Today's cinematographers see what's coming in terms of technology and equipment. When it's good enough for them to use, they say they'll be ready. We're still in the infancy of "high-definition technology" in the movie business, Poster explains. "But high-definition technology, which has been said to be the death of film, the be-all and end-all, is in a rudimentary form that is rapidly changing. So this technology that was supposed to replace film is, within the next year, going to be the old technology."

It's crucial to note, though, that the term "digital technology" doesn't mean much all by itself. Cinematographer Wally Pfister's credits include "Memento" and "Laurel Canyon," but because he began his career as a news cameraman in the early '80s, he knew how to shoot on videotape long before he ever shot a frame of 35-millimeter film. As much as he loves working with film, he's convinced that within 15 to 20 years, electronic media will replace it. But for now, he says the quality of digital images is nowhere near that of images recorded on film, in terms of resolution, richness or subtlety.

Pfister believes that large electronics corporations are using the term "digital" to sell the idea of something revolutionary and hot, even though this "new" technology, at least at this point, is no improvement on the old one. Sony and Panasonic both manufacture high-definition cameras, and have a stake in getting their products used and accepted (not to mention plugged by Lucas), whether they produce satisfactory results or not. It's easy to see how a multinational entertainment conglomerate like Sony -- which owns Columbia Pictures -- would benefit if its equipment became the standard among filmmakers.

"The buzzword is 'digital,'" Pfister says. "It's the same buzzword that's used in the consumer world -- the same word that was used to sell CDs and DVDs and anything for home computers. But it's not an accurate way of describing it. The images are collected and processed digitally, but really, it's videotape. It's a video camera, and the images are recorded onto a video chip." Yet the companies that make this gear, he notes, are trying to act like they've invented "a whole new device."

In fact, Pfister is enthusiastic about the fact that digital technology could help democratize the world of filmmaking. "Anyone who wants to tell a story can afford to," he says, "by picking up a camera for $1,000 and buying computer software for another $1,000. That basically allows them to write, produce and edit films entirely on their own." Pfister, Poster and Bailey all note that there are instances where the new high-definition cameras can be put to good use, particularly in episodic television -- the image quality looks just fine on TV.

The problem, Pfister says, is that digital technology is being pushed for theatrical exhibition purposes even though it's still an inferior medium. Manufacturers of digital filmmaking equipment are hoping to take advantage of the fact that the technology is changing so rapidly -- today's top-of-the-line high-definition camera is sure to be tomorrow's garage-sale Brownie. Obsolescence guarantees a steady revenue stream, as most of us know from having to replace our computers every other year.

At the moment, for the serious cinematographer's craft, Pfister says, high-definition cameras are simply not the best option. "It's like asking us to work with crayons rather than oil paints. You can do some incredible works of art with crayons. But with the current videotape format, you're never going to capture the textures, the depth, the richness, be able to see into the absolute subtleties and the shadows, that you can with 35-millimeter film.

"Most cinematographers, we have a great passion for the artistry involved in our jobs. And what we love the most is painting with light. If somebody tries to tell us that the paintbrushes that they have are better than the ones that we're using, we're gong to be leery. And we're going to be the ones to decide whether those paintbrushes or that particular paint is as good as it should be. Because we know it better than anybody else does."

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John Bailey says that a few years ago at the Sundance Festival, when one of the "film is dead" factions of young directors was making itself rather noisily heard, he decided to shoot something on digital video, just to find out what it was like. He thought he might end up doing a small project, a 10- or 15-minute student-type film. Then Jennifer Jason Leigh approached him to shoot the feature she was making with Alan Cumming, "The Anniversary Party."

"So I decided to really embrace the D.V. aesthetic and make it as much like a film looks as I really could, given the technology and the equipment," Bailey says.

In retrospect, Bailey says, both he and Leigh realize there was no reason not to have shot "The Anniversary Party" on 16-millimeter film and then blown it up to 35-millimeter, given the time, effort and cost of doing the project digitally. But the experience of making "The Anniversary Party" helped him define some of the difference between film and video. He realized that there were some independent features -- he cites Neil Berger's "Interview With the Assassin" -- that have really benefited from embracing new technology.

Digital technology and celluloid technology have also converged in recent years, he says, "to create images and propel stories in a way that was impossible even six or seven years ago." We're seeing more and more images that are being created completely through computer-graphic technology -- images that couldn't possibly exist in the real world.

"This kind of incredibly rich, complex and highly artistic image creation on computers becomes sort of a new norm and expectation, sort of an image default position," Bailey says. "It has the possibility to desensitize our ability to look at beautifully captured, real, natural images.

"I'm not trying to pick on any particular film, but I'm thinking of a film like 'The Two Towers,' or even the first one ['The Fellowship of the Ring'], where there's just so much incredible stuff that's created only on computers. There are now studios that are thinking about going and shooting in New Zealand. Admittedly, New Zealand is incredibly beautiful, and those movies had some wonderful natural landscapes. But those studios are going there looking to capture images that were captured only on computers."

In other words, they want to shoot on location in Middle Earth.

"It's a very exhilarating time and also a very anxiety-inducing time for all filmmakers and especially for cinematographers," Bailey says. "I've been joking to a lot of my colleagues that I think given the surfeit of energy and speed and lushness in films today, the most revolutionary and the most daring images you can create are very simple images, very directly captured images." Bailey recently had another look at a 1966 Tony Richardson film, "Mademoiselle," shot by David Watkin (in widescreen black-and-white, something of a rarity in itself), in which Jeanne Moreau stars as a sexually repressed schoolteacher who wreaks havoc in her small village, poisoning wells and burning things down.

"It's incredible, but the fascinating thing about it is there's not a single camera movement in the entire film," Bailey says. "All the action happens within a static frame. This film is, like, two hours long, and it's absolutely riveting. It's so unlike anything that you would ever see now."

If you spend enough time going to the movies, you begin to realize that you never quite know what's going to inspire the filmmakers, the cinematographers and the screenwriters of tomorrow. In 10 years, will every mainstream Hollywood feature look like "The Matrix Reloaded"? Is that what audiences will expect and demand?

Maybe. But for every movement, every trend, there's a backlash. For every 10 kids who decide they want to be filmmakers after seeing the Wachowski brothers' action-fest, there might be one strange little tyke who manages to catch "2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Vertigo" or "Night of the Hunter" or "Blue Velvet" and decides she wants to make a movie that looks like that. Change is coming, as it invariably does, and the only hope for people who love movies and care about their future is to bet our money on the strange ones. The revolution will not be televised. No matter how it plays out, it will be coming to a movie screen near you.

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