With the digital revolution in the audio-visual field, media has become increasingly available in digital formats, giving rise to many different products that provide the digital audio-visual experience, like the computer, television, computer games, mobile phones etc. Films, or rather, the cinematic experience, which has always been the most impressive and elaborate audio-visual treat, is no longer at the top of the list among these various formats, but only one of the choices. The earlier theatrical experience, with the cinema audiences watching a film projected for them [like watching shadows in Plato’s cave], has now become a highly personalized viewing experience with the easily available movie DVDs and digital home cinema system. The owner [cinema theatre] and guests [viewers] no longer in this fixed positioning, the traditional models of media distribution collapses, with the viewers [the end users] being more empowered.

This digital revolution and the effect it has on modern cinema are inevitable. Although seemingly existing only as an extreme binary form, the possibilities of the inexhaustible combinations and paths used in digitization has revolutionized the methods of animation film production, from digital video cameras to digital editing. Digital production has also brought about more flexibility in montages and unlimited possibilities in creativity in the art of moving image. In this era of end-to-end digital production and distribution, digital cinema is not only beneficial to moving-image creators, but also for audiences, letting them experience exactly what the creator envisioned.

The combination of computer animation or computer-generated special effects with digital film production has blurred the lines between these two areas. They are no longer in the traditional models of pure animation or pure live-action films. In the future of digital media, realism in these films will not be an issue to be addressed as that will be meaningless. However such changes in the digital age will require a much more in-depth discussion and research.