The implications of this aren't obvious but if you're filmmaker, Lucas decision marks the end of an era: Film as celluloid media. According to the news article, Lucas finds the Digital cameras, develop by Panavision and Sony up to standard to shoot a major film project like Episode 2. The image's up to film quality, with high resolution and a low cost for production since there's no digital to film transfer. The future of film's coming faster than expected.

     In fitfty years we might not recognize the artform known as Cinema. In twenty years,it would have started feeling alien to those familiar with 20th century film. Consider the state of film on the early 80's: Lucas had shoot Star Wars and was about to release The Empire Strikes Back. The word Multiplex was but a glimmer in a threatrical-chain mogul's eye. CGI was just in its hold-the-baby-by-the-legs-and-smack-its-butt infancy. And film distribution on the Internet was a theoretical concoction in a computer geek's head. Now in the early MM's, films are poised to be shoot on digital media sans celluloid. Multiplexes with 20 screens are the norm. And with the advent of broadband internet technology, it's just a matter of single digit years before we will watching films first run on the Internet on big screen monitors with millionth by millionth resolution--that is if films aren't being projected from digital projectors on the multiplexes of the future.

     Even farther ahead are technological leaps like interactive virtual cinema, in which people will submerge themselves into a film's world and become part of the story if not the main protagonist. I believe that in time this type of entertainment could replace Cinema. Who would want to just sit there and be told a story when every day they can become part of any story, in any genre, and make it all up as they go along? Someday it's going to be like Star Trek's Holodeck....and it'll be a pity, because telling a story with images and words requires artistry which very few people have. Plus, I suspect if the Holodeck ever becomes a reality, most people will simply indulge their porn fantasies (Yeah,Baby,Yeah!)