Spectacle and Technology
Over the years since the introduction of the blockbuster age which started with the film ‘Jaws’ (Spielberg, 1975) filmmakers have been striving to make their films bigger and better than any competing film in the cinemas. Creators are creating and innovating new technology to keep the audiences engaged. There are creators known as ‘technological determinists’ who think of technology as a necessity and invent new ways of using it in order to benefit their films. On the flip-side creators like Christopher Nolan use old school technology such as analog film cameras, real time stunts and prosthetics in order to prove a point that you don’t need new and fancy equipment and technology in order to make a good film.
As for whether I feel technology has eroded the art and craft that is storytelling, I don’t think so. Technology is a great tool which we can use to create our own films easier and more efficiently, by using these technological ‘shortcuts’ we may allocate more time to the production quality and overall quality of the story itself. Though technology can be abused and used to take some of the authenticity out of the film, it remains perfectly reflective of the creators themselves, whether to use the new-age fancy technology or not is up to the creators themselves.
The spectacle of a cinema viewing is a very important factor in the industry, as it is the ideal method of experiencing these films, creators won’t create a film to be watched on your phone, they will create it to be watched in cinemas, therefore the filmmakers will go into great detail ensuring everything looks perfect and sounds right in order to be a perfect viewing spectacle on the big screen. The spectacle itself is not as important as the story, a film could have very stunning visuals and be beautiful when screened at IMAX, but it could lack correct story structure and the viewer would be completely taken away from the narrative universe.
As a creator I would use technology to immerse my audience in my narrative world by ensuring that my creative visuals are to the most stunning standard they possible could be, using the sharpest and best lenses available on the best cameras to perfectly capture the subjects just as the human eye would see them, I believe this is crucial as most viewers want to be immersed in a fabricated world which seems real, not one which is obviously fake. The technologies I would use would be very modern, as I am very familiar with them, and their extreme efficiency to add to my creative palette.
