What's the next step in Cable Game technology? OK, so that's not a question asked very often, but it should be. Because the whole history of technology shows that people always want more. And news is not exempt, nor should it be.
So television--or Convergence-vision, after TV and the Net become one--will end up giving people what they want.
Indeed, The Cable Gamer is reading a fascinating book, Shivers Down Your Spine: Cinema, Museums, & the Immersive View, by Alison Griffiths, an associate professor at Baruch College in NYC. Professors are not known for writing accessible books about any topic, and there's some jargon in Shivers (perhaps the academic author still needs to get tenure), but for the most part, Griffiths tells a fascinating tale and tells it well.
She takes us back to the Middle Ages, and their cathedrals. We think of Notre Dame, Chartres, and all the rest of those Gothic structures as great monuments of past faith, and they are--even if they seem to be more like tourist attractions today.
But as Griffiths points out, in their time, cathedrals were the shows, and the showcases, of the age. That is, they were designed, at least in part, to be both impressive and persuasive. That's what all the stained glass, and statues, and incense, and music were for--not to mention the grand architecture.
As Griffiths puts it:
Cathedrals were intrinsically multimedia, multisensory spaces (the apotheosis of the sensorially rich pilgrimage), if we can appropriate a twentieth-century concept to describe a thirteenth-century edifice. The mixed media forms on display in the cathedral were the collective effort of artisans and craftsmen...Gothic artists disclosed a a world of incredible intensity and color, constructing richly embellished three-dimensional objects into which people could enter psychologically.
With all due respect to God--because it was He, after all, who endowed us with the basic skills that makes anything possible--all these production elements sound like showbiz to me! And as Griffith tells us, cathedrals were very much a showcase for the show:
The architecture and visual logic of the interior design formed the the perfect backdrop for rituals involving the stimulation of aural, haptic [touch], olfactory, and oral senses. Spectators experienced their faith not only iconographically but corporeally, since attending the liturgy and receiving the communion in a Caholic Mass was, and still is, an elaborately detailed theatrical performance.
Once again, some might take offense at the equation between faith and theater, but every religion uses the techniques of communication to propagate and perpetuate the faith. What was an eye-opener to TCG was the degree to which the medievals used the then-state-of-the-art technology.
They presented their religious rituals--not just the Mass, but also Passion Plays and other feasts and festivals--inside grand cathedrals designed to "shock and awe." And they went further: They used stage tricks, such as fake blood spurting out of actors, to recreate, for example, Christ's death on the cross. As Griffith adds, the bloodier the better, because we remember vivid better. And as she noted, that's a lesson that was well remembered in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."
Since then, the secular has muscled out the sacred; most entertainment is aimed at making a buck, not saving souls. And so while we still have churches and church-pageants, obviously, pop culture and the profit motive are the overwhelming drivers.
Yet the basic injunction--make the show powerfully persuasive--always applies to all forms of show biz. And that means using the latest and greatest techniques. Griffiths carries her tale from churches to dioramas to planetariums, but in each case, the rule is the same: If you want butts in seats, if you want eyeballs glued to the screen, you gotta send shivers down their spine.
It's a never-ending story--the quest for the best. In movies, for example, one can think of all the techno-evolutions of cinema: from the first nickelodeons to full-length dramas, then to sound, then to color, 70 mm, and so on. And then, fitfully, into 3-D and Imax. Techno-evolution is not steady; it starts and stops. But it never reverses course.
And so to today--actually Thursday, in Variety, under the headline, "Studios wary of big budget auteurs/ 'Avatar,' 'Benjamin,' 'Wild Things' are gambles," Anne Thompson provides us with a look into the future of the media, not just movies.
Her story is about three big-budget films using cutting edge technology. The most interesting of the trio seems to be the long-awaited James Cameron movie, "Avatar."
Here's some Variety dope:
Fox execs are sweating as Cameron again pushes the frontiers of f/x and motion picture technology with the CG/motion-capture/live-action 3-D "Avatar." The filmmaker worked on advance R&D for six years -- incredibly, studio execs say they plowed only $10 million into that, gambling that Cameron's new process would even work.
The director, working with VFX whiz Rob Legato, showed the studio advance pre-viz footage demonstrating how high-def video cameras could track actors moving inside a virtual CG set. Initially budgeted at $200 million, the sci-fi epic was pushed back from May to December 2009 to give the director more time to combine in the computer all necessary elements: 3-D motion-capture data of the actors on bare sets, CG environments, and final animation of the human avatars (Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver) and alien characters (Teresa Saldana, CCH Pounder). The photo-real digital film is 20% live-action with humans shot on location and 80% live-action mixed with CG elements. "It's a CG film with live-action in it," Legato says.
Sources close to the studio admit there was a time when it was terrified that Cameron's process wouldn't work. Execs relaxed a tad when they got to see finished footage. Giving Cameron and Weta Digital in New Zealand (where substantial rebates make everything cheaper) extra post-production time made sense.
TCG remembers, long ago, when everyone pooh-poohed Cameron's "Titanic"--which, of course, proved to be the greatest box-office hit of all time. But Cameron's true love has always been sci-fi ("Terminator," "The Abyss"), and the technology to go with it (he has always been playing around with filming documentaries under sea, and in space). And so now, "Avatar," which should prove to be another blockbuster. Why? Because people always want to see something new. Show 'em something they haven't seen before, and they will reward you for it.
As Variety's Thompson says of Cameron, "His goal is to change motion pictures as we know them. Fox could score another global commercial blockbuster."
And so now television. Just in the last few years, many networks and channels have shifted over to HD. And CNN paid for a Sky-Cam to cover Barack Obama's speech in Denver.
That's all very nice, but audiences will be soon be saying, "What's next?" That is, the same never-tiring force of technology will force television to make better screens, show better effects, add dimensionality--and who knows what else.
As Griffiths might put it, it's only a matter of time before TV evolves to stimulate the "aural, haptic, olfactory, and oral senses."
TCG believes that this techno-inevitability will apply not just to televised entertainment, but also to TV news. And why shouldn't it? What's more compelling than reality? If there's news from near or far, why not present to TV viewers--and, of course, web-surfers--in the most compelling way possible?
If history is any guide, some media players will resist this techno-inevitability. Some will be smug and complacent, saying, "What we're doing now is good enough."
But others will be smart enough to see that the future never stops. There's always more to do, because there's always more that people want.
Those visionaries will be the big winners.
