The future of film - debate

What excites me about the future of film?Not much.I've tried plenty of them,and thank you very much,but I'll stick with my old classics,my silent film collections and Harold Lloyd,Greta Garbo,John Gilbert,
Rudolph Valentino,Lillian Gish,Gloria Swanson,Buster Keaton,James Stewart,Bette Davis,Barbara Stanwyck,Bogart,Mickey,Rooney,Laurel&Hardy,
W.C.Fields,Cary Grant,Sidney Poitier,Richard Widmark,Gary Cooper,Spencer Tracy,Charles Chaplin,Rosalind Russell,Katherine Hepburn,The Barrymore's,etc.I could mention the directors now,but you get the picture.Don't even get me started about television!What with all the reality shows and other equally bad programing,I don't even bother to turn it on anymore.When my tv gives out,I won't be buying a new one.
Nowadays,everything movie related is special effects,garbage,smut and excessive violence.Too many movies are made just for their shock value and to rake in some quick bucks.Who has any real talent as an actor/director these days?Who will we remember 50 years from now?Not too many,I think.

I think what excites me about cinema is watching a film with an appreciative audience. When I saw the Wallace and Gromit film: "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" at my local multiplex the audience howled with laughter at the scene involving Gromit, the were-rabbit and a space hopper. To often you feel the audience dosen't react or is apathetic to what they see so when you see a response like that then it's a delightful surprise. I have also seen families with children, couples and pensioners attend screenings of films such as "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday," the original Japanese version of "Godzilla" and the recent BFI release of selected GPO films: "Love Letters and Live Wires", proving that it's not film buffs such as myself who are interested in films like these. When we had the old City Screen in York we had regular showings of silent films. I remember the audience chuckling at Rotwang's appearance in "Metropolis" and gasps over Harold Lloyd's high-rise antics in a Harold Lloyd evening. What I'll never forget is a showing of the 1913 film "Barney Oldfield's Race for Life". When the heroine was plucked at the very last minute from the on-coming train the audience collectivly gasped and then burst into applause. It's interesting that it's classic films such as these or, as in "Were-Rabbit" which involve the audience and treats them with respect rather than throwing a lot of digital effects at them hoping they will be impressed. Compare those films with say "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones". I went to see it the night of it's release and the audience just sat overwhelmed by the CGI and didn't react!

Brian, they only add the films to the main voting list that have received the most nominations by the public. Hence the additions of "Casablanca", "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Brazil", "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Pans Labyrinth".
I'm guessing not many people voted for A clockwork Orange, and to be fair i've definitely seen better Kubrick films!

I am trying to vote for Clockwork Orange, but it seems that is not possible. What is the point of asking people to nominate films, if they are not then added to the active voting list. Stupid and a waste of everyone's time.

Nobody writes dialogue like Robert Bolt, and nowhere did his incisive wit find a better subject than in the inspiring, heartbreaking story of Sir Thomas More's insoluble clash with Henry VIII. The case, of More's refusal to approve Henry's divorce, raises ever-relevant matters of law, conscience, faith, duty to our loved ones and loyalty to self. It stands as a lasting tale of supreme (and lonely) self-sacrifice, affirming the moral realm over which earthly powers ultimately remain powerless. The film won 6 Oscars in 1966. Intelligent, handsome, vividly designed and beautifully acted, 'A Man for All Seasons' gets my vote as a film for all generations.

Within these pages I have made some not too kind remarks about commercial cinema. I have been critical of directors such as Spielberg and Lucas. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being simply entertained. However, there has to be more to the cinema than that. Film should also be a tool for enlightenment, education and illumination. It should touch the conscience and intelligence of the spectator. Not necessarily by being preachy but by observing life and by reflecting society. Continental cinema still achieves this to a marked extent but British and American film has lost that sensibility. This is a great shame.

The quality and success of a film should not be measured by profits alone. It is possible and, I believe, should be desirable for art and commerce to work side-by-side.What has been very damaging for the industry has been the huge pay-checks of stars.This has resulted in the investment of massive budgets attached to projects and the pressure to secure a huge financial return.The consequence of this is that smaller productions cease to exist or find it near impossible to get finance.

I am personally attracted to movies of the past because I believe that were better crafted. Also the people who made them generally didn't have one eye on the box office. They made films because they loved making them and did their utmost to create the best possible product. Directors like Lean, Wyler, Stevens, Kazan and Hitchcock defined their success by the quality their work and if financial success followed that was a bonus. They had not only self-respect but respect for their audience. They believed in the virtues of good writing, fine actors and accomplished cinematographers. Ask most people ( and I mean so-called film buffs, not just Joe Public ) and they would have a vague clue who D W Griffith and John Ford were. A sad state of affairs.

The future? Who knows! I am rather pessimistic. There is talent out there, that's for sure. So let's put craftsmanship first and profits second. I know it sounds incredibly naive but things have to change. So, here's to movies. GOOD movies.

In response to Christina F's comment on the empowerment of cheap digital film making technology and others like it.

The fact of the matter is that whilst cheap digital technology has empowered people to produce their own images and narratives to a point, they remain highly personal and undistributed and pose no threat to the film making industry proper. The idea that a new wave of democratic digital film makers is just waiting in the wings to usurp the national cinema industries is a poor assessment and one I have been listening to and reading about ever since Super 8mm made it into people's homes. You might make a film on video with your friends but that is all you will do. Access to funding and more importantly distribution and exhibition are as protected by the hegemonic mainstream as they ever were. And how will "poor" film makers compete with the behemoth PR campaigns and agencies that accompany even the most "independent" of cinema? As industrial capitalism continues to concentrate wealth and influence into an ever decreasing small number of hands those on the outside will be forever kept there.

I hope it will be fantastic. The way technology is going, many fantasy and sci fi films will hopefully have the most real quality about them yet and so the effects will be indistingushable from the real actors and such.
However I think more time should be taken over creating amazing scripts that aren't similar to many other things and plots which don't have holes.
films should be made for the enjoyment of all people who want to watch it, not something to rake in all the money as the first idea to making a film (the same applies to making sequels etc).
More time should be given to picking actors who would really do the roles justice and directors who really have vision. And adaptations from books should really stay as close to the truth from the book and try to follow all the description that authors give us.

Paul Greengrass, Christopher Nolan.

I can't wait to see what type of films that they're making in 20 years time.

I'm also looking forward to James Cameroon's next film and whether using 3D techonlogy can improve a film, your experiance watching it or whether it just turns out to distract or if it ends up being used to cover flaws in other aspects of the film.

Surely these must be in anyone's list of top movies.

can we have some todd-ao films or cinerama 3 strip like they have at the bradford film festival or a wide screen week end thank you

Film audiences today expect special effects - but remember characters and story. What would happen to a film like Harvey with todays technology - some very clever person would animate the rabbit - and the audience would lose out. Treat the audience with respect, allow them to be intelligent and use imagination and creativity.

New (digital) technology means two things. First there are better techniques for cleaning up, remastering and screening older films. Secondly - and quite specifically in this decade of DVD - that people also want to see restored and extra footage, and different cuts or editions.

It's possible that we are in a period where there is a minor boom in the consumption, rediscovery and understanding of cinema. Consequently there may well be a corresponding creative surge to follow. I hope so!

With the better technology available to so many more poor filmmakers, we will finally see a new age of different and unique films. No longer in the hands of just the rich, I think we will develop new, exciting and enriching films that touch everyone.

http://www.fest21.com/video/terry_gilliam

Great: another blog on future of cinema!
http://www.fest21.com/blog/futureofcinema
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Bruno Chatelin

What excites me about the future of Film is the history of its past. There have been so many great films and I have been privileged to see so many of them in my not inconsiderable lifespan. My recent viewing of some of the classics of the 30's, 40's and early 50's with David Lean, Powell and Pressburger, Merchant and Ivory convince me that there have always been great films and great film makers. More frecently watching the remarkable No Country for Old Men assures me that there always will be. Times may change and fashions will always be ephemeral. But creativity is eternal. As long as there are visionaries and creative geniuses, films will be made that will shock, delight, uplift and transform us to the degree that makes life an inspiration worth living.

Aside from Blade Runner (which I voted for here), this is my favourite film of all time. It's elegant, it's atmospheric, it's disturbing, it's occasionally quite funny, it's a masterpiece.

Gregory Peck spoke for many when he told an audience at his AFI Life Achievement tribute that, ".artistry is more important than making a buck..". Of course, he was so right. These days one is lucky to see ten great films a year. There is so much crap. Directors like Lean, Wyler, Stevens, Kazan, Hitchcock, Ray, Welles, Huston, Visconti, Fellini, Peckinpah, Reed and Lindsay Anderson. These were film-makers that made the cinema a great art form. It's time to be great again..PLEASE!!

Well one thing that would help place modern filmmaking properly in context, in an industry ruled by the $$....
How about a film's box office status been dictated by bums-on-seats rather than earnings?
I'm truly tired of biggest opening weekend figures when the simple increased ticket price means at this rate Police Academy 28 could end up higher up the list than Titanic!

Artistically: The story is important, but let's not forget Cinema is a visual medium. No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood are cases in point. Great plots, but it's Josh Brolin's profile on the bed waiting for Javier to stop outside his hotel room door... Daniel lit burnt orange by the glow from the burning oil... shot's that burn themselves into the retina.

INGMAR BERGMAN MOVIES

Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa 1952

The future of cinema is quite bleak. There is a distinct lack of fresh talent coming through our cinema screens. The models aren't in place to create the new Spielberg's, Scorsese's or even the Alan Smithee's of the future. Cinema has lost the balance of art to finance and it's killed the hopes of future film making.

But fortunately in true Hollywood fashion, just before all hope is lost - our hero (cinema) has one last ace up it's sleeve... digital projection / distribution.

Digital distribution and display is the only hope for emerging filmmakers. The studio model has had it's time in the spotlight, but after one too many remakes and one too many dips into unoriginality, it is time for the new model of filmmaking to take over. Express movie making.

Argue me this... who needs a studio when you can get from the avid to cinema in one easy step?

Fair enough maybe the marketing will be less generic and with less spend but i say bring back the 'trickle-effect' and 'word-of-mouth' after all it did alright for our modern auteur's and weeded out the forgettable's. The cinema will be forced into producing worthwhile product.

Te future isn't quite here yet I know but when it does, it wont take any crap of anyone.

One thing I love most about film is the constant emergence of films that prove themselves to be classics over time.
No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood are two great examples of films released in the past year or so that will be looked upon fondly for many many years.
New technologies and new ways of making and delivering film are all well and good but at the end of the day it's story and filmcraft that bring about those movies we really cherish.

Cinema is the imagination projected on a screen. It takes us to new worlds, forces us to put our emotions on the line and fills our minds with new and exciting images that in turn oils the audience's imagination. The history of cinema has so much wealth to inspire the new filmmaker, with narrative and technological feats encouraging further exploration of the medium, creating wholly original and unique ideas that will be influential themselves. It seems that cinema can't avoid exciting people - excitement being the tool that will further cinemas legacy. This ability to excite is as fresh as when the Lumiere brothers first filmed workers leaving their factory, and it will continue to do so.

Our future rests on our past. What excited me about the future of film is the dedicated recovery, preservation and research taking place now, to ensure that the film heritage is not lost to future generations. The DVD revolution is securing the library bit by bit (if you will excuse the pun) and proves there is a continuing audience.

The fact that we can submit our penni'worth on a BFI forum has to be an advance, how else will future generations know the thoughts of today's film spectator (wouldn't you just love to read a thread from, say - 1910)?

The current cinema climate is purely a money-making machine. There are so many films made with such huge budgets now that quite often the youth of today fail to have the opportunity to see some of the past greats. Having just finished school, I think its a great pity that so much emphasis is put on big explsoions and new technology. So few kids have seen the likes of The Pink Panther, The Magnificent Seven or Hitchcock's Psycho. Unless we can remember the past greats, Hollywood looses its meaning and there will be no more classics, with new releases constantly detracting from the past.

Look at Hollywood today - all flashy editing and jump cutting/special effects. Computers are great and have revolutionised filmmaking for the better but imagionation is still needed. The British can't afford the effects-laden style of America (thank goodness). Let's remember that film is a form of photography and strip things back to the simple 1960s-90s style where good camerawork, lighting and acting prevail.

Use computers to edit, but don't rely on fake effects.

Films, like fashions, go round in circles and I look forward to things going back to a more imaginitive state of mind - remember how fresh 'Shallow Grave' was in 1995 - and Boyle kept his effects to the imaginitive kind and relied on stunning locations and realistic acting. 'Sunshine' was, for me, just Boyle playing with computers.

forgotten film!!!

DEATH IN VENICE - so sensitive, so loving, so disturbing,stars Dirk Bogarde

Great to see them making a stab at comics, and classics. I'd rather see them copy good material if they can't come up with decent stories on their own. I'm tired of sex, violence and explosion filler.

Fingers tightly crossed for the prospect of a flourishing or evolving British Film Industry with much greater output. A complete ban on pointless, repulsive remakes. CGI taking a significant back seat so that talented celluloid storytelling (akin to the 70s) can dominate our screens.

One can only hope!

Quiet frankly i'm not that interested in the future of cinema (british or otherwise) given the current state of it , i mean just take a look at the list that people are voting for BLADE RUNNER was at the top when i looked a moment ago and while it ain't a bad film (pretty good in fact) it's a bit of an obvious/populist choice innit (ok i included AMELIE in my top 5 but i did TRY to include some other more obscure/older movies too in the hope that maybe we'll get the chance to see one of them on the big screen and if not that at least that maybe someone would look at the list and be intrigued by something and then go and investigate it for themselves)

When I was a teenager, my local arts cinema (basically, an unheated room) showed, cheaply, two different films a night - all sorts of stuff, Jarman, Wajda, Renoir, Paradjanov, Ozu, Ed Wood. Manchester's Cornerhouse had three screens! I could skive off school and watch afternoons of East European animation. Meanwhile, BBC2 and the new Channel 4 gave us Bergman and Fassbinder and whole afternoons of silents. I didn't have trendy parents pushing these things on me- I had a book of film stills from a second hand shop and wanted to see where they came from, and, back then, it wasn't too hard. My car mechanic, Sun-reading cousin once enthused about a film he'd just seen about casting a bell, which I realised was Tarkovsky. Where the hell is anyone going to get the chance to stumble across Tarkovsky nowadays? Ironically, Channel 4 inadvertently killed the arts cinemas, but then changed its style completely into the moronic teen-fest we have now. BBC1 and 2 don't show anything: late night slots are filled with crap American TV movies, not L'Atalante. BBC4 and Film4 play very safe and don't seem to venture more than 10 years into the past. Yes, you can get them on DVD, but only if you're an initiate, and well-off (they always seem to be at least £15). I haven't seen a new 'cinematic' British film in years: I can't think of a young British director who can think cinematically - they all seem plodding, pedestrian and dull, making filmed theatre or TV-writ-large. Other countries still produce them - the Coen Bros, Peter Jackson, Tim Burton, Guillermo Del Toro - but it seems we can't anymore, and I think the lack of 'everyday' access to great cinema is in a large part to blame.

I definitely think we're going through a new golden age of film. I love the idea that we can now visualise almost anything onscreen and it's heartening to know that many top film makers are looking to 'story' again as a key element.

If there's one thing old films show us, it's that we don't need SFX to tell a good tale. The script is king.

The only sad thing about today's market is the desire of hacks and moneymen to remake so many classic movies. Just think of all of the book adaptions and original screenplays that are possible.

Apparently James Cameron has developed new HD and 3D rotoscoping technology for his next couple of films, Avatar and Battle Angel, and it's meant to look like nothing we've ever seen before, it's meant to be the single most important step forward for the medium of cinema since sound. George Lucas has speculated that beaming films to picture houses across the country will in the long run cut massive amounts out of the cost of transporting film reels and cans etc. So if all this is happening, does that mean tickets will be cheaper, and the Brits will be able to make more films?

I just hope the act of cinemagoing does not change, like so many critics have been saying in the last few months . . . There is nothing like going and sitting in a darkened room full of strangers, and being collectively absorbed into a film, no matter if its a documentary, a comedy, an action film, a musical ~ no matter if the film's really good or really bad, for that matter. We have been doing it for over a hundred years, and we still do. So I hope it will be the same when I am an ancient old man.

The most important thing for the future of cinema is that future audiences and future critics, scholars and historians do not forget the older films.

I am 22, and I look forward to that sense of nostalgia that so many older people have for the cinema ~ that recent Double Bill article in Sight and Sound made me quite jealous that people were "there" when this or that film first came out. I want to be able to say happily when I am older, when the whole approach to film history and theory and studies has no doubt changed, and say "I was there on the first day to see Jurassic Park ~ and it changed my life!" It sounds silly now, but just wait and see people!

Story seems to be making a comeback after some plotless films over the years. The lack of story helped independent films come to the forefront but blockbusters like Dark Knight now show that good story telling is coming back to the mainstream.

(actual name of fishing series I mentioned that no one will buy is "catching the impossible", from same makers as "A Passion for Angling")

The technology for watching them is likely to improve by huge proportions (and hopefully get a hell of alot cheaper)........ the only problem is hoping the industry doesn't do a trend I've started noticing over the years, where it seems the better the technology to entertain gets, the more downhill the new content to watch on it gets.

e.g. Back when people still had Black & White televisions and colour ones were coming in + only had the old grainy analogue signal there were great shows like Monty Python, Dad's Army, Steptoe & Son, Fawlty Towers, Some mothers do 'ave 'em, Whatever happened to the likely lads, Porridge + many others.
Now when more & more people are getting fancy High-Definition enabled LCD or Plasma TV, hooked up to a top-notch Digital Signal to pick up the content all that seems available are pathetic reality shows like BIG BROTHER, etc... with the only exception of something actually good being TOP GEAR (and there would also be "Casting at the Sun", a fishing series made by the same team as "A Passion for Angling", except none of the main channels seem to want to buy).

Also in the future of film, another concern is whether the industry is going to keep up with distribution technologies and not get so paranoid over Pirating like they & the music industry are beginning to these days that people will eventually need a degree in rocket science in order to figure out how to work the gadgets needed to play them on.... already some devices can be like trying to bash your head against a brick wall trying to persuade them to work the way they're mean't to.

On the plus side, hopefully.... like with the Sony PSP & the iPOD gadgets it will easier to watch them wherever you want, not worry about them degrading after you've purchased them (as happened to a few movies on video I bought in the days before I had a functioning DVD player) or jamming inside the machine + it'll be alot cheaper to build up a collection of old favourites to watch whenever you want (an increasing necessity these days, the way Television is going).

I believe cinema will be used as the chemicals of science and the words of philosophy. When society is finished with the deliverence of story and novelty the visuals and power will be used as experiments of abstracts.

Trust in this. We will no longer be making feature length films but putting together shots like chemical compounds while society braves on. It will bring us closer to enlightenment.

I'll meet you guys and girls there.

The advances in the quality of digitalisation and availability of bandwidth, with the consequential drop in production and distribution costs, added to the constant appearance of new platforms, means that one cannot predict the future of cinema, which is a wonderful thing.

It should however be safe enough to predict that these improvements should eventually make non-blockbuster material easier to market without necessarily confining it to home viewing, as markets fragment (though we seem to be still rather a long way away at present). As has been mentioned in other comments, the experience of being part of an audience seems to be growing stronger again.

Also, advances in restoration techniques (combined with reduction in costs) should mean more films could be saved, although of course we may still lose several as it is often a race against time. Care will also need to be taken to avoid crossing the line between enhancement and "improvement", but this is surely an insignificant risk when compared to the potential gains. It opens all sorts of tough questions, not least whether everything is worth preserving - we have reached eternity, in a sense: nothing need be lost anymore - but the simple fact that tough questions will need to be asked is more than enough sign that the future looks as exciting as one could hope it to be.

While there's little doubt that as technology like Image Metrics' continues to evolve new groundbreaking techniques to story-telling, production and audience involvement will arise. However, I do not believe that this will change the ENTIRE industry, merely allow us to do more.

I can only hope for more film releases per year at a quality they have been for the past 50-30 years. More to see, newer faces on and off the screen, new stories that challenge even the ideologies we've yet to carry.

XD

I can just imagine the convergence between the cinema quality-sound-attention to detail, and the Wii technology and similar. It gives me hope for the future where I don't feel the same way about television somehow.