Blog 5, an opinion of digital film.

     Films play a huge role in society. The theatre was a way to escape reality or to get enveloped by the film. For example the great depression was a boom for films, the theatres still ran movies and people still went, even though their circumstances. In these times film was cherished, you saw a film as something more than just entertainment; it was something that took over and hit a nerve. Thus the film became more than just a movie, it became a piece of art targeting emotion and thought. Film progresses through history, even though it is somewhat a short history, changing constantly and creating new innovating ideas that overcome the film industry. Silent films to talkies, growth of studios and the golden age of Hollywood, film noir, epics, death of the studio and rise of the independent film, the new wave, and today the rise of digital film and computer generated special effects. The raw essentials of old film making and its way of capturing the perfect shot and finding the visual trigger to strike an emotion has become muffled by the overwhelming blockbuster. Digital has brought to the stand a new way to create whatever is wanted, and the industry tries so hard to create real, when real is right in front of them.

    Creating a blockbuster is trying to get a sense of awe and also a large crowed to the theatre. The film industry is trying to make money by using a style of big, luring, and grandiose filmmaking that harnesses a sense of amazement. But the sense of capturing beauty or emotion gets lost in all of the excitement. Digital films and special effects are just adding to the growth of the blockbuster. Money is the greatest concern within the film industry. The use of film as an art is rarely seen in theatres; a beautifully made film cannot be made for the sole desire of making money, but instead it needs to capture something that provokes a thought. A film needs to be sublime, something that catches the attention of a viewer in a way other than the exciting blockbuster.

     Film has become a money making dazzling lightshow that is aspiring to become bigger and bigger. It all comes down to what makes the money. It is these kinds of films that have taken over. Our society has a lust to be dazzled rather than being pried open emotionally and being moved by a film. So therefore we see an enormously mystifying demand for the extravagant blockbuster. And because of the digital age, the average person can, download, copy, steal, store, and watch any film they desire. Oddly, it is the blockbusters that create the uproar. Only within a certain community of people the use of film as an art form is harnessed. And in the case of this group the digital age has created a new style of artists that have become the innovators for a new era of film. So in the end, digital is just a new chapter in the book, and it is still being used by a select few to create magnificent, art. It is the artist that needs to be appreciated rather than the moneymaker.

Blog 4

Connor McShane

Film Blog 4

November 14, 2010    

     The post classical era of film became what it was due to the growing culture of the rebellious teen. We see in the time after WWII a revolutionizing shift within society. It is the rise of easy times that blew out of proportion and leisure is what was wanted. The time of fast food and drive-ins, the all electric dream home, able to do anything, drive-in theatres, the first credit cards, and an explosion of televisions showing up in the American household. Out of this life became easier, more and more was just handed to the American society; all because they had money. Life became leisurely, and because of money the American culture adopted a certain attitude, this attitude created a crack, and it was the teenage culture that slipped through. The rise of modern jazz and the birth of rock and roll fueled their teenage fires. This change in society was harnessed by Hollywood and a new road was taken by filmmakers. Because of this change, as said by Tim Dirks, “Older viewers were prone to stay at home and watch television”[1] while the young culture, wanting to be alone, went to the drive in and dark movie theatres.

     Teenagers wanted something new and with “the period following WWII when most of the films were idealized with conventional portrayals of men and women, young people wanted new and exciting symbols of rebellion. Hollywood responded to audience demands”[2], and thus created “the rise of the anti-hero”[3]. The filmmakers thrived to draw in the younger generations with their new films, it was a shocking new movement of material that was considered to vial for the theatre. The new content for these films were the result of a “new generation of young, cinema-crazed filmmakers [who] came to prominence in America, drastically changing not only the way Hollywood films were produced and marketed, but also the kinds of films that were made”[4]. The style of the old Hollywood was still run by people who were there from its birth and they were unable to reconnect with their audience. With this a new age of filmmakers they easily brought their audience back by creating widescreen epics. The body of work created from this period has become some of the greatest films ever made[5]. Before the baby boomer children became of age, the film industry was severely hurting for money; they didn’t know what the audience wanted and were struggling to get by, and all the while being able to have television at home wasn’t helping them. To their surprise “what the audience wanted was something new. European art films, the French New Wave, Japanese cinema, were all making a big splash in America—the huge market of disaffected youth found something in themselves when they saw movies like Antonioni’s Blow-Up, with its oblique narrative structure and full-frontal female nudity. Studio heads were baffled. Unable to figure out what was happening, producers gradually handed power over to the directors. This was when the Movie Brat generation broke in and Hollywood became an asylum that was truly run by the inmates”[6]. The new style that this Movie Brat generation was taking on was the end of old Hollywood and the birth of New Hollywood, which was an amplification of subjects such as violence and sexuality. Film was breaking free from the rules that were so constricting, suffocating it, and keeping it from being art.

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[1] Tim Dirks, “The History of Film The 1950s The Cold War and Post Classical Era The Era of Epic Films and the Threat of Television,” (amc, filmsite, written and edited by Tim Dirks, 2010), http://www.filmsite.org/50sintro.html (accessed November 14, 2010).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] “New Hollywood (1967-1977),” (jahsonic.com), http://www.jahsonic.com/NewHollywood.html (accessed November 14, 2010).

[5] “New Hollywood (1967-1977),” (jahsonic.com), http://www.jahsonic.com/NewHollywood.html (accessed November 14, 2010).

[6] Ibid.