Film isn't dead.... unfortunately.

[Kirk.Attard]

I think that the perfection our friend has seen in the skin tones comes from several factors though.. The amazing gamut, latitude and color range of film, extraordinary photography and lighting and truly talented colorist. Probably shot with some of the best glass as well. In the end this produces fantastic images and colors. Unfortunately this kind of budget and team would not be possible to work on smaller budgets. Thats why we might say that digital still lacks when confronted to film. The thing is that 99% of those who shoot film are pros in pro studios with engineers to process all the film and result with a fantastic end result..

My faith is that the big producers and directors would never go digital just to save some money. Peter jackson wouldn't mind shooting the hobbit on film. But I am sure that he would never compromise film and picture quality. I am sure they have done their homework well. Dont get me wrong I love to see movies shot on film but I am sure that an Epic with good glass and good lighting would produce some amazing skin tones... I wish that film was more affordable just to experience filming on film myself but at last we have a good alternative I think. I think they are at par with each other and in a few years we would prabably prefer digital even for picture quality. There is so much research going on in digital cinema. Thats a good thing for us. I hope there will still be those that shoot on film because thats our origin after all and it still produces great results but the cost is too great..

 

[Marc Wielage]

My faith is that the big producers and directors would never go digital just to save some money. Peter jackson wouldn't mind shooting the hobbit on film. But I am sure that he would never compromise film and picture quality.

I think it was done mainly because this was a 3D production, plus Jackson wanted to try a higher frame rate to minimize motion artifacts. Neither is practical with film today.

My observation is that there's a certain trend for the industry to jump on the trend of whatever's cool at the moment -- whether it's a certain camera, a certain kind of lighting, or a certain kind of lens or filter. We've already seen this in post, where directors are trying to judge dailies on iPads, iPhones, and computer displays, most of which aren't even close to being calibrated. Some of this is due to the "whiz bang" factor; some of it because it truly is faster and cheaper. "Compromised instantaneous" is often seen to be better than getting it perfect an hour later.

But I'm not convinced it's necessarily a better way. DP Wally Pfister made some interesting comments about why he felt that shooting in 65mm Imax negative was really the highest quality image available in the world, and that's why they went to that system for 75% of The Dark Knight Returns. I understand that it's not practical for most productions, nor will this work for 3D. And even Pfister admits that film's days are probably numbered.

 

[Patrick Wieland]

Iphones shoot pretty pictures...

 

[Geoff McLeod]

I would say it's the colourist and DOP who worked on the film that made the difference - not the fact it was shot on film. Film always had an unfair advantage when it's compared to any digital format. Why? Because film was digitised through a telecine by an experienced colourist before editing. Whilst the guy who shot on digital downloaded it to their disk and viewed the first cut straight out of camera. Only afterwards were the digital clips looked at by an experienced colourist (and many of these colourists were probably not used to dealing with digital files). Nowdays, colourists are more familiar with digital cameras and Red, in my opinion, can be anything you want it to be if you have the right colourist and DOP and lighting. Basically, there are too many variables to simple say, "Film is the best looking because I saw the great film that was shot on film and it looked great....'. It's a bit like saying "Old cars are better than new ones because I saw one being driven really fast around the track." when it was probably the driver who made the great lap time possible. Just my thoughts anyway.

 

[David Battistella]

Geoff,

I think you are correct in the sense that traditionally, MANY more people are taking care of an image shot on a 35mm film frame. I mean the real factor is the whole crew.

Lets break it down.

Film set:
Shot is set up
Lit by a crew of people directed by a DOP
A great operator hold the camera
A director is directing the scene
A set dec has cordinated with the art department and make up to help create a visual look
The shot is reocrd.
the shot is processed at a lab where it is check.
A colorist does one light on the dallies.

This EXACT SAME process can happen with the EPIC with the exact same people, with the exact same or better results.

Its when this happens:

Someone has an actor friend that wants to film a short in a friends apartment.
there is little or no crew and a boom operator.
they get access to a RED for teh weekend and shoot the film.
They get on REduser and complain that the skin tones look bad on the RED. and they want to know how to use REDrushes to transcode on their windows machine.


My overall point is that if you want RED to look like film, spend the same amount of money you might spend on film and chances are vastly improved that your images will resemble film. When I shot RED with professional crews and great grip and gaffer and crew, the results are stunning when printing to 35mm print film, provided you understand that what makes great images is a series of professionals in the pipeline, not the camera or the software, digital or film stock are equal now.

Film is a creative and budgetary choice. That is it. Thats all.

David

 

[Patrick Tresch]

It's very simple.

Film can capture a full gamut of colors but the most of high end digital motion cameras can't.

Film has another gamut than "digital" but it's not necessarly fuller than "digital". Film has a 100+ years culture to base the gamut on skin tone (whether BW rendition or Color).

Pat

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Patrick,

sometimes you are talking a kind of "conformist's trash".

I was talking about a color gamut that related to Sony claim that F65 has a wider color gamut than film also any other digital cinema camera.

Also there is no such a thing as an "another gamut" just because there is only one color gamut (can be seen, presented or reproduced as a wide or narrow...):

"In color theory, the gamut of a device or process is that portion of the color space that can be represented, or reproduced."

Link>>>

Here's the bigger box of crayons you always wanted.
The range of available colors in Sony's F65 Gamut is larger
than that of the SMPTE specification for color negative film.

Link>>>

Hope this helps.

 

[Lee Dashiell]

You may not think that film is dead, but Kodak may. It would surprise me if you can buy it in the future. You can argue this all you want but click on this link and take a look at the stock history of Kodak. It has an obvious trend which leads to death.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=EK&a=00&b=2&c=1962&d=09&e=9&f=2011&g=m&z=66&y=0

 

[Stephen Williams]

You may not think that film is dead, but Kodak may. It would surprise me if you can buy it in the future. You can argue this all you want but click on this link and take a look at the stock history of Kodak. It has an obvious trend which leads to death.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=EK&a=00&b=2&c=1962&d=09&e=9&f=2011&g=m&z=66&y=0

You could have doubled your money in Kodak stock last week. Fuji is alive & makes more interesting stocks, they couldn't even make the film worlds requirement if they tried.

B&W film is easy enough to make at home, I doubt it will ever die.

 

[M Most]

I would say it's the colourist and DOP who worked on the film that made the difference - not the fact it was shot on film. .... Nowdays, colourists are more familiar with digital cameras and Red, in my opinion, can be anything you want it to be if you have the right colourist and DOP and lighting.

I would venture to say that a large majority of high end DI colorists - the guys who grade most of what you see in theaters - do not agree with that. At least not based on the current products. In the future, it will likely be a moot point. At the moment, it's not.

 

[Phil Holland]

Just to add a bit of familiarity to this conversation in case you're in the dark about film/post production.

What has become the sort of "industry standard" when it comes to digitizing film for motion picture use is the NorthLight Film Scanner by FilmLight up to 8k resolution or more commonly 6k (I haven't seen any film truly resolve past 6k in reality) that produces a 16-bit log DPX frames. It's actually a beautiful machine in terms of design for daily use. Large marble work space, precision machined, simple to load pin registration, tension sensitive film platters, easy to setup within studio pipelines. It's the Ferrari of the digital scanning world in my opinion and that's why so many have adopted it's horizontal table-top style. I also have experience on Imagica devices and a propriety film scanner before that the produced 4k with a scientific CCD. Those would not be considered sports cars and occasionally chewed O-neg. Even got a hard shock off of one. Not fun.

The key here is getting a nice high resolution and high quality 16bit image to then introduce to post production for VFX and color use. Now when there's a reason to go back out to film a device like the ArriLaser Recorder is used. Also, by far the industry standard, it shoots out at 4k max onto a variety of stocks, but typically a low grain Kodak Vision Color Intermediate Film.

In terms of image pipelines often studios are working at 2k but scan at 6k or 8k and resize down; then export back out 4k with an upscale/sharpen process. There are instances which 4k or higher is used and there is certainly an industry wide shift to adopt pure 4k pipelines. However, this is a costly upgrade when you consider how much that needs to happen.

My personal career path allowed me to get "dirty intimate" with film on these devices and color correct/grade on multiple high end systems. Commonly dealing with labs, NG prints, good quality LAD print wait times, the added cost of "Daylighting" film just to get it back quicker for client review, film projector variations. There were and are a lot of things I personally don't enjoy about that process from a time, money, and quality control perspectives. But people have been making movies this way and you can produce lovely results.

I was fortunate to not be turned off by the digital wave years ago as I saw the promise of a closed loop system. A faster system. These days it's not uncommon to get the color grade going on set on the day of shooting and dirty composites being slapped into an EDL over at video village. Earlier cameras didn't have wonderful color in my opinion, but since things have change radically thanks to modern digital cinema cameras.

We're now at that point where there are many ways to get to the same destination via two radically different paths. In terms of my workload I know I made the right choice by supporting digital technology. However, I wouldn't trade the experience or the patience that the film pipelines have taught me for anything. These days I prefer to shoot digital though.

 

[Van Royko]

I believe a lot of my notions about colour on the Red (at least Red one MX) have been confirmed by the Zacuto shoot out.

http://www.zacuto.com/the-great-camera-shootout-2011/episode-three

You can clearly see the superior color separation in orange and reds on the Kodak stock. The Red is better than what I thought and it seems as good as the Alexa.
It does seem though that the colors don't pop as much while maintaining a gentle gradation on the Red when you compare it with the Alexa. (As in the still life test)

All this just to reiterate that I believe Red's remaining area of improvement lies its color handling.

 

[Peter Strietmann]

And people thought photography was going to kill painting. Ultimately it does not matter.

 

[Dan Kanes]

IMHO

Zacuto "Shoot Out" = FAIL.

But that's just me.

Before anyone says "Unbiased, run by professionals, etc." - hey professionals make mistakes, and we can forgive them.

 

[Van Royko]

Lower noise on Epic - yes. Better colours no. Colorimetry is the same for M-X and Epic using the same chip. Sitting in the audience means you're watching the result of the entire process from lens through to screen. Sitting looking at the set, the R3D files and the finished production like Deanan and myself do gives us a better perspective. Most of what you see on screen (in terms of colour) is dictated by factors other than camera choice.

Graeme

Graeme claims that color handling is identical in Red One and Epic.

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Patrick,

sometimes you are talking a kind of "conformist's trash".

Thanks for the picture and the kind words Sanjin! ;-)

In my opinion...

...the box is a theoretical representation of the color gamut in RGB values. No imagery systems can reproduce throughout the whole colors of the gamut they claim. It should be seen as a color gamut with some "color" holes in it.
Film, as photochemical medium, shoud not be simplified to one absolute gamut, but merely as a "reference". Even if you have a great film scanner, you will always loose colors going from Neg to an RGB digital file, because you work in a different color space (or science?). Now in the DI world we could argue if it still makes sense to speak about only film gamut?

Pat

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Partick,

sorry for my "kind words"!

Also I didn't say that film has any sort of absolute gamut but till today has widest that can easily handle skin tones in a different lighting situations much better than digital.

As we know well filmmakers like a Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson recently showed us movies that have been analog film all the way of process without DI involved

just because they wanted to keep wider film gamut at the final print.

As I said before Sony F65 claims wider color gamut than film.

For sure that Sony have already wider gamut digital 4K projector in pipeline...

We should wait and see all that.

Probably F65 and upcoming Genesis 65 will be the first cameras that could replace film by wider color gamut and higher DR.

Sony and Panavision counting on that to take over main feature film market in the future.

Alexa will remain as a king of TV feature production and EPIC will take over 3D blockbuster market in the future.

And the rest is for all other type of cameras...

That means wide color gamut and higher DR both rule camera IQ.

 

[Tom Cheater]

Some Brits once said Americans dont understand irony. Let's not prove them right now ok.
Of course we never want to see film dead.

The point is- is that we (we meaning humanity/civilizaton) were chasing film when we invented HD. When we invented 4k. High fram rates. Increased latitude. Film has been our point of reference for improvement as long as video has been used for 'cinematic' endeavours.

Why is it only ok to compare Red to film when its favorable for Red? I loathe propaganda. So lets stop with the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil spiel.

Lets stop averting our eyes from the truth and make Red as good in color as it is in latitude, resolution etc.

This whole forum is propaganda,