Saturday 3 March 2012

Videography – film or digital

Here is a film demonstrating a comparison between analogue and digital footage.


The video is clearly very biased towards film as the better 'more beautiful' medium. It brings up the interesting point, that digital can easily be edited and offers a simple means of adding effects or filters. However, in this case they aren't done for any desired result other than for showing a sample of what can be produced digitally. This highlights how easily amateurs are able to create videos of their own, through the use of rather childish effects. This undermines digital film by seemingly saying 'look at some the cool shit we can do...' through chucking on a variety of absurd and random effects. In turn it highlights the questionable truth in film, showing how footage can be altered to give or convey a desired meaning. The poor, heavy overlay of music for the digital footage immediately unsettles the viewer causing them to further dislike the already bewildering array of digital styles. Compared to the soothing music played over a selection of calming analogue shots of nature. Already the editor is manipulating the viewer to conform to their view of film over digital.

I myself am not against film as a medium but see this video as a prime example of the 'honesty' of any type of video. The editor has chosen or created particular footage to get across their opinion, through an unfair and rather absurd comparison. Digital clearly does provide the possibility to further alter the truth of recordings, by the ease at which they can be edited. Most people nowadays own or have access to software to apply effects and edit footage to their liking, ruining it's original documentation to their own version of the 'truth'. It could be as simple as modifying the colour or the cuts between certain clips, that convey the narrative in a different way to how it was when initially recorded.

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