The Digital and CG Revolution — The Dream Painted in Pixels

Last time, we watched the films of Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu cross the seas and captivate people around the world. Light and shadow burned onto film, moving hearts across borders—for a century, cinema had walked its road alongside a single strip of film lined with grains of silver.

But at the turn of the century, cinema quietly began to replace its very foundation. It was no longer only the reality caught by a lens that drew the picture. A computer would calculate, placing each point—each pixel—upon the screen. Shooting and projection alike would gradually leave film behind and turn into strings of numbers. In this chapter, we trace how the two waves of CG and digital remade the very act of making movies, looking at both their brilliance and at what was lost.

The Toys Began to Move on Their Own

In 1995, a single film became a turning point in cinema history: ‘Toy Story’, produced by Pixar and distributed by Disney (released in Japan in 1996). This story of toys who move and talk to one another when no one is watching is said to be the first feature-length film in the world built entirely from computer graphics. Its director, John Lasseter, received a Special Achievement Academy Award for the accomplishment.

Until then, animation had been an endless accumulation of work, each frame drawn by human hands. ‘Toy Story’ traded that brush for a computer. Three-dimensionally modeled figures of toys took the light, cast their shadows, and raced about within the frame. What audiences saw was an image of an entirely new texture, unlike either hand-drawing or live action.

Behind this single film lay a long run-up. Pixar’s origins trace back to the computer division of Lucasfilm, created in the late 1970s. In 1986, Steve Jobs—who had just left Apple—bought that division and set it on its way as an independent company. More than a decade of accumulated work refining the image-generating technique known as rendering bore fruit in those toys that came to life.

The Technique of Painting onto Reality

CG showed its power not only in fully constructed worlds of animation. The technique of adding to live-action footage something that looked utterly real also advanced rapidly. This was the world of visual effects, so-called VFX.

In 1991’s ‘Terminator 2’, an enemy made of liquid metal freely changed its form, becoming a human figure one moment and a blade the next. In 1993’s ‘Jurassic Park’, dinosaurs that should have been long extinct walked the screen as creatures one could feel had weight and body heat. What had until then been expressed with models and stop-motion was replaced by CG with imagery indistinguishable from the real thing.

Attempts to transfer an actor’s very performance onto a CG character also advanced. In the ‘Lord of the Rings’ series of the early 2000s, the technique of reading the movements and expressions of actor Andy Serkis and overlaying them onto a fictional creature called Gollum drew great attention. Flesh-and-blood performance and a form made by computer melted together. Even the meaning of the actor’s existence began, little by little, to waver.

Shooting and Projection Leave Film Behind

If CG was the technique of ‘painting’, the other wave changed the very mechanism of ‘recording and showing’. Film, which had supported cinema for more than a century, was being replaced by digital data.

On the set, George Lucas led the way. In 1999’s ‘Star Wars: Episode I’ he tried partial digital shooting, and in the 2002 sequel ‘Attack of the Clones’ it is reported that he shot the great majority on digital cameras—something exceptional for a major film. The process of carrying boxes of film and soaking them in chemicals at the lab disappeared, and footage could be checked on the spot. In finishing as well, a technique for freely adjusting the screen’s coloring on a computer (the digital intermediate) spread, and 2000’s ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ is often cited as an early representative example.

A shift occurred on the projection side as well. One of the world’s first digital screenings took place in 1999, and in 2000 digital theatrical projection is said to have begun in Japan too. The days of distributing heavy film cans to theaters and battling scratches and fading were being replaced by the transmission of data. The transition advanced all at once in theaters around the world from the late 2000s into the 2010s.

In 2009, James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ was released. Combining performance capture that read actors’ performances in fine detail with 3D imagery that appeared to have depth, the work became a worldwide blockbuster and drew a wave of 3D projection into theaters everywhere. Cinema came more and more to compete on its thickness as an ‘experience’.

What Was Lost, and What Remained

The digital and CG revolution brought cinema an immeasurable freedom. Almost anything imagined could be drawn upon the screen. Expression released from the constraints of reality carried audiences off to worlds never seen before. Yet beside that light, several shadows stretch out as well.

The industry that had supported film shrank rapidly. Kodak, synonymous with motion-picture film, fell behind the wave of digitization and was driven into bankruptcy in 2012. Much of the long-cultivated craft of developing and projection, and the work of the people who had carried it, lost its place. The changing of the guard in technology always happens upon someone’s livelihood.

There was bewilderment on the creative side as well. The freedom to draw anything sometimes turned toward excessive imagery, and could make the core of a story harder to see. Seeking a texture obtainable only from film, some directors deliberately kept to the old methods. Their resistance is also called nostalgia, but it can equally be read as a quiet will not to let the options of expression be unified into a single standard. Opinions are surely divided here.

Cinema, having obtained numbers and pixels, became free of reality’s gravity and at the same time let go of its anchor of film. When the tool for making changed and the mechanism for showing changed, the next thing to change was the very place of watching. What would become of the century-old habit of gathering before a screen? And so cinema leaves the theater and turns toward the home.