, but a lot of great films.

It's hard to say how much a filmmaker who prefers to watch DVDs over the big screen changes the act of filmmaking itself. It could be argued, though, that you might make more personal, more personally focused films; or, even, that you might create or be part of a sort of living room kind of genre that people might recognize after a while by feel.

I think it is likely that the difference is there somehow, i guess is what i'm trying to say, but how it manifests itself is hard to tell. It's interesting, though.

[Blarg]

Well, movies used to be much more a community event. You hd to be part of the community to see anything not in crappy quality. Especially with wide screens now, the home experience is high quality, and a decent alternative in some ways. It's good enough, for many if not most.

People are also less social in general. Organizations like the Lions, Elks, Shriners, etc., and local sports teams and clubs have seen their memberships largely evaporate. Unless you specifically want the community experience of a movie, or it's a spectacle, movies don't have the inherent draw they used to.

Not to mention the price. Over ten bucks a ticket, especially when in real terms incomes of such a broad part of society have stagnated, is way too much. You can get the same flick that would cost you 22.00 to see with your girlfriend for the equivalent of a dollar or less from Netflix. The costs of seeing movies are way out of whack for anybody but a die-hard movie guy, or someone who doesn't pay for them himself, like a kid, or if you really NEED a big screen for a spectacle.