The Winter Film Awards WFA

The first thing that always comes to mind these days when talking about the craft of making movies, for all movie-goers is 3-D and its continued assault on our senses, when it’s not done right. Yet 3-D hasn’t been the biggest sea change in recent memory, no, the biggest change in the industry has been a long time coming and became very obvious recently, Digital. Movies shot digitally and a good majority of theaters switching over to Digital projectors, we are seeing the onset of the truest future of Film, its extinction. 
That might sound doom and gloom regarding what film has been well, good overall for the industry because, this transition gives those who wouldn’t have the option in the past to make films, because of the budgeting constraints, the option to finally make movies, for shoe string budgets, that wouldn’t have been viable with the exceeding high cost of film production in the past. Yet, consumer grade DSLR’s, affordable video editing software, and a cliché but true, can do attitude, are allowing for more creative productions with wider breadth’s with small scopes. 
These are the good things, but where this transition begins to dwindle in its optimism is the clarity of the digital as compared to film. Film stock, 35mm and greater have fidelity level, especially in darker area’s leave something to be desired on digital. While the crispness of film reels, can never be replaced by the sharpness of digital, the convenience of hard drives as opposed to reels has really broadened the options that movie theaters have with regards to selection as they are no longer taxed with the exorbitant charges of transportation and storage. 
While some directors, like Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight) have had their reservations, when shooting with digital, and chooses to shoot his films primarily in film, because of its fidelity. Directors like Martin Scorsese( Hugo), Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive) have embraced it as the future and use it as a tool to tell a better story, In Scorsese’s case, he also used 3-D, and it was effective because it was something that added to the experience of whimsy that the movie had going for it, and without digital cinema, we would be left with the red and blue glasses 3-D that, frankly is silly in this day and age.
Film will always hold a near and dear place in many people’s hearts, as it was where the medium has been for so long, but digital is breaking bearers to entry and giving creative professionals a wider breadth of options to display their craft. By displaying their crafts they are honored, at things like The Winter Film Awards held from February 9th to the 12th.

 Contributing Writer, Faisal Qureshi