OK... Film vs. RED

[Bachman]

Film is dead. Sorry folks. There just isn't a future for film.

I'll second that!


And added to that, hardly any of the training institutions here are teaching it. Its all digital

 

[Graeme Nattress]

And think of the horses!

Graeme

 

[Priyesh P.]

And think of the horses!

Graeme

And the children, Graeme ? Did you ever think of the children ?

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

And the children, Graeme ? Did you ever think of the children ?

They were riding the horses at the time

 

[Priyesh P.]

They were riding the horses at the time

*lol*

 

[Craig Bowman]

Saying that film is dead because in the future it will be superceded is the same as saying you are dead because in the future you won't exist or the earth is dead or the universe is dead....

All of these are either dead right now or they're not. Even though in the future all of those predictions will be a certainty, they haven't happened yet. Our ability to abstract into the future as a generality is fairly useful, but I can imagine your consternation if they used your argument and declared you dead right now. Credit cards are gone, lights and water are ceased, bank accounts frozen, mortgage if not paid up foreclosed, etc. etc.

 

[Kyle_Doris]

There are structural reasons why non-Hollywood filmmaking is so mediocre in the U.S.

This statment to me is hillarious. I would say the exact opposite; There are structural reasons of Hollywood filmmaking that produce the mediocre films not the other way around. Going to the movie theater these days for the most part is like eating a donut.... most of the time you'd be better off just throwing lard into your mouth instead. Cable television right now has more redeeming qualities than most hollywood films you can see in the theater.

 

[Bachman]

Saying that film is dead because in the future it will be superceded is the same as saying you are dead because in the future you won't exist or the earth is dead or the universe is dead....

All of these are either dead right now or they're not. Even though in the future all of those predictions will be a certainty, they haven't happened yet. Our ability to abstract into the future as a generality is fairly useful, but I can imagine your consternation if they used your argument and declared you dead right now. Credit cards are gone, lights and water are ceased, bank accounts frozen, mortgage if not paid up foreclosed, etc. etc.

Credit Cards are gone? Wicked! Mine was maxed

 

[david farland]

Wow...is this thread still going?

If it's still active tomorrow I'll bring out my Point 8 - Risks of Shooting Red vs Film.

Unknowns such as extensive shooting in hostile environements and other unknown limits of Red camera/accessories, plus post workflows solutions.

Very important...as the rest of this 'risk adverse' industry have little or no experience using Red in any situation or workflow.
Crossing off these risks translates into faster uptake and sales!

By the way, these unknowns along with the existing investment in film infrastructure, are why if Red produced an identical image to film, film wouldn't die overnight!

However if that were the case, then the film industry would respond...like the rest of the digital industry will to Red!

as so on it goes..........

Cheers,

 

[Kyle_Doris]

i should add, i know for one when making my modest/not so great but rewarding feature... when i showed it on the big screens i felt it was inadequate to my eye, and that fact was very very frustrating for me... to the point of being almost painful.

people didn't seem to care and enjoyed it all the same; we actually won stuff for it... but honestly i was very angry about how it looked.

...so if something like RED is out there to help me achieve my personal goals when doing a project than so be it. not everyone has to own the camera and make oodles of money in hollywood or television for the product to have meaningful value. it'll be great for the industry but it also helps other people achieve their own goals too. that fact shouldn't be taken lightly.

 

[JD Holloway]

1) It is nice that you care, just don't ask me to pay for it with my taxes. I can't really speak for the Inuit since I personally know only two (maybe three, not sure) and if they were obsessing on culture they would hate me for my Cree ancestry since it was the Cree that took their land and drove them north above the tree line. But speaking with what little authority my diluted Cree blood gives me, I'd rather see a good film about the Chinese explorer Zheng He than a good film about Chief Peguis leading my Saulteaux Cree ancestors to Lake Winnipeg. Zheng He's story is just more interesting and I'd love to do it myself if I had that $100 million dollar budget.

But you know, if I had a $5 million budget, that Cheif Peguis story could get me writing too. It just isn't as good a story and no amount of common DNA will change that.

Just because somebody wants to tell a story doesn't mean that anyone else should give a damn... unless it is a good story that enough people would be willing to pay to see. Other than that, they should put it in a museum and get on with life, not try and get the state to force everyone else to pay for their intelectual masterbation.

2) We agree on the TIFF! See, I'm not as disagreeable a git as I'm coming across in these posts. I'm actually quite nice, just ask me.

3) I think we'll continue to disagree about the Francophone film scene, when the province tries to keep people from finding out that there are better films out there, I don't see that as helping anyone but some hothouse production companies that couldn't cut it on quality alone. And this type of protectionism in the music industry may have given us Celine Dion but I still prefer Tom Waits.

I am a little indie guy who doesn't want the help the state offers; tax me ten dollars so you can give me back five dollars? No thanks. I know, I know, I'm supposed to game the system so that the government takes more money from other people to pay for what I want... but outside of the poor economics of it, that just strikes me as morally wrong. So I am stuck with high taxes trying to scrape together non-state funding in a business sector that is addicted to corporate welfare.

In a vain attempt to bring this post back on topic... uhh... I'd rather shoot both Zheng He's $100 million and Chief Peguis's $5 million story on Red digital cinema.

Dude,

You have issues, apparently with government... I have never asked you for money and never will. Don't get your knickers in a twist.

Intellectual masterbation? Force? What have you been forced to watch, by me for that matter? Clearly you seem bitter. Did your funding get rejected?

Celine needed no state help. She had/married just about the biggest producers in the biz. As for quality. Import television is cheap and our televisons are awash with foreign serials like zena and its spinoffs. They compete with our Anne of green/avonlea/pitpony drivel. Programmers care less about "Good Stories" and more about selling advertising and dont give a damn how they do it. Bottom line rules.

Look I hear what you are saying about canadian film....but I have nothing to do with it.

 

[number6]

I really don't know what kind of competition this is. Being of the younger set / having shot digital since I was a kid and knowing an online NLE work-flow, film seems like a real legacy format that hasn't been abandoned because the people who grew up shooting it haven't died off yet. I feel like people often get really romantic with the format because all of their favorite films were shot on film, but in time that will change. And in time, the Hollywood system will hopefully become de-centralized thanks to online distribution and developments like the Red. And if it does, digital formats like the RED will be very important to the future of movie-making.

Neither the RED or any digital format is perfect. Digital has its own quirks that are unique to itself and that is fine. What it really comes down to (in my opinion) is the market... if digital distribution does change the way that films are made and theaters become less prevalent then movies will become more niche, make less money, but increase in quality because of sheer numbers. And, if movies are making less because of a re-defined distribution system then the ultimate deciding factor when it comes to telling your story won't be 1-2 gained stops of latitude, but price and familiarity.

And if the future is commanded by a bunch of young-guns, then they will be most familiar with digital, they will work around any quirks just as Hollywood filmmakers have been working around the quirkiness of film forever. Whats exiting is that possibly very soon the only factor determine a films success will be the talent and the quality of the storytelling (as apposed to the quality of a filmmakers contacts and marketing strategy). Imagine: in a couple of years our kids will grow up with 4k camera's that we pass down to them and are editing on our "old" 8-core Macs, uploading their features on iTunes and having showings at friends homes on mass-market 4k projectors.

Exited about the future.

Good Post!

 

[Fix]

Ok heres a ridlde for you in good Red vs film spirite. Think organic, good old fashion film look. Like "Munich" by Steven Spielberg. Straight analog and done in ruffle 6 months. Now thats fast for a project in that kind of magnitude. They did alot of traditional old school grading (bath) to make it look like 70'ish.

Now the questions. Would RED (as a tool) be able to create a similar organic look/feel, and would it be yust as easy and fast? Would the casual crowd be "fooled"?

This is of course hypothetical. But yust imagen the outcome and tell what you think.

 

[peter roehsler]

In Austria, where I live, independent filmmaker have used every con/prosumer cameras
from DV, DVcam to HDV and P2. Hardly anyone can afford 16mm, let alone 35mm. People have been paying up to 150/day for this equipment to achieve PAL 720x576. They used P+S adapters to get that `film look´, thus pushing rental and lighting costs up by 200%. This market will change through RED and 4k screens. For a fraction more they will have a technical quality comparable to 35mm, if they or their DPs know what the are doing.
On the other hand some rental houses here see the end for their 35mm cameras coming. Why would you pay 20+ grand for a camera body for 6 weeks, when you can buy a RED sans lens for about the same amount. Bigger production houses will just buy their own RED cameras and rent lenses.
Movies over here are typically financed by government foundations, locally and nationwide. Austrian TV (PBS) usually also has a part in financing, but they only need 2k. Most theaters are still film only but this is also changing. While a filmout 35mm print is still a must over here, RED is definitely the way to go. It will change the technical standard for indies and it will save a bucket or two for public funding. In fact one or two years down the line, it will be quite difficult if not impossible to convince film fund controllers, who check budgets in applications for financing a project, that you must have 35mm, when there is a comparable digital alternative.

 

[krd]

Quote:
Originally Posted by krd View Post
There are structural reasons why non-Hollywood filmmaking is so mediocre in the U.S.

This statment to me is hillarious. I would say the exact opposite; There are structural reasons of Hollywood filmmaking that produce the mediocre films not the other way around. Going to the movie theater these days for the most part is like eating a donut.... most of the time you'd be better off just throwing lard into your mouth instead. Cable television right now has more redeeming qualities than most hollywood films you can see in the theater.

Before you fall off the chair and break a rib, try reading a little more closely. Nothing about Hollywood was said or implied by this quote. I myself have no interest in Hollywood filmmaking (well, almost none; even when it's good!). The crying shame is, American indies tend to be even worse. We could go into the reasons why, but let's leave that for another day....

 

[David Mullen ASC]

What's amazing about "Munich" was the Spielberg shot "War of the Worlds" the previous winter, had it out in theaters by the summer, shot "Munich" in Sept.-Oct. locked a picture cut by two weeks after wrap of photography -- cutting on film using workprint and a flatbed -- and did an optical printer blow-up from Super-35 to anamorphic, and had it in the theaters for December.

One could cite "Zodiak" and "Planet Terror" from "Grindhouse" as two digital movies with 70's visual stylistic elements.

There's no right or wrong method, just like the arguments for shooting a b&w movie on b&w negative versus color negative. Some people like the organic look from using old tools to create old look, while others are more comfortable doing it all in post.

Look at Tony Scott and his experimentation with hand-cranked cameras (with in-camera dissolves and overlaps) using cross-processed reversal in his last few movies, yet also using the Genesis camera for parts of "Deja Vu." And they all went through a digital intermediate to tweak the look further.

While simply using an old camera like a Mitchell isn't going to impart a look (those cameras have rock-solid registration), using an old Cooke Speed-Panchro or B&L Baltar would, and the little optical accidents would be very subtle and perhaps time-consuming to recreate digitally.

 

[Stephen Williams]

While simply using an old camera like a Mitchell isn't going to impart a look (those cameras have rock-solid registration), using an old Cooke Speed-Panchro or B&L Baltar would, and the little optical accidents would be very subtle and perhaps time-consuming to recreate digitally.

Hi David,

I bought a Fries Mitchell yesterday from David Stump on EBay! What a bargain $3500. Vive la revolution!

Stephen

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Do we have matching final print stock of 13 stops as well?

I thought that we need 13 stops only because we nee some safety margin, say 2 stops, to work with. At the end it goes to 11 stops final print anyway?
Do we need this 2 stops safety margin on the RED?
RED has real time histogram monitoring so you see right away that you are bit left or right on the graph, so the need for the safety margin is not as crucial as on the film?

You have to think of shooting and presentation as a 2-part imaging system. In film, it's a negative-positive system designed to work together, since we don't look at negative images. The gamma (contrast) of negative is very low and the gamma of print stock is higher in order for the final combined gamma on the screen to look normal. So you can't have a print with the same visible exposure information on the negative because it would look very washed-out. You need a lot of density on a print for the shadow areas so that blacks remain black when you pound light through the print and project it onto a white surface.

So if you shoot digitally and plan a transfer to film, you need to re-create or simulate the gamma of negative stock on the film-out so that it prints correctly. Hence why they goal is generally to create a 10-bit Log image in the digital realm (which is rather low contrast) to match the look of a 10-bit Log scan of color negative. If you had shot in linear video using an F900, for example, and color-corrected for HD monitor display, then a LUT would be applied to the final master to make it look like a 10-bit Log image for film-out. But there wouldn't be the same range of exposure information to work with since the image was limited to broadcast video's color space and dynamic range.

And the advantage of having a wider exposure range on the negative versus the print is that we then have some flexibility to color-correct the image in post.

Now if you are shooting for presentation on a video monitor, you are limited to the dynamic range that the video world can represent, but again, having more info to work with in post can be useful. But in color-correcting for video presentation only, you don't necessarily need to be working in Log space. Cameras like the Viper and F23 have both a Log emulation mode and standard video linear modes.

The classic difference between video and film (skipping the RED for the moment) is that video has less exposure range and latitude for misexposure compared to film -- but since you can monitor your exposure, you have fewer excuses for misexposing video. Video is more user-friendly. So to some extent, this makes it easier to deal with video's more limited range. However, in real-world shooting situations, exposure mistakes do happen in video. You may balance and expose a scene perfectly for an outdoor cafe scene, only to have a white van in full sun drive up in the background and look horribly clipped. Hence why a digital camera with a wide dynamic range is very helpful.

And it's not really like you toss away two stops of information on the negative (or digital file) when making a print. The information is there, more or less, it's just less visible due to the contrast of the print stock. If the information were missing, you'd see that your shadows were unnaturally blocked-up.

 

[number6]

Some History:

Film manufacture starts 1880 by George Eastman
Digital Camera Patented 1972 Texas Instruments, first commercial electronic camera Sony Mavica, 1981

Film has had approx 100 years development head start over Digital's meger 30 or so years.

Processor speed approx doubles every 2 years. Do the math!

What will RED look like in 10 years??

Didn't I read somewhere that (Eastman) Kodak is shutting its film making operation? If so, that says volumes about film in general.

 

[Leo Ticheli]

When shooting a locked-off table top shot, film has more "life" because each individual frame is slightly different because the molecules are never in exactly the same place from frame to frame.

Even with modern film cameras and telecine, there remains a tiny bit of weave from frame to frame.

Each frame of a digital motion picture is precisely identical to the previous frame. So I try to put a bit of subtle camera movement in my otherwise locked-off table top shots. Of course this is not always appropriate to the shot.

Whether the "life" of the film shot is better or worse is, of course, a matter of taste.

I made my choice about six years ago when I began shooting HD exclusively. I still love the look and feel of film; the practical advantages of HD far outweigh it for the kind of work (and budgets) I have.

Good shooting and best regards to all,

Leo