As the saying goes, ‘change is the only constant’. Though our world’s always in flux, change has never happened so rapidly for humanity than as since the dawn of the industrial revolution. The emergence of ever-evolving technologies that have come rapidly since have pushed our existence & experiences like never before. Things that could only be imagined just 60 years ago by the baby-boomers who marvelled at concepts & stories by the likes of Asimov, Bradbury & Wells are realities today. It’s all so normal to those of us who’ve grown up with it or were present through their development. That said, I don’t know that I’ll ever actually get used to seeing self-driving cars whipping down our roadways…
The tech revolution has touched every part of our lives –including how we make movies. Once, CGI was not only extremely costly, but also often dodgy. Now, your desired visual can be whipped up on a MacBook in minutes. It’s gotten soooo ridiculously easy. Yet CGI also threatens to wipe out a huge component of the art of filmmaking –practical effects. Some of the greatest cinematic moments of the past century were achieved through camera positioning, set building & the use of pyrotechnics. Some say practical is still the way to go! (As an actor, I believe this as a truism since standing on a set, surrounded in an environment allows for greater believability than standing in front of a green screen with props.)
You gotta admire the filmmakers who still insist on keeping it real: Christopher Nolan who had sets built for the madness-shifting world of Inception, Tim Burton who had the dark, futuristic Gotham City constructed for Michael Keaton’s Batman, Stanley Kubrick’s space station in 2002: A Space Odyssey. Still stands up more than 50 years after it was shot!
The nature of evolution is to creep along consistently, then periodically take a big leap forward. At the turn of the 20th century, the film industry underwent its first of many evolutionary jumps. George Méliès was a huge part of that. An illusionist turned filmmaker, Méliès fell in love with the moving image & had ideas of what trickery could be done with the camera through practical effects & positioning. In his lifetime, Méliès would go on to make more than 500 films, often inventing ways to create illusions with the camera that showed audiences things they had never seen before. Méliès iconic, innovative & experimental work would spark generations of filmmakers to dream of new adventures, to want to tell stories & to find new ways to do it.
Today is George Méliès 157th birthday. As a film fan, art lover, creative spirit & performer, I’d like to say happy birthday, George. Thank you for blazing a trail that impacts us all to this day. Thank you also, Google, for this terrific 360 tribute video!