A Reflection on the medium of Cinema, Film versus Digital: Which side are you on?

Storytelling has been an essential part of the survival of humans and human civilization in general. Over the years humans have designed and found newer ways to narrate and preserve their memories. However, it was not until Lumière brothers found the magic of narrating stories by moving the frozen images, not until cinema was invented, the art of storytelling remained somewhere hollow. This is one such medium that encompasses all the art forms, whether painting, dance, drama, etc., or any science, whether it be physics, chemistry, math; and at times, it even succeeds revolutionizing these and other such streams. Nonetheless, since last few years, cinema is also going through certain revolution. This revolution is about the freedom of choosing the medium via which directors want to narrate their stories, that is, with film or digital. Now, this paper is an attempt to explore the possibilities that these mediums provide to cinema along with their limitations. Also, it seeks for an answer as what kind of affect and effect it produces on first, the director, and second, on the audience, when one medium is chosen over the other. This paper goes through the versions of different directors and technicians, such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Keanu Reeves, and more, who have mastered their art form of storytelling by choosing one or both mediums of cinema and attempts to bring out the answer to the questions: Whether film should be left to die? Which one is the superlative medium, film or digital? Is digital revolutionizing cinema for real?

叙事（Storytelling）向来是人类存续与人类文明整体发展的核心组成部分。千百年来，人类不断探索并创造出愈发多元的方式来讲述故事、留存记忆。然而在此之前，叙事艺术始终略显空洞乏味，直至卢米埃尔兄弟（Lumière Brothers）发掘出通过动态定格影像讲述故事的独特魅力，直至电影正式诞生，这一局面才得以彻底改观。电影作为一种综合性媒介，能够包容所有艺术形式——无论是绘画、舞蹈、戏剧等，亦或是物理、化学、数学等科学领域；有时它甚至能对这些乃至其他领域带来革命性的变革。但近数年以来，电影领域也正经历一场深刻变革：这场变革的核心在于创作者拥有了选择叙事载体的自由，即可选用胶片（film）或数字（digital）形式进行创作。本研究旨在探究这两种媒介为电影创作提供的可能性与各自的局限性，同时试图解答：当创作者选择其中一种媒介而非另一种时，会对导演自身以及观众分别产生何种影响与效果。本研究梳理了史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格（Steven Spielberg）、马丁·斯科塞斯（Martin Scorsese）、詹姆斯·卡梅隆（James Cameron）、克里斯托弗·诺兰（Christopher Nolan）、基努·里维斯（Keanu Reeves）等一众深谙叙事艺术的导演与技术人员的创作实践——他们均通过选用电影的一种或两种媒介完成创作，并试图回应三大核心议题：胶片电影是否应当被淘汰？胶片与数字媒介中，何者为最优创作载体？数字技术是否真的在革命性地重塑电影行业？