Asia's digital cinema only serves as training ground

It is cheap, immediate and versatile. No wonder many filmmakers are turning to digital video, particularly young filmmakers on shoestring budgets.

This phenomenon really took off after 1999's The Blair Witch Project, a horror flick shot with Hi-8 camcorders. With production costs of only US$22,000, the movie went on to make $240 million worldwide.

This success inspired many filmmakers to use digital video (DV) to overcome budget constraints, including in Indonesia, where the local film industry, despite recent signs of recovery, remains in a lull.

Among the Indonesian movies shot on digital video are the 2001 hit Jelangkung by Rizal Mantovani and Jose Purnomo and this year's Eliana Eliana by Riri Riza.

In Asia, the two filmmakers considered to be pioneers of digital video are Hong Kong director Kenneth Bi with his 2000 debut A Small Miracle and Singapore's Ong Lay Jin with Return to Pontianak.

"Hong Kong's film industry is not like it was. It's either very high or very low in terms of production costs. There's nothing in between. It's not as healthy as in the 1980s or the early 1990s. My financing collapsed but I was in desperate need to be creative. So I turned into DV," Bi said during a seminar on digital technologies at the recent Asia Film Market & Conference.

With $10,000 from his own pockets, Bi shot his movie with amateur actors who worked for free.

Though never released commercially, the movie received good reviews and has been screened at film festivals around the world, allowing Bi to secure funding for his next project.

A similar experience happened to Malaysian director Amir Muhammad, who wrote and directed that country's first DV feature, Lips to Lips, which was invited to over a dozen film festivals around the world.

"A lot of indie filmmakers are inspired to shoot their movies with digital video," said Amir, whose Lips cost some $60,000 ("cheap but still a lot").

Beside being cheap and immediate, digital movies also free filmmakers to do anything they want, to experiment with the small camera.

"If you want to do something mischievous, it's possible with DV. My second movie, (this year's) 6horts, is a series of six video essays that I shot completely without actors. It would be impossible to do this with regular celluloid but it's possible with DV," Amir said.

Return to Pontianak producer Juan Foo said regular film was technically more sophisticated because it was two to three times more sensitive.

"But digital movies don't abandon aesthetic. Everything else is almost like a regular film production," he said.

With digital video, filmmakers are free to do what they want and produce any type of movie they choose.

This has, however, resulted in some digital movies being shot with apparently little thought for the quality of the film.

In Indonesia, this tendency has been shown with several new digital movies with stories that are just absurd, such as Titik Hitam (The Black Spot), Kafir (Satanic) and 5 Sehat 4 Sempurna (Healthy Five, Perfect Four).

With the local film industry still struggling to get back on its feet and find its audience, the new DV craze could end up scaring people away.

"It's a big problem. The problem is there's a TV aesthetic, there's a film aesthetic but there's not yet a DV aesthetic. DV has not found an avenue yet, except the dogma. You can like them or not like them," Bi said.

Amir, however, thinks the DV movement could create a new audience apart from the audience for mainstream Malaysian films.

"Some (DV movies) are good and some are bad, but it's too early to judge. It's still something that many people have yet to become familiar with. Those who are really good and interested will continue to sharpen their talents," he said.

What does the future of digital cinema look like?

Bi does not see it becoming popular any time soon, as there are still very few cinemas that are equipped with digital projectors.

"There is one theater in Hong Kong that has the projector and it's broken," he said.

Therefore, many digital movies do not play in cinemas because they first have to be transferred to film, which costs thousands of dollars.

"And audiences have yet to warm to digital movies, maybe because technically they look inferior, like something the audience can make at home," said Bi.

Agreeing with Bi, Foo does not think distributors and exhibitors are ready to invest in digital projectors, given the preference for regular film.

"But I think that will change, hopefully," he said.

In this sense, digital cinema still only serves as a training ground for young filmmakers. The challenge is how to take it to another level, to make the movies look less like something anyone can do at home. Perhaps this will have to be accomplished with gripping stories, so audiences will not realize the technical limitations.

"It's a great alternative to mainstream films. I once saw a digital movie in New Delhi. It was so good, so funny and so wonderful that when it was finished, it was a great thing. No one remembered that it was a DV," Bi said.

-- Hera Diani