Do you think that the impact of special effects and other technology on films is positive? Do the new tools help or harm storytelling in film?

Ever since Thomas Edison invented most of the major compononetns of the camera film has been improved by increasing the number of frames or images per second, making the image wider, a adding color.  Initially special effects developed in films in movies like King Kong (1933) as mechanical models.  Special effects have developed throughout the course of movie making history into rear-projection, front-production, as well as compositing as tools and implemented to add a dynamic to the movie watching experience.  This eventually led to the digital revolution in movie making with the use of computer driven cameras in Star Wars (1977) to construct multilayered space battles, evolving into the amazing slow motion scenes shot in The Matrix (1999).  Today special effects are very impressive and much of this is due to postproduction process when films get their finishing touches.  Nonlinear editing allows the editor to rearrange scenes in making the master copy.   What has evolved from the continual evolution of special effects in film industry are franchises like Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean.  These movies along with films like Avatar would have previously been screenplays at best, simply because we did not have the technology prior to the digital revolution. 

“Development on Avatar began in 1994, when Cameron wrote an 80-page scriptment for the film.^[12] Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, for a planned release in 1999,^[13] but according to Cameron, the necessary technology was not yet available to achieve his vision of the film.^[14] Work on the language for the film's extraterrestrial beings began in Summer 2005, and Cameron began developing the screenplay and fictional universe in early 2006.^[15][16] Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million.^[3] Other estimates put the cost between $280 million and $310 million for production and at $150 million for promotion.^[17][18][19] The film was released for traditional viewing, 3-D viewing (using the RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D, and IMAX 3D formats), and "4-D" viewing.^[20] The stereoscopic filmmaking was touted as a breakthrough in cinematic technology.”  (Wikipedia)

Given the current state of movies I think that the impact of special effects and other technology on films overall is a positive, but it does not come without its’ negatives.  Today you have a film industry that is semi-saturated by special effects driven movies, and what is often compromised is the actual storyline of the film.  Movies today that use an abundance of special effects often try to tell a story through the visual, and what happens is that often times the actual dialogue of the film is compromised.  I think we saw this first hand in Waterworld in which the studio spent a tremendous amount of money on a movie that was an ultimate bust.  Just because a movie is visually appealing does not mean that it is a good movie.  You have to take into consideration what movies and films have always been about.  There is more to the movie going experience than just the visual effects, and as production companies continue to make movies in 3D, they must keep in mind not to skim on the content.