To say that due to digital technology, motion pictures are poised to make their greatest technological leap since the introduction of sound is both true and obvious. The creation of computer generated imagery, digital enhancement of picture elements, morphs, warps, and the rest, has moved from a trickle a decade ago to a vast torrent of imagery today. Terminator 2, Willow, Forrest Gump, Jurrasic Park, Apollo 13, and a thousand other films have made it obvious that digital imagery is here to stay.

However the significance of digital tools goes far beyond merely creating cool morphs. They will have an even greater impact on film structure, aesthetics, and meaning. The accomplishments of today are just the beginning. For it is equally true, and less obvious, that due to digital technology, motion pictures are poised to make their greatest aesthetic and structural leap since D.W. Griffith invented modern film narrative structure with the creation parallel editing. A new film form is being born and Digital Cinema is it's name.



Digital Cinema will not be everyday filmmaking by other means. New technology creates new contexts. In the first stages of technology implementation, the focus is on doing what we already do, but doing it faster, cheaper, or better somehow. In subsequent implementation stages the focus shifts to doing new things, things that have never been done before. In time new technology changes not only what we do, but why we do it. If this was true for banks and ATMs or transportation and cars, it will surely be true of film. Film is poised on the brink of change so vast as to make the introduction of color or cinemascope seem as trivial as smell-o-vision.

Just over the horizon and closing fast are motion paintings, cubist cinema, virtual actors, virtual sets, new transitions, image overlay, and new structures. The emergence of new images will make for new meaning.

The comming of Digital Cinema will affect independents, artists, and grassroots filmmakers as much, if not more so, than the Hollywood film machine. The new digital tools create new methods and contexts for work. Newtek's Video Toaster coupled with the Amiga computer single handedly, in less than a decade, created a new class of filmmakers, the desktop video independents. This is just the beginning.

Examining that change.... tracking its dynamics.... investigating its workings.... and uncovering its significance is what you will find on the Digital Cinema Today page of Tech Head Stories. Through interview, review, and reports from the field Tech Head will bring you the story of Digital Cinema Today.