you have got to see this !!!!!

[Ram Shani]

http://www.scorsesefilmfreixenet.com/video_eng.htm

 

 

great great stuff!!!!!!!!!!!

[Alex Lindblom]

Bloody Brilliant.

[Saul Rodgar]

If Hitchcock were alive today, would he be using chroma key backgrounds and/or CGI as proposed by Scorsese on this short? Probably so, since he used rear-screen projection -his time's analog version of chroma key background- so much in his films. Now, here is a mind -boggler, would he originate on video?

 

I know these themes have been discussed ad-infinitum on this site. However, this is a particularly poignant subject, since it involves Martin Scorsese making a film "the way he (Hitchcock) would have made the picture then, only doing it now, but the way he would have done it then," and the ramifications of the statement since there were no chroma key and computer technology in Hitchcock's time. Wouldn't Scorsese just do it the way Hitchcock would have done it then, without computers?

 

I have a film-theater owner/ projectionist / classic-film print collector friend who is adamantly disdainful of the (over?) use of digital technology to make films these days. He prides himself in not having sit through any Hollywood feature films made after 1985. One could perhaps call him a snob. He loathes to think about the day when all movies are released digitally to theaters.

 

Does my friend have a valid point, in that digital technology is making films "cheap"? Sure, the advent of technology is making it feasible for a lot more people now that ever in the past to express ourselves. However, we all know, in terms of film preservation, polyester prints -if properly kept- will last 100 years or more with no loss of quality. Whereas digital technology is so new there is no way to tell how long a DVD will keep for, other than few years. So what if ALL films were originated, edited, color-corrected, scored, effected, released and distributed digitally? Would something be lost? This digital-at-every-step-of the-way scenario is very real and in some cases already happening in a major way.

 

So, for the sake of argument, how do films that employ digital technology fare when compared to the analog oldies? The short answer is that these are just tools that are available to filmmakers to create with. Yet people like my friend claim there is something lost to digitally "compromised" movies, akin to people who claimed that CD's could never equal vinyl records. So when this up-coming production model threatens the whole "classic" production model, from acquisition to distribution, what then? Could these two models co-exist?

 

I personally would hate to get to the point where physical film is actually gone from the world, aside from the film archives. "Remember film?"

 

So, what would Hitchcock do?

 

I'd just like to be devil's advocate on this one.

[Lindsay Mann]

If Hitchcock were alive today he wouldn't be making web advertisements for wine.

 

I'm pretty sure about this.

[Michael Nash]

[A. Whitehouse]

If Hitchcock were alive today he wouldn't be making web advertisements for wine.

 

I'm pretty sure about this.

 

Well Orson Welles made ads for wine (he was in them)...

[A. Whitehouse]

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm probably more nostalgic than most people in regards to filmmaking techniques -- I've been watching 1930's three-strip Technicolor this week, just finished "Jesse James" (1939).

 

But that's really what it is, nostalgia -- romantic sentimentality. Yes, I honestly believe there were artistic accomplishments, aesthetic trends, that were significant, even superior to some of the things being done today. That's the nature of art -- every generation has its works of genius. And I think there is a lot of gold to be mined in studying the works of the past.

 

But the notion that modern tools are somehow "cheating" or negate the artistic value of a work when they are employed, well, that's bullshit. Tell Hitchcock in the 1950's that he was wrong to use modern tools like VistaVision or color film, that he had to go back to using 1930's technology to be a "real" artist. Tell someone in the 1970's that "real" filmmakers used non-reflexed cameras and prime lenses only. Tell someone in the 1990's that he was ruining the art of cinema by using high-speed film stock, or multi-track sound on his 35mm prints.

 

Saying that digital technologies make a film less of an artistic achievement would be like telling the early users of oil paints to give up and go back to using tempura, making frescoes, etc. Or that the only legitimate form of sculpture involved wood or marble, but not metal. Or that paint from a tube like the Impressionists were able to use was cheating, since they didn't grind and mix their own paints anymore.

 

Digital technologies change the textures of movies, and some of the style and look, but being different isn't necessarily being less artistic. It's the nature of everything to change over time, in all art forms, and then it's the nature of people to prefer one era or style over another. But we can't freeze music to the late 19th century or books to the immediate post-WW2 period, or movies to before the 1980's.