Introduction: The Death of Celluloid

The shift away from celluloid as the default method of producing film has produced a time of upheaval in the cinema industry. The rise of digital technology has led to changing practices in the construction of a film; every step of the process is now able to be carried out on digital medium. The film industry faces a production process that does not resemble the process as it occurred when most of the current established film makers were learning their trade. This has triggered several of these film makers to produce films which respond to the changing times (Gilbert 2012, 2), including Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011). Midnight in Paris laments a bygone era of artistic creation, and in doing so also laments the fading method of film production.

Part 1: Midnight in Paris

Midnight is Paris follows Gil, a Hollywood screenwriter and aspiring novelist, who idolises the artistic expression which took place in Paris in the 1920’s. The film grapples with both a longing for times past and a coming to terms with the present. Whilst the films story surrounds writing and the romance of Paris, it is directly analogous to the struggle the film industry faces in coming to terms with the decline in celluloid. There is an outcry of nostalgia for the way films used to be made whilst at the same time an embracing of digital cinema and all of the possibilities it provides (Gilbert 2012, 5). Even in the production of Midnight in Paris Allen uses, for the first time in any of his films, a Digital Intermediary process for digitising his film (Goldman, 2010). This highlights that even as the industry laments the changes taking place it has not slowed in its use of new technologies. Even in films such as Midnight in Paris, where there is very little use of special effects or CGI, the most obvious and visible form digital alteration, digital processes are being used in order produce the film. The digital tools are completely replacing, rather than augmenting, traditional film technologies.

Part 2: Established Film Makers

One of the key reasons for the outpour of grief over the death of celluloid is that as the technology changes, what constitutes a film also changes. The ways in which films are shot are so very different from the ways in which they had been shot in the past, with much greater control over what the finished product looks like available to film makers.

Digital cinema is actually a different media to celluloid, even if the finished product often takes the same form, and because of this the ways it is interacted with and understood are different to that of traditional cinema (McLuhan 1964, 11). You therefore now have a generation of film makers who entered the industry working with one media now coming to terms with learning to work with a new media, understanding the ways in which the new tools shape what is created with them. This makes the significance of Midnight in Paris even more apparent, the story of the film represents Allen’s coming to terms with the new technology the industry now relies on, even if he is not particularly pleased with the new tools, as is highlighted by the line at the end of the film “That’s what the present is, it’s a little unsatisfying, because life’s a little unsatisfying”.  Even as Allen adapts to the new tools, and wishes for a return to the old, he realises that his longing for the old ways of production is coloured by nostalgia.

Part 3: New Technology

Traditional celluloid tools for film production rely on an indexical relationship with the world from which its images are captured. Digital cinema tools have no such reliance; the images it produces do not have to have a referent in the real world (Prince 1996, 30). CGI technology allows for the creation and manipulation of images so that they do not have any relation to an actual object, they can be entirely fictional.

Whilst celluloid technology did allow for the creation of fictionalised images, they either had to be subtle alterations, relying on tricks of perspective and colour modifications, or did not look nearly as realistic as what digital technology makes possible. This underlines the fact that digital cinema and traditional film cinema are in fact two different medium. The differences in the production process, the types of images that can be created, and the relationship those images have with real world make clear that we are dealing with a new media. As the media is different, so too will the ways in which it is utilised be different. T he new technology allows for different types of films to be created. Midnight in Paris however, whilst utilising digital technology in its production, seems to intentionally tell a story, and produce images which largely could have been made with celluloid technology. Allen’s yearning for the production methods of times past has caused him to produce a film in line with what those tools could create, and in line with his stylistic choices which were informed by that technology (Goldman,2010), in this case Allen uses a rich warm colour pallet, which is traditionally able to be created through lighting choices.

Part 4: New Media

Even though Allen has utilised the new technology to create a film which could have been made with the old, the fact that the tools are different impacts our understanding of the film. The media form instructs our reading of the text, the content is shaped by the medium (McLuhan 1964, 11). In this case, the reading of Midnight in Paris as a commentary on the death of celluloid is educated by the fact that Digital Technology was utilised in its production. The fact that the media is digital cinema, and yet it is created to reflect the technologies of celluloid, brings to light the struggle within the industry. Furthermore, the different media form not only affects the production aspects, but also influences audience interaction. Digital cinema can be viewed in a range of different forms and locations, from multiplex theatre to a mobile phone on the train. The differences in the reception of the media invariably influence audience interaction.

The ‘Death of Celluloid’ reading of the film would perhaps be more obvious when watching the film on a tablet or mobile phone, than when watching it in a traditional theatre. The direct interaction with the digital device would bring more clearly to light the disjuncture the film espouses.

Conclusion

Digital cinema allows for the creating of worlds, settings and characters which have no basis in the real world (Prince 1996, 30). This is the core impact of digital cinema, over the last decade more and more films have come to utilise this technology, until it has now reached a climax where it is largely no longer feasible to produce film on celluloid. This is the transition which the film industry is grappling with and trying to understand. To those film makers who learnt their craft with the old tools, they may feel that something is lost in the procedures required to use the new technologies. This fundamental feeling of loss, a yearning for times past, has been the catalyst for the production of films which comment on this subject, from a wide variety of film makers in a wide variety of styles (Gilbert  2012, 2). Midnight in Paris is just one of these and presents a coming to terms with the new paradigm, there is an understanding that the longing for the old ways is most likely emphasised by sentimentality and that the new tools must be accepted.

Refernces

Gilbert, Andrew (2012). “The Death of Film and the Hollywood Response.” Senses of Cinema 62, available at http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/feature-articles/the-death-of-film-and-the-hollywood-response/

Goldman, Michael (2010). “Vilmos and Woody, Together Again” The Art of the Craft Blog, available at http://www.theasc.com/asc_blog/goldman/2010/11/05/vilmos-and-woody-together-again/

McLuhan, Marshall (1964). “The Medium is the Message.” Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 7-21

Prince, Stephen (1996) “True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images and film Theory.” Film Quarterly, 49(3), 27-37