VIDEO VERSIONS
Video release became more than another window for a film; it also gave filmmakers a chance to alter the film. Music could be added, scenes could be trimmed, and dialogue could be rerecorded. Some films were released in longer “director’s cuts.” When Disney’s Aladdin was criticized by Arab Americans for stereotyped characters and dialogue, the song lyrics were changed for the video release. Joe Dante used the video venue to reshape a gag in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). The theatrical release included a scene in which it appears that the movie we’re watching is breaking down in the projector. Since that gag did not work on video, Dante reshot the scene to make it seem that the viewer’s VCR is mangling the movie.
GEORGE LUCAS: IS FILM DEAD?
George Lucas led the digital revolution. His Lucasfilm computer division innovated digital hardware for editing picture and sound, an effort followed by Avid and other firms. Lucas also established the THX standard, which certified superior digital theater sound. His Industrial Light & Magic was at the forefront of computer-generated visuals, working on almost every major special-effects film of the 1990s.
Characteristically, Lucas was eager to screen Star Wars: Part I: The Phantom Menace digitally. More radically, he shot part 2 of his saga wholly on Sony high-definition video: sets existed only in the software, and actors performed individually before bluescreen, to be pasted into the same shot together. Lucas was even able to erase unwanted expressions and eyeblinks. He envisioned digital tools as allowing more people to take up filmmaking. “It’s going to be more like novels or plays: if you have the talent, you can express yourself” (quoted in Benjamin Bergery, “Digital Cinema, By George,” American Cinematographer 82, no. 9 [September
2001]: 73).
Did this mean that film was dead? Lucas compared the shift from photographic to digital cinema to the shift from black-and-white to color cinema. The new medium offered different creative options, not a cancellation of what went before. “I still love black-and-white movies. I don’t believe silent movies are dead, either—any more than the pencil is dead” (ibid.: 74). Interestingly, Lucas did not write the Star Wars scripts on a computer but on yellow legal pads, in longhand.
REFERENCES
1. Stephen Prince, A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989. Vol. 10: History of the American Cinema (New York: Scribners, 2000), p. 84.
2. Bill Mechanic, quoted in Don Groves, “Global Vid-iots’ Delight,” Variety (15-21 April, 1996): 43.
3. Quoted in Justin Wyatt, High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), p. 13.
4. Michael D. Eisner, with Tony Schwartz, Work in Progress (New York: Random House 1 998), pp. 100-101.
5. Quoted in Mark Litwak, Reel Power: The Struggle for Influence and Success in the New Hollywood (New York: William Morrow, 1986), p. 73.
6. Quoted in Bruce Handy, “101 Movie Tie-Ins,” Time (2 December 1996): 68.
7. Peter Bart, “By George, They’ve Got It... Wrong,” Variety (23-29 July, 2001): 4.
8. Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing (Los Angeles: Silman-James, 1995), 88.
9. Spike Lee, with Lisa Jones, Do The Right Thing (New York: Fireside, 1989), p. 33.
10. Quoted by Lory Smith, Party in a Box: The Story of the Sundance Film Festival (Salt Lake City: Gibbs-Smith, 1999), p. 103.
11. Quoted in Paul Cullum, “Deconstructing De Luca,” Fade In 6, no. 2 (2000): 44.
12. Quoted in Emanuel Levy, Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film (New York: New York University Press, 1999), p. 206.
13. Quoted in John Pierson, Spike, Mike, Slackers, & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema (New York: Hyperion, 1995), p. 31.
14. James Schamus, personal interview, 26 February 1998.
FURTHER READING
Andrew, Geoff. Stranger Than Paradise: Maverick FilmMakers in Recent American Cinema. London: Prion, 1998.
Bordwell, David. “Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film.” Film Quarterly 55.3 (Spring 2002): 16-28.
Compaine, Benjamin M., and Douglas Gomery, Who Owns the Media? Competition and Concentration in Mass Media Industry. 3rd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2000.
Croteau, David, and William Hoynes. The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2001.
Kent, Nicolas. Naked Hollywood: Money and Power in the Movies Today. New York: St. Martin’s, 1991.
Lewis, Jon, ed. The New American Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.
Litman, Barry. The Motion Picture Mega-Industry. Nee-ham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1998.
Schatz, Thomas. “The New Hollywood.” In Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins, eds., Film Theory Goes to the Movies (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 8-36.
Thompson, Kristin. Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Wasko, Janet. Hollywood in the Information Age: Beyond the Silver Screen. Cambridge: Polity, 1 994.
Wasser, Frederick. Veni, Vidi, Video: The Hollywood Engine and the VCR. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.
World History
