(no subject)
As I was leaving work today, I found an article in Popular Mechanics about George Lucas, which caught my eye and on which I bestowed the five minutes it took to read it. The gist of it - as you would imagine from an article in Popular Mechanics - was Lucas' career-long pushing of the digital envelope. He has from his earliest days, apparently, been dissatisfied with filmmaker's traditional tools of film, glue, and editing machines, instead wanting - and developing - CGIs, digital editing, THX sound; all the technogeek bells and whistles. According to this article, ninety minutes of Revenge of the Sith is purely computer-generated - as Lucas points out, as long as the average animated movie. His next step, apparently, is to develop the technology to transmit movies directly to the distributors, obviating the need to make and mail out prints.
Yadda yadda yadda, I'm not especially impressed by or enamored with techno-bling. I am, however, enamored by what can be done with it. There's no question that the original Star Wars would not have been as gripping nor as iconic without the lasers zipping around and the X-wing fighters dodging in and out of the canyons of the Death Star.
But as interesting and visually stimulating as all the cool effects were - let's face it, the attack on the Death Star was ADD-heaven - the movie was as powerful as it was only because of technology that dates back to the beginnings of our species. In fact, I would say it was our original technology - storytelling.
I have much to say on this, and will say it later, but Stephanie is here and we're going to get something to eat. I can't save this as a draft, so I'll just continue it later.....
Yadda yadda yadda, I'm not especially impressed by or enamored with techno-bling. I am, however, enamored by what can be done with it. There's no question that the original Star Wars would not have been as gripping nor as iconic without the lasers zipping around and the X-wing fighters dodging in and out of the canyons of the Death Star.
But as interesting and visually stimulating as all the cool effects were - let's face it, the attack on the Death Star was ADD-heaven - the movie was as powerful as it was only because of technology that dates back to the beginnings of our species. In fact, I would say it was our original technology - storytelling.
I have much to say on this, and will say it later, but Stephanie is here and we're going to get something to eat. I can't save this as a draft, so I'll just continue it later.....