Luciferjones

It’s very easy to get carried away with the power, flexibility and adaptability of contemporary digital production tools for cinematic media. The digital tools of today punch far above their weight but strangely and remarkably there is still a discontinuity between what the tools are capable of and the production workflow paradigms that dominate much mainstream media production. The tools may have advanced into 21st century conceptualization but very often we shoe-horn those tools back into a old mentality of how cinematic form has traditionally been made rather than simply letting the digital pony have its head.

Traditional Cinema possesses certain core tenets of its making and reception that have been in place for an awfully long time. Established cinema workflow process is:
Linear –
It follows a clear process of order whereby certain processes are always an invariably done before others.
Hierarchical –
In delivery and perception there is a hierarchical privilege of form. Theatrical cinema as the penultimate and other forms subservient and subsidiary. This most directly manifests in a compositional aesthetic whereby, despite the fact that the majority of a movie’s viewers will experience the work on a TV set in the home, the work is still ‘composed’ for the theatre rendering the viewing on any other medium a lesser or ‘incorrect’ experience.
Segmented –
Traditional cinema has clear and fixed divisions between production phases and the roles of people working in those phases. Each phase is clearly defined and largely self contained with remarkably few personnel roles carrying over from phase to phase. And, in a bigger view, virtually no allowance for corss-pollination between phases.

By contrast the Digital Age doesn’t necessarily demand but it certainly prompts, coerces and entices us with opportunities to conceive and work out side of these modes. Digital tools by their own natural evolution and internal logic invariably construct a workflow and process that is integrated, non-linear and focused on the spectrum of cinema as parallel delivery options rather than the hierarchy of privilege and implied delivery value.

In many ways it’s the tools of production themselves that implement these cultural shifts in process. The digital tools of contemporary production have seemingly evolved ahead of filmmakers themselves who very often are still firmly attached, despite their digital weapons, to a linear, segmented and hierarchical structure of developmental process.

Many production tools already embody the concept (if not yet the full ability) of an integrated and holistic, non-linear and non hierarchical approach. As a simple example having comprehensive audio tools and compositing animation functions on the same timeline as edit itself was unheard of less than 10 years ago. Even 5 years ago it was uncommon. And yet now, despite the fact that the tools do this without blinking, there is still a large body of media production practitioners who side step the natural impulse of the tools to overtly implement a traditional workflow. Many filmmakers are still struggling with how to embrace this idea and indeed how they can exploit these tools in a way that might allow them to make better films.

Though, that said, the truth is though that it’s not about making ‘better’ movies but rather letting the increasingly diverse modes and options for delivery, production, reception and conceptualization dictate how a project is developed. This rather than conforming the project to a mode of production workflow and process built on legacy technology and perspective. A perspective that simply isn’t a ‘good fit’ with a many modes of contemporary cinema.

The process of this breakdown of structures is self evident between Production and Post-Production – cinematographers continuing their ’shoot’ in post through digital-grading and virtual cameras (not to mention the bleeding edge technology of RAW video as espoused by technology from Cineform). Production designers dictating dramatic ‘writing’ by the arrangement design of 3D environments (as is common in narrative computer gaming where very often writing begins with production design rather than script). Costume, makeup and sets created in post production after the act of shooting. All these examples point firmly towards an increasingly defunct division between Production and Post-Production.

But what is less often embraced or invoked is the application of a more holistic and integrated approach to Pre-Production. Why not start a script with a storyboard first? Why not begin a screenplay with a production design? Why write a screenplay independent and ignorant of its logistical production parameters? Why not the development of character and script right along side schedule, break-down and budget?

In particular why do we consider pre-production to begin after the script is written? Surely there is value, or at least opportunity, in dissolving the division between scriptwriting and pre-production and instead embrace a greater production workflow that begins with character, drama and screenplay and continues unbroken and tightly integrated through production. Maybe th tools are leading us to a near future where there is no Pre/Production/Post but simply ‘Production’ where by a matrix of discreet but integrated elements are engaged in the order and form best suited to the project.

Having spent the better part of a decade reviewing, testing, analyzing and evaluating virtually every digital media creation tool on the market and writing extensively about them, a series of patterns begins to emerge. That each tool, each creative application, brings with it an innate philosophy. That philosophy is embedded in the tool invariably by those that make it and espouses those values which are held dear to the makers. In simpler terms, every tool values those things that its makers value; privileges those areas that the makers deem most important.

In this context very few software tools every live up to their promise as they get bogged down in the semantics of conflicting desires – the desire of the designers vs the desires of the corporation vs the desires of the marketing company. Almost never are the desires of users truly engaged. Rather a proxy of what a combination of the previous three ‘think’ the user wants is enacted on the user’s behalf. The result is a broad maintenance of the status quo when it comes to creative software design.

Thus it is that I often take great pleasure in discussing, showing and teaching (let alone using) the screenwriting and pre-production system Celtx. Celtx is a tool that holds as its core reason for being, an holistic, integrated, non-hierarchical and non-segmented approach to building cinematic form.

Tools for conceptualizing character, plot and dramatic tension; research, revision and annotation, through script arrangement and formating; storyboarding and on to break-down reporting and scheduling. Celtx strength isn’t simply that it houses all these elements under the one roof but rather that it allows each of these elements to influence and shape each other.

Celtx evokes all the potential of the digital age by simply not making distinctions between forms of cinematic media - it does not privilege any particular form and is not focused on any one mode of delivery. If nothing else this idea is arguably the future of cinema - a work being designed, composed and produced for multi-platform, scalable delivery.

So many software applications have moved beyond the hierarchical, linear and segmented precepts that have governed cinematic production for so long. But few point the way so firmly and effectively as Celtx. All we need now is for the very slow cultural change that allows media makers to see and engage the opportunities of doing away with many of those old workflow paradigms, to come to the fore.