Digital Film Making: Not Just Another Film Stock
Bill Buxton
Buxton Design
Date: Friday, October 14,
2005
Place: Engineering 2 Pavlion
Time: 2:00 pm — 3:00 pm (Refreshments
served at 1:30 pm)
Abstract:
This talk reexamines the potential role of digital in filmmaking.... Ultimately,
the real benefit of digital is to expand the opportunities of those who
have stories to tell. Digital can have a dramatic effect on their ability
to get them on screen in a manner that is faithful to their vision, at
a quality that is worthy of exposition, and within a budget that they
can afford. Secondarily, for those from the technology and business side,
what I have to say will have significant impact on moving digital beyond
the stagnant VFX and animation ghetto, and into the mainstream of film
making.
Digital has the promise to restore creative control to the director and
the director of photography, and reign it in from post-production, where
it has migrated due to the previous generations of technology.
Despite protests to the contrary, filmmaking has always been, and always
will be, a technological medium. Choosing a lens, for example, is a technical
decision, as is choosing a film stock. These decisions have a significant
impact on how the story is told. So is it with digital. The technology
is part of the larger ecology of cinema. By a better understanding of
this ecology, we can help navigate our way out of the limitations of the
current marketplace. And have fun in the process.
BILL BUXTON, Principal of Buxton Design, has a 30 year
involvement in research and the design of technologies for creative endeavor,
including music, film and industrial design. He was a researcher at Xerox
PARC, a professor at the University of Toronto, and Chief Scientist of
Alias Research and SGI Inc. During the fall of 2004 he was a lecturer
at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and in the spring of 2005, he
was a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research, Cambridge England.
For more information, visit http://www.billbuxton.com
Host: Professor Curtis Roads, Media Arts & Technology
Co-sponsors: Computer Science
Colloquium and Media Arts & Technology Digital Arts Lecture Series
