Change is coming soon to a cinema screen near you

Filmmaking has come a long way — from silent movies to immersive 4D cinema experiences. Gone are the days people would laugh at Laurel and Hardy through a fuzzy black and white visual, compared to currently having the option to going to watch a 4D movie and enjoy enhanced effects, such as seat vibration, wind, rain, fog, odour and light flashes. Tech advancements have played a crucial role in making creative storytelling possible, removing all creative limitation on how a story was told.

We have seen technology enable filmmakers to destroy an entire city by powerful and battle-hungry robots from Transformers and transport viewers to their fictional planet — Cybertron, with ease. From cameras and sound recording, to editing, advancements are expanding the creative potential of filmmakers, who are adapting to meet the needs of evolving consumer demands.

Coupled with emerging technologies, the filmmaking industry has evolved to enable complex cinematography, motion and light dynamics.

Today, display technology is a key contributing factor to creating cinematic brilliance, as it ultimately brings the story and motion picture to life. The increased appetite for 3D films has led to local cinemas, such as VOX and Novo, increasing the allocation for 3D and IMAX screens.

Filmmakers are not stopping there, and are also looking into Cinema 4K display technologies, which will arm them with colour-critical accuracy and automatic calibration to produce films and animations of the future. 4K display technology will raise the bar in terms of colour accuracy, and is becoming a gamechanger for studios and digital creatives.

The applications for 3D technology are diverse — from 3D glasses and image designing, to printing. Today, 3D printing is transforming filmmaking from a production design perspective.

Concept artists often design with computer-generated imagery (CGI) and computer-aided design (CAD) software, which lends itself perfectly to printing in 3D.

The technology enables sophisticated levels of detail, print size and finish. Props departments are now seeing concepts come from a simple drawing to printed high-detail objects. 3D printing has been instrumental in producing set pieces for iconic films.

For example, the night vision goggles in Zero Dark Thirty and a full-scale tank exterior for an action setpiece in Fast & Furious 6 were both 3D printed. It has also played a significant role in recent Marvel blockbusters, changing the way costumes for some of Hollywood’s most memorable characters were brought to life.

Another emerging trend shaping the filmmaking industry is the use of virtual reality (VR). With the VR industry projected to generate revenues of $75 billion (Dh275.47 billion) annually by 2021, a considerable amount will be driven by the filmmaking industry.

As a non-linear medium, it brings a very different viewing experience to the table and industry leading vendors are already working hard to define the best and most compelling VR cinema formats.

VR is set to offer exciting possibilities as a dynamic new storytelling medium — as a rich narrative device within conventional film and as a practical, time-saving pre-production tool. With the sheer amount of concept art and design created in digital 3D files, VR offers production designers a new way of creating a full set environment experience complete with props ... before it is commissioned to build.

VR also offers new opportunities to enrich the main cinematic event, helping to immerse the audience in a movie before it begins, perhaps through a behind-the-scenes tour, a character back story, or even a virtual wander through the film environment.

Technology will continue to empower artists and filmmakers, by allowing them to push the boundaries of self-expression and reinvent how they work, from inspiration to conceptualisation and creation. While cinema is a powerful platform to watch film, there is competitiveness from televisions, tablets, smartphones and the growth of YouTube and Netflix.

There is a greater need to innovate and come up with bigger, better and more visually appealing ways of watching movies. In the future, this could lead to movie theatres moving away from projecting a sequence of two-dimensional images in a darkened room and evolve into large-scale public attractions.

For instance, we’ve already seen cinema move outdoors with open-air cinemas. Imagine where it could go in the future. We can also expect an increase in utilisation of drone cinematography, which can aid the film industry by providing a cost-efficient and straightforward way of capturing aerial and crane shots.

So, if you’re an avid movie fan, know that future technology is poised to make your film experience more entertaining, engaging and immersive.