Cinema of 21st Century DIGITAL MOVIES
By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter
The term ``digital film'' is an oxymoron, for digital cinematography is a process of filmmaking that ironically does not involve film (celluloid). Instead, it captures motion pictures as digital images and uses digital representation of the brightness and color of each pixel of an image. The digital film revolution is said to have started from the bottom up, first thriving among independent filmmakers.
But recently, mainstream Hollywood movies are venturing into the field, beginning with ``Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones'' (2002) and most recently ``Speed Racer'' (2008). For a better grasp of digital films and their effect upon the film industry, The Korea Times sat down with Chung Sung-ill, 48, one of South Korea's foremost film critics and co-director of Cinema Digital Seoul Film Festival, the nation's first digital film festival.
``Digital films are all about demolishing barriers that analogue films create between filmmakers and the audience ― rendering a powerful technology applicable for daily life and personal use,'' said Chung.
``Everyone in Korea is a digital filmmaker,'' he said of the countless people who record video clips with their cellular phones, digital cameras and camcorders.
Another change brought about by this technology can be seen through Abbas Kiarostami's ``Ten.'' ``I was lucky enough to see the groundbreaking moment at the 2002 Cannes Festival,'' he said. The ``revolutionary'' moment came with the opening credits, even before the story had begun. The director not only produced and directed the film, but was also in charge of cinematography, editing and recording. ``It was a one-man-band movie,'' he said.
Another example is Wang Bing's ``Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks'' series. The Chinese director filmed the ``one-man-band movie'' alone over three and a half years.
Chung explained that digital film doesn't change the nature of cinema itself. Rather it just creates a new means of achieving different artistic purposes. ``It's like when painters were no longer limited and were able to take their canvas wherever they wanted to paint. The canvas gave birth to baroque, Impressionism art works and so on,'' he said.
Watching the Process of Filmmaking
Like Wang, Jia Zhang-ke also utilized the advantages of digital technology to achieve artistic purposes in ``Still Life.'' For instance, in order to film a scene depicting a character's ennui, he had the camera running for four hours and 50 minutes. After about four hours, the actor truly became bored and turned on a fan. The director thus had his 30 seconds and discarded the rest of the four hours and 49 minutes. This would be impossible with analogue, said Chung.
``This reminds me of what film theorist Andre Bazin said, that movies are ultimately documentaries. He did not believe in good acting,'' said the film critic. With a digital camera enabling him to record hours of footage, he has achieved a sort of revolutionary filmmaking process, where actors are in fact not acting. Chung himself firmly believes that ``movies are about watching the process.''
What digital films enable are thus the prolongation of time, capturing the truly mundane and an extension of the human experience.
Digital film technology creates a bipolar effect, explained Chung. Big Hollywood studios are able to make large budget, computer graphics-ridden movies like ``Star Wars: Episode 1'' and ``Speed Racer.'' But at the other end of the spectrum, digital films allow ``one-man-band shows,'' where independent filmmakers can create their own work without worrying about expensive lab work.
In all, this feeds into a global phenomenon where filmmaking isn't limited to diehard cinephiles. ``Peter Jackson (`The Lord of the Rings' franchise) was a white-collar worker who made movies on weekends. Now, painters, theater directors, students and so on have ventured into filmmaking,'' he said.
Esteemed filmmaker David Lynch made his first digital movie ``Inland Empire,'' which opened Cinema Digital Seoul last year, with a PD150 _ ``practically every newlywed couple in Korea owns this camcorder'' said Chung. The 63-year-old is a veteran of the celluloid/analogue age. But after ``Inland Empire,'' he swears by digital technology, said Chung.
``All I want to inspire in the audience is the thought that they, too, can make films,'' said Chung about Cinema Digital Seoul, which will open Aug. 20. The festival captures this sentiment in every aspect of its program. For example, a mystery guest who's never worked with digital film will be making the festival's signature trailer. This was also done last year and serves to show that anyone can make a digital movie.
``It's not about all movies becoming digital. It's about the coexistence of the two media, analogue and digital. It's about understanding the aesthetic differences that each medium allows and taking advantage of it,'' he said,.
Korean Cinema Still in 20th Century
In 2006, South Korea's feted director Park Chan-wook (``Old Boy,'' 2002) made ``I'm a Cyborg but That's OK'' starring pop star Rain. It was the country's first digital movie shot with a Thomson Viper, a three-sensor camera that can capture 1920 x 1080 pixel images. It is one of the few movies, along with David Fincher's ``Zodiac'', to have done so.
However, Park has returned to analogue for his upcoming piece ``Bat.'' Hong Sang-soo, another iconic director, openly said the only reason he chose to digitally film ``Night and Day'' (2008 Berlin International Film Festival) was financial.
``There seems to be a pervasive fear about new technology. And even those who do venture off in the digital world do it for technical reasons rather than aesthetic ones. The Korean film industry still remains in the 20th century,'' said Chung.
