Homework

What significance does the continuing development of digital media technology have for media institutions and audiences? You should focus on FILM but you may make reference to other media such as Music, Newspapers, Radio, Magazines or Video games.

The advancing technology of digital recorders and cameras is changing the film making process and saving time and money. Now high tech digital video cameras are available the quality and ease of film making is being improved. Although the quality of films made with film are better in the long term digital films maintain their high quality for longer due to their wear of the film real when they are shown repeatedly in the cinema. 
Digital film making also makes it easier during the editing process. With films made on film it requires physically cutting the tape and putting it back together to get the required affect. With digital recordings the editing process is much simpler and has many different transitions and effects easily and readily available. Digital recording is also much cheaper than buying film rolls. 

With the use of CGI they are able to make films such as Shrek made in 2001 made by DreamWorks, United International Pictures and Argentina Video home. in this film instead of using actors they create animations to be in the film as the characters are not people they are ogres. These films can be made to a very high quality due to the high standard of this technology. CGI characters can be made so detailed that they even look life like as people or as animals. This film had a budget of $60,000,000 and made $267,652,016. 

Green screens allow the actors to be located to other places or scenes. They will be filmed in a studio in front of a plain green screen and then the background is changed so that they look like they are somewhere else. Green screens are often used when characters are flying or when they are somewhere that it would be impossible to be in real life. Lord of the rings a film produced by New Line Cinema and WingNut films is an example of a film that used green screens to create a locations and even to add CGI characters to the film to interact with the actors. This film had a budget of $93,000,000 and made $36,116,967. 

The advance in technology is especially popular with distribution stage of film making. It is a lot easier and cheaper to copy digital files in order to distribute them to cinemas rather than actually copying the rolls of tape.

The film audiences are also being advantaged by the advance in technology. One reason for this is the advance in blue ray from DVD’s and DVD’s advancing from videos. This gives the audience easy access to the films and allows them to watch at a high quality. Video on demand is also available on many different sites and forms of technology such as the internet, tablets and even on TV’s making it very easy and cheap to watch the newest films in the comfort of their own home. Technological convergence's allow the audience to consume the film on all different types of technology such as phones, tablets and on youtube making it easier. They can also find any trailer and watch it on demand creating the opportunity for free advertisement for the distribution company of the film. Home exhibition on video on demand and youtube is becoming one of the more common exhibitors of films.

Technology also allows 360 degree marketing to be easier as there are many more digital portals that they can advertise on for example social media sites, you tube, tablets and still televisions there are even electronic billboards meaning that the institution can surround the audience with advertising to the point that they feel they have to see the film or they are missing out.

There are also disadvantages of new technology for the production and distribution companies. For example with digitally recorded films piracy is made a lot easier than just going to the cinema and recording the film that would have low quality results anyway. They just get hold of one digital copy and then they can copy it on a huge scale losing the companies a lot of money. In order to prevent this they have a digital release date around the  world so that there is less need for piracy to happen as the film is available for everyone to see at the cinema at the same time.

There are now TV’s available with very large HD and 3D films meaning that they can consume the whole cinema experience at home. These however are very expensive and it is unlikely that many people actually own them. This means that the cinemas are once again offering some that is not cheap to have at home encouraging people to go to the cinema and therefore buying popcorn and drinks etc and spending money. IMAX is a cinema with an even bigger screen than cinema and even clearer and more realistic 3D therefore offering the audience an even more exciting experience and therefor making more money. 

Due to the new technology IMAX is so clear that the audience would try and reach out and grab things that are not actually there. There are now IMAX cinemas located all around the world, with quite a few of them in London. IMAX also affects the production of film as the film has to be filmed on IMAX film to be shown in IMAX, which is larger than normal film and more expensive. IMAX screens are 20m high and 26m wide compared to the average cinema screen which is 9m high and 21m wide. 

A disadvantages for the exhibitors of using digital technology is that in order to exhibit digital films the old equipment they have for showing the movies that are on a film is no longer any good meaning they need to buy new expensive equipment to show digital films.

Recently they have even advanced to 4D cinema's where the audience is actually physically affected by the film. For example the seats move, real bubbles will come from around the screen, they will let out smells, the audience may get sprayed with water or blown with air all in relevance to the film allowing them to feel as if they are actually in the film.