Eric Lange
Well-known member
I agree.
Yes the thread has been hijacked a bit, we/I are just picking over the wreckage of a thread that died out quite some time ago but never the less raised dome interesting points (for example I think ESTEBAN RED started an new more fruitful thread concerning latitude elsewhere.
I think (obviously) technical capability and creative freedom go hand in hand. For example in our work we have designed precision accessories and software for high end digital cameras that will allow stereoscopic shooting and the clean and expedient extraction of 3d geometries and associated textures, (and much else besides). For 360 degree capture of a dynamic scenes we need a minimum of eight pairs of cameras. To restitute (I.e. figure out the exact position and orientation of each frame to high precision) would nearly be impossible using conventional film cameras. Film does not have the spatial stability of digital, even after you have compensated for the (jitter) and relative movement of the image in the film gate. Film flatness, jitter and non uniform shrinkage from processing would make our techniques very impractical if one were using film. I.e. even after major 3d fudging in our software the 3d pieces of a 360 degree scene would not fit together very well. Digital offers a terrific level of stability and spatial precision that cannot be achieved with film. We use special surveying grade encoders that determine the orientation of a sensor to within 3 arc seconds. This is because we can calibrate to the plane of CCD/sensor using autocollimators and precision reference mirrors so we know exactly where that piece of silicon is. Conventional film based studio cameras simply don’t allow for this. Similarly motion camera composites are far more precise in digital than in film.
I think ultimately it is the need for greater levels of precision and control that will push digital to the top as greater and greater demands are placed on the whole film making process. At the moment it seems that a not insubstantial number of folks kind of winge and complain about the difficulties of various digital processes and workflows. However, perhaps we have become lazy and comfortable by comparison to an earlier generation of film makers. Take for example the Technicolor process, totally nuts and extremely difficult to the point of virtually being utterly impractical, and yet for the sake of color they were willing to go through complete hell to get it. In 2001 a space Odyssey when they were doing composites of one of the astronauts floating against a star backing each individual star that would overlay the figure on every frame had to be painted black by hand! Standard blue screen composite technique would have yielded poor results and yet the creative demand was to have something that looked very clean and believable. I think that throughout the history of film making technical demands, new capabilities and creative freedom have always gone hand in hand.
In my experience of digital work, things that were impossible to achieve last year, are very difficult and tricky to do this year and are then easy for one else everyone to do five years from now. The real question is do you want to be leader (now), or a follower (five years from now).