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Damian Fuentes

Mrs. Trisha Briones

ENGL 1302-222

12th April 2022

Progressivism in the motion picture industry

Cinema has changed immensely throughout the years, and truthfully as time progresses

the film industry adapts to the political climate and has the inclusiveness for anyone and

everyone to enjoy. From inclusivity to proper representation, and innovative technologies, others

tend to stray away from this as it is not familiar in the traditional sense. Examples of these are

inclusivity of Black communities, different ideas from outside the country, and having artificial

intelligence helping with the movie process.

When watching a modern film and seeing people of different racial and ethnic

backgrounds enjoy themselves by simply being human amongst each other is something that is

often looked over. It might not seem like something as major since it is just people being people

however it is important as it teaches younger generations that this concept should be normalized.

An example would be the all-inclusiveness of Black communities as throughout history society

Black communities have always been misrepresented. However, specifically in the United States,

roles and parts are given to people of Black communities are often brushed under the rug and

disregarded as such, leading to a misrepresentation of the Black communities via cinema. Since

racism has tainted the media and the public for generations the inclusion of more Black

communities and having proper representation could change the views of the population tenfold.

In the article by Teisha Dupree Wilson, she states, “The roles played by African Americans in

early television and film confirmed the entrenched American view that African Americans
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should only be viewed as servants or slaves and nothing more” (13). Looking at films that have

been released in these past two decades there has been not only better but a true representation of

Black communities giving those movies a better score and more attention from the media and the

public. It gives more attention to those who made the movies but at the same time, it gives the

public eye that diversity is possible and influences the public to shatter the glass ceiling so that

they can feel inspired to do more and not just in the motion picture industry but in all aspects

altogether. The same goes for when the British came to America with their new ways of film

directing.

As previously mentioned, representation and freedom of expression are not restricted to

one group of people as the British did it themselves which allowed the concept of Auteurism to

flourish. In an article by Ian Scott, he says, “The ability to shape the American past or present on

film became a sign of one’s ability in the new medium, mastering the art form was like mastering

the “untamed west” that the sons of pioneers had come to inherit” (9). This allows for alternative

ways of directing so that way future directors can have more than just standard movie direction.

Giving the ability unrestricted to single ideas that are already pre-set allows for creative

freedoms of anyone to set them free and run wild. British film directors created auteurism so that

they can stay on their original ideas for films and not stray off from said original concept. This

can be challenging nowadays as films are composed to please the fans instead of having unique

ideas flow through cinema and embracing originality. Referencing the same article, “Andrew

Sarris’s groundbreaking study of the 1960s, The American Cinema, which famously borrowed

from European critics the notion of directorial authorship – auteurism – as a key to unlocking the

structure and routines of the Hollywood industry from the 1920s onwards” (Scott 10). Auteurism

is just the way movie direction is produced which is based on the director’s vision and having
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personal preoccupations. In the mind of the majority, it might seem like just another way to keep

those wishing to create movie scripts to only follow Auteurism and such for the sake of

maintaining originality but the very central idea of auteurism is that it pushes people to innovate.

Innovation by either producing something new or just as simple as altering the original idea in

just the slightest way by having for example the scenery of suburban households so that way that

a director can show how underappreciated they are. These sorts of ideas are what push film

directors to strive for the abstract or originality and although there’s nothing wrong with having

similar concepts the focus is to be able to have that freedom of expression.

Freedom of expression, allows others to freely express how they want to represent or

explain something regardless of what that ‘thing’ is. This can be seen everywhere and most

especially in smaller towns in examples of flags on a front lawn or a car that stands out from the

rest to even as little as wearing something different than the rest. These examples pragmatically

sum up the description of small towns. Sub Urban areas tend to be shown as peaceful living with

calm and happiness, and while that might not always be the case in cinema it is just shown as

generic household families where nothing happens in the town area. Proper representation of said

small towns in a cinema however can be important as small towns can be vital to remind oneself

of their humanity. “It seems, finally, to respond with the fatuous bleat that the spontaneous

goodness inherent in small town folks is the great problem solver” (Muzzio 2). While most

movies can be misleading with towns folk if correctly done movies with small towns can shine

as to what they are and give proper representation. Giving this chance to these small folk towns

allows them to have opportunities that only metropolitan cities are given such as events or

funding. “Typically hailed as a paean to the virtues and rewards of small-town life in a golden

era” (Muzzio & Halper 2). In the article by Thomas Halper and Douglas mezzo, they explain that
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not only are these small towns misrepresented in cinema but that these towns are rich in culture

and history. These topics are what gives a town or city it is marked on the map and what makes

films with said towns their lovable charm. To have a small town represented as property allows

the viewers to like the film more and in turn, give it a better rating simply due to the familiarity

or the nostalgia it gives them. If films give this feeling to the audience or not, not everyone can

be pleased the same way, but currently, technology is rapidly growing allowing for virtual reality

to pave a new path in the entertainment industry to simulate these experiences.

Virtual reality on its own is already immensely marketable regardless of use since as

stated before it is a way to interact with the virtual world. So, in a sense, this puts the viewer or

consumer in the shoes of whatever character they can desire to be, and with relativity to the

cinema, in the shoes of the main characters, however, struggling to deal with cables and such

would not be ideal. “The higher the urgency for the content of wireless virtual reality technology,

the lower the risk it will endure” (Lei & Kim 1). And so, with VR being primarily used for

gaming and such it is a decision made by the authors of the article by Lei & Kim to have

animation assessed with VR to have a prototype of their hoped-for result of mixing cinema with

virtual reality. “The 360-degree panoramic immersive experience of VR animation gives the

audience a new perspective to observe the virtual world of the animation” (2). Now of course it

is not an easy task however it can revolutionize the motion picture industry even more so than

ever before. All these efforts are done with the intent to keep the immersion by having the

display to be wireless. “The experimental results show that the wireless virtual reality scene film

and television animation has better entertainment effects, and while enhancing the interest” (11)

To aid in this future of cinema, the animations themselves must produce, and what better way to

do it than with more artificial intelligence.

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“It is very important to innovate the visual performance of movies, explore new ways of

visual performance of movies, and meet the characteristics of the times and industry needs”

(Wan & Ren 1). With the rising popularity of anime having pre-generated 3d animation would

save half the time it takes to manually produce it. This is done by having advanced AI create

weak 3d animation and having workers expand upon what was spat out by this amazing AI.

Machine learning technology is what it would be referenced to as it paves the way into a new

branch in cinematography. “Since the movie video itself contains a large amount of data, it is

composed of multiple frames of static images per second, and each frame of an image contains

rich information” (3). The sheer complexity of algorithms and code imbedded into this

technology presented by Wan & Ren is astonishing as the capability of this can also eliminate

half the costs it takes to create these animations which can be turned into shows movies or

whatever else requires 3d animation. All these benefits can have a quantity number of media be

put out ever so frequently and have new jobs where those talented in refining this work can have

the focus so that the said quantity can have the quality. The future of cinema is looking better

than before, and fortune is not stopping anytime soon so long as ideas keep on pumping out by

these brilliant directors, filmmakers, and technology.

From popper representation of humanity, all the way to new use of machine learning

technologies, the path of the Motion Picture Industry expands and appeases the masses to a

substantial amount. Simply put the future of cinema is certainly bright and a perpetual journey to

advancement seizes the minds of every filmmaker whether old or young, Black, or white,

American or British and even as far to say human or A.I. It is truly marvelous the technology to

convey stories without needing books.

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Works Cited:

Di Lei, Sae-Hoon Kim, "Application of Wireless Virtual Reality Perception and Simulation

Technology in Film and Television Animation", Journal of Sensors, vol. 2021, Article ID

5041832, 12 pages, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/5041832

Dupree-Wilson, Teisha. “Killing ‘Dixie’: The NAACP, the Black Press, and the Crusade to End

Black Caricature Culture in Hollywood, 1950–1969.” Journal of African American

Studies, vol. 24, no. 4, 2020, pp. 596–610., doi:10.1007/s12111-020-09502-6.

Hwangbo, Hyunwoo, and Jonghyuk Kim. “A Text Mining Approach for Sustainable

Performance in the Film Industry.” Sustainability, vol. 11, no. 11, June 2019, p. 3207.

Crossref, https://doi.org/10.3390/su11113207.

Ian Scott. “‘Don’t Be Frightened Dear … This Is Hollywood’: British Filmmakers in Early

American Cinema.” European Journal of American Studies, vol. 5, no. 4.

doi:10.4000/ejas.8751.

Muzzio, Thomas Halper- Douglas. “It's a Wonderful Life: Representations of the Small Town in

American...” European Journal of American Studies, European Association for American

Studies, 24 Feb. 2011, journals.openedition.org/ejas/9398.

Orme, Tylor, and Harold L. Vogel. “Is the Motion-Pictures Industry Recession Proof? –
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International Advances in Economic Research.” SpringerLink, Springer US, 1 Dec. 2020,

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11294-020-09811-2.

Yijie Wan, Mengqi Ren, "New Visual Expression of Anime Film Based on Artificial Intelligence

and Machine Learning Technology", Journal of Sensors, vol. 2021, Article

ID 9945187, 10 pages, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/9945187