# The Digital age of Cinema



## Guest (Feb 9, 2013)

I've bought a new Loewe television set - a widescreen set with excellent sound. I've had it about a month. Very recently, now that we have Digital HD-TV, I've noticed something strange has happened. Though I very much enjoy vintage films, and am especially glad to see these "restored, I notice they have a kind of "faux" 3-D appearance. Today I watched a cheesy old movie, "Death Drums Along the River" - a British film from the 1950's. To my horror it came across as digitally isolated characters and props in a 'flat', one-dimensional backdrop. It reminded me of the old days of colour television (I worked in TV) when we used 'chroma key' to put a character into a false background. Often a silvery halo would skirt the characters so you could instantly recognize the 'chroma key' formula and establish the fake backdrop.

I find it morally reprehensible that old films are being 'remastered' digitally and 'doctored' for a new effect. The flat backgrounds might just as well have been achieved through the ancient 'back-projection' at the time they were made. I wonder why film-makers would have gone to the trouble expense of an authentic location only to have these films sabotaged decades later, making them appear to be studio-bound. Tampering with film is *an appalling practice*, equally as bad as the ill-advised 'colorization' process adopted a couple of decades ago and abandoned because of an outcry.

Leave cultural artefacts alone. 3-D characters and visuals do not make a film a good one and no amount of tampering can do anything except infuriate a cineaste like me. Something should be done about this vandalism. I reserve the democratic right to see films how they were originally made and not have them subject to the whim of philistines.


----------

