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A threat to cinema?
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In film-making today, `going digital' is the buzz word. But is it really superior to existing technology? Noted filmmaker K. HARIHARAN writes.
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Theoretically, digital technology should have made film-making cheaper and quicker ... a scene from "Aalavandan".
WALK into a music aficionado's house and you can hear him lament about how the synthesised quality of A. R. Rahman's songs can never match the melodious quality of M. K. Thyagraja Bhagvathar's original recordings. A film critic can be heard mournfully asking as to what happened to those simple, yet revolutionary, narrators of the early 1980s like Bharatirajaa, Balu Mahendra, Bhagyaraj, Mahendran, Rudriah or R.C. Sakthi. And somebody replies that television, big budget movies and digital technology have driven them all into oblivion.
How can such filmmakers and musicians be made redundant while some others shine in the same environment? Has it really something to do with the digital domain? Is digital technology all about transistors, IC chips and the state-of-the-art equipment or has it also got to do with the way one thinks and puts together a "creative" project? Is digital technology completely inimical and superior to analog technology? Can one not make a conventional analog programme, be it music, news or a fictional story with digital equipment?
Before we enter into further circles of confusion, let's at first clear the controversy of what is analog and what is digital.
By its very nomenclature, the analog system or programme refers to an activity which is in series where action one has to be completed before it can move on to executing action two. For example, one can build the second floor of a building only after finishing the plinth, the ground floor and the first. The linearity of the creative process is dominant here. Similarly, in the world of culture a novelist can write chapter one first and then proceed onwards in a series or a musician can compose in a temporal order. In a digital process or programme, one can jump the linear sequence to write the climax first and then back to write the opening paragraph. After the introduction of writing music on a score sheet, composers had the advantage of moving back and forth while creating their symphonies or concertos. In the shooting of films this is standard practice.
Virtually no film is shot in the order that is finally presented on the screen, which means that the actors and the technicians have to rely entirely on the director and hope that the film will ultimately make sense when put together on the editing table. The production of cinema was therefore virtually in the digital domain from day one although it recorded itself on a filmstrip or videotape, which is actually in the analog domain.
What we see here is a comfortable co-existence of a thought process, which could be in the digital domain and an action process being executed in the analog domain as seen in the work of an architect and his building. On the other hand, a screenplay written in an analog manner gets made in a digital manner by the director with no problems whatsoever. But that comfort zone for the filmmaker is seen to be facing a grave threat thanks to digital technology, which in fact threatens to make the "celluloid" film medium redundant.
Is it a threat or an opportunity? To discuss this was a workshop conducted by EFX and the Prasad Film Laboratories, where the pros and cons of conventional analog versus digital filmmaking were put forth by several technicians and filmmakers. Basic to their argument was, of course, the ease with which one could shoot (acquisition), edit (post-production) and release (distribution) their works to their viewers.
What was convincingly spelt out was the imminent death of the celluloid medium as a method of acquisition, post-production and distribution. In the editing sphere we are already seeing the powerful presence of computers and in the distribution domain most people see their films on TV and pirated VCDs.
Rajiv Menon connected the arrival of various technologies like the printing press and how it virtually created a new form called the novel. He elaborated on the various manipulations that can be done to the celluloid film image thanks to the intervention of digital post-production systems and how in the world of advertising it has become an absolute must. After all is not consumerism the most aggressive means of modern capitalism to convert all luxuries into needs?
Talking about Lars Von Trier's award winning "Dancers in the Dark" which was shot entirely with a small low-cost digital video handycam, he predicted how today's cameramen will have to develop newer skills to challenge and survive through a highly competitive easy-to-use digital technology. Balu Mahendra, the icon of the early 1980s revolutionary Tamil cinema, talked about his wonderful experience with the small screen as he made his 52-part video series called "Kadhai Neram". Then there was Yuval, the Israeli filmmaker who had shot an entire film on digital Betacam video and transferred it onto celluloid film with hardly any loss in quality.
All of them referred to how ultimately it was so much cheaper, quicker and reasonably satisfying to work on the new medium. What was being missed at the workshop was the fact that one was actually referring to conventional videotape technology as the threatening medium, which at its root is tediously analog. Just by switching over to digital or video technology was not going to bring about better cinema. In fact with the arrival of high-end digital technology, Indian cinema has only seen a severe drop in film production and consequently in good quality cinema.
I, for one, cannot agree that the advent of digital technology has made filmmaking any cheaper or quicker although, theoretically, that's what should have happened. Even mildly educated filmgoers coming out of a screening of "Aalavandan" wonder how budgets shoot up thanks to digital special effects. If the digital medium was so cheap and quick then it should have helped those filmmakers and not just the pirates make their VCDs! The problem obviously lies elsewhere.
Unequal growth
The past decade has witnessed a very unequal growth in the advancing world of digital technology and the normal analog world of creativity. What has to be understood primarily is that, for a creative artist, a logical thought process has to be analog. For the viewer a good work is one which has a proper beginning, middle and an end necessarily in that same order. The digital perception of the world has to be subservient to the "natural" analog process. What has gone wrong with Indian cinema is almost parallel with what has gone wrong with the bizarre bubbly world of information technology.
Called the "New Economy" it spelt out a narrative course with no social coherence, no economic rationale, and with absolutely no political responsibility.
From their ridiculous pricing logic to their Anglo-centric world-orientation, the digital exercise has so far been an exercise in disaster and bankruptcy. Has any consumer forum asked why an audio CD should cost ten times the price of an analog audiocassette? Totally irrational. And we all know that the real cost of a CD is far cheaper to make than the magnetic tape and yet!
Coming back to the world of Indian cinema, this bizarre exercise has taken its own toll. Thanks to digital technolog, the music director can now record a song without having to assemble the entire music band. Each musician comes in separately and plays his or her piece without any idea of the final product. In fact it is seen as an act of idiocy if a filmmaker insists on having all of them present to get a "good effect".
Similarly, film scripts are constructed in terms of non-sequential items — six songs of six minutes each, of which two will be in Switzerland, two in Rajasthan, one at the wedding hall and one in a blue screen studio. These items are taken care of by the choreographer. And then there will be six items of comedy by Vivek or Manivannan or Senthil. These actors take care of that.
And then there will be two fights — one in a shipyard and other in a chemical godown. The stuntman takes care of that. That accounts for over 75 minutes of film time. The screenplay writer or the director is now called to conceive the rest of the 45 minutes of screen time. And usually the cameraman takes care of that! The net result is a pastiche done by several craftsmen with no cohesive grammar. The producer feels completely empowered thanks to a whole digital "itemised" thought process. Why will he need those "thinking" revolutionaries of the early 1980s?
On the other hand, it is to digital technology's credit that the medium of cinema has become so democratic. Every college now has a sizeable visual communications department armed with a handycam and a computer with editing facilities. What is necessary is just to teach them the visual narrative skills. At the same time it is also important for them to understand the importance of convergence. It is impossible for one filmmaker to attain mastery of screenplay writing, cinematography, music composing, art direction, make-up, editing, location scouting, casting and directing the final work. Being multi-skilled does not make one sensitive to the complex demands of the various branches of filmmaking.
The difficulty in the development of a good entertaining narrative is indeed becoming more challenging with the democratisation of the film medium and it's visual grammar. More creative heads are required but given the capital-intensive situation of digital filmmaking today, it seems logical that the conventional producer would like to cut costs, reduce manpower and control these respective departments. The boss achieves this by keeping them as divergent as possible when in fact it would be to his or her long-term benefit to bring them all together under one roof and share their ideas in a holistic manner.
But can he actually assemble them? This is where and why one has to go digital right from the beginning. Knowing that it is difficult to actually assemble his or her talented team on a daily basis in the pre-production period, a good producer should use the tools of digital technology to bring them all together if necessary in a kind of cyberspace environment. Visuals and stories can be sent back and forth between all the team members on the Internet allowing each one to absorb a new idea and respond to it on the same platform instantly. There is a variety of inexpensive software for screenplay writing, storyboarding, costume designing etc. available for this purpose. In fact one can even create them if necessary in one's own native language. A new creative vocabulary could be evolved. One will realise that the final script/storyboard can be shaped together with ideas coming in from all the creative heads.
Am I being idealistic? No. When semi-skilled sound engineers and editors could switch over to digital technology with such ease why not film writers and directors? Mind you, this system is being practiced even by the most successful legends in Hollywood like James Cameron and George Lucas. With time running out this convergence is an absolute necessity, if Indian cinema has to be kept alive. Or else we need not be surprised if we too are swept off the ground with a barrage of Hollywood blockbusters like in most other countries. After all can we give up a hundred years of legendary Indian cinema just like that?
An investment in this "avenue of organisation" would cost a fraction in comparison to the acquisition of the latest Sony HD camera (Rs. 1.8 crores) and yet it will outlast the camera which I am sure will be obsolete in another year.
I believe that this is putting the horse before the cart, practicing first things first and the value-added benefit to this approach will spell returns in the short run too. Will the big studios and producers heed this call? After all those delightful revolutionary masters and the spirit of the early 1980s are still alive! Do we want to give them a longer life?
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