Unexpected Media

HD - so what?

It’s snowing in Banff and the New Media Institute is holding a 3 day summit on High Definition. I came partly to see whether there would be any value in setting up collaboration between BNMI and Creative London, partly to work with Andrew Bullen who is Director of the Mediaguild in Amsterdam. I’m going to be directing a Lab for him and one of the focal technologies may be HD.

I was sceptical about the value of HD before coming here and what I’ve seen so far doesn’t resolve my doubts: most of the films that have been shown here seem only to have gained marginally from being produced in HD. I still think that most of the people who really stand to gain are hardware manufacturers, making gazillions as we all buy new kit.

The images can be stunning for sure, especially projected onto a big screen, and I’m told that two of the screenings that I missed (one on football the other a film called ‘War Hospital’) became ‘audio-visceral’ experiences because they were in high definition. But for all the buzz and hype around it, HD remains an incremental innovation.

Blu Ray looks interesting though.