Cinema Electronica
by Jon Jost
Back a while--what seems like a generation or two ago in the fast-lane electronics world--in 1995 in the United States and in 1996 in Europe, a consortium of electronic manufacturers introduced a new video format: DV. Built around digital processes instead of analog, a specific compression codec, and Apple's FireWire, this format seemed like it was aimed at a high-end amateur market--people who used Hi8 or S-VHS to shoot the family vacation or birthdays, but would pay for better. They goofed, though, by making a kind of video that was so good it immediately drew the attention of professionals, from news gathering outfits, to experimentalists, to regular old famous filmmakers. After some initial huzzahs from video sorts, the usual complaints from filmmakers, and the customary hoo-ha surrounding a new product, DV rapidly took off.
A major public and industry icebreaker was the adoption of the DV format by Denmark's somewhat volatile (and by commercial standards, just plain weird) Lars von Trier. Following up his cult TV-series-qua-film success, The Kingdom, and his handheld 35mm epic, Breaking the Waves, von Trier, with some fellow Copenhagen anarchic filmmakers, announced a new manifesto, Dogme 95 (www.dogme95.dk). Basically a PR ploy and provocation, this was a kind of back-to-basics declaration, built in part around the virtues of DV and the exploitation some of its qualities. (Dogme's logo is the backside of a piggish looking dog, with an eye blinking in the rear).
Von Trier jumped in with The Idiots, which was transferred at a von Trier company to 35mm, and marketed with grand hoopla. It did good enough at the box office, and was followed by Thomas Vintenberg's The Celebration, with better box office numbers, and then Soren Kragh-Jacobsen's Mifune. Lavish press followed the trail of heightened box office success, and suddenly DV was in, as was the Dogme style: handheld, no lighting, improvised, loose.
This was all foisted off in the entertainment world as something brand new, a breakaway from the stifling rules of Hollywood, from big bucks, etc. That it was hardly new was conveniently tucked under the rug in the constant requisite of "newness" in the news. That Cassevettes had done Shadows in the late 1950s, 40 years earlier, and that a long list of others had likewise done so, from early French New Wavers to U.S. indies (including myself) for many decades was all washed aside. Dogme 95 was hot, hip, new, and, if history said otherwise, in an industry with the memory of a flea, who the hell cared? The basic thing was that this Dogme stuff sold and got attention. Along the way, the shibboleth that video looked like crap got crushed as the audiences seemed not to give a damn if some zaggies were evident, or other electronic artifacts marred the image. Besides, Lars and Co. (along with others) had figured out some snappy transfer tricks to gloss over the alleged video defects. Bottom line was the bottom line: this made money. A few years later came The Blair Witch Project, which--although not even done on DV, but in lowly Hi8--busted fiscal records, cleverly used the Net as a propaganda organ, and put to rest any industry quibbles about the quality of video images. The only quality the industry cares about, push comes to shove, is the color green. Blair Witch has pulled in more than $200,000,000 worldwide, not bad for a lousy film shot for well under $100,000, and certainly something to perk up ears in Los Angeles.
So what was Dogme 95 and its fall-out in terms of alleged big changes in the movie-making equation, and the aesthetics that attended it, all thanks--presumably--to the new wonders of DV? The basic ground rules were a bit simple and obvious. DV cameras weigh a few pounds. They have neat electronic stabilizers, good lenses, and, unlike earlier video, they can shoot in just about any light. So the rules were handheld and no lights. Because DV tape is very cheap, especially in comparison to its celluloid equivalent, it lends itself to shooting a lot--with multiple cameras, many takes, and wild, out-of- control improvising. You can erase it and use it again, which offers further enticement for letting things roll and taking a chance. Otherwise, though, Dogme 95 and its spawn really just treated DV like a poor man's film--financially liberating, letting you go out on a narrative limb, but not much more. Dogme 95's interest in DV, per se, as a new medium, seems betrayed by the fiddling done in the transfer-to-film process, and the adoption of what are essentially film-oriented thinking and procedures.
Out in the more developed areas of the DV world, you can find numerous products and services reflecting this same mentality: For some hefty bucks, you can buy XYZ software that will produce the film look, while numerous video-to-film outfits promise that magical film look with their proprietary bag of (expensive) tricks--all of which are really just used to gum up the crispness, tone down the contrast, and make the mathematical shift from 30 or 60 (or 25 or 50 in PALville) frames to the holy 24fps of film. The fact that this costly tango back to filmland has an ironic edge and betrays all that blather about the wonderful hip newness of things digital seems to fly by unnoticed. And, in truth, I suspect that the fiscal muscling isn't done by those folks who are interested in anything aesthetically new or risky, but by conservative stalwarts, who are looking firmly at the box office figures and the present mechanics of distribution, and who are busy figuring out how to co-opt a dangerously cheap new media and getting real nervous about the emergence of the Net as a distribution device that is making an end run around the majors.
This is an old story, repeated historically in the arts and media world again and again, in which "new" means aping the old norms for a bit. Just as photography went through a phase of soft-focus Romantic Victoriana until the painters, conceding photorealistic qualities to photography, shifted through impressionism, expressionism, and left--for the most part--"realism" to the lens, digital media now bends over backward trying to emulate film in all ways, showing a profound conservatism, which will soon look as silly as those early photographs that tried to be paintings.
Next time around, I'll jump in and start to talk about real DV qualities and their technical nature and aesthetic possibilities. In the meantime, you can keep up to date on the ersatz wonders of digital video as substitute celluloid in Variety, Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, or even elsewhere here at DV.com. But for a primer on The Real Deal, tune in next time when I'll try to run through the paces of getting to know what DV can be, other than a cheap rubber stamp of tired, old, film biz cliches.
Excerpted from: http://www.dv.com
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