Blu Review: Side by Side (2012)

Cast: David Lynch, Keanu Reeves, Lars von Trier
Director: Christopher Kenneally
Country: USA
Genre: Documentary
Official Trailer: Here

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0

Editor’s Notes: Side by Side released on Blu Ray and DVD from New Video Group on February 5th, 2013.

A documentary that follows the progression of cinema from Eadweard Muybridge’s first experimentations in captured motion to the digitally fabricated worlds of James Cameron’s Avatar , Side by Side examines the subject of the evolution of filmmaking from an insider’s perspective, often granting the viewer a firsthand look at the unseen elements that go into creating feature films. Informatively narrated by Keanu Reeves, this documentary provides an all access pass to the men and women behind the curtain that toil furiously and passionately to craft the art of our dreams and the tools used to bring these dreams to cinematic reality. The processes, equipment, and tricks of the trade have always been in a constant state of flux as the advent of new technologies necessitates drastic changes in workflow, but the end result has always been the documentation of light and shadows that approximate the realities and fantasies of the human mind. Like any dramatic changes that impact an entire industry, the conversion to digital formats is met by fervent opposition from those whose livelihood is dependent upon the clunky mechanisms of yesteryear. There are also those who hold a romantic endearment for their preferred methods and tools, but change has been the only constant in evolution of humanity’s youngest art form.

The romantic adherents to celluloid and the riff-raff digital filmmakers and their methods of instant gratification are given equal opportunity to present their cases, both sides making solid arguments for their method of choice as we are hand-held to the realization that the tools aren’t as important as what they are being used to deliver.

In an unlikely drama of power struggles and procedural polemics, Side by Side takes no side in its exploration of the tools and techniques of filmmaking. The romantic adherents to celluloid and the riff-raff digital filmmakers and their methods of instant gratification are given equal opportunity to present their cases, both sides making solid arguments for their method of choice as we are hand-held to the realization that the tools aren’t as important as what they are being used to deliver. Power struggles between the DP (director of photography) and the director of the film arise as the new digital filmmaking techniques remove the mystique of the process and give instant results, tilting the balance of power back in favor of the director, granting them the ability to make on-the-fly lighting adjustments instead of waiting a day to find out that the material didn’t come out correctly due to the innumerable variables in the finicky and expensive process of analog filmmaking.

When presented with the benefits of digital filmmaking it is easy to see why directors like David Lynch and Lars Von Trier have chosen to embrace the idiosyncratic aesthetic of young formats as the technology creeps ever closer to approximating the imprudent limitations of the human eye. Digital formats were once met with resistance by myopic festival programmers and film distributors as no “proper” film could be shot using such limited formats, but some would embrace the freedoms that such formats provided while accepting the oversaturated “ugliness” of digital as the cost of complete freedom.

Films from the Dogme 95 movement would push the ugliness of early generation digital filmmaking to its limits. Thomas Vinterberg

illustrated the near-limitless mobility of digital cameras with brilliant motion that would otherwise be impossible in Festen as its camera tumultuously tumbles through its taciturn environments with complete freedom of motion, stripping away the veneer of the “perfect” aesthetics of 35mm to expose the base elements required to express ideas through the medium of film.

The format that we learned to love film on is unceremoniously dying as film manufacturers are no longer creating new film stock and theaters are switching to more economical and less unpredictably cantankerous digital projection systems.

It would take the audacious irreverence of filmmakers around the world to remove the stigma from films shot digitally, some directors embracing the “ugliness” of the format in its infancy to create an entirely new aesthetic, unbound from the burdens, limitations, and expectations of photochemical film. Bold filmmakers like Lars Von Trier eschew the conventional formats; pioneering in uncharted filmic territory, forging new techniques to accommodate the format’s strengths and avoid its weaknesses, and cataloging the progression of digital formats as their films slowly converge with the look and feel of 35mm film.

Side by Side investigates the processes of film creation with the artists and craftsmen that have had firsthand experience in crafting our collective cinematic dreams and reveals the ways in which digital filmmaking is creeping ever closer to eliminating the artifacts that instantly expose its “secondhand” methods. The format that we learned to love film on is unceremoniously dying as film manufacturers are no longer creating new film stock and theaters are switching to more economical and less unpredictably cantankerous digital projection systems. 35mm film is an incredibly rich and versatile tool, but the freedoms that digital provides are too compelling to disregard in the business and artistry of filmmaking. Instead of weeping for its loss we press forward, shaping a brave new world of the digital auteur, free to execute their vision without permission from money holders and afforded innumerable attempts to perfect this vision.

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Matthew Blevins

Director of Home Entertainment & Sr. Staff Film Critic

Behind me you see the empty bookshelves that my obsession with film has caused. Film teaches me most of the important concepts of life, such as cynicism, beauty, ugliness, subversion of societal norms, and what it is to be a tortured member of humanity. My passion for the medium is an important part of who I am as I stumble through existence in a desperate and frantic search for objective truths.

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