Digital Video and 'e-cinema'

Abstract

NEW HORIZONS: DIGITAL VIDEO AND 'E-CINEMA' When digital video (DV) was introduced to the consumer market in 1994, it would have been difficult to visualise it as a medium predestined to cast a shadow over the future of filmmaking. Vulcanised on the advances in digital technology, DV would not only proselytise a slew of economical and mechanical gambits to its superiorly endowed counterpart, but also attempt to wrestle power and centrality from it. And now, more than half a decade on, filmmakers around the globe are either basking in DV's therapeutic warmth or shunning its unsavoury heat. In contemporary Singapore, where the omnipresent label 'film industry' is a categorical misnomer, and where the financial realities of using film constitute a perennial cul-de-sac, DV has unsurprisingly been embraced as the alchemic alternative. Earlier in March, the Substation (a non-profit centre for the arts) organised a groundbreaking seminar on the business...