The divergence of creativity and technology

[kye]

I think one of the main sources of confusion and disagreement is that creativity and technology used to be aligned, but are now diverging, and it's confusing a lot of people.

What I am talking about

Take resolution as an example:

• First, film and lenses were low resolution, and everyone wanted them to be higher
• Then, digital was low resolution and everyone wanted it to be higher
• At some point, somewhere between 2K and 6K, the resolution of sensors and lenses exceeded the human visual system

This meant that the people who wanted to create for the human eye and the people who loved tech were aligned up until that threshold was reached, and now the perceptual people are saying "enough already - we've reached the goal - put your development efforts into something that matters" and the tech people are saying "more is more - I thought you agreed with us - why would you choose this inferior thing instead of the latest and best thing???"

It's the same with frame rates, as we have seen in a very civil and productive discussion in another thread.... 😂😂😂

Dynamic range is approaching this point, with some saying there is enough and the discussion starting to move from "everyone needs more" to "sometimes I need more" and will eventually be "we're done - except for specific and rare situations".

Bitrates and codec quality are getting into this territory, on the capture side at least, and streaming bitrates will get there in years to come as internet bandwidth inevitably increases exponentially.

There are many other examples...

Some predictions

I suspect the discussion will further segment into the "virtual realism" industry and the "creative storytelling" industry.  

The "creative storytelling" industry will continue in the directions that cinema and TV have been developing in for the last century.  This will be 2D image capture and playback, different lenses used, heavy editing with 2-10s per shot, sound design in post, potentially heavy VFX, focus on creating an emotional journey for the viewer.

The "virtual realism" industry will develop from its current infancy.  It will be for immersing yourself into situations that you wish to experience but don't have access to, or wish to experience multiple times.  This will likely be things like music concerts, cultural experiences like festivals, events like watching the Pope speak at the Vatican or attending an F1 or Nascar race or space shuttle launch, personal recordings like your child's school play or dance recital, scenes from nature like watching the sun rise in Death Valley, and (of course) the adult entertainment industry.  This will be 3D VR, minimal editing with very long immersive shots (maybe even just a single shot for a concert etc), sound captured almost exclusively on location or very naturalistic sound design in post, and a focus of creating an experience that matches reality in as many ways as possible.  This technology will likely also extend into capturing more senses too like smells, air movement, temperature, etc.

The sibling of the "virtual realism" industry will be the "virtual worlds" industry, which will be the same as above, but with everything computer generated.  This will be things like gaming, interactive experiences, etc.  It will rely on mostly the same viewing technology, but augmented with things like force-feedback / touch controls, and of course a massively powerful computer generating the virtual world.

I also predict the virtual realism folks will step into discussions that the creative storytelling folks will be having, and the worlds will collide, mis-communication will dominate, egos will be bruised, etc.  This already happens when the documentary folks start talking to narrative folks and things like camera size and low-light performance etc are hotly debated by people with vastly different requirements and priorities.