Recent Predictions and Developments

The End of Film?

     Cinematographer John Seale, who won the Oscar for The English Patient, has predicted that "films" will no longer be shot or exhibited on celluloid within a few years. "The economics of Hollywood will demand it," he told today's (Thursday) Sydney Morning Herald. He pointed out that the time involved in processing films will be one of the reasons for the conversion to digital media. "Producers just want to shoot their films, get them out, distribute them, and start making money on them as quickly as possible," he said. Another reason, he added, is that "film isn't that reliable." He observed that virtually every movie encounters problems in the lab or is damaged in handling outside the lab. Seale's comments, the SMH article noted, appeared to echo findings of a recent study for the Australian Film Commission which concluded that "film is beginning to enter the twilight zone of history." (From Studio Briefing, 9/11/97.)

     Disney announced Wednesday (8/6/97) that it plans to build a chain of some 20-30 electronic game arcades that will easily dwarf those already constructed or planned by Sega, DreamWorks and Universal. It said it will open the first 100,000-square-foot DisneyQuest in Orlando next summer and a second in Chicago in 1999. Today's (Thursday) Wall Street Journal quoted Disney Regional Entertainment president Art Levitt as saying that the goal was to create a miniature version of the Disney theme-park experience. The arcades will reportedly include "ride films" based on Disney characters. (from Studio Briefing, 8/7/97.)

     Toshiba on the Digital Video Disk (DVD) player: "We're proud to have started a revolution that will help bring Hollywood and Silicon Valley together. But it's only just begun. Get ready for the ride of your life. Since the first silent celluloid hero rode a flickering beam of light through a darkened theater, the medium has been evolving to this." (From an advertisement appearing in the Wall Street Journal, September 16, 1996, p. R6.)

     "If you go back in history to when they first added the soundtrack to the film, the movies had a new name for a brief period. They were called Talkies. Now we've added interactivity, an entirely new medium for cinematic expression. That's why they are called Thinkies." - Lee Morgenroth, quoted in Frank Beachum's essay Movies of the Future: Storytelling with Computers.

     "I find it entirely plausible to think that someday a motion picture studio might acquire a fast food chain or vice-versa. " - David Donnelly, 4/97.

Past Predictions

     "I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbook." - Thomas Edison, 1922.

     "To doubt that stereoscopic cinema has its tomorrow is as naive as doubting whether there will be tomorrows at all." - S.M. Eisenstein. Quoted in About Stereoscopic Cinema, The Penguin Film Review (Ch. 8), Penguin Books (London 1949.)

The following forecasts are from the April 1974 issue of the American Cinematographer:

     "I believe strongly... that within a decade motion pictures, in order to exist against the onslaught of wall-sized projection television and rental movie cassettes, will all be in 3 dimensions. "  - Arch Oboler, Writer-producer-director of "Bwana Devil" (the firsts major American 3-D motion picture.)

     "If 3-D lasts, it will survive as a medium of its own, not as a add-on to a typical motion picture." - Petro Valhos, Chief Scientist, The Motion Picture and Television Research Center of the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers Inc.

     "By 1980 holography will solve the problem of three dimensional movies-the problems of three dimensional projection. It will be possible to produce a hologram screen which will be visible only in certain viewing zones for the left eye, and in other zones for the right eye." - Brian J. Thompson, Professor of Optics, University of Rochester (1971). Quoted in Technology Forecast for 1980 by Ernst Weber (NY 1971.)

     "By the beginning of the 21st century the movie theater will become a more dramatic, exciting and diverse place. In addition to extremely high quality and the introduction of such techniques as holography, simulation is an important new factor. The extension of a Disney concept, the human looking robot, will provide entertainment thrills such as the "all star simulated symphony". A resurgence of Hollywood will occur under the pressure of high resolution techniques. There will be more direct stimulation of the sensorium, but the themes will remain the same - thrills, violence, love stories, westerns, etc." - Arthur C. Clark, 1990. Quoted in What Futurists Believe by Joseph Coatis (MD 1990.)

     "There's not much question that high-definition television will have an impact on the commercial theater. Instead of seeing an image projected from film, you may very well have an image bounced off a satellite and then projected in the theater. It's very much in the realm of possibility. And if you can do this in a theater, you can also do it at home. I wouldn't want to make any commitment that the conventional theatrically released film will continue long into the next century." - Paul Spehr, Library of Congress, from 29 on 2000, Media Studies Journal, Fall 1991, p. 166.