Speaking at a forum held on Friday during the ongoing Shanghai International Film Festival, directors noted that the wide availability of portable digital cameras has changed filmmaking and alternative ways to watch movies have changed people's viewing habits.

"There are films shot with low-quality equipment," British director and producer Hugh Hudson said, referring to handheld digital camera. The visual style from the device has led movie-making in a new direction, he said.

Hudson mentioned acclaimed British director Paul Greengrass ("Bourne Ultimatum," "United 93") whose works have a distinctive, documentary look. Hudson likened his movies to newsreels. With the increasing number of movies of this style, he noted there is a blur between documentary and films shot "in an emotional realistic way."

Meanwhile, people have changed a lot in movie-watching habits due to various devices that they can watch movies on, American director Barry Levinson said. Observing his son, he found that young people like to hit the pause in the process of watching a movie to do something else, like getting food and making phone calls. In addition, young people even don't care about the movie's characters or story and they often fast forward to the parts that they find funny or interesting, he said.

Despite all those changes, they would not care less about the story they are going to tell, the two directors said. For them, whether making a movie for big screen or small screen, the story always comes first. Levinson said good movies work on big screen, small screen or any other device.

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