Wednesday, April 16, 2008

How the Internet is Ruining Movies

You know how some films use rotating newspapers as transition devices or to move the story forward with the headlines on them? What happens when newspapers are no longer around and everyone reads their news online or on their mobile phones?

Mark Cuban discussed something like this before when he wrote about how some movies still use that sound effect of a turntable needle scratching a record to depict an interruption of events in the story. Most kids now are probably born when records were no longer popular so what do they think that sound is?

This is what the Internet can affect movies. How can a story about former lovers from opposite ends of the world work if they can just search for each other on the Internet? And there's nothing more boring than watching a character typing away on a keyboard on the computer then cutting to the monitor. Even crime stories aren't so compelling now since almost all the investigation can be done using the Internet.

This will definitely be a challenge for screenwriters and directors in the future since they will always have to factor in the Internet and mobile phones into the story. It just wouldn't be believable for a character now to not have a cell phone on hand when they are in trouble. They always have to show that there's no signal or the battery's low. What happens in the future when there will be a signal everywhere and batteries can last for days on end?

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1 comment:

HoiPolloi said...

What we don't see a lot of in movies, or even in written works is how texting has also changed. We may not be online everytime, but we are slaves to our mobile phones. A significant amount of time is spent texting, specially in the Philippines, that a lot of relationships are made, maintained or broken through texting.

I have experienced all three. If I was to write a book or script about the period in my life, i couldn't avoid the "texting" scene, as it proved time and again to have a major impact on me.

I just wonder how it would look like on the printed page. That would be harder than including it on film.