Replacing old cinema with the new (3)
One big X-factor: How many filmmakers are going into this kind of work and making a living out of it?
I don’t have exact figures, but I will bet my squirrel’s hoard of streetware VCDs that there are a bigger number of them doing video projects now than conventional movies on film.
The number is sure to increase year by year, not only because the costs are generally going down, but also because demand is going up.
The “DV geeks” only need to team up with local culturati who are not intimidated by digital video technology and are brimming with good ideas and story lines.
Fortunately, the world of NGO-PO’s, media-cultural circles and academic institutions are teeming with such groups and initiatives. Their annual output is increasing by leaps and bounds. They have common problems of funding, packaging, quality control, distribution and marketing, but such problems are not insurmountable.
Even as I write this, UP Baguio is holding Arubayan ni Oble - an Amateur Video Film Festival by BC130 students (“the first-ever,” according to the brochure), featuring 25-minute narratives with such delicious titles as Aniniwan, Payong, Kalso, Litany, Lakad, Banyo Thoughts, Taghoy sa Dilim, Talingkas, Montiniosa, and Fedrang Falad. Like I said, I’m no movie buff, but I will gladly shell out my lunch money to view one or two of the festival choices.
As in other new media like wireless and the Web, some people who have mastered the medium might at first tend to monopolize their knowhow and mystify the technology with mouthfuls of mumbo-jumbo. But, in the long run, skills will diffuse quickly and widely, like using cellphones, among a wider public who have access to the technology.
The biggest X-factor, however, remains that of content: Where are the filmmakers - the writers, directors, photographers, sound engineers, editors, actors, musicians - who will shape the materials of this new cinematic vehicle, not just by mastering the medium and indulging their egos for self-expression, but more importantly, by ensuring that it contains relevant social messages that the broad public will support?
And who will create those messages?
Will it be another generation of profit-oriented media capitalists who will of course glorify the capitalist lifestyle while catering to our most decadent fantasies? Let’s hope not.
Let’s hope that they will be, for the first time in our history, ordinary folk with cheap cameras and computers, helped by grassroots cultural and media activists. These are people who don’t want to merely make money, but rather to turn common lives into powerful social images, and maybe, in the process, help conscientize and overhaul society.
Dare we hope for a new cinema? Abangan sa susunod na kabanata. #
Northern Dispatch Weekly, Sept. 12, 2004
I don’t have exact figures, but I will bet my squirrel’s hoard of streetware VCDs that there are a bigger number of them doing video projects now than conventional movies on film.
The number is sure to increase year by year, not only because the costs are generally going down, but also because demand is going up.
###
Small-scale video outfits are all around us more than we realize. Just stroll through a major city’s university belt area, and count the number of shops offering digital video services. It should give us an idea of how large the technical base is for this new medium.The “DV geeks” only need to team up with local culturati who are not intimidated by digital video technology and are brimming with good ideas and story lines.
Fortunately, the world of NGO-PO’s, media-cultural circles and academic institutions are teeming with such groups and initiatives. Their annual output is increasing by leaps and bounds. They have common problems of funding, packaging, quality control, distribution and marketing, but such problems are not insurmountable.
Even as I write this, UP Baguio is holding Arubayan ni Oble - an Amateur Video Film Festival by BC130 students (“the first-ever,” according to the brochure), featuring 25-minute narratives with such delicious titles as Aniniwan, Payong, Kalso, Litany, Lakad, Banyo Thoughts, Taghoy sa Dilim, Talingkas, Montiniosa, and Fedrang Falad. Like I said, I’m no movie buff, but I will gladly shell out my lunch money to view one or two of the festival choices.
###
Is it hard to learn videography (the new term that means film-making in the era of digital video)? Not really.As in other new media like wireless and the Web, some people who have mastered the medium might at first tend to monopolize their knowhow and mystify the technology with mouthfuls of mumbo-jumbo. But, in the long run, skills will diffuse quickly and widely, like using cellphones, among a wider public who have access to the technology.
The biggest X-factor, however, remains that of content: Where are the filmmakers - the writers, directors, photographers, sound engineers, editors, actors, musicians - who will shape the materials of this new cinematic vehicle, not just by mastering the medium and indulging their egos for self-expression, but more importantly, by ensuring that it contains relevant social messages that the broad public will support?
And who will create those messages?
Will it be another generation of profit-oriented media capitalists who will of course glorify the capitalist lifestyle while catering to our most decadent fantasies? Let’s hope not.
Let’s hope that they will be, for the first time in our history, ordinary folk with cheap cameras and computers, helped by grassroots cultural and media activists. These are people who don’t want to merely make money, but rather to turn common lives into powerful social images, and maybe, in the process, help conscientize and overhaul society.
Dare we hope for a new cinema? Abangan sa susunod na kabanata. #
Northern Dispatch Weekly, Sept. 12, 2004
posted by moonriver at 11:55 AM
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