Does the digital revolution mean the death of film?

Side by Side: The Science, Art and Impact of Digital Cinema

A Documentary

Every movement in every artform across the ages is inevitably accompanied by resistance to change, tentative excitement about innovation and progress, and a wistful gaze through rose-tinted glasses at the past. Our cinematic versions of these glasses are very fetching 3D ones, which perhaps perform the dual function of making us nostalgic for a simpler, more innocent age of cinema and enlightening us to the potential of the digital revolution.

Side by Side is an intelligent documentary looking at how the landscape of filmmaking is being transformed by such proliferation of digital technology. It ranges from the specific scientific developments involved in capturing moving pictures to the age-old philosophical question of whether our rapidly changing world should welcome technological developments or remain wary of the razzle dazzle of modern pretenders.

Although not a flawless documentary, it’s worth watching just to be enlightened about the myriad techniques available to filmmakers in the digital age. But it really shines as a platform for the debate between those who champion new methods and those who believe that traditional photochemical techniques will always have more artistic integrity. Director Chris Kenneally and producer Keanu Reeves have consulted a wide variety of directors, cinematographers, colourists, actors and industry experts to tease out the nuances of these two sides. The result leaves you with a sense that digital has opened up brave new worlds but that the teachings of the old film masters and the unique effects of celluloid must not be abandoned.

Much of what the documentary records is fairly obvious: art is led by technology and vice versa, the marriage of technology and art can help to ‘outpace the audience’s imagination’. And frustratingly it doesn’t always tell you immediately who the talking heads are. But the expertise of those heads, from staunch digital advocates George Lucas and James Cameron to the more equivocal Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese, gives both an interesting overview and quirky little insights into the history and current practice of Hollywood fimmaking. The extent to which digital is democratising the industry, and conversely is jeopardising its more traditional counterpart, is still very much unresolved.

So if, as cinematographer Michael Chapman avows, ‘cinema was the church of the 20^th century’, where does that leave us now? We may have our 3D glasses on but are we seeing, experiencing and creating more through them? Or will we end up with the inevitable headache from watching a film in more dimensions than it should aspire to achieve, or from whizzing our eyes about at 48 frames per second, or from seeing colours so searingly clear that we crave the distinctive grainy aesthetic of celluloid? It seems somewhere between the two. And I think if you watch Avatar or Sin City, you can't deny the exhilarating possibilities that digital affords. But it is clear from the way that these eminent filmmakers talk about celluloid that there is a unique magic to film and a visceral engagement with it that cannot, and should not, be lost in the furore. But do watch Side by Side, and make up your own mind.

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See a trailer for Side by Side here