The technology associated with film-making has evolved incrementally ever since its inception: from the 1890's Edison Kinetoscope shorts that could be watched by only one person at a time to the 2-reeler comedy shorts circa 1915 to D.W. Griffith's breakthrough with silent feature-length films in Birth of a Nation to the first talkies with 1927's The Jazz Singer to the introduction of color in select 1920's movies such as The Black Pirate (eventually evolving into beautiful technicolor productions) to Disney's feature animations in the 1930's to the first experimentation with 3-D in the 1950's with The Blue Lagoon and other gimmick films featuring knives and other assorted objects being hurled gratuitously at the audience to the widescreen film techniques of the 1950's featuring elongated landscapes that made one dizzy watching them to the modern digital special effects movies featuring CGI in a leading role.

Throughout this history, film-makers have continually experimented with different camera techniques and different types of cameras.

This item relating to Mr. Cameron appears to be another incremental step in this long process. It looks to be interesting and possibly intriguing.

What is being lost in the modern film innovations, however, is what I would call the essence of film-making, which is a play-acted script featuring real people but presented as human drama/comedy/satire/etc. using the recognized camera techniques that distinguish cinema from a live play - rapid cutting, point-of-view camera angles, etc. As things go increasingly digital, and become more and more subject to manipulation of images bearing less and less connection with our real world experiences, we get more and more a sense of watching a cartoon as opposed to real people. It is no coincidence that, in this context, many of the modern plots are drawn from cartoon sources (Batman, Spider Man, many others). As this emphasis on special effects has increased, what has become increasingly lost is the quality scripts (with their corresponding wit, drama, fantasy) that once could be taken for granted in quality film-making. The result is an increasingly artificial experience to which it becomes harder and harder to relate.

Over the centuries, it is the great stories that have moved us, from epic poems to the great novels and, yes, even to the cinema of old warhorses such as Gone with the Wind. Today, technology has become as much a substitute for story-telling as anything else. Yes, it constitutes progress in a real sense (incremental though it may be) but, insofar as it has detracted from inspiring story-telling by serving as a tin-hat means of attracting audiences without the need to develop a great story, it has brought a net loss. Just watch a silent movie like Sunrise (1927) and tell me that CGI and other gimmicks have brought a net improvement to what truly can be inspiring about film.

It is, of course, possible to combine great new technology with great stories but not when the technology itself is being featured as the primary attraction.