A glimpse of the future of the movie business

Michael Simkins says that the film industry has to prepare for a future where everyone is a potential filmmaker

In this age of instant digital recording, the lines of demarcation between the actor and the director are fast blurring. Silvia Razgova / The National

‘Adapt or die” is a phrase often attributed to the naturalist Charles Darwin. Although he never actually coined this phrase, his precise words: “It is not the strongest species that survives, but the ones most responsive to change”, amount to much the same thing.

Not that this warning ever need apply to me. Oh no. I always considered myself to be the most adaptable sort of creature. After all, at the age of 60 I can send an email, use my mobile phone, and even operate the self-scanning checkout machines in my local supermarket. Not bad for a boy who grew up in an age of steam trains and unsliced bread.

As for my profession – that of acting – well, there was never a need to adapt, for the job spec is the same now as it’s always been; namely, performing in front of a live audience, or in the case of filming, waiting for someone to point a camera at me.

Yet, a few days recently spent playing a proud father in a new rom-com for an American cable TV channel showed me in brutal fashion just how fast the art of filmmaking is evolving.

Time was when it was very much Them and Us. “Them” were the film crew, the gaffers, the dolly grips, the cameramen and sound recordists, busying themselves behind the camera with little interest in the performers or what we were doing. On the other side of the lens were “Us” – the actors.

But no more. This slick, fluid low-budget movie in which I found myself acting last weekend showed that in this age of instant digital recording, the lines of demarcation are fast blurring.

To start with, the director was barely out of her teens. A well-known comedienne and blogger, Stacey was an attractive and sassy individual from America’s east coast, who had never directed before, but who nonetheless seemed utterly unfazed by her ignorance. Instead she relied on instinct, a winning personality and the knowledge that she could turn for help to the more experienced crew members around her whenever she needed it. They could be relied upon to point her in the right direction.

Indeed, everywhere I looked, new technology was rendering the often-tortuous process of moviemaking as easy as putting flat-pack furniture together. No trundling cameras on wheels, metres of electricity cables and complicated-lighting rigs – instead, hand-held cameras and portable lamps which seemed to be able to do just about everything except make the tea.

Even the set itself was festooned with myriad recording devices – tiny remote-controlled digital cameras, so small they could be safely secreted in a vase of flowers or behind a serviette – and which allowed simultaneous, multi-angle coverage.

In one especially alarming sequence, two of the actors with whom I was performing even had these devices strapped to their chests.

More confusing still, in between takes Stacey seemed to be recording the day’s events on her mobile phone, to be uploaded later on to her own YouTube channel. It soon became difficult for an old dinosaur such as me to tell who was filming whom.

“Could you improvise a few extra lines in your character please?” Stacey asked me at one point. Improvise? Me? On film? Once upon a time such a suggestion would have been greeted with a dismissive laugh. Actors are now supposed to be able to handle whatever is thrown at us, including inventing our own script whenever necessary. Yet such was Stacey’s sunny personality and self-confidence that I’d have done anything for her.

I finished the shoot on the Sunday evening with my head still spinning from the experience. It had been undoubtedly a steep old cultural climb for an old-fashioned luvvie like me; yet it had also proved liberating and energising, and had offered a tantalising glimpse of the future of the film industry.

Adapt or die was my abiding conclusion. For with every laptop a one-man studio and editing suite, we’re all now potential filmmakers.

And if you don’t believe me, just ask Stacey. Or Charles Darwin.

Michael Simkins is an actor and writer in London

On Twitter: @michael_simkins