Last summer, a documentary film titled PressPausePlay premiered in film festivals country-wide which had many film critics talking with such praise centering around the cautionary topic of the film. This film contains interviews with some of the most influential artists and creators of our digital society. The film focused on the digital revolution of the last decade of our entertainment media, and speculated around the question of what is true art in this era, and does the advancement of technology have any blame for the unlimited range of what our society considers as art today? PressPausePlay addresses this question by asking some of today's top entertainment business leaders and artists.
Before there was all this new technology, many considered it a challenge to become an artist in the world of entertainment. People had to work really hard to get their name out there to promote their talent whether it was singing, dancing, painting, photography, film-making, music-recording, and etc; the point is before technology took over, people did everything on their own strength. Individuals worked extremely hard to make it in the entertainment industry, It was never an easy route to become an artist. Fast-forward, now with the fast-paced level of advanced technology, PressPausePlay is conveying the idea that in today's digital age it has become so easy for basically anybody to become an artist and that individual does not even have to have real talent because technology can do all the work for us. Nowadays, technology has made it so accessible for anyone to sort of cheat their way into the entertainment industry. Let's face it, most of these music artists we see are not really talented at all, technology makes them appear talented by the click of a button, just as photoshop can make a model look flawless on a magazine cover.
In the above clip, emmy nominated and golden-globe winning film-maker, Lena Dunham talks about how this issue affects the film-making industry. She starts off by stating that it use to be that a successful film-maker would go to film school, learn the material, graduate and start making short-films for film festivals and if the film was a hit, it would be considered to become a major film by a possible studio deal, and that was the dream route for every film-maker in the business, but not anymore; now it is more of a financial gamble than a creative art process. Studio companies are more concern about the box office numbers than the actual art of the film, and this could all be due to the advancement of technology as questioned by the documentary. One would ask what does any of this have to do with a film being produced? Think about it for a minute, technology has allowed our society to become so accessible to our entertainment that it has become very hard for companies to produce any profit to keep businesses going. For example, believe it or not, most people do not even attend the movie theaters that much anymore because movies can now be seen on technological creations such as a cellular device, IPAD, online internet, whether its on youtube, hulu and other online sites that have such easy access through technology. This is the same issue for musicians; people hardly purchase albums anymore because music has become so easily accessible to download and share which effects the entertainment industry of making a profit that then becomes very dangerous to many of these executive companies.
The bottom-line is that our digital culture has shifted our society so much that it has become a fearing future for the entertainment industry of recognizing real art. Technology has made our society believe that we do not have to work hard for anything because we can depend on technology doing everything for us, but what happens when technology breaks, then what does society depend on? We must realize that no matter what, technology provides no rewind button for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment