The Next Generation of Cinema.

It's a statistically charted fact that movies are getting worse. The old studio system is clutching for sure things only to find gems like "Skyline". They can't even get a winner with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in "The Tourist." There are many more, and better examples, but why is this happening? Are we witnessing the death of large studio cinema as we know it?

I believe that we need only to look to reality television to see why cinema is beginning to struggle. Audiences are considerably less amused by invented stories than they are watching crab fishers slide around an icy deck for an hour, and it's because those crab fishermen are REAL. Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine detailed this phenomenon in their book "Authenticity." Most people living today have grown up in media soaked environments- Televisions and radios, later computers, and now smart phones... We have become well trained in identifying authenticity and reality over the years. Every day the falseness of our surroundings makes us long even more for "real" things.

Hollywood hasn't changed a damn thing, and that's exactly the problem. The next generation of cinema will not lose the big budget film, but rather grow in a new way. I believe that documentaries will find a more aggressive and active role in filmmaking and in society. Most documentaries tend to take an 'observer' role -fly on the wall style- and tell a story that requires the audiences reaction. However, whistle-blowing an warning aren't enough for audiences... we are smart and we want to see what is being done in response to the threat that a film identifies. We've begun to see ACTIVE roles of the documentary filmmakers in their approach to problems. The Cove is the story of what filmmakers went through to tell you WHY you should care about dolphin slaughter. Super Size Me wasn't just about the fast food industry, director Morgan Spurlock caused health damage to his own body to illustrate his point to his audience. Catfish follows filmmakers discovering who the scary person at the other end of Facebook actually is, and in a very REAL way we get to discover the lonely stranger at the other end of the internet. Born to be Wild doesn't just warn of orphaned animals from poaching, it follows the rehabilitation of the animals and the hardships their caretakers go through.

What all these films share is that they refuse to sit back and show you the problem without DOING something about it. Active documentaries like this will strike a chord with audiences everywhere. Not just warnings, but REAL action with REAL results will strike chords with audiences everywhere. To make easy easier- digital camera equipment these days will allow amazing access to every corner of the world where someone has a story worth telling- as the story happens! As time goes on production quality will grow, and production time will drop. At this point these stories will be from action to the audiences with all the polish of feature films- and maybe, just maybe, the audience will join in.