28.6.07

The 305



300 mockumentary by dholecheck. The humor seems very office-ish. Refreshing to see a well done and ridiculous spoof of the CGI blood fest.

21.6.07

Four Legged Friends and Digital Techne



What do we lose in the temporal journey through different forms of techne? Even if we don't technically lose them thanks to non-synchronous production, how does our experience change? How does our abilitiy to acquire capital change?

Maybe they seem like too broad, too general questions, but sometimes it is fun to be romantic about writing with a pen on paper, hand churning blueberry ice cream or threading slick film through gates in a movie projector.

In some ways the argument against digital projection seems similar to many arguments against more extensively mechanized production. As a projectionist I wouldn't be able to feel the pride of completing a specialized task with my hands. I will be more removed from the final product because I put in less of my knowledge and labor into its completion. As the complexity decreases I will become less valuable as a worker. The shelf life on part of my current skill set sucks.

The counter arguments, in many ways, seem similar as well. I will have less work. Ideally less work would also allow for more leisure. Digital projection would save the theatre the costs of shipping heavy reels of film.

Until today it seemed there was more weight on the side of keeping the old technology. We already have it. It seems wasteful to upgrade, and the nostalgic factor is tempting sometimes. It's nice, in a way, to watch a movie on film. Quaint?

Today, wiki and a recipe for cantalope sorbet in the Ingles coupon page informed me that film, from Kodak's to Carmike's, is all made with gelatin. According to Peta's site, there isn't a substitute. Tomorrow a random sequence of events could conspire to inform me that digital projectors enslave nations, but today it is nice to have a change of mind.