Basic question

[Dan Hudgins]

RED's cost less than film.

RED's cost less than film.

I don't know here the idea that because you CAN shoot more takes to get the shot that works in the edit, you must be a bad director comes from.

For people with an unlimited film budget let them shoot 65mm it looks good, maybe better than a RED ONE. But who is permitted to shoot 65mm any longer? I don't think I am going to be on that list soon, do you?

As of 35mm, you can purchase two or three RED ONE for the cost of film and lab on a feature with a realistic ratio for working with actors that are not in constant practice.

I have enough ECN on hand to shoot a feature with a 2:1 ratio, but with any amount of dialog I'm not even going to get 15 minutes of usable footage out of that.

If I put that money into getting a re-usable then I can finish that film without running out of film, and use the media over for doing additional works until the camera needs repairs.

Un-like most people I see little need to archive bad takes and working files, rather than put money into saving junk, it is better to use the good takes you can get and make something worth looking at.

I know the argument that nothing with a budget under say 5 million will "ever" be worth looking at. Well, maybe, but if 90% of you budget goes into film and lab, rather than actors and sets it will not be a better film. Digital lets you shift your budget to what shows on the screen, that's why we have been going to DIY DI to cut the lab budget to almost nothing. Without using a Digital Cinema camera there can be a great deal of labor in dust mitigation when working with bleach bypass or black and white negatives.

While Digital or Film may make little difference in a high budget producton, would "Knowing" have cost or been much different on film, for lower budgets and people who are not close to a good lab, it can make a huge difference in the quality of the end result.

Why should a filmmaker become lazy or untalanted because he can shoot until he gets the performance he needs?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Why should a filmmaker become lazy or untalanted because he can shoot until he gets the performance he needs?

Why are you assuming that you need to shoot more takes to get better performances? Half the actors out there like being able to go again multiple times and half can't stand it, they start to think that the director really doesn't know what he wants after awhile, plus the director isn't always taking into account that he has hours more of shooting to go and he should consider whether he is wearing out his actors on one set-up trying to achieve perfection.

Look, it's not necessarily a given that being able to shoot a lot develops laziness, but it doesn't necessarily encourage discipline either.

I'm just saying that the restrictions that film has brought us still delivered a 100 years of some great cinema, and I see no indication after a decade of digital independent movies of an increase in their general artistic quality due to being shot on digital. If you go to film festivals showing low-budget independent movies, the general impression isn't that the digitally shot ones are better overall because the directors could shoot more takes to "get it right". Is independent cinema of the 2000's significantly better than the one of the 1990's because it's now being shot digitally for the most part? Because that would have to be the logical outcome if you make the argument that being able to shoot more takes with digital allows you to make a better movie. So, ergo, movies today must be better than movies of the past because today we shoot more takes than we did in the past.

 

[Jose Alvarez]

Thanks David, your grain of sanity is always welcomed in this sea of "Digital Fanboy Mentality". Even today film has a LOT of advantages over digital cinema, primarily esthetic ones. So yes, digital is great, but film is still better in most circumstances. Cheaper definitely does not mean better. BTW I hope I didn't misread the subtle sarcasm in your post.

 

[Julio Quintana]

Thanks David, your grain of sanity is always welcomed in this sea of "Digital Fanboy Mentality". Even today film has a LOT of advantages over digital cinema, primarily esthetic ones. So yes, digital is great, but film is still better in most circumstances. Cheaper definitely does not mean better. BTW I hope I didn't misread the subtle sarcasm in your post.

I don't think he was arguing that film has a "lot" of advantages over digital. He's just criticizing the idea that digital technology can be a substitute for artistic vision and pre-production.

 

[Stefan Christou]

David is right obviously.

The real advantage the Red has over other digital formats is quality of colour reproduction. The RAW workflow gives one much more room to change things up in post or to be creative, without degrading the quality of the image as much as would otherwise be the case with baked-in formats.

Using RAW also removes one layer of MTF degradation in your workflow.

I'm really looking forward to shooting run-and-gun with Scarlet fixed, and not having to worry about colour temperature (except to shoot a 50% grey card as often as possible for reference later). I can just imagine completely unnoticeable transitions from daylight to shade and tungsten. Perhaps I'm kidding myself, but anyway.

Over film digital has the obvious advantage of telling you lots of information about exposure right there on set, thus meaning less experienced (but no less talented) DPs will not be shown-up by over or under exposure in their shots.

Of course film has better highlight roll-off, and digital can have more DR in shadows.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

There are some advantages to digital, don't get me wrong -- financial ones being major, but I think some of the advantages people often like to cite are either minor or a mixed blessing.

Some common "benefits" over shooting film that are often mentioned are:

- the ability to work faster. Not much actual difference, especially if you talk to AD's who type of the production reports at the end of the day. So you save a little time because you aren't reloading as often, but lighting is lighting, and you can either do a little or a lot whether or not you are shooting digital or film, it's more of an attitude thing. And many directors end up shooting more takes with digital and thus losing any time savings they might have accrued from reloading less often. Not to mention the average digital movie shoots at least 3X the amount of footage than a film production shoots, which means more time or effort in editorial dealing with more footage. I don't know many editors who like having a short post schedule and having 60 hours of footage dumped on them for a 2-hour movie.

- the ability to work in lower light levels. Again, the average sensitivity of these digital cameras is not better than 500T film stock, but you do have the ability to open up the shutter in emergencies and boosting the gain at least doesn't increase the contrast the way it does with film stock push-processing.

- the ability to do more takes and cut less often. We've already discussed the pros and cons of this.

- the ability for the director and DP to see exactly what they will get, while on the set. I do think this is a major advantage with digital and is perhaps the most important one for me, plus not dealing with inaccurate film dailies. If you have a good relationship with a visual director, the ability to really discuss the shot while looking at a good monitor is very productive creatively. On the other hand, you can still find problems in post that you somehow didn't notice on the set, and you can also end up with interference from producers and whatnot who can't help but comment on everything they see on an HD monitor. Not to mention that many actors can't stand to see themselves in full HD quality, they find it distracting -- they look at playback to see their performances but end up getting wrapped up in how they look on the monitor.

- the ability to put more money into "production value". Before we had good digital cameras like the Red or Genesis/F35, I thought this line of reasoning was fairly bogus because image quality is one important aspect of production value. No point in spending extra money to shoot in an expensive location if you shoot it on an inferior format, is there? Would "Lawrence of Arabia" had more "production value" if David Lean had shot it in 16mm instead of 65mm in order to get more extras or more shooting days?

 

[Frank Weeks]

If you have a spare 13 minutes and a good stomach for dark comedy check out the following short I produced a few years back - Big Bad Wolves - shot on Mini DV.

http://www.vimeo.com/769224

That was great Creig.

Very well done and you're right. Creative content comes from the mind not the equipment. For mini-dv, that was amazing.