In Brief: De-Mystification of the Modes of Cinematic Production

The means of media production filter quickly to consumers: print, music, and recently, video. We've had affordable video cameras for decades—already grainy home movies from the sixties have a nostalgic air, and we all remember the rise and fall of mini-DVDs. But what happens when the consumer-level camera starts to rival those used for low- to medium- budget movies and television? The aesthetic watermark of the homemade begins to evaporate, and anyone with an interest in filmmaking can produce a movie that looks "professional." Editing software gets shipped with consumer computers, and the whole process is brought home and made accessible. For less than the cost of a new car, anyone can purchase studio-grade cameras and professional software. All you have to do is figure out how to use it, and as the technological vernacular filters through the populus, even this last step gets easier and easier.

Clearly the home movies and self-produced documentaries stay solidly confined to YouTube, at least for now. But what's interesting is the effect on the way we see major release films: If I can produce a formulaic romantic comedy at home, for what do I turn to Hollywood? The magic of cinema is intertwined with the mystery of how the film is made, of what it is, of what the filmmaker can do with a given set of tools. We want special effects, complicated tricks of the camera that almost mirror real life and yet do not, a sense of escape into a world that must be at least somewhat fictional. And when it comes to science fiction or fantasty films, we demand a long and dramatic flight away from the familiar. When the limits of cinematography inconveniently make themselves known, most moviegoers will feel somehow failed or betrayed by a director who couldn't quite pull off the illusion.

I've been thinking a lot about the overwhelming success of The Dark Knight, and how every New Yorker seems to have seen this movie in the space of three days. Here is a movie that probably maintains all its illusions, and reminds us of the immortalizing power of cinema: Heath Ledger is dead, and here is our last chance to see him in action. For the would-be filmmaker with a few thousand dollars worth of equipment, The Dark Knight is one summer blockbuster he couldn't have made himself. So the fabled magic of cinema holds up, and maybe it always will concerning dead actors on display, but it can't hold up in every case. We look at such a movie and know we couldn't pull off the CGI at home, couldn't hire stuntmen to jump from buildings. But it wasn't long ago that high-quality, high-density video production was out of reach, so we can guess that animation capabilities will someday be in our hands as well.

When you hand everyone a camera, when you show them how easy it is to produce something that "looks like it could be on television," how long before they stop being impressed with what is on television?