I think we're about to "cast off", the "film look"

[Peter Hodgins]

Not really an Ayn Rand "form follows function" simile but sort of....

Digital is ... what it is.

Why not just use our tools to the best of our abilities to tell a good story ... use the depth of field appropriate for the shot ...

light the scene the way we want to ...

then the style is what it is .... anyone who doesn't like it can walk out.

When color came in ... did people shoot to emulate B&W?
(maybe they did ... I'm a newbie and haven't looked this up)

Film is dying 4-5k digital is the future.

I will shoot the best quality digital, as I said, the viewers can walk out ....

 

[Shawn Booth]

Right on.

Film's not dying though. It'll be around for awhile.:biggrin:

 

[jaadgy akanni]

Not really an Ayn Rand "form follows function" simile but sort of....

Digital is ... what it is.

Why not just use our tools to the best of our abilities to tell a good story ... use the depth of field appropriate for the shot ...

light the scene the way we want to ...

then the style is what it is .... anyone who doesn't like it can walk out.

When color came in ... did people shoot to emulate B&W?
(maybe they did ... I'm a newbie and haven't looked this up)

Film is dying 4-5k digital is the future.

I will shoot the best quality digital, as I said, the viewers can walk out ....

Exactly the way I've always felt. One thing I've always liked about Stevie Wonder is how he uses synthesizer strings without making any attempt to fool anyone into thinking he was trying to pass them off as real strings. The 24fps digital is what it is; its a look of its own, and we're all gonna eventually learn to love it.

 

[Brian Chapman]

Right on.

Film's not dying though. It'll be around for awhile.:biggrin:

That's true. Look at the music industry.... CD's and digital downloads are all the rage but they still make albums.

-Brian

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

More power to you but I for one am going to continue trying to make films that don't have what has come to be known as "smeary motion"

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Film Look?

Film Look?

Very few films are finished with all film to film printing any longer. How many negative cutters are still working?

What most people think of as the "film look" is not a product of film, but rather heavy image processing of something shot on film then scanned and mixed with CGI elements, and then run through a LUT. LUT that simulate faded prints and bad lab work and EDTA bleach problems are a disservice to the concept of film's look which never looked like that in a fresh print made by a good lab.

For the most part the "film look" no longer exists in major motion picture production.

Lower end "films" (and some higher end ones) are shot on HD or Digital now.

Once you go to DI you no longer have the look of film to film optical printing of the type DeLux and Technicolor once made. Many of the optical printers have already gone to the dump and most of the others are on their way soon enough...

Too much people are using very heavy LUT to muck up the gambit of their "films" in place of good art direction.

Digital Cinematography and CGI should not be a way to cheaply substitute one click gimmicks for creative vision, it should be a way to amplify and realize that vision, assuming one exists...

Once you get into a DI it matters less and less if it was shot on film or with Digital, since to scan film you need to use a digital sensor, and so shooting Digital in the first place gets the signal closer to the subject.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

I think "film look" is very relative term.

The part where the look is additionally crafted in post should be less exclusive and use the full creative potential of today's digital tools IMO. If creative process leads to what reminds of a certain stock - then fine. I wouldn't exclude that option, just as I wouldn't chase the same looks in different projects.
There are too many choices in post these days to be limited by using the same ones every time. Sometimes the scene itself leads to a look which fits it the most.

 

[Bob Gruen]

...use the depth of field appropriate for the shot ...

light the scene the way we want to ...

DoF and lighting have evolved over the years as a way to control what the viewer is paying attention to. This has to do with human psychology; you ignore this at your own risk. Yes there is room for art, but if the subject in the shot doesn't 'fall to eye' then the viewer will miss little pieces of your story and you will fail as a storyteller.

Ayn Rand didn't buck conventional wisdom, she was a champion for it.

Bob

 

[James T Mather]

I will shoot the best quality digital, as I said, the viewers can walk out ....

Not exactly a dream pitch to a financier.

 

[Leo Ticheli]

One may define "film look" as they wish and then attack the straw-man they've created, but such an approach is a fallacy.

The film look is an amalgam of all the arts and crafts that go into a scene; it's not about the recording medium.

Would "the Color Purple" have been any less stunning had it been shot with a Red camera?

Would there have been very subtle differences? Most certainly. Would audiences be able to tell the difference? I'll bet not.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo

 

[Jeff Brue]

bringing technical aarguments to an aesthetic discussion, is one of the quickest ways to fall on your face.

 

[Joel Kaye]

Not exactly a dream pitch to a financier.

Yeah, mentioning people walking out is probably a bad idea.

...but shooting digital to save money while creating quality that is virtually the same as 35mm film to almost any viewer is a pitch that's already working very well in the lower budget world.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

What's happening is that viewers are being conditioned to meet digital halfway as digital works to emulate film more. Once we reach that point, then eventually as film gets used less and less, digital has more freedom to drift away again and explore its own aesthetics.

I've been watching movies on Blu-Ray recently and I've noticed that the ones shot digitally (RockNRolla / D20, Get Smart and a host of other movies shot on the Genesis) look really good on Blu-Ray... and most of them looked pretty good when digitally projected. They just didn't make the best film-outs.

So as people get to see more and more movies on Blu-Ray and projected digitally in theaters, they will get used to digital cinematography more and more because the movies will look good.

And because 35mm often goes through a 2K D.I., to some extent, we've been adding a digital look to a lot of film-shot material...

It's all causing a convergence, where film looks more digital and digital looks more like film, and everything is being distributed and shown digitally, causing more and more people to accept digital cinematography.

 

[Leo Ticheli]

One day we will all queue up to screen a blockbuster movie, highly touted and critically reviewed, that was shot... on film! The maestro will receive press acclaim for resurrecting the dead medium of chemical emulsion which he/she declared was necessary to achieve the film's vision.

No one can say when this will happen, but betting against the advance of technology is surely folly.


Good shooting and best regards,

Leo

 

[Shawn Booth]

One day we will all queue up to screen a blockbuster movie, highly touted and critically reviewed, that was shot... on film! The maestro will receive press acclaim for resurrecting the dead medium of chemical emulsion which he/she declared was necessary to achieve the film's vision.

No one can say when this will happen, but betting against the advance of technology is surely folly.


Good shooting and best regards,

Leo

YES! And he will have processes the film himself, by hand, in his basement. And it will be glorious! (But he learned his craft working with the Optitek Camera System and HoloCreation Studio Kit.)

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Film?

Film?

YES! And he will have processes the film himself, by hand, in his basement. And it will be glorious!

Glorious? Hardly, it will be covered with dust and scratches. People who have not cut their own Negatives have no idea how hard film is to deal with, and more so now that TCE cannot be purchased to clean it with.

In a few years there may be only one or two labs to process negative stocks in, and then there will be none. Print stocks will lag a bit but soon enough there will be no prints made.

We had five or six labs in San Francisco at one time, now there is one that seems to only run batches on occasion. Do you want your negative processed in developer that is not in constant use? If you have to ship your negative to Hollywood area for processing and pay for shipping and storage that adds to your costs.

==

As to the "film look" what I was trying to say is that many people have not seen what film looked like printed film to film on the right print stocks. You cannot print old color negatives onto current color prnt stocks, the curves have the wrong slope and crossover, so the prints look wrong. People get in their mind that "old" films had a messed up "look" and they want their film to look like the "films of the 70's" but the copies they are looking at or the transfers from faded prints look nothing like what the films first looked like in fresh prints of the day.

==

The point about the 2K DIs is important, optical printing when done well yelds more resolution (both in MTF and tonal range) than a 2K DI can and without the aliasing artifacts, but people see "films" processed through DI and think of that as what film looks like, when it is a Digital process that is having much of the impact on the "look" being something soft and off color. CHE was apperently run off at 2K on a Cinevator, some people commented that it did not seem as sharp as 4K digital projection, well how could it?

==

The "film look" to me is just that, what film-to-film printing looks like when done well with the right print stocks at the best labs, which no longer exist for the most part. You cannot get the look of the films of the early '60s because the chemicals used and the film stocks used are not used any longer and no LUT or software will give you the same result, the only way to see that "look" is to view an archive print that is in good condition.

As for the "film look" being what you get with a DOF adapter in front of a camcorder, well that should be called something that does not have the word "film" in it, like the "cinema look" because it has nothing to do with "film".

 

[Chris Parker]

we are close to the tipping point in this film vs. digital debate.....

once we get over that hump, the tables will suddenly (over a two or three year period that will start in 2009) turn.....

right now, many producers/DPs,etc. feel shooting film is easier, as they know this workflow inside out.

soon, it will flip, and shooting digital will become 'easier' as film processing labs, film technicians, and film stock become less and less common.....

once this happens, it is all over for film (except the art house flicks). it is happening faster than i originally thought it would, and i think the process will continue to evolve.

how many NEW film cameras do you think arri is putting R and D money into? panavision?? when companies like these are focusing almost all their energy on digital camera models, the writing surely is on the wall. i couldn't imagine many camera houses beyond 2010 investing in new film camera inventory, whereas almost ALL of them will be investing in some sort of digital camera purchases.

enjoy the smell of film while you can. in 5 years from now, you won't see much of it. hell, i bet of those starting work in the 'film' industry beyond 2015, at least half will never ever work on a set where film is rolled....

as for the look. i totally agree with david. digital is now trying to emulate film. once film is gone, and theatres are all projecting digitally, no one will care about the film look anymore, and in fact, it will be LESS appealing to the next generation, just as black and white is to this generation.....

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

we are close to the tipping point in this film vs. digital debate.....

once we get over that hump, the tables will suddenly (over a two or three year period that will start in 2009) turn.....

right now, many producers/DPs,etc. feel shooting film is easier, as they know this workflow inside out.

soon, it will flip, and shooting digital will become 'easier' as film processing labs, film technicians, and film stock become less and less common.....

once this happens, it is all over for film (except the art house flicks). it is happening faster than i originally thought it would, and i think the process will continue to evolve.

You are giving away your youth here. This argument started in the late 90's and then REALLY heated up when the DVX-100 came out. WOW, a 24P frame rate video camera!

The world was abuzz, Film was soon to be dead.. blah blah blah.

but the bottom line (FOR ME) is that the human eye is less perfect than a digital captured image, hence my preference for a softer "film look."

As opposed to a hyper accurate and detailed video image. I mean who looks good on video? VERY FEW people.

Hence all the techniques to soften the digital palette for the eye, to a more forgiving and essentially degraded "film-like" image.

I think David Mullen nailed it when he said, once the playing field is leveled, only then will filmmakers and DP's starting pushing the edge of the digital medium away from film-look and instead embracing the medium for all it is. not what it isnt.

RED is leading the way with the 645 and 617 Monstro sensors.

I think those two alone are going to spawn some sick ass images
that should defy todays perceptions... who knows?

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

That's true. Look at the music industry.... CD's and digital downloads are all the rage but they still make albums.

-Brian

They are making albums again because there has been a wave of 20 something's getting all vintage and retro and creating new demand.

LONG LIVE VINYL!

and the the LASER disc player!

 

[Chris Parker]

You are giving away your youth here. This argument started in the late 90's and then REALLY heated up when the DVX-100 came out. WOW, a 24P frame rate video camera!

The world was abuzz, Film was soon to be dead.. blah blah blah.

I wish I was that young!

Yes, it may have STARTED with DVX100, etc. etc. but that is not the least bit related to my post. Those were prosumer cameras, at best. And they did manage to kill the format they were truly competing against.....BETACAM.

Now, digital cameras from the likes are ARRI, Panavision, RED, etc. are all squarely aimed at the same market that shoots film. DVX100 was never going to replace film. Totally different market. Totally different manufacturers. When the makers of the film cameras now switching their R and D resources to digital, it is a completely different story than the early 90s, and the advent of MiniDV.

We are now at the point where stills were when the first DSLR cameras hit the market. Those sure seemed to kill off stills film (for the majority of shooters) pretty quickly.....and RED/ARRI/Panavision will do the same in moving pictures. It is inevitable now, and will happen faster than most 'old timers' think....