March 8, 2004
To the optimist, digital technology offers freedom. To the pessimist, it enslaves you to a computer. There appear to be so many contradictions underlying the use of digital technology in filmmaking that it is sometimes hard to determine what its real impact is. Digital technology can make some tasks easier but renders others more difficult. It can simplify your life or make it more complex. It can dramatically cut costs or significantly increase them. The actual impact, however-positive or negative-is more likely to be a function of the decisions made during production than of the digital technology itself.
One thing is certain though: Spectacular advances in computer technology over the last few years are irrevocably transforming the filmmaking industry. This has already occurred in specific areas of film creation such as film editing, visual effects creation, and motion-control cameras. It is now spreading rapidly into other fields, accelerated by the new medium of the digital intermediate (DI).
The DI can act as a strong catalyst to a broad variety of new technologies and workflows. They provide a digital core to film production that can be leveraged by a wide range of creative functions. Over the next decade this will almost certainly drive dramatic transformations in filmmaking, from how content is created, to how tasks are executed and managed, to how the different departments collaborate.
Digital technologies blur the historically linear separation between pre-production, production, and post-production, as they are inherently non-linear and can map more malleably to the creative process. As a result, digital production environments can be created, within which there are elements that are pre-production, others that are pure production, and still others that are post-production-all operating in parallel.
This aspect is frequently overlooked in discussions of digital technology, which often focus on specific processes rather than the overall context. Ultimately, although specific processes are important, the significance of technologies such as DI cannot be fully understood in terms of the latest "hardware gadget" or software application, or even as a digital alternative to existing processes. This limits our perspective, makes it hard to understand and justify these new digital paradigms, and it can lead to the contradictions described above.
Taking the cost contradiction as an example, often the cost savings of digital technology are indirect. Adding a digital process such as pre-visualization or digital grading is almost always more expensive than "not doing it," and may therefore seem hard to justify per se. When considered as part of the overall production, however, the actual expense of the process may be mitigated by overall savings to the production. This can be particularly true when techniques such as pre-visualization are used to reduce the costs of shooting. And digital technologies are no longer the preserve of multi-million dollar productions, as films such as Robert Young's Below the Belt, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, clearly demonstrate.
As is the case in the modern-day "digital office," the film workplace is being driven by a technology that is-by its very nature-vast, complex, and changing at an exponential rate. To see this you need look no further than the length of visual effects credits of a movie today versus one of ten or even five years ago. Although posing definite challenges, digital technologies are also creating significant opportunities. From data wranglers to inferno artists, many new careers have been created thanks to digital technology. As a result the job requirements, skills, and competencies of most film professionals will continue to evolve dramatically.
But digital technology does not guarantee success in filmmaking any more than it does to business people in an office. It may be an indispensable tool but it is ultimately a means to an end, not the end itself
. Success is driven by the vision and talent of the various artisans involved in making the film.
Production design, art direction, composition, lighting, costume design, and all the other artistic elements that go into making a good movie cannot be replaced effectively by computers. The "Art" of filmmaking-whether digital or not-is the most critical factor behind the success of a movie, and no technology can compensate for poor storytelling. Nonetheless, the tools of the artist will change and the most successful artists will be those who can translate their art to these new tools.
It would be a misconception that DI makes the DP's role less important. Poor camera work cannot be compensated for digitally. An average picture shoot will not achieve maximum impact, even if digitally altered via the DI process. This is as true for motion pictures as it has proven to be in still photography, where digital technologies have long been established. A digital camera and Photoshop does not a good photograph make. In fact, the malleability of the DI process makes the DP's role more important.
Innovative production designers are also integrating digital tools, such as pre-visualization software, into their creative toolsets as a powerful means of planning and storyboarding a movie prior to production. Production designers together with the art department establish a look and feel that is coherent, strong, and a perfect match for the story. To do so the production team is immersed in the same visual language, and this immersive visual experience must be carried over into the digital realm if digital processes are to be successful.
A lot of this visual data comes from and is archived by the art department, where resources for archiving are already part of most movie budgets (hardware, server space, personnel). This archive becomes the central repository of the design data and the metadata, starting early in the production process. As a result, the art department's archives are extremely valuable for adding extras to DVD's, for creating interactive games, and for marketing materials. Today, however, this potential is almost always under-exploited.
Accessibility to the art department's database is essential throughout pre- and post-production. Because of it, the art department is now playing a central role in film production. An editor can rough-cut the first edit using storyboards, into which location shots, 3D pre-visualization, and scanned art can then be inserted, allowing a film to be extensively blocked out before shooting begins. This can then turn into the offline edit and finally the digital negative cut that will be printed back to film, allowing for an extremely flexible and creative digital production workflow. In this context digital film production is much bigger than just DI.
As complexity of the digital content creation process increases it becomes critical to be able to effectively and efficiently manage the millions of data elements that are generated throughout the production cycle, from the first storyboards to the final DVD. This requires new means of handling collaborative access to project data and enabling more efficient iterative processes. The need for enterprise-level integrated content creation and data-management systems is already a key concern among filmmakers and will continue to be so over the next few years as the amount of digital information involved in a production continues to soar and the overhead associated with managing the information mounts.
New solutions will emerge, bringing new meaning to traditional filmmaking roles-and so the technology race will continue. New skills will be required and new professions created. But as we continue to develop newer and better technologies to solve the production problems of today and tomorrow, we should not forget that digital technology is just a means to an end. Without the creative tools that can make a difference-that can advance the state of the "art"-the fact that it is digital becomes irrelevant.n
Maurice Patel is Systems Product Marketing Manager at Discreet, in Montreal (www.discreet.com).
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