eDIT|VES 2003 was held in the heart of Frankfurt at a new location this year. All images unless otherwise noted © Werner Wille, eDIT|VES 2003.

The eDIT/VES Event in Frankfurt —The European Festival for Production and Visual Effects, hosted by the Visual Effects Society — offers a great opportunity to exchange ideas about the latest tricks of the digital trade with writers, producers, effects specialists and media people from all over the world.

Despite the global economic downturn, however, the festival attracted 1,500 visitors from 17 countries, raising the standard of the past five years, and boasting an audience that has become more international and professional.

Professionals, students and layman were brought together in a showcase of the latest digital technology in cinema from Hollywood to eccentric arthouse, but also discussed were the latest trends and issues dominating advertising, television, animation, sound effects and computer games.

It didn’t hurt at all that this year’s topic, “Storytelling in the Digital Age,” was touched on only casually. It’s still up to the storytellers to use the tools provided in an inventive and intelligent way. These are skills that no technological tool can provide.

Storytellers and technical wizards — that’s still two worlds apart — but Frankfurt gave both worlds a chance to meet and interact.

Dennis Muren (left) is greeted by Hessen Prime Minister Roland Koch.

The celebrity guests were wisely chosen, offering a beautiful triad from Hollywood’s spectacle-wizards (Industrial Light & Magic’s Dennis Muren) over traditional storytellers (cinematographer Michael Ballhaus) to representatives of experimental arthouse (director Peter Greenaway) .

But most of all, the eDIT/VES provided a pretty clear picture of things to come.

And it made one trend perfectly clear: sooner or later, movies will be HD. Greenaway already announced and celebrated the death of celluloid in his presentation. As a matter of fact, his latest work, The Tulse Luper Suitcases, shot in HD, breaks with the rules and conventions of cinema, as we know it, playing with our normal understanding of frame, story, length and completion.

Well, it might be a little early to sing an epitaph on celluloid altogether, but the eDIT/VES clearly gave the impression that the evolution cannot be stopped anymore. It will not happen over night it will rather take at least another couple of years, but it was pretty obvious where the journey is heading.

The trendy hype of the ‘90s seems to be over and HD is on the brink of becoming a serious tool of future filmmaking.

Even Ballhaus, a representative of character and story-driven cinema, is not scared by the idea of the digital camera. He welcomes it as just another tool to tell a story. “Maybe,” he says, “it’ll give us more freedom to express creativity and not less, as some people fear, but it certainly will not make filmmaking cheaper, as some producers hope. Let’s not forget that the likes of George Lucas get sponsored by the digital industry. We won’t all have the same luck.”