Dissecting Film as an Old and New Media Object
The following essay was submitted for a New Media Analysis assignment Senior year.
In this essay, I will explore the relationship between old and new media by analyzing physical and abstract distinctions between the consumption of Classical Hollywood films in the 20th century and the consumption of modern films. I will first reflect on consistent elements pertaining to the idea of film. I will then outline specific, tangible changes in the film production and projection process. Finally, I will consider more abstract cultural shifts related to cinema consumption and draw a parallel between transitioning modes of film projection and evolving means of identity projection.
Basic principles of ‘film’ have remained fixed since classical Hollywood cinema. Specifically, a film’s duration, underlying profit motives, and inclusion of ‘stars’ are three core aspects of the media practice at large. Film duration was approximately fifteen minutes prior to Quo Vadis’ high-budget production in 1913 (Edwards 2013). Quo Vadis ran for 120 minutes, establishing a lengthier standard for film duration. Constrained by budget and the effort of splicing physical film reels together, Hollywood film duration did not stray far from this two-hour standard during the 20th century. Whether it is still a product of budget restraints or a catering to the human attention span, the two-hour duration remains a fundamental expectation for spectators in the digital film era. Furthermore, films are products within a consumer society. From a capitalistic perspective, industries manufacturing products in a consumer society must generate profit. Classical Hollywood studios emerged around 1917. By the 1920s, Hollywood vertically integrated the production process and operated monopolistically, owning the entire chain of production. Small chains brought a suit to the Supreme Court in 1960 because owners would ask Hollywood to play X film in their theater and Hollywood would make them show films Y and Z movies as well. Hollywood film is still profit-driven, albeit classical studios are now owned by larger distribution and oversight-focused conglomerates like AT&T, Disney, and MGM Holdings (Kunze). In the vein of profit, while film eras like Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave pushed back on the inclusion of famous figures for marketing purposes, Hollywood cinema has consistently used famous actors to lure audiences to the theaters. Whether it be Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca or Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems, film’s inclusion of stars has always been a primary tenet of the Hollywood film and an integral mode of attracting paying audiences.
Yet, at the tangible level, there are notable physical differences between the act of watching a Classical Hollywood film in theater and its potentially indirect modern displacement: consuming contemporary digital film in theater. In terms of the screening itself, film has transitioned from celluloid prints screened in a projector to digital images produced from stored or streamed code. This shift is reflective of the switch from photochemical filmmaking to digital filmmaking. Digital filming arguably involves a more intricate process than photochemical filming: digital film cameras contain fixed sensors whose diodes or photosites create pixels to display a final image whereas photochemical filming cameras use film ribbon that exists as an unexposed film stock in the camera (Bordwell and Thompson 10-14). In terms of storage, digital film cameras’ sensors convert patterns of light into electrical impulses, which are ultimately transported to a recording medium and stored as numerically-encoded files on memory cards. Photochemical film cameras store footage on the physical film strips (Bordwell and Thompson, 10-14). Hollywood films are made with photochemical film, presented to the audience in a series of succeeding, still photographs wherein each photograph slightly differs from the one preceding it, creating the illusion of motion. Film reels were commonly 35 mm and were shipped to theaters which then had to splice together the physical films and present them in theaters via a film projector. Today, films are often distributed to theaters via Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs), which reside on hard drives. These digital files are delivered to the theater and the film is projected via digital video projectors.
The audio component of film projection has also vastly transformed. At the height of Hollywood cinema in the 1950s, a singular channel of sound was “optically encoded onto a strip of film” (Miller 2004). Then, theaters used a four-channel structure in which tracks were either played via the right, left, center, or surround speaker. The surround channel was primarily used for sound effects or ambient sound. Today, the Dolby 5.1 surround system is the surround system used in multiplex theaters. The number five indicates that five channels are used and the 0.1 refers to the fact that it uses a large subwoofer to recreate low-frequency effects (Bordwell and Thompson 44). Of the five channels, three are placed in the left, center, and right sections behind the displayed image. Each of the Dolby Digital 5.1 system’s components has a different role in creating the fluid, immersive sound heard in the modern theater. The center speaker usually emits dialogue and important sound effects; the left and right speakers work to create a surround-sound effect, play music, and add other sound effects; the surround channels repeat the sounds of the other speakers with a slight delay (Bordwell and Thompson, 44).
A thorough analysis of film as a transitioning media form must address shifts beyond film’s physical composition and presentation. This final section will focus on changing consumption patterns and how these more abstract patterns a) reflect broader cultural changes and b) mimic cultural shifts in other aspects of society. The act of going to the theater is still an option for those wishing to watch a movie, but even tangential aspects of the consumption process, such as buying a physical ticket, have been displaced by digitized practices, such as buying a digital surrogate for a ticket and putting it in our digitized phone ‘wallet’. A ticket is no longer a physical ticket and the wallet from which we pull it from is merely a pixelated representation of a wallet on our smartphone. Perhaps this process of digitization has tainted the allure of an old-fashioned practice, but perhaps a broader cultural change (aside from the pandemic) is responsible for modern society’s gradual shift away from watching movies in theater. Even if we regard the inclusion of stars as a core tenet of film as an art form, are we really still gathering with a group of friends and hustling to the theater to drool over an attractive male lead? No. We can do this at home. The social aspect of film has not diminished, but film consumption has become an increasingly less collective endeavor. This increasingly privatized manner of indulgence does not necessarily have an identifiable impetus, but it inarguably coincides with the emergence of personalized technology ownership, such as personal laptops. This personalized notion of ownership exists at sub-levels of the computer itself, such as the personalization of platforms within such technology. For example, it is common for someone to have their own computer with their own Netflix account that is “locked” via passwords and security measures. It is “my” computer with “my” Netflix account that displays “my” movie selections. Perhaps I will share what is mine with those that I know, but I am uninterested in sharing what is mine with the collective.
Drawing from Tara McPherson’s theoretical discussion of how the modulated UNIX operating system mimicked concurrent attitudes about race, it seems that the shift from photochemical film projection to digital projection mimics transitioning ideas surrounding identity projection. In a sense, the tactile physical film reels of the 20th century might be understood as somewhat symbolic of the tactile means of presenting information about one’s identity. In this symbolic example, the screen in the theater might represent one’s presented identity. To provide a somewhat meta and topical example, just as the physical film had to be manhandled and projected to the screen, the physical person had to be seen, felt, touched, or heard to be understood. To express something such as a love for film as a component of one’s identity, one needed to physically be seen at the film, speak about film to others, or even write about this love for film on a physical piece of paper. Thus, the shift to digital projection in theaters might then be seen as symbolic of concurrently digitizing means of identity projection. Just as the physical reel has been displaced by digital pixelations and projections, this highly physical means of knowing and being known has been replaced by digital representations of identity. We no longer have to be seen at the theater, talk to others, or physically write about interests such as film for them to be known by others. Instead, we can project aspects of our identity by doing things like engaging with film fan accounts on Twitter, reposting film critics on Instagram, or even engaging in film discourse on Reddit. This analogy is admittedly interesting because, although the physical film reel differs from a digital hard drive (which, again, represents the manner in which we present our identity to others), the presentation on screen does not necessarily change. This may be taken as the fact that our expressed identities have not necessarily shifted, but the means of projecting such identity have.
This exploration is admittedly limited for it analyzes principles of film and film consumption through a narrow, Western-centric scope. Despite technological advancements at the audio-visual level of film, many of the primary draws to film have remained constant over time. These technical advancements coincide with social changes related to film as a collectively-enjoyed art form and mimic the way in which one may construct and present an identity.
References
Bordwell, D., & Thompson, K. (2004). Film Art: An Introduction. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Edwards, P. (2019, November 19). Why Movies Went from 15 Minutes to 2 Hours. Vox. Retrieved April 7, 2022, from https://www.vox.com/videos/2019/11/19/20971000/movie-length-history
Kunze, Peter. PK. (2021, February 14). “Classical Hollywood.” Intro to Cinema, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA. Lecture.
Miller, M. (2004, September 24). The History of Surround Sound. Retrieved April 7, 2022, from https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=337317#:~:text=Prior%20to%20this%20point%2C%20one,of%20these%20magnetic%20audio%20tracks.
