I'm currently following the progress of Kick-Ass, the latest movie adaptation from Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn. Based around the creator-owner comic series by Mark Millar.
I got into a bit of a debate on a forum related to the movie as to just how useful technology has been for filmmakers in fine-tuning their craft, but at the same time wondering if we're getting into a state where one can endlessly tinker with a film that one can never say it is truly finished (yes, George Lucas, I'm looking at YOU).
The reason I got into the debate in the first place was that it is revealed that much of the blood splatter effects are being produced digitally through Double Negative, and Matthew Vaughn mentioning that he had been wondering if he should have done the effects live on set. It kind of spiraled onto films that used entirely artificial environments (green screen stuff) and the use of technology, especially when it comes to tinkering and fine-tuning. The "fix it in post" mentality which generally effects the bigger budget film.
I recall the times when I was working in post-production when directors would endlessly keep changing their minds, watching deadlines screaming towards us while all the time tweaking and fixing was going on until it's absolutely perfect in the eyes of the client. All of this happening until the very, very last minute.
Of course with the advent of digital non-linear editors, you can go back and keep tweaking, re-arranging, adding and removing material at a whim.
Yet there was a time in film land when one had to plan everything out meticulously, shoot it, and spend time thinking about how the story is presented. Every cut of the film required the editor and director to think about every shot before the physical cut is made to the film. Re-shoots were expensive. Special effects were even more expensive (and time consuming) to re-shoot. Most of my favourite films were shot prior to digital technology came into the mainstream.
But not now. Everything is relatively cheap (labour cost included) and any filmmaker can tinker until their heart desires. Digital cinematography allows directors to shoot far more material than they would do so if they were using film. It would certainly allow a director and editor to have more choice over the material they incorporate into the finished film – but also probably increase the number of deleted scenes on your DVD and Blu-Ray disc.
Also thanks to digital cinema, systems capable of self-editing are not far off. By utilising often under-used meta-data on modern digital camera systems, and direction in the script, it's quite possible (using third party software) to produce EDLs (edit decision lists) which can be imported into editing systems to produce a very rough edit of your film.
Don't get me wrong. I love digital cinematography and the digital post-production work-flow. I also love a good digital visual effect when thought and artistic love has gone into it. But I thoroughly dislike films which have had very little or no prior planning before shooting it, and everything is a mad dash in post to fix everything before the studio goes mad and wonders what the hell they were doing investing the money in this pile of junk in the first place. And I've seen a few of THOSE kind of films go through my previous employers at one time or another.
