Movie 666

Hollywood has embraced digital technology and the signs of the “new cinema” are everywhere — from special effects in theatrical films to streaming trailers on the web. Much more is promised: soon all movies will be shot on digital video and theaters will swap film projectors for digital ones. Film itself will vanish for all but specialized uses or be treated as a special effect in its own right, accessible in postproduction to editors via pull down menu.

Because of its omnipresence and inertia, Hollywood has already defined much of what many consider “digital cinema” to be and supposed to be. However, just as Hollywood filmic practice represents but one vision among many, there are alternatives to Hollywood in the new digital cinema. One of these is web cinema.

HOLLYWOOD HOLDOUTS

The technology to produce web cinema has been around for several years, but its potential has yet to be fully explored by digital artists and aspiring desktop moviemakers. With the proliferation of consumer-targeted, inexpensive, video-ready computers, any delay in the spread of web cinema has less to do with available technology than artistic inhibitions about creating in this new medium.

Even now, many so-called “digital” moviemakers are afraid to move beyond the traditional practices of Hollywood film. Even existing Hollywood professionals mainly use computers as a stepping stone to a final, finished film. Computers are used to produce special effects that are later transferred to film or digital editing decks to produce a decision list that is eventually used to cut film negative. Film is still the ultimate goal in the cinematic process. The final, consumate act in this regard is taking a digital movie and “bumping it up” to film for distributive or aesthetic reasons.

As far as the web is concerned, Hollywood moviemakers promote films on the web and in some cases, use the web as a secondary, lesser means of distributing film clips or entire, shorter works. But the web is a powerful medium in its o���wn right. Distribution is affordable, access widely available, and its aesthetics still young and largely undefined.

THE CINEMA OF UNDERPRODUCTION

Web cinema is not Hollywood cinema. On the web, Hollywood standards of “quality” must often be sacrificed for demands of file size and efficiency. Web movies take on reduced visual dimensions and employ a limited amount of colors. Mechanically placed “key frames” cause stunted movement and degradation and artifacts appear. Many Hollywood staples — fades, dissolves, rapid movement, standard running time — are no longer feasible or practical in the new medium. Perhaps the most significant difference is the viewing of the movie itself — web cinema is seen on a computer monitor versus the movie screen of the darkened theater.

To some extent, these technological considerations are the flip side of the web’s distributive potential. On the other hand, these are drawbacks only from a Hollywood perspective that prefers large screen dimensions, heavyweight sound, dreamlike dissolves, and climate controlled space. To a new generation of moviemakers, the web not only offers the opportunity to break from the overproduced, decadent grasp of the Hollywood style, but mandates an aesthetic of simplicity, non-escape, renewed abstraction, collage, visual disintegration, and interactivity.

A RIFT OF POSSIBILITY: WEB CINEMA

Web cinema is particularly inviting to moviemakers who seek new means of communication free from the glossy constraints of mainstream cinema. Moviemakers are similarly free of the ossified complexity of the traditional distribution marketplace and might even go so far as to construct the actual “theater” themselves through graphics and code in the form of a web page.

Web cinema opens the doors to new structures, genres, and running time. By necessity, most web works must be kept to shorter running time, opening up a new world of three-minute epics or disposing of narrative altogether. Likewise, in a medium that somewhat hesitantly supports movement, static images take on a new significance, as does text, jump cuts, limited color palettes, and alternative aspect ratios. Fades and dissolves from the old medium are bulky, glossy, and therefore impractical for the web. Abstraction is once again invigorated, as are techniques of collage and parody which utilize the web itself as a virtual library of clips and images to be appropriated and utilized by the digital artist.

But perhaps the greatest inroads lie ahead in the arena of interactivity. Few digital artists have yet to tap into the clickability of web movies (Quicktime — arguably the standard format for web movie files — supports clickable regions within movies that can be used to control the playback of the movie or link one movie to another). The fusion of movie and interactivity has failed in the analog theater, but succeeded in the CD-ROM-enabled gaming arena. Its future on the web is yet to be decided.

What is of key importance at this point is that creators recognize the potential of the web cinema medium and utilize and colonize it early. Rifts in hegemony sometimes appear — the web does not yet belong to Hollywood, its file size too large and cumbersome for the sleek new medium. The web is now open to digital pioneers, thinking outside the bounds of corporate cinema.

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