Many fast-emerging and evolving technologies hold tremendous potential for the future of cinema. A film revolution awaits us? But when?
For decades, virtual reality (VR) has been called the future of cinematography. It was said that it would be able to offer the viewer an experience incomparably more multidimensional and immersive than traditional film or television.
In his 1955 essay, The Cinema of the Future, American director and virtual reality pioneer Morton Heilig predicted that cinema would advance to the point where it could open up a new scientifically created world for man, vibrant and alive, responding to dynamics. of our consciousness.
Heilig highlighted many of the properties of virtual reality, although he has not yet used the terms that we use - they have simply not yet been invented in his time.
But now, while the point is, the very future has come - and cinematography is still very far from using the advanced and amazing technologies that we see in some fantastic films.
However, many filmmakers have already replaced traditional cameras with ones that allow shooting from all possible angles (panoramic cameras with a viewing angle of 360 degrees), and the present time resembles the early years of cinema, full of experiments (late 19th - early 20th centuries).
The technologies that we see in some science fiction films (Austin O'Brien in the movie "The Lawnmower") have not yet come to the cinema.
In short, while we are at the early stage of the new film revolution.
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Rapidly evolving technology holds tremendous potential for the future of cinema: for example (augmented reality), AI (artificial intelligence), and the ever-growing power of computers to offer ever more detailed, high-resolution digital worlds.
What will movies made in 20 years look like? How will the stories told in the cinema language of the future differ from the present ones? What kind of viewing experience will they offer?
Especially for you
According to the artist and virtual reality guru Chris Milk, the cinema of the future will offer a personalized approach to your needs and an immersive experience created especially for you.
Such films, Milk said in an interview with BBC Culture, will be able to develop a story in real time, "specifically for you, to meet your exact needs, based on what you like and what you don't."
Milk likes the term "living the story", he replaces the usual one - "storytelling", telling a story.
Milk believes that cinema technique will evolve so that the film will be perceived as part of everyday life, only with striking elements of fictional stories.
Immersive reality guru Chris Milk believes that in the future we will have films that adapt to the needs of a particular viewer.
In a 2015 TED Talk, Milk described the artistic potential of virtual reality. He believes that advances in artificial intelligence technology will allow computer-generated characters to respond in real time to audience requests.
Imagine a much more advanced version of Siri, just as a movie character.
Milk admits that no such technology has yet been developed (allowing a movie character to talk and react to you as if he were a living person), but adds: "I don't think we will have to wait 20 years."
Volumetric image of reality
Influential documentary filmmaker, journalist and, according to the Wall Street Journal, "godmother of virtual reality" Nonny de la Peña says that the first thing that comes to her mind when she ponders about the future of cinema is "three-dimensional", as opposed to of today's 2D screens.
Nonnie de la Peña (pictured - during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival) is called the godmother of virtual reality.
A virtual copy of our world
Eugene Chung is the director of the critically acclaimed Allumette, a virtual reality film that has compared Chung to American film pioneer David Wark Griffith.
The film is set in a futuristic city floating in the clouds. It was filmed using six degrees of freedom (6Dof, immersive graphics) technology, which allows viewers to physically move around in the created world.
In the future, says Chang, VR will increasingly merge with AR Cloud, which is essentially a digital copy of our world.
Eugene Chang performs from the stage of the Tribeca Film Festival (2016).
“Imagine an extremely detailed version of Google Earth, in which not only the streets, but the whole world in every detail,” he suggests. "We will mix this world with the highest class virtual reality, the technology of which is already quite impressive today."
According to Chang, stories will literally surround you in the future. For example, “you wake up with a movie character you like on the table next to your bed. Already, films are being created that are moving in this direction, for example, "She" (American fantastic melodrama, 2013 - translator's note).
The art of the game of consciousness
American Television Emmy Award-winning Australian artist and VR filmmaker Collisions and Awavena Lynette Wallworth says ways to tell a story using VR technology will offer new experiences for people - like being autistic, experiencing being like that. feels the world around.
Wallworth foresees that VR and AR will expand the color palette of traditional films: virtual reality helmets will allow you to switch from simple "watching" a movie to complete immersion in one or another episode of the film - at the request of the viewer.
Virtual reality helmets on the heads of those who attended the evening of the meeting with Lynette Wallworth (2016).
"Imagine watching, say, 'Mad Max: Fury Road' with a device on your head that allows you to switch - click, and you're already in the cockpit next to Furiosa, racing through the desert at full speed."
Virtual reality technology is evolving very quickly and there seems to be no limit to its capabilities.
Interestingly, Steven Spielberg warned filmmakers in 2016 about the dangers of virtual, mixed reality: after all, the viewer, having the freedom of action, may choose a completely different direction from the storyteller.
But for many, this moment - when the viewers themselves choose in which direction to develop the plot - seems rather positive, because it supports the idea expressed by Heilig: "the cinema of the future will no longer be a fine art, it will become the art of playing consciousness."
This is probably the difference between "storytelling" and "living."