Ladies and gentleman, whether you are aware of it or not, we are in a new era of filmmaking. In an industry and art form where the most significant advance in its first hundred years was the addition of sound, the dawn of the proliferation of digital filmmaking into the mainstream is a similarly earthshaking evolution. Kerry Conran's Sky Captain and The World Of Tommorow is a signpost of this new era, being the first film shot entirely in front of a blue screen. Is this capability a positive or a negative influence for both the artistic and commercial viability of today and tommorow's American cinema?

Digital Cinema, in a very generic sense and for the purposes of this article, can include two clear pools of evolution. On the one hand it can mean the marketplace proliferation and availability of high-quality affordable digital video cameras, advanced editing suites like Avid and Final Cut Pro and digital distribution channels evergrowing on the internet; on the other it is the highly advanced (and more expensive) digital animation/CGI graphics that a select few filmmakers have access to create a new world (like the one created by Conran) that may not necessarily exist in our real one. The immediate pros of both of these pools is the increased access they afford their masters. The availability of digital cameras and editing software literally give the access of opportunity to thousands of amateur filmmakers to tell their stories where none had existed before. The capabilities of CGI mean more advanced filmmakers have greater access to their own imaginations and unleashing whatever stew it has cooked up; boundaries heretofore limited by location/set/early special fx have been pushed and now, thanks to the likes of Sky Captain, seemingly eliminated. Indeed, the advances of Digital Cinema overall seem to have divided the film world into two camps: those "purists" who hold onto celluloid as a sacred living, breathing parchment and those who are welcoming its evolution into bits and bytes.

So is this movement, this newfound access a good thing for artist and audience? Like every new technology there are inherent trade-offs. On one hand there has been an explosion in amateur filmmaking; festivals filled with the short films made on the cheap spring up like Barbara Streisand comeback tours. One could argue, however, that it is not a good thing for any Tom, Dick, Harry or Akbar to be able to tell their stories (or write reviews on their own blog...ouch, me!) much like you don't need yet another Starbucks to open across the street from the one already open right next door to you. But as long as talent, hard-work and luck cause the cream to rise from an ever-growing crop then it should be no issue. A problem does arise, however, when young directors rely on this technology and never learn the how to use real film. While films shot on DV are creeping into the mainstream (Blair Witch, 28 Days Later, Pieces Of April) the overall quality of the look and feel of the films suffer when compared to traditional film; today's digital cameras can still not match the amount of color and contrast you can achieve the "old" way. It could, nevertheless, be argued that the lower-fidelity image in those films mentioned above evoked a certain mood the respective directors were shooting for. When digital cameras can one day completely mimic the image a 35mm motion picture camera can create, eliminating the large expense of film purchasing, processing, etc., well then, folks, the use of film may die out with the surviving members of this generation of purists who wrap themselves in it today; much in the way the days of flatbeds, miles of footage and scissors have given over to a flickering screen and a mouse click in editing universe. Shooting on film in that possible future will become something an auteur would do to be "retro," to make a film like his ancient forbearers. Sad, but probably eventual.