Digital Cinema and the loss of control leads to the death of the auteur

The title of my blog states it all really. But the term digital cinema is confusing at that. So let me just state what i mean about digital cinema.

What i mean is a film that has been technologically rendered through digital technology's to produce a form of hyper realism / photo realism or as a new term that i have first come across in the lecture called 'Verisimilitude'.

So now that i have somewhat defined what i mean about digital cinema lets got on with an argument. The title states Digital Cinema and the loss of control leads to the death of the auteur and this is my argument.

In my own humble opinion i feel that this new form of digital cinema has created a web like structure in film making. The directors vision is somewhat hampered with a need for high end special effects. No longer does the director take full control with his/her vision but perhaps leading digital aesthetic companies take away some of this glorified vision of production.

With Digital Cinema i feel that the director's are somewhat stigmatised in control. Now it is up to big budget production companies to create this vision. The vision of the director is manipulated and constructed highly through the vision of technology. Not the vision of the directors mind. The web like structure starts in the centre where the director becomes the central controlling point of the film. But by the beginning and end of production other spiders form and make the spider web bigger and bigger, increasing in diameter. Until. Well. The director loses control of the production itself. And all is well because the special effects and the speaking to blue screens or a non existent characters is all that is needed. What ever happened to the purist form of vision. What ever happened to using a break through piece of camera technology to create a large distorted world of wide angles and a High depth of field (Citizen Kane by Wells).

Instead we have mass studio time on computer technology to perfect digital cinema. There is rather no creative inner vision from the director anymore. This vision is played out through sci fi like conventions. Where the most hyper realist style of filmier extravaganza is needed in order to create a pop.

This leads to the death of the Auteur. No longer do we have Auteur's. They have been pulled apart by post production processing of the digital kind. There is no art or form of expressionism in the Digital film world.

The only form of expressionism through art is how realistic you can make a scene. Not perhaps how it is shot or why it is shot ( For example Vigil by Vincent Ward). Rather its just made to look as real as possible to fool the audience. This is not the Auteur theory. Rather it has been discarded in the past. The Auteur is now a box with a microchip inside of it.

That is the vision of the 21st century.

There is no strong vision. Use of environment or inner psychological development and subtle cues to suggest to a mode of audience the 'thinking' audience has been lost. Instead it is how hyper realistic a production studio can make a scene in order for a somewhat glorified take on special effects or getting that golden globe or academy award. What ever happened to the inner workings of an Auteur.

It is lost. Lost in construction. Lost in perfection of realism. Lost in the future. Digital cinema has ripped apart the very essence of expressionistic films. Auteur's are long forgotten as production companies fester in delight.

The End.