Blog # 4 - MOMI Reflection

The Museum of Moving Image (MOMI) encapsulated a visually informative “behind the scenes” experience of the Film and TV industry. It covered every aspect of production ranging from scriptwriting to editing. I found the evolution of camera technology to be especially fascinating. The change has been exponential in the last century. From what I understood, camera technology has changed mostly in two ways: size of equipment and quality of image. Seeing the sheer size of camera systems in the museum with even heavier equipment to hold them was beyond belief. My respect for the people who made films in the earlier days increased very much after seeing these machines. These days technological advancement has given the power to make movies in the palm of our hands. The other way camera technology has evolved is quality. It began with film on an 8mm or 16mm reel and has evolved into a completely rehabilitated industry shooting on 70mm IMAX reels or even on digital formats. The use of Technicolor was such a new concept back in the day but now Color Grading is a standard tool in post-production process. In conclusion I feel that even though technology has helped us in many ways but somehow it has diminished our determination to be more attentive and has shattered the “getting it right the first time” attitude. In the earlier days if you were working on a film, every crew member had to be perfect because you couldn’t see the results right away and even then it couldn’t be altered if something went wrong using post-production tools like we have them today. Nowadays we just shoot and if we don’t like it we keep on shooting again and again. And if we still don’t like the results later, we always have After Effects as our backup plan!