In film theory, the discussions of what defines cinema classically revolve around the questions of either format or narrative. Is it film editing that makes cinema what it is, or the use of different focal lengths, the focus, or the frame? On the other hand, most viewers equate cinema with story-telling; so is the unique way that cinema can impart narrative the key to its identity? What most of these questions forget is that at heart, cinema is basically live action films. That is, cinema’s identity is constructed through photographic recordings of real events which took place in a real space. While a character in a film is fictional, the actor portraying the character nonetheless occupied that physical space. And while the images can be modified using light, filters, and lenses, the cinematic image is like a footprint in sand–it is a recording of reality. More than just that, it is the attempt to make art out of that footprint. With the advent of digital cinema, however, that very basis of cinema has to be redefined. It is now possible to generate photorealistic cinematic images using computer graphics while we as the viewers have no way of knowing whether it was actually filmed or not. While cinema evolved from animation, it soon strove to define itself in its early stages as an objective and untampered recording of reality. But as cinema becomes digital it is reverting to those origins. I would argue that digital cinema today is no longer an unmitigated recording of reality but instead a return to animation.
Some of cinema’s original names testify to the fact that, in its origin, it is simply the art of moving pictures. Early techniques of displaying moving images such as the Kinetoscope, the Cinematograph and many others essentially evolved from projection shows popular in the 18th century. In 1789 Paul Philidor created what may have been the first true “Phantasmagoria” show, a combination of séance parlor tricks and projection effects, which he toured across Berlin, Vienna and Paris. The most famous of the ghost showmen of the late 18th century was the Belgian inventor and physicist, Etienne-Gaspard Robert, more commonly known by his stage name Etienne Robertson. In 1797 Robertson took his show to Paris where he staged hauntings using lanterns, smoke and special sound effects in an abandoned crypt in Paris. Though quite varied, these proto-cinematic devices nonetheless shared a number of basic characteristics: firstly, they relied on hand drawn or hand painted images and secondly, they were animated by hand. Optical toys such as the thaumatrope–a plate with an image on either side and strings attached, which when twirled would superimpose the one image over the other–or the zoetrope, a rotating cylinder with single frames drawn in a loop which would become animated when viewed from a fixed perspective–were also hugely popular in the 19th century.
Then, in the 1890s, the automatic generation of images and their automatic projection were finally combined. The scientist and photographer Étienne-Jules Marey invented a “chronophotographic gun”–essentially the first portable film camera–which could capture sequential images at twelve frames per second. Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope was the first truly modern cinematic device, creating the illusion of movement by using a continuous loop of celluloid film frames over a light source with a rapid shutter. The British electrician and scientific instrument maker Robert W. Paul then pioneered the idea of displaying moving pictures for group audiences rather than individual viewers and invented the modern film projector, giving his first public showing in 1895. Meanwhile in France, the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière invented the Cinematograph, which was an all-round cinematic apparatus encompassing camera, developer, printer and projector. The Parisian Georges Méliès also began shooting and projecting films in 1896. He specialized in science-fiction and fantasy films, including the 1902 A Trip to the Moon, and created special effects techniques that remained fundamentally in use for most of the 20th century. Edwin S. Porter pioneered film editing in films like The Great Train Robbery of 1903, the first real Western. Porter was the first to argue that the basic unit of structure in a film is the shot, rather than the scene. It soon became clear that moving pictures were more than just a passing trend and as a result there was a huge boom in nickelodeons–the first real, permanent cinemas. By 1908 there were 10,000 nickelodeons in the United States alone.
As the technology continued to develop and become more stable, it distanced itself from its origins in animation. Animation became a sub-genre of film, an unwanted relation relegated to the task of entertaining children. 20th century animation became the heir to the 19th century techniques of moving images. While cinema aimed to erase the traces of its own production and simply (re)present reality, animation overtly admitted its status as artificial representation by not being photorealistic but rather using sparsely detailed animated characters in the foreground and a non-interactive, stationary background. Of course there are many examples of live action films which depict alternative and fictional realities. But even fantasy and science-fiction films like the original Star Wars trilogy are nonetheless part of this tradition of portraying reality. The images might not actually be filmed on location in the Death Star, but they are filmed in a studio. The cinematic images are testament to the fact that actors occupied a physical space-regardless of what that space is meant to represent. To alter the reality of the image in classical cinema therefore meant to actually alter reality-using studios, miniature sets, models and special effects like light and smoke.

But in the late eighties, Sony began marketing the concept of “electronic cinematography”, the digital recording of images and sound. One of the earliest developments of truly digital technology was digital sound, implemented in the early 1990s with the rise of the compact disc. At present there are three digital sound systems in use: Universal’s DTS; Sony’s SDDS; and Dolby 5.1 and Digital. While not the norm until about 2002, digital cameras are being used increasingly in anything from Hollywood blockbusters such as Star Wars: Episode III to independent art-house films like A Cock and Bull Story. Digital projection is only used in a handful of cinemas worldwide, as the conversion from normal to digital projection is very expensive. Digital nonlinear editing programmes, such as Apple’s FinalCut Pro, have become the standard and, like digital sound mastering, they allow images and sequences to be edited with far greater ease and with no loss of quality compared to earlier systems.

There are two forms of digital manipulation of images which are now used constantly, often without the viewer being aware. The first is image processing, in which the lighting and tint of a shot, as well as the removal of flaws, can be rearranged; the second is CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) where anything from characters interacting with real actors to composite landscapes are created. The first real CGI character was created by Pixar for the film Young Sherlock Holmes in 1985. CGI was not really considered photorealistic enough by the film industry and therefore rarely used until The Abyss won an Oscar for special effects in 1989. In 1991, Terminator 2 presented the T-1000 Terminator villain which was created using liquid metal and morphing effects that were fully integrated into live action sequences. Terminator 2 also won an Oscar for its effects. Especially in the early days of digital effects, George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) pioneered many of the effects now in general use, while his Pixar–later sold to Steve Jobs and now owned by Disney–has specialised in fully animated CGI films. Further milestones in CGI were in 1999 with Star Wars: Episode I which was the first film to feature a CGI character wearing fabric; The Matrix which introduced “bullet-time” and 360° virtual camera pans; and the fully animated CGI film Final Fantasy in 2001.
Effectively, these developments mean that at present practically every film released both in cinemas and for home viewing is a digital film. Every aspect of film-making, from the recording to the actual cinematic image and its projection has become digital. How does this affect the principles of filmmaking? First of all, rather than filming actual reality, it is now possible to generate any image using CGI. Secondly, when live action footage is filmed digitally or converted into a digital format it loses that unique relationship with reality. The computer–and ultimately the filmmaker–does not distinguish between images that are filmed and images that are created artificially. Cinema is no longer a footprint of reality. Thirdly, whereas special effects were previously part of the filming process, they are now a part of post-production and have almost become synonymous with editing. Where filmmakers would have to have countless retakes or wait for certain light levels, everything is now done using post-production software.

Ultimately this means that cinema is no longer a recording but rather a creative medium. Images are no longer recorded by light falling through a lens and reacting with raw film stock at 24 frames per second, they are created in a computer. There may or may not be certain elements which are still filmed using sets and actors, but even they will have been tampered with in post-production. However, this is not meant to be a nostalgic lament back to the old days of analogue cinema because at heart, the effects on the audience remain the same in digital cinema. The French film critic André Bazin describes the 1951 film Where No Vultures Fly, in which dramatic tension is created in a shot where a lioness is stalking a child. To him, it is “this single frame in which trickery is out of the question that gives it immediate and retroactive authenticity.” The dramatic effect on the viewer is so strong because of the awareness that a real lion occupied the same physical space as a child actor. But the identical effect is achieved in for example Jurassic Park, where the dinosaurs and actors only come together in a virtual space. This same relationship exists between classic Jackie Chan films, in which we know that he does his own stunts and are therefore impressed with the action scenes, and films like The Matrix, where we know that the stunts are physically impossible but as they nonetheless look believable we are just as impressed.

Two recent films perfectly illustrate digital cinema’s new identity, namely Richard Linklater’s Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. Both were filmed using digital cameras and then, in a process called digital rotoscoping, each frame of the shot footage was traced over, essentially turning it into an animated film. Waking Life follows a young man as he observes and participates in pseudo-philosophical discussions about the nature of dreams and reality, while A Scanner Darkly is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel. Set in the near future it is about a narcotics cop chasing a drug dealer–the twist being that due to drug use, they are in fact the same person with a spilt personality disorder. The quality of the plots may be debatable, but the key is that the nature of the images presented underline the fact that cinema today has returned to animation. While the paradoxical nature of the process of rotoscoping means that we as the viewers can still discern that part of the images were recorded, the nature of digital images however means that we can no longer differentiate between what was recorded and what was created. These two films represent the future of filmmaking.
Obviously, I am not claiming that all films in the future will look like A Scanner Darkly. For one thing, the process of creating each frame is extremely expensive–each minute of film takes about 500 hours to complete. However, these films overtly show the nature of the cinematic image at present. An image that is created rather than recorded. The digital revolution means that cinema has reverted to what it originally was intended to be: simply the art of moving images.