Discussion of the Role of New Technology and Digital Media on Filmmaking

Technology is continually evolving; film has changed throughout the years due to technological advances. The first twenty years of filmmaking was defined by the different advances and legal battles that took place concerning the new mediums technology. It seems that today we are at a similar critical moment where much of the focus in the film industry is on new technology. 

Perhaps the most important development in film in the last fifty years is digital technology, which has opened up two new roads for production. First there is the large budget Hollywood production that uses digital technology to create new worlds and cool special effects. On the opposite end of the spectrum digital culture has opened up new avenues of production for small productions with little money and small crews. 

This is the area, which my project is mostly focused on, the ability of one man to create something new and interesting that still discusses important issues revolving around our modern world. It seems that too often artists get lost in the visual spectacle of digital culture and forget that it should still be used to serve a larger ideological concern. I have chosen to create what I’m calling an “interactive comic book.” I chose this format for several reasons: at first I was just going to do an animation, which served many of the ideological concerns that I wished to address with the project. There is the overarching technological concern that as digital technology expands a greater number of people will be able to create film or interactive project. I have never used flash before and thus to prove that even an amateur with no experience could make a project I decided to do my project with the program.