A Reflection on the Medium of Cinema, Film versus Digital: Which side are you on?

Abstract

Storytelling has been an essential part of the survival of humans and human civilization in general. Over the years humans have designed and found newer ways to narrate and preserve their memories. However, it was not until Lumiere brothers found the magic of narrating stories by moving the frozen images, not until cinema was invented, the art of storytelling remained somewhere hollow. This is one such medium that encompasses all the art forms, whether painting, dance, drama, etc., or any science, whether it be physics, chemistry, math; and at times, it even succeeds revolutionizing these and other such streams. Nonetheless, since last few years, cinema is also going through certain revolution. This revolution is about the freedom of choosing the medium via which directors want to narrate their stories, that is, with film or digital. Now, this paper is an attempt to explore the possibilities that these mediums provide to cinema along with their limitations. Also, it seeks for an answer as what kind of affect and effect it produces on first, the director, and second, on the audience, when one medium is chosen over the other. This paper goes through the versions of different directors and technicians, such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Keanu Reeves, and more, who have mastered their art form of storytelling by choosing one or both mediums of cinema and attempts to bring out the answer to the questions: Whether film should be left to die? Which one is the superlative medium, film or digital? Is digital revolutionizing cinema for real?