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Janusz Kaminski: "..I don't have respect for digital media just yet."

Dominik Muench

Dominik Muench

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It's not that he decries anything about digital capture. Just the inescapable mentality you endure when you see what you're recording, instead of meticulously planning, calculating, guessing, finding blind miracles in the emulsion that one day elevate you to the level of Janusz, painting with the sum of the accidents and alchemy you've found... when there's a 17 monitor that looks good, you lose part of that process, especially if you never spent 30 years mastering it in the first place...

hence the dramatic statements.
 
true that.

I have to agree with him to a certain degree though, that a little bit of the "power" cinematographers used to have gets lost in the digital process today by splitting up tasks....then again...the skills just shift....instead of doing things yourself, you now talk to a DIT and get him to resolve certain things. this of course is also due to the fact that digital image capture has become a quite complex process with a lot of steps inbetween that can be influenced. where in the old days it could have been as simple as whacking a roll of film in the mag, expose it, take it to the lab and there was your image.

i might be wrong but didnt Kaminski shoot Indy 4 on the Genesis ??? This article says his first experience with HD was just recently on a commercial ?
 
Did you guys read about how he shot War Horse? In ASC this month? He literally layered filters and shot everything in camera. He layered double fog and coral and ND grads to get these pastoral majestic looks. I saw the still grabs and I was blown away. They have almost no tweaking done in the DI. He and Speielbierg shoot it all in camera. Amazing.
 
Not that I know anything about how Janusz feels... But most of those I know personally, who still prefer film, are in love with the process. Both film and digital can produce amazing imagery, this is proven and I don't see how anyone can deny it. And yet, both have their own aesthetics, some people still prefer film and may always prefer film, even when it falls to the wayside as a forgotten art and no longer has any technical edge, maybe even loses the ability to compete on a technical capability level altogether. That's beside the point. Film is an art and a process all its own. Setting aside all the technical facets such as dynamic range, resolution, etc.., all things that digital is now mostly equal to or even beginning to surpass, film still has many organic aspects in the images it creates and the process to get there which digital can not emulate. Nor will digital be able to emulate in the foreseeable future... For some, film is still very much where it's at.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Not that I know anything about how Janusz feels... But most of those I know personally, who still prefer film, are in love with the process. Both film and digital can produce amazing imagery, this is proven and I don't see how anyone can deny it. And yet, both have their own aesthetics, some people still prefer film and may always prefer film, even when it falls to the wayside as a forgotten art and no longer has any technical edge, maybe even loses the ability to compete on a technical capability level altogether. That's beside the point. Film is an art and a process all its own. Setting aside all the technical facets such as dynamic range, resolution, etc.., all things that digital is now mostly equal to or even beginning to surpass, film still has many organic aspects in the images it creates and the process to get there which digital can not emulate. Nor will digital be able to emulate in the foreseeable future... For some, film is still very much where it's at.
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Roger Deakins said this month in American Cinematographer that after shooting Alexa he's convinced that digital has now surpassed film. He loved the experience. He said he couldn't see a reason to going back....
 
I read this article as Kaminski being unwilling to turn substantial parts of creating the look and texture over to other parts of the production (DIT, post-house, colorist...).

When you are a legend, still at the top of your game, why would you want to relinquish that kind of control. His position makes perfect sense, for him. It's not so much about digital media being "good enough" - it's about it working precisely the way that he wants it to....

For me, a far less talented "painter," I'm glad to have RAW files at my disposal and a team behind making the best possible images.
 
Yeah in the War Horse article in American Cinematographer, he pretty much said the same thing. He knew what he wanted. He preferred to not muddy the process and just get it all in camera. He didn't want his vision to get lost downstream.
 
Nick Morrison said:
Yeah in the War Horse article in American Cinematographer, he pretty much said the same thing. He knew what he wanted. He preferred to not muddy the process and just get it all in camera. He didn't want his vision to get lost downstream.
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This is part of what I've heard from well established cinematographers, with film you were some what forced to learn the technical side, you learned your craft. Unfortunately, there is not as much discipline required with digital. (good and bad)
 
I agree with Kaminski. This happened with casual still photography already. Vacation photos used to come back from the lab with this raw mystery and emotion and power. The immediacy of digital ended that and I think the same can be said for working on set.

The upside being... for those out there who aren't Kaminski... they can't b.s. themselves anymore.
 
I'd like to read all of what Kaminski said, and not just the paragraph and a half that was printed. He's a very intelligent, articulate man, and I suspect his thoughts about digital are complex and not easily expressed in a soundbite.

One thing that all DPs are not happy about is the fear that more tweaking will be done to their work on down the line, without their creative input. If you have a raw image as a digital file, and people can go in, change the effective exposure, change the color temperature, and otherwise twist things around far different than you ever wanted... this is a huge issue, especially if the DP isn't present for the final color correction. I know for a fact this is why certain DPs deliberately "bake in" a set look into the original photography, knowing that there's no going back later on. And I also know there are many DPs (not necessarily Janusz) who are annoyed by the delays of digital, the need for DITs, the annoyance of scopes and histograms, and all the other technological crap that gets in the way of what they see and what gets captured.

Guaranteed, Kaminski and Spielberg will do a digital project before too much longer. I give it two years. By then, who knows what'll be out there? I bet by 2014, they'll have 10 different 4K cameras to choose from, all very good, each offering advantages and disadvantages. Maybe even higher than 4K.
 
Marc Wielage said:
Guaranteed, Kaminski and Spielberg will do a digital project before too much longer. I give it two years. By then, who knows what'll be out there? I bet by 2014, they'll have 10 different 4K cameras to choose from, all very good, each offering advantages and disadvantages. Maybe even higher than 4K.
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I agree. Times are changing so fast that their will be other alternatives coming up from the wood work much like RED. Lucky, for RED they have a great following and amazing picture quality at a reasonable price point not like 10 years ago.
 
Ryan De Franco said:
...instead of meticulously planning, calculating, guessing, finding blind miracles in the emulsion that one day elevate you to the level of Janusz, painting with the sum of the accidents and alchemy you've found... when there's a 17 monitor that looks good, you lose part of that process, especially if you never spent 30 years mastering it in the first place...
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30 years..? ..doesn't take that long..Janusz shot Schindlers List when he was only 6 years out of film school.
Kodak used to have an advertsing slogan "You press the button we do all the work".
Not sure if it's true or not but I read that 7 of the 9 Best Picture nominess were shot on film this year...so it's still out there.

Nick Morrison said:
Did you guys read about how he shot War Horse? In ASC this month? He literally layered filters and shot everything in camera. He layered double fog and coral and ND grads to get these pastoral majestic looks. I saw the still grabs and I was blown away. They have almost no tweaking done in the DI. He and Speielbierg shoot it all in camera. Amazing.
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The work itself may be amazing..but the process is not...this is how absolutely every single film ever shot before the year 2000 was done.
 
Steve Das said:
The work itself may be amazing..but the process is not...this is how absolutely every single film ever shot before the year 2000 was done.
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Exactly. And moving to shooting digital does not mean that one can't shoot this way. Many do. It becomes a matter of how and where you want to construct your image. Do you do it in camera? Or, do you do it in post production? Most find a happy medium between both approaches that fits their shooting style, budget, time constraints, etc.. I'm all for getting the look as close to what I want in camera and try to do that. On the other hand, I don't tend to do much of anything in camera that affects color rendition or will ultimately make post process color correction and grading into a bigger job than it needs to be. So I will use filters for effect, but tend to shy away from colored filters on the camera.
 
Excuses. I respect the talent and eye of Janusz, which is immense, but his philosophy is one of fear and complacence. With the resources, talent and knoledge pool available to him and Spielberg there is no reason they could not achive the exact same (or better) look using digital capture. I feel it's important for creative artists to challenge themselves and work in new ways, not just kling to the dying ones because it feels good. Spielberg has already shown he can with Tin Tin, film is now too environmentally hazordous to be a viable option when it's possible to capture and control the look better than film with an Epic/Alexa/F65.
 
Evin Grant said:
Excuses. I respect the talent and eye of Janusz, which is immense, but his philosophy is one of fear and complacence. With the resources, talent and knoledge pool available to him and Spielberg there is no reason they could not achive the exact same (or better) look using digital capture. I feel it's important for creative artists to challenge themselves and work in new ways, not just kling to the dying ones because it feels good. Spielberg has already shown he can with Tin Tin, film is now too environmentally hazordous to be a viable option when it's possible to capture and control the look better than film with an Epic/Alexa/F65.
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I disagree. I don't think he's making excuses, more likely he knows what his eyes like and he likes the process of shooting on film. Many DPs agree with him, including Cronenweth. Jeff seemed to indicate he would still shoot on film if given the choice. Some, like Cronenweth have accepted and even embraced digital too. I do feel the two formats are still different enough to warrant their use and I would expect that to be the case for a while. And I think it's okay.New generations of filmmakers and audiences are growing up on digital and that aesthetic will be what's burned into their memory just like film is in ours.
 
"Digital" is not the problem

"Digital" is not the problem

Back in the day I used to shoot B&W still film, develop it and print it in a darkroom. Each step was a portion of the artistic process with myriad opportunities to influence the results.

With digital formats, particularly RAW formats like RED offers, I utilize a very similar process. Some things are best achieved in camera, other "flavoring" can be precisely controlled while "developing" the RAW into an RGB image. Color grading in the digital world is especially rich with opportunity to mold the image to your vision.

Lets stop lamenting what we have "lost" to technology and turn the tables. The authorship of the image needs to extend beyond the original capture. No DP should be asked to end their involvement until the process is complete. The problem is not the digital nature of the acquisition medium, the problem is DPs getting cut out of the imaging process prematurely.

Cheers - #19
 
Blair has nailed it. I cut my teeth in film and we lost that wow factor when the rushes came back or as a photographer you laid the transparencies out on the light table. Now asa DP we have to take ownership of the final image. I usually get the DIT to take still grabs for me to take with me and play with. I then email them to the post house or colourist ( who I have a relationship with ) and hopefully have a say in the end product. If schedule permits i insist on being at the final transfer.
 
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