Christopher Kenneally, along with host Keanu Reeves and a myriad of directors and cinematographers interviewed for this film have done all of us in the creative arts, who find our tools and mediums altered by technology, a great service: they have described for us the benefits, detriments, and possible melding of past technologies with the new in the quest for achieving our goals of telling a story.
As a writer, I do rely upon technology – the computer, the internet – in order to publish my works as e-books. Do I disdain Microsoft's default font as Times New Roman? (as a former phototypesetter who used Times English 49, yes, I do; and even that wasn't my preferred font – Palatino was the most beautiful font family to my eye). Spell and Grammar Check in Microsoft? It's my comedy explosion the descent of standard American English into the realm of not knowing when to use "who" or "that" astounds me still. But I digress.
This documentary, geeky and nerdy as it can be (and I love those things myself), shows how technology evolves to meet a creative need, is exploited to further meet a creative need, and how it also can fall short of the desired creative vision of those who use it. The film also serves as a history of how celluloid has been handled (and for a writer, this is so inspiring for me in terms of how to write), and how digital allows for visualizing people and events that otherwise would be difficult to achieve.
From Scorsese's description of fingers being sliced in the process of physically splicing (cutting) celluloid to achieve the desired result, to the cinematographer on "Laurence of Arabia" describing how a celluloid film cut created a dramatic transition that no writer, director, or actor could have done alone gives great credit to a medium that is around a century old – and argues for the fact that because there is new digital technology, it doesn't render it obsolete. Quite the contrary: one director points out that, without a knowledge about how film photography renders a finished (in the rough) project, digital film photography can fall short of what the cinematic experience in full requires – the intuitive sensitivity of the eye, which is, at the core of it, a subjective interpretation of experience. And isn't all creativity that?
The exploration of how digital technology expands ability to film at all (in difficult location circumstances) and in creating unknown worlds is just as fruitful to understand as the "10 minute cut" that the celluloid film canister requires. Actors and everyone else get to take a breath and come back to a scene anew, a great asset to the creative process. On the other hand, being able to continuously "film" someone in a challenging location without cuts also has advantages.
In the final analysis, the title "Side by Side" says it all: both media are essential to the creative process when it comes to storytelling through a "film" media. Reeves' project underscores this by showing many examples of films shot on a variety of cameras. The cameras, back to geekdom, get center stage, as they should – the technology any of us use to create our work is vital to getting our work out to others.
This film needs to be in the library of anyone in creative arts who finds that technology is impacting how they do what they do. On the one hand, "the better is the enemy of the good". On the other – new and old can walk forward side by side and expand the creative output of us all. As a writer contemplating having my work adapted for cable/streaming, I know that both technologies, and knowledge of them, will be essential to storytelling that will make the work memorable to all viewers.
Isabeau Vollhardt, Author, The Casebook of Elisha Grey series
As a writer, I do rely upon technology – the computer, the internet – in order to publish my works as e-books. Do I disdain Microsoft's default font as Times New Roman? (as a former phototypesetter who used Times English 49, yes, I do; and even that wasn't my preferred font – Palatino was the most beautiful font family to my eye). Spell and Grammar Check in Microsoft? It's my comedy explosion the descent of standard American English into the realm of not knowing when to use "who" or "that" astounds me still. But I digress.
This documentary, geeky and nerdy as it can be (and I love those things myself), shows how technology evolves to meet a creative need, is exploited to further meet a creative need, and how it also can fall short of the desired creative vision of those who use it. The film also serves as a history of how celluloid has been handled (and for a writer, this is so inspiring for me in terms of how to write), and how digital allows for visualizing people and events that otherwise would be difficult to achieve.
From Scorsese's description of fingers being sliced in the process of physically splicing (cutting) celluloid to achieve the desired result, to the cinematographer on "Laurence of Arabia" describing how a celluloid film cut created a dramatic transition that no writer, director, or actor could have done alone gives great credit to a medium that is around a century old – and argues for the fact that because there is new digital technology, it doesn't render it obsolete. Quite the contrary: one director points out that, without a knowledge about how film photography renders a finished (in the rough) project, digital film photography can fall short of what the cinematic experience in full requires – the intuitive sensitivity of the eye, which is, at the core of it, a subjective interpretation of experience. And isn't all creativity that?
The exploration of how digital technology expands ability to film at all (in difficult location circumstances) and in creating unknown worlds is just as fruitful to understand as the "10 minute cut" that the celluloid film canister requires. Actors and everyone else get to take a breath and come back to a scene anew, a great asset to the creative process. On the other hand, being able to continuously "film" someone in a challenging location without cuts also has advantages.
In the final analysis, the title "Side by Side" says it all: both media are essential to the creative process when it comes to storytelling through a "film" media. Reeves' project underscores this by showing many examples of films shot on a variety of cameras. The cameras, back to geekdom, get center stage, as they should – the technology any of us use to create our work is vital to getting our work out to others.
This film needs to be in the library of anyone in creative arts who finds that technology is impacting how they do what they do. On the one hand, "the better is the enemy of the good". On the other – new and old can walk forward side by side and expand the creative output of us all. As a writer contemplating having my work adapted for cable/streaming, I know that both technologies, and knowledge of them, will be essential to storytelling that will make the work memorable to all viewers.
Isabeau Vollhardt, Author, The Casebook of Elisha Grey series