Just back from Barcelona and playing radical catch-up, but I see that Sunday's New York Times has a set of timely articles on the digital reproduction and distribution of films we'll certainly want to incorporate down the road in our unit on digital video. Reading them over quickly, I see that what's going on here in the world of video parallels a number of developments discussed in the digital textuality material we'll be discussing tomorrow night. A.O. Scott's article, "The Shape of Cinema, Transformed at the Click of a Mouse," for example, envisions a world in which every film, like every text, is always available 24/7 for viewing, distribution, mashing-up, etc. What he envisions is something like the Google print project applied to film, but he also discusses how the online distribution of film is going to make a lot more so-called "obscure" films available for viewing.
Manohla Dargis, in "The Revolution Will Be Downloaded (If You're Patient)", also discusses the emerging possibilities for the online distribution of independent films (once hardware and bandwith problems are solved). She talks about her experiences downloading some films and provides links to a number of emerging cinema sites (as does a third, companion article, "Little Films on Little Screens (But Both Seem Set to Grow"). She celebrates the portability digital technology provides (you can watch downloaded films on your laptop, desktop, phone, i-pod, etc.) and doesn't waste much time on nostalgia for the "big screen." There's a parallel here with the articles about digital textuality, of course, where die-hards worry about the fate of the book. Will people really read texts that aren't in book form? Will people really watch films that aren't on a big screen at the multiplex? How much pull will the old delivery systems have, or will portability trump our ingrained viewing/reading habits?
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3 comments:
I don't have to go to the theater anymore for an awesome movie experience. With a large enough television and decent sound system, one can almost replicate the movie experience at home. I saw 300 over the weekend and I was completely annoyed when someone's cell phone rang in the middle an intensely emotional scene. Watching movies at home is more like reading a book. You can choose when to watch. You can stop if you need to and you can watch a movie for less than $10 with your own gourmet snacks on hand.
That being said, for some reason I doubt the internet will be the death of the multiplex. After all, there's something great about watching a movie with 100+ people and laughing or crying en masse. Seeing a movie is still a great date and its a nice way to feel social without actually being social.
For the scholarly take on digital textuality, from the point of view of a materialist textual studies, I recommend anything by Matthew Kirschenbaum, maybe starting with his recent stuff on textual forensics:
http://www.otal.umd.edu/~mgk/blog/archives/000785.html
Matt's simply the best there is at reminding us of the materiality of digital texts and what we might do with them. Watch for his MIT Press book, out later this year.
I also think Jerome McGann's recent theoretical work in this area is crucial.
Steve Jones
PS I enjoyed talking with everyone last week. Thanks for the hospitality.
Some of these articles seem to suggest that putting movies online will allow for them to be discovered. While it may increase the viewership of individual films, I wonder to what degree it will impact the types of people watching particular items. Will people diversify their interests as more things become available—or, are they going to just seek out those things that they know they like? I tend to think that people will stick with things they like or things their friends like (which are often the things they like anyhow). Besides, the companies are charging them a fee to watch these movies, and it doesn’t seem like people will continually “risk” spending their $1.99 for a film that they aren’t pretty sure they will enjoy. Perhaps this is just another case of the network enabling the niche market to become profitable, which we read about in the Networked Public essays.
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