With the 3-d movement entering the mainstream cinema, one more era of cinema is coming to an end. Cinema has always been the ultimate ground for implementing the latest advancements in sound and visual technologies. Generically speaking, cinema is all about conveying ideas- the storyline. The technology involved is secondary. Good cinema embeds the available technology to narrate an idea. It is the story that ultimately matters.
But on a very individual level, haven’t color films almost completely eliminated the black and white style of film making? There are many viewers who today have a restricted set of films to watch from, if he’s b/w film fan. Same tragedy follows with silent films as well. Why is it so that the emergence of one technology kills the other, thereby restricting the viewers to adapt to it? It is a question that exists in all fields. History is evidence that in the middle of color and digital era, black and white films like Schindler’s List, Raging Bull and Dr. Strangelove have been fresh showers of the lost technology.
One more thing; I don’t see it very much fair to do the same things with softwares and animations that once were a matter of skills- somehow don’t feel very comfortable about it. The jump cuts implemented in Goddard’s Breathless define an era- a cinematic triumph. There are many such skills, executed and often discovered by the greatest of cinematographers, directors or editors of their times. Today, or some years later, these things will be automated. On one side it’s reducing the complexity, but on the other, it is depriving the two elementary items a director loves- a camera and a reel. He’ll have to use a futuristic device (say XYZ) that looks like a camera but is no more than a simulator. This worries me.