I read with interest your post on computers in teaching cinema. I think there
are many useful ways it could help. But one aspect disturbs me and that is
the seeming reliance on the computer to expose students to films.
It seems to me that the increasing use of low-quality video to show films is
a disaster. One of the most interesting and significant things about film is
its resolution. By downgrading films to video reproduction, students are
deprived of understanding how powerful and effective these images can be in
an atmosphere in which they are not under the control of the viewer.
The size and quality of the image in a theater is an essential element in
understanding the medium. The psychological value of being in an audience and
not being able to manipulate the experience is totally lost with electronic
methods. Projecting images electronically, at least at the present state of
the art, reduces the great works of cinema to the level of just another music
video or commercial -- a disposable part of the information slag which
represents the current situation. It would be like teaching art history with
xeroxes of the great paintings or learning about music with a kazoo.
