Argument-Technology in entertainment. Who needs it? REPOST

TECHNOLOGY? WHO NEEDS IT?

Remember when?

Growing up watching films from the 60’s and70’s as a kid I remember first seeing such blockbusters as Jaws and Star Wars and like a million other kids of the era I was awestruck. I stayed up late and watched UHF transmissions of the now well known Toho films, watching with eyed enthusiasm as Godzilla, the brown and green Garguantuas, Rodan, Mothra and their kin stomped the hell out of Osaka and Tokyo (or their miniature equivalent) and an army of H/O scale tanks.

Realism wasn’t necessary to draw you into the fantasy back then. All you needed was an open mind and an interesting premise. At that time, computers and digital high tech solutions weren’t available as a tool for filmmakers. Spielberg and Lucas first started making names for themselves in the early 70’s but the success of their work became the harbinger of the technology, which has raised the stakes with every passing year.

Ray Harryhausen created most of his amazing illusions single handedly with a rear projector screen, footage of the day’s dailies and one or two of his stop motions models. Harryhausen’s films were created at a time when fantasy wasn’t really the king of the roost. Science fiction and fantasy were considered aberrations and B-movie drivel by critics and audiences alike up until the mid 70’s. Occasionally a big studio production would emerge that would receive positive notice from the America’s top critic’s. George Pal’s War of The Worlds and Forbidden Planet were just two examples of 1950’s A list fantasy from an era when such things were often laughed at and ignored. Technology changed all that. Now the top grossing films of all times are primarily in the fantasy or science fiction realm. The film going experience is now considered akin to an amusement park ride than theatre.

The pre-digital age films had a charm to them. These films had a handmade kind of feel to them in which the effects and matte paintings had a wonderful aesthetic quality to them. You can’t really describe to someone born pre 1980’s. I think it’s easy to look back at some of these older films and laugh at their crudeness, their naïve breeziness. But when you consider the budget and technology limitations of the pre-digital age, you begin to appreciate the art and creativity behind them. Back then artists were really artists. They thought of their work as art in a museum that was moving at 24 frames per second.

In the pre-digital era, so many of these illusions required the skills of engineers, photographers and even scientists to bring them to life. Off the shelf solutions that are common in the digital age didn’t exist. Problem solving was always a competent of the methodology in this time. Problem solving still exists but it seems more about software solutions than artistic ones.

When you watch David Naughton transform himself into the devil dog from hell in John Landis’ 1981 cult classic American Werewolf in London, you feel every bone-crunching bit of his metamorphosis. Rick Baker and his crew were unable to show the wolf creature full frame as a quadruped due to restrictions of the technology at the time so the director showed the creature running from the head to mid section only. The effects team used a “wheel barrel” set up to move the actor in the suit so he appeared to move as a four-legged creature. Using clever editing and quick cutting solved the issue. Problem solving was a director’s prerogative. It kept them on their toes. Now it seems like digital tools have made filmmakers lazy.

Sometimes the most effective effects are always the ones that you never see. When Spielberg had difficulty with the mechanical shark built by Robert Mattey for Jaws, he decided to shoot around it until he began editing together with Verna Fields. He discovered that not showing the shark in the first hour of the film was far more effective and suspenseful. The now opening of the film is a classic example of letting the viewer fill in the blanks for maximum effect.

Digital effects have opened the door wide open for filmmakers and producers to create anything they can image. That can be a good thing and a bad thing depending on your point of view. From a strictly economic perspective, digital tools can save time and money, create imagery that can be changed with relative ease and summon armies of digital actors to fill in crowds without having to pay for overtime.  However, digital effects can often look mechanical and soulless. Directors can often over do effects sequences, making them extremely overlong and redundant simply to show off the technology. Either way, the sheen comes off fairly quickly.

Illusions are no longer eye openers because they have become commonplace and audiences are becoming more tech savy. They don’t make your jaw drop open like I remember so vividly when I first viewed the “Stargate” sequence in  2001: a space odyssey at the Cinerama dome in Hollywood.  I recall seeing Terminator 2 in a movie theatre in Boston. In the scene when Arnold’s robotic protector blasts huge holes in the liquid metal T-1000. During the quick shot, the camera showed the holes liquefying and sealing up. I recall a loud gasp from the woman sitting behind me. That was a sounding horn of the new age. Digital was here to stay. Since then we have had dinosaurs, dragons, trolls, great apes, goblins and every manner of magical creature that would never been possible before the implementation of computers. But has all this technology made filmmakers lazy? Is the fact that they can now show you what they couldnt 30 years ago a good thing? Would Jaws have been better if the shark didn't break down during shooting and replaced with a CG shark? Ask Yourself..

But since the dawn of the digital age, nothing has made me gasped in awe like when I first saw the fighting skeleton army of Jason and Argonauts, or the universe opening up in a barrage of mystical colors in 2001: a space odyssey, or the monster from the ID breaking through the invisible force field in Forbidden Planet, or the alien war ships destroying Los Angeles in War of the Worlds. This was my eye candy. These are the images that will stay with me forever. I can’t really remember much of what I saw last week at the theatre.