"The fact that films have become digitalised has revamped its dynamics"

-- Samina Peerzada, actor, director

People like me who loved black&white cinema miss it -- there was a lot of mystery attached to it because you didn’t know what you were shooting till the release. Today, since it is all digitalised, there is no element of mystery -- you can pause, rewind, and forward.

Cinema was not so exciting during the late 1970s, the 80s and the early 90s; colour-grading was particularly bad. Now, cinema brings so much more to the table, the lighting has improved and people are detail-oriented.

In a matter of two and a half years, look at what we have created. So much is happening; story-telling has become much cheaper and more cost-effective. The process of making a 35mm film was much more expensive and you could only get into that if you knew what you wanted to do. You had to follow a formula. The cinema that came out was totally dependent on box office. Now, you can experiment with story and actors.

There are cineplexes which ensure room for experimentation and quicker returns and then there are big cinemas with a capacity of 700 to 1200 people for which you need mainstream films. Everything from the box office to the cinemas, to the fact that films have become digitalised (the kinds of special effects that are used today) has revamped dynamics.

Pakistani cinema has never seen anything like this before. All of this has been made possible because of digital cinema. It is so wonderful that all kinds of films are being made in Pakistan. I have watched them all -- Moor, for instance, was a great one. There is such incredible diversity and no formula is being followed. All of that we owe to digitalisation.

People who derive pleasure from watching films on small screens will do that; people who don’t will go to the cinema. I have watched a lot of films I wouldn’t have otherwise on a small screen -- French films and animated films. I am optimistic about the evolutionary process -- it should be celebrated not shunned. There is nostalgia about a few things; there is a romance about a few things like black and white cinema that will remain. We will always reminisce these like childhood memories.

-- Enum Naseer

"People who watch a film on a 3-inch screen in a private room cannot claim to have watched it"

-- Arif Waqar, film academic at NCA

Viewing by appointment -- where you used to plan watching a film with the family, hire a tonga, sit in the theatre for three hours and discuss it on your way back home -- is a thing of the past. Then the film, and later even the 8pm television play, was an integrating force where there was a sort of communal watching.

Now it may be one film but all five, six or eight people in the family will watch it in different settings, at different times and on different gadgets. That social role of film has come to an end.

As for the craft, the director makes a film for the big screen. That’s how it’s meant to be. But with the digital revolution or the progress in media, something which was not meant for smaller screens is being seen on them, even on mobile phones. But this takes something away from how the director had conceived it. It’s like an artwork, where the composition of the painting matters. The director composes it in the long shot -- that’s a whole world in itself. He plays within the frame. This concept works only on the big screen.

But people who watch it on a 2- or 3-inch screen in a private room cannot claim to have watched it. There is an entire aesthetics of the film, where each shot has a purpose and there is a lot of discussion and that is not established fully on smaller screens.

Obviously, film-making has become easier with the advances in technology but it has become non-serious, too. With the proper camera, you had to take care of all technicalities of sound and light etc. There is more facility and ease now but the art and aesthetics that has developed over the last hundred years suffer.

 -- Farah Zia

“Watching films on the phone is sacrilege to the film itself"

-- Mira Hashmi, film academic & critic

Watching films on anything other than the big screen is an artistic loss to the filmmaker. I know that there are many ways in which art is adopted for viewing but movies were specifically designed and meant to be watched on the big screen. And when that is not done then there is a loss not only visually but also mystically.

Personally, I like watching films in cinemas but under ideal conditions. I think cinema is a sacred space. If people sitting in a cinema are doing their things, like talking on the phone or with each other, and are encroaching on other people’s space then under these circumstances watching a film becomes difficult.

It’s meant to be a communal experience for civilised people and wishing for the latter is something one faces around the world. I prefer watching films on the big screen but not every movie gets released in cinema. I think watching films on the phone is sacrilege to the film itself. So, if need be I watch films on my TV.

The pressure faced by filmmakers to conform to audience’s needs and appeals has been there ever since movies became commercial enterprises. Art is subjective. And it has been a struggle between art and commerce. But filmmakers, generally, find a middle ground and the audience comes around as well. I do not think that there is a big divide between the audience and the artists since they both continue to find a common ground to operate from.

-- Muneera Batool

"It’s a paradigm shift that we are talking about"

-- Agha Shezad Ahmad Gul, film producer & owner of Evernew Studios

About a decade ago, at a conference in India, the late Bollywood producer Yash Johar said that the biggest threat to cinema was going to come from the digital revolution. He had the foresight to predict what we are seeing today. I find youngsters hooked on their laptops, mobiles, and tabs, streaming and downloading movies among other things.

But the good thing about technology is that it keeps on evolving. Tomorrow, there’ll be other, more sophisticated gadgets at our disposal.

Having said that, in Pakistan, the cinema industry isn’t quite ‘hit’ by the digital wizardry as much as, maybe, Hollywood. People here are still discovering the joys and wonders of watching a film in a high-end theatre that offers a clean and comfortable environment, upscale café items as well as the conventional popcorns, and, of course, great sound and picture quality. Eventually, they are ready to pay up a hefty ticket price for the ‘collective’ -- dine-in cum movie viewing -- experience. This experience you can replicate in isolation of your bedrooms, for instance, on your TV sets or any portable gadgets.

Statistics show that the [cinema] business has grown in the past two or three years, and it is growing by up to 20 per cent annually. The number of screens has also gone up in the metros. In Lahore alone, at least 20 new cinemas are currently under construction. And, to think that these are projects of big multinational companies like Packages, Nishat Group and Kohat Cement.

Correspondingly, the films’ sales have registered a sharp spike. Earlier, if a film would take weeks and months to collect as much as Rs10 millions, despite hundreds of functional theatre halls, today it can easily gross 10 times more in just a week’s time and from a handful of sites. It’s a paradigm shift that we are talking about.

-- Usman Ghafoor