Think About the Future

I'm surprised to find myself actually pleased that television is making such a sudden strong showing in the posts and comments of The Conversation. Weirdly, it's somewhat related to what I was about to get around to saying about the state of cinephilia, so let me back up and start there.

In short, and to state the obvious: DVD. A few weeks ago, Dave Kehr proclaimed in the New York Times that 2004 was the year the DVD "came of age," and relative to previous years, he may be right, but it does seem that many of us felt the little silver discs have made decisive breakthroughs and larger claims on our collective cultural experience each and every year for the past, oh, four or five at least. "Has there been a single technological advance - even the advent of sound - has changed movies as quickly and thoroughly as the DVD has?" asked Elvis Mitchell in those same pages way back in 2003. "Sound changed the scope of movies, but it didn't really change the way they were made, the way they were marketed or the way they were watched. The DVD is changing all those things."

And at a rapid, ongoing pace. As for how movies are made, think of just one easy example, the luxury Peter Jackson was able to take in going ahead and filming the demise of Saruman before he'd decided whether or not it'd be included in the theatrical version of The Return of the King. Which leads to how they're marketed: it's practically conventional wisdom now that, very broadly speaking, a theatrical release primarily serves as a promotional campaign for the DVD. But it's how movies are watched that's the most vital part of this overall equation. Mitchell wasn't alone in pointing out that the better DVDs are each like correspondence courses in a grand, freewheeling film school into which millions have enrolled - enthusiastically, too, sopping up lessons in film history, craft and, in some cases, maybe even a dash of theory.

Which, in turn, leads us to the delightfully irrational component in all this. You can't take those first steps and wade into the murky pool of cinephilia without access to movies. And yet the DVD isn't, of course, the first format to provide it; there've always been libraries, VHS had been around for a couple of decades, and eventually, there was Facets and so on. But just as, around five years ago, there was something about Napster that rekindled a love of music that had been long lost for so many, there's something about the DVD that's done the same thing for movies. You could probably break it down and quantify it, but ultimately, DVDs are simply, irrationally, cool.

And we watch them on our TVs. Now, then. I really don't want to talk shop too much here, but one of GreenCine's managing directors and our content acquisitions fellow have just returned to the main office in San Francisco from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas all abuzz about the ever wider, ever more fluid hook-up between the PC and the TV. Yes, this is something geeks and futurists have been chatting up for literally decades, but now concrete steps are being taken in that direction. With that in mind, consider what the Web did to the CD-ROM. Hell, the plain ol' music CD has had a far sturdier life span, but look at what the iPod and iTunes are doing to it now. In whatever form(s) it takes, video-on-demand, or whatever else it is that we end up calling it, is on the verge of doing the same thing to the DVD. Of course, none of us have any idea of when that might happen - three years at the very least, presumably, maybe as many as 13? - but recently in Slate, Paul Boutin even went as far as to suggest that the vicious (and expensive) battle over the next generation of the DVD (i.e., Blu-ray vs HD-DVD) may turn out to be completely irrelevant.

To steer this back to relevance, though, there are signs all over the place that the line between shooting a "film" and shooting a "TV show" is getting fuzzier by the hour. Let me just spill a bowl of random thoughts:

• Britopia brings up Deadwood, "the best film I saw last year"; just as notably, I think, is that it hopefully signals the welcome return of Walter Hill as a director. In the same vein, a few months ago, Joy Press had a piece in the Voice about the impressive number of idiosyncratic directors whose only hope at the moment is cable TV.

• In this, the year of the doc, how many of them were actually little more than glorified and extended segments of 60 Minutes or Frontline? Not that there's anything wrong with that; one of Michael Moore's accomplishments has certainly been to prove that a doc can be worthy of event status.

• Digital video is progressing by leaps and bounds, and its possibilities are being explored by talents as vastly varied as Jonathan Caouette and Michael Mann.

• The home viewing experience progresses as well, already beating that to be had in a typical suburban cineplex. The ways the demands of TV used to hamper filmmaking (e.g., producers requiring directors to simplify compositions, make greater use of close-ups, etc., so they could sell movies to broadcasters) are diminishing rapidly.

Now, none of this suggests a complete merger or, if you like, unfriendly takeover. But these bits of evidence of an overall evolution, combined with the eventual rise of video-on-demand, suggest a possible cinematic equivalent of the much ballyhooed and pined for "celestial jukebox" in the relatively near future. In the most utopian terms, imagine being able to call up on your widescreen home display a digitally remastered version of just about any film you can think of, and then, after watching it, with or without subtitles and so on, selecting this or that associated doc or commentary or checking to see what this or that scholar or even "snake-hipped wordslinger" has had to say about it - and then perhaps leave a comment of your own. Imagine how much Criterion could save on packaging and manufacturing, that is, how much it could invest in salvaging our cinematic heritage instead.

In part, and I guess not so briefly as I'd planned (I haven't even touched on what digital projection, via satellite or wires, might do for local festivals, because I'm sure we'll never want to let go of the communal experience of watching movies together), these are some of the reasons I'm an upbeat cinephile.

Comments

[Luke]

Sound didn't change the way movies were made? Has Elvis Mitchell ever watched a silent from 1929 and then a sound film from the same year? I think it's quite obvious they were made quite differently. The silent film could go anywhere, see anything, frame a face or a city. The sound film always framed a small stage of a few people gathered around a flower pot that hid the microphone. It took nearly a decade for movies to recover from the way sound changed how they had to be made.

[dave]

The problem, however, with VOD is that you have to pay each time you want to watch a movie. I would much rather own my own copy of the latest Criterion disc than have to pay once to watch it, once to listen to the commentary, once to watch the trailers, etc. I think the movie from theater to TV, impossible to fight as it is, is profoundly negative. The differences between are not just one of screen-size, but are fundamentally opposing. The bottom line is that the theater traps you into a space that basically forces your attention - the only real escape is sleep or an obnoxious exit. Watching a movie on TV allows for the bathroom, checking email, pausing to talk on the phone, do the cross-word puzzle, etc. These differences in presentation affect the way we watch, which is why TV has always lacked the visual charisma and subtlety.

I do agree that DVD is, straight up, awesome, and it has been impressing me more and more, but transition to predominantly VOD market is awful the "art," if you will, making everything just television.

Its like GOOGLE putting libraries into its search engine. Are we going to loose the hard copies?

[lizpenn]

i was just rushing here to say this, but luke beat me to it: the advent of sound didn't change the way films were _made_? what is elvis mitchell smoking?? many have argued, eloquently, that the changes wrought by sound cut off a whole possibility, a direction in which cinema could have gone and didn't -- as godard wrote, sound and image were like two people who meet up along a road and are never able to part again.

i can't imagine that DVDs would completely supplant the tradition of seeing films in theaters -- video didn't, and i'd argue that the change from no home method of seeing movies at all to video, was more radical than the shift from VHS to DVD. just as paper books are not going anywhere, anytime soon -- they're just too good a technology, and provide all kinds of things electronic versions can't, like portability, cheapness, independence from other media (if the lights go out, you can read a book by candlelight.) in the same way, people don't want to lose the experience of going to the movies: on dates, in groups, to get out of the house, to forget about the world.

[David Hudson]

Luke and Dana, all in all, I think Elvis Mitchell did overstate his case in order to make a point. Or to put it less politely, yes, he was wrong about the impact of sound. But he went too far out on a limb because it just looked so damned dramatic out there, and that was the gist he was trying to get across - the DVD is big, big, BIG!

Also, Dana, I agree, people are always going to want out together to the movies. But how many? And how often? Your book example applies somewhat, but I think the old photography/painting horse could be reasonably beat one more time in this case. Yes, people still want to go out and look at paintings. But how many? And how often? The fact of the matter is, ticket sales continue to decline while DVD sales continue booming.

To carry on playing devil's advocate, Dave, I would guess that there are as many different home viewing experiences as there are homes. Not everyone is that inattentive to a film they want to see enough to fork over 10 or 20 bucks for in the first place; and need it be said that not every movie-going experience in an actual theater is pleasant? There've been times when I wish I were watching a film at home because it'd be a lot easier to concentrate on it there than in a room with bad air, munchers and chatterers.

As for paying each and every time you watch something, this was of course the model several online music companies floated and consumers shot right back down again. They've embrace the iTunes model because they pay for a song once and it's theirs. The studios seem determined to ignore each and every lesson the music industry learned the hard (and expensive) way, but eventually, they're going to figure out that we all want exactly what you want.

[Matt]

One thing's for sure, however, and that's that DVDs have changed the way we watch movies -- the way the vast majority of people watch movies, I mean -- and the way people think of movies.

The DVD is transforming our expectations of a movie -- screen size, random access capabilities, powerplays between film and viewer. As TVs get bigger and better, people become more willing to subject themselves to the home video experience; I remember how, the second time I saw Mulholland Dr., it was on a huge, crystal clear television set, and it was just like being at the movies -- almost exactly. So, our expectations in regards to the screen are changing.

The other two points play into one another. Yes, the VHS always offered fast forward, rewind and pause capabilities, but DVD offers chapter marks and bookmarks -- random access capabilities, which one can use, if so inclined, to re-edit the film in the viewing of it. Now, I don't know anyone who's actually done that, of course, but even so. Realistically, that's just a few steps up from pausing a DVD to get a drink or rewinding slightly to re-watch a scene. Bookmarks allow people to watch regular, feature length movies over the course of a couple of days if the want to. They choose how they watch them film, in other words -- the film itself doesn't dictate to them.

Earlier last year, one of the film bloggers -- I think it was one of the Conversationalists actually -- was writing about why they don't like the idea of owning DVDs: they like the idea of the movie having power over them, not vice-versa. I just wonder if, with the advent of the DVD, our expectations for cinema are slightly shifting -- from a passive, masochistic position to a more aggressive and sadistic one.

[Wiley Wiggins]

All I know is that a movie can seduce me in a theater much more readily than on DVD. I need the theater experience to fully appreciate a film.

[Luke]

I can't tell you how pleased I am to see this 'Slate Movie Club clone' with comments enabled, and even that the original posters are watching the comments and responding to them!

BTW, David, GreenCine is the BEST film 'link-blog' out there. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Now, can you convince GreenCine to open a distribution center in Minneapolis? :-) I've been begging Netflix to grab a copy of Sunrise (1927) for ages, but they're too stubborn!

Re: DVD. Because my tastes are so self-righteously opposed to what appears to be mainstream taste (okay, Anchorman made me laugh), I don't care much for watching most films in the theater because my reaction differs so greatly from everyone else in the theater. Also, the dust, scratches, and jerky reel-changes can't compare to the experience of a crystal clear DVD playing on a nice, big TV. And, I can pause ROTK on DVD to take a piss and grab some popcorn, but in the theater that means missing the Mt. Doom sequence or wetting my pants (okay, like Mr. Mitchell, this is an exaggeration to make a point).

I know others have different preferences, but if the DVD was released the same day theaters started showing a film, I might never go to the theater again (as it is, I still only go a few times a year). Besides, it's cheaper to buy a DVD at WalMart than to see it once, in a crowded, messy theater, anyway.

[Matt]

re: Luke's comments on DVD -- you see what I mean? DVDs are actively transforming the audience itself.

"Anchorman made me laugh."

Nothing to be ashamed of there, Luke.

[Luke]

Matt:

No, I'm not the least ashamed that Anchorman made me laugh. Indeed, that was my attempt to appear less chronically contrarian with mainstream tastes.

I agree with Mitchell (and you, Matt) that DVDs are changing the audience of film. Netflix + clones, via the easily-shippable DVD format, are also changing the audience. My only issue with Mitchell was his poke at the insignificance of sound.

P.S. The seemingly Invincible Blight of pan-and-scan must be defeated! (If only so I can safely borrow my friend's DVDs instead of renting everything)

[Aaron]

I think that eventually when we reach a state of true VOD, where a vast library of films is available as opposed to simply 20-30 at a time, what you'll see is something akin to a subscription-based service. In fact, not too long ago I remember reading a rumor of Netflix and TiVo trying to formulate some deal that would allow TiVo subscribers (for an additional fee) to access some segment of the Netflix inventory through their TiVos rather than waiting for the DVD to come by mail.

Mini versions of this already exist via digital cable (and it's the one major advantage digital cable has over satellite systems that can't offer VOD). All the major premium channels have "On-Demand" options now where you do not pay-per-view. Rather, here in New York, if you have Time Warner cable and you subscribe to HBO, you also get HBO On Demand for free. If you don't subscribe, you can get it for a monthly fee. Same with Showtime On Demand. Those channels offer a selection of movies, series and specials that air on the channels, but you can access them whenever you like.

In fact, this month, Time Warner added a bunch of other On Demand channels for free, including ones for Comedy Central, BBC America and A&E. (Sadly, no The Office on BBCA right now. But I wouldn't be surprised if within 10 years, you see various On Demand channels organized by genre or decade or something, each with hundreds of selections, and all accessible by subscription rather than pay-per-view. I don't think that will necessarily be the death of DVD, but it will compete more directly.

[dave]

Reel changes, dust, and scratches adds to the experience (although a hideous audience is just that - hideous). I know that I'm watching film passed through a projecter, the fundamental idea of which makes the movie resonate (even junk, believe it or not), which is why I find myself seeing a lot of trash (i.e. Stepford Wives remake). The two are just... different. Even the brain processes the two differently. If someone offered to show me a perfect DVD of a film vs a pretty good print, I would take the print over the DVD any day.

[David Hudson]

Thanks for the kind words, Luke.

By the way, the cover story of the Guardian's Friday Review today is all about what we've been talking about in this particular thread. Tim de Lisle's numbers are fairly UK-centric but his overall points seem to be practically universal.

[Luke]

Ah, how convenient! Thanks - for the... [counts]... 494th time - for the link!