Independent Filmmaking and Digital Convergence

3Technology Changes

I think it’s important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.

Lars von Trier, film director¹

From its beginnings, filmmaking as form and practice has depended on and been defined by its technology. Changes in film technology have changed film as a medium throughout its history—its expressive abilities as well as business and distribution practices. A major impact of new technology on filmmaking was the introduction of sound in the 1920s. This expanded the medium and also ended many careers of early movie stars, whose voices did not match their on-screen personas. The first “talking feature film” ...