Cinematic specificity refers to the specific qualities or characteristics that distinguish film from other media and art forms. Theorists seek to answer the question: What properties or qualities are unique to the cinema? This question has been one of the reigning questions of film theory, and it has received renewed attention since the advent of the digital era and the emergence of new technology and, thus, changes in film and the filmmaking process. In some contemporary films, for instance, the image is no longer the product of the physical contact between light and its referent; instead, the properties of the image are digitally coded and thus mutable.