Red vs Film

[M Most]

Don't say that to technicolor technicians. You will hurt their feelings.

Why? I didn't say it doesn't require talent and experience. In fact, it requires a great deal of both. But it is only 3 parameters and as such is not "elaborate." If I misunderstood your post and what you really meant was that pictures sometimes require some very extreme scene matching, then you are correct.

I've worked with and around film labs practically my entire career. What they do is rather exacting, and requires a great deal of expertise and knowledge that, sadly, is not going to be passed on to another generation. But the fact is that what can be done with photochemical timing is limited. It produces the best results - in most cases, far more natural and of higher quality than digital intermediate. But it does require a properly exposed original negative to produce that great result, exactly the same way that a digitally captured image requires proper exposure in order to produce the best result, whether you're recording a RAW image or not.

 

[Chris Kennedy]

Until digital is "organic" like film, gotta love that grain; film will always be my #1 choice.

 

[Joe G.]

I didn't know what a "Sumix" was, so I thought it might be a lens on a Red One. The landscapes looked pretty good, until I got to the interior scene grabbed below.

Noise vs. grain

Grain is much more pleasant than noise. Reason: the entire image is constructed from film grains. They form the image in successive frames, and this gives each frame a unique fingerprint and a more natural looking, or analog signature. The eyes respond to film like the image was formed from a sea of grains.

Noise is different. Noise only occurs in the parts of the image where something is wrong. Noise is not graceful, and it isn't integral to the rest of the image. This is subliminally transmitted, even if you're not scouring the frame for defects.

Many comment on how they "crush" the image to get rid of noise, thus reducing dynamic range further (so that even many big budget Hollywood crap-taculars look like video games nowadays).

There's just a different feel to film vs. video, and I believe there always will be.

I remember watching Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut in the theater. I was completely immersed in the look of the images. It was like a magical environment taken from pieces of classic Christmas movies mixed with something razor sharp and new, disturbing, yet absolutely filmic. I couldn't put my finger on it. The experience was just so rich, the colors and the natural flicker of the grains, that I hoped that one day I could emulate that look for some project. That's film.

Digital has never affected me like that one and a lot of other emulsion originated films of course. Film films have some hypnotizing power that I think digital lacks. Maybe as other characteristics of film are emulated more accurately (dynamic range) this one deficiency can be overlooked.

How to get around that problem with resolution and photosites?

If I am ever offered the choice of 35mm or digital, I would have to take the film. Getting the offer remains quite an obstacle.

Peace.

 

[Chad Clemans]

If you’re lucky enough to find an old copy of the “Name Above the Title” by Frank Cappra, buy it and read it, it’s about the early history of Hollywood.
Humberto Rivera

Thanks Humberto. I'm interested to read this now; here's hoping I can find it.

"The Genius of the System" by Thomas Schatz is my favorite book on "Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era" as the sub-caption puts it; I recommend it to all filmmakers, but especially anyone concerned with workflow on the business end [aren't we all these days]. You really can't come to understand how the studios, talent agencies, unions, production companies, division of labor, equipment manufacturers, and theaters all come together without some grasp of where it all comes from.

For me, there was "genius in the system". The studios were able to vertically integrate under a central producer where financing, talent, production, distribution, and exhibition were all done in-house. Irving G. Thalberg turned MGM into the only A-quality player for a time, and he was personally producing more pictures a year than anyone else has in a career [give or take]. The Academy [AMPAS] occasionally gives out the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which goes to “creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.” The point is: I'd go to more movies a week if there were more high quality ones, but as antitrust laws abolished vertical integration and the role of central producer transitioned to Unit Production [spearheaded by David O. Selznick], and for good reasons, the ability to speedily pump out consistently high quality motion-pictures has become more difficult. Filmmakers don't have consistent resources at their disposal that are accustomed to working together. So how do we accommodate antitrust laws aimed at leveling the playing field [despite the Oligopolies that dominate our industry], while achieving consistently high quality that we can get to market at a ridiculous speed? To me, digital cinema is the solution, and as such, I'll probably never shoot film again.

I must say film holds a special place with me, but I suspect it's merely nostalgia and its superior quality over analog and digital video codecs of yesteryear, but then again, it doesn't worry much about compression for storage and transmission, so in comparing it to lossless digital, or even visually lossless digital, you can get comparable quality now, but workflow and cost side with digital -and this is the key; the genius of the new system. Syncing, logging, metadata, processing, dailies, distribution, etc. can now all be done more streamlined with digital cinema, and therein lies faster turnaround time, lower cost, and the ability to make more consistently high quality motion-pictures.

Speaking of higher quality, I haven't heard anyone mention RAW much with respect to archival. The images we shoot get better long after we shoot them due to better algorithms for debayering not yet thought of; I bet filmmakers now retired or dead are jealous. While the specific formats may not hold, that idea is here to stay, and archival may just need to stop being a one time event and now become a task throughout life where every bucket of years we do some conversions. This isn't a huge problem because conversions are getting faster and faster and now we are doing them without generational loss.

Here's to watching a different A-quality flick (that suits your tastes) every day of the week!
:emote_popcorn: :emote_popcorn: :emote_popcorn: :emote_popcorn: :emote_popcorn: :emote_popcorn: :emote_popcorn:

 

[Rick Presas]

Until digital is "organic" like film

what does "organic" mean in this context?

Just curious as a musician i've also heard vinyl enthusiasts throw this word around, but never able to explain what it means.

Evolution is organic. Digital is evolution of the medium. How will we save our movies? We'll figure it out.

I suppose i'm the not the only one here who sees the irony of film, being such a "superior archiving medium" having such a shelf life there days?

"KODAK: Our prints will exist long after we've gone bankrupt!"

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Grain vs. Compression Macro Noise vs. Uncompressed sensor noise

Grain vs. Compression Macro Noise vs. Uncompressed sensor noise

I didn't know what a "Sumix" was, so I thought it might be a lens on a Red One. The landscapes looked pretty good, until I got to the interior scene grabbed below.

Those vimeo clips are compressed, compressed formats show more "macro noise" in the shadow areas, as does compressed REDCODE, you should look at the RAW images in the AVI at the SUMIX web site to get a better idea. Their footage and grading do not show off what the sensor can do very well, they seem to need a good DP and some lights to make footage for them, my point was that something like a SUMIX seems to look LESS noisy than the Super16 scans I posted.

Link to SUMIX sample footage in AVI format,

http://www.sumix.com/products/cameras/smx-12a2c.html

Click on the "sample images" tab. Why their grading is so far off is a puzzle, I corrected some of their samples and it can look much better, thats why I posted the link to the viemo footage since it looks better graded, but is compressed. H.264 has too much "macro noise", we tried filmout from a Canon camera and H.264 is much worse than REDCODE. That is not a digital sensor camer issue, it is a compression issue which goes away when you shoot uncompressed true RAW data, for all the good that does since in a few years you will not be able to make film prints.

With ALL distribution going to highly compressed formats, having noise or grain will be a big "no-no" since it eats bandwidth. Like it or not, the days of uncompressed film projection are numbered, ALL future projection will be from compressed formats that need low noise source images.

==

The "films" people love where made with less CGI and real sets. The loss from going digital is not so much from the camera, but from the overall trend to cheepness in all aspects of the production. The biggest issue with films I have seen made with the REDONE or other Digital Cinema camera is the notion that they no longer need light let alone lights to film. To get the clasic "film look" the sets must be almost up to two stops below full daylight, they where shooting at f/8 with EI 50 film or less.

==

And yes, I ment that it will cost maybe $50000 to $100000 to make a digital archive version that will last 500 years, so if you shoot a digital flop, who is going to pay to preserve that for future generations. Digital is "soupe du jour" so after a while you empty the fridge...

 

[Wesley Scoggins]

Perhaps a better way to phrase Dan's point is:

Of the thousands of movies that will now be shot with digital cinema cameras, only a small amount of them will make money. Some may never get distribution at all. How much will they be willing to spend to go to great lengths to preserve their films for eternity? My guess is budget will only allow for a low to mid level solution and that may not be good enough 50 years down the line. So there is a threshold, and perhaps that is what Dan was referring to.

It's still part of our cultural heritage. We have so many Black Maria shorts that have been lost or degraded because no one thought people doing stupid tricks, or making dogs jump through hulla-hoops was worth saving, but now we have big chunks of (what we consider now) to be important history missing because no one thought that these things were worth it.

Sure, there are a lot of things being shot today that many of us aren't huge fans of, but there have been so many films that people thought were worthless when they were released that only gained an appreciative audience something decades down the road.

I think we should reserve some judgment for new things, because really what they are worth to the culture at large will only be truly determined down the road.

 

[Dhruv Govil]

what does "organic" mean in this context?

Just curious as a musician i've also heard vinyl enthusiasts throw this word around, but never able to explain what it means.

To me, the organic-ness of vinyl is the 'flaws' in the process. Everything fluctuates from one second to the next making it feel alive.

Personally I am a digital person. I like my audio to be crisp and I can rely on it being as I want it to be. As a music lover, I like to be able to have perfectly organized music that I can listen to exactly the same way each time. As a musician, I like to be able to know that my audio isn't degrading each time I do a new take etc...

Anyway my two cents on the whole film vs digital is, most people can't tell the difference. Digital is cheaper in the long run and the resolutions are almost high enough, that the large majority of the audience wouldn't care.

With good enough grading, again most people other than the industry pros wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Hell most people in the audience are happy with how their dinky consumer cams look.

As for going for the film look, I'm not anywhere near as experienced as anyone else on this forum(I'm a mere student in learning), but it's not a concern for me and I don't see why it needs to be a concern for anyone. Not to say it's a useless endeavor, but I think we're just so stuck on making things look like film for nostalgia's sake. They are different mediums and we should play to their respective characteristics.

 

[Wesley Scoggins]

Until digital is "organic" like film, gotta love that grain; film will always be my #1 choice.

This mindset lost out in music and sound production, and it lost out in still photography.

Digital I think can look just as "organic" as film, it's just a matter of how good the digital imagery is, how it's lit, and how it's processed. I've seen more than one digitally shot film that I wouldn't have known was shot digitally if I didn't know about it before I saw the film.

Regardless, if people want grain, I have seen a lot of grain added in artificially that I think looks fantastic, and I don't really understand what is the obsession with having grain in the source image.

Grain will eventually be able to be accurately simulated down to the molecular level, with accurate "organic" reactions being able to simulated, and countless different filmstock grain structures being able to be accurately recreated in post. I have already seen a ton of filter packages in photoshop that can replicate the look of a lot of different filmstocks quite accurately, especially when you have a good source file to work with.

As technology progresses, the distinction between film and digital will continue to blur, and the question of "organic" or "artificial" will become outdated.

Film can't do what digital can do, digital not only can do what film can do, but ALSO can do what digital can do. As time progresses digital will get continually better at not only doing what it can do, but also being able to do what film can do, and a step further.

We're already pretty much at the limit of what can be economically done with film. IMAX is the realistic limit of what film production is going to be able to do in the future. It can only be improved to a limit, the crystals can only get so small, while digital have no real limits (within reason).

 

[Wesley Scoggins]

Grain is much more pleasant than noise. Reason: the entire image is constructed from film grains. They form the image in successive frames, and this gives each frame a unique fingerprint and a more natural looking, or analog signature. The eyes respond to film like the image was formed from a sea of grains.

I think that is really a matter of opinion. I know PLENTY of people that prefer the look of digital and hate the look of grainy film. I definitely don't think it's a universal appeal, and I think it largely has to do with nostalgia.

I remember reading something, that people who grew up with black and white television, not only show a preference for how shows looked back then, BUT also tend to dream in black and white far more commonly than people that grew up watching color television.

My grandparents expressed a love of black and white films, and have stated more than once that they looked better than color. My parents expressed a fondness for the 60's and 70's cinema and how they looked. I hear the same thing with teenagers and kids now expressing a love for how things looked in the 90's, and over the last 10 years, while conversely I have heard a fair share of people who grew up in previous decades express a displeasure with how it looks...

So really, instead of being a universal thing, I think that people tend to flock to the style they grew up with, since that is tied to their early development of what "looks good", and what a movie is.

Noise is different. Noise only occurs in the parts of the image where something is wrong. Noise is not graceful, and it isn't integral to the rest of the image. This is subliminally transmitted, even if you're not scouring the frame for defects.

Well that's not totally correct. System noise ALWAYS exists (at least in current digital sensors and our current technology limit), even if it's infinitesimal there is always some system noise in electronic capture mediums.

I don't know what you mean by it isn't graceful, or never looks nice, but I like how noise looks (when it's exploited in the proper way), and it gives a certain mood and quality that can work beautifully for a film.

There's just a different feel to film vs. video, and I believe there always will be.

Really, ALWAYS? So even a century down the road with billion microlensed hypersensors with resolutions millions of times sharper than (unaugmented) human vision, and computers powerful enough to simulate a hundred human brains with ease, that can also accurately predict every possible grain combination in a film frame down to the molecular level... And that STILL won't be able to replicate the feel of film?

I just think saying, "ALWAYS", or "NEVER", about any series of technology developments is jumping the gun a bit.

15 years ago, some people said it was impossible that a digital camera would ever look cinematic, then Lucas shoots Star Wars with a digital camera, and it was replaced with, "it'll never look THE SAME", then people intercut digital camera shot scenes into films shot primarily on film and no one can tell the difference, and they say it'll never be as versatile, or be as good as film under all circumstances.

I just think that everybody needs to stop saying what digital can't do, and what it'll NEVER be able to do, because frankly a paradigm shift has occurred in the last decade that is affecting EVERYONE that makes films, and if the last 10 years have been any kind of example, the next 10 will be even more dramatic, and we're all in for a surprise at exactly what digital will be able to accomplish.

Digital has never affected me like that one and a lot of other emulsion originated films of course. Film films have some hypnotizing power that I think digital lacks. Maybe as other characteristics of film are emulated more accurately (dynamic range) this one deficiency can be overlooked.

How to get around that problem with resolution and photosites?

Well digital cinema is in it's infancy, it's BRAND NEW, new this decade people just said that digital and film will ALWAYS be different. If we go back and look from Muybridge's motion experiments and the Lumiere's short films, and then compare and contrast those to the Wizard of Oz, you'd see how clearly and how quickly film developed from a scientific oddity to a artistic medium completely new and unique.

By 2015 the discussion between what film and what digital is capable of will have largely disappeared, and as time wears on, it's only going to get better.

 

[Kristjan Kristjansson]

Hi,

People still carve stone & use oil paints, both well proven for their archive ability. Making ones own film emulsion can be fun. Art is more than 1's & 0's.

Stephen

Exactly, art is art and now a days it's doesn't matter if you shoot digitally or film. Red looks good to me on vimeo and amazes me in the theater in 2k,
(I wonder how will look in 4k??)
But what I really worry about in the digital realm CocaCola drinking blender-using special-effect guys putting their terrible CGI sets up on the screen, totally replacing the genius of art-direction and set design. These are the things that must not be lost in the digital revolution.

Look at these movies, it would have made no difference if these sequences were shot with red or film, but it would have made a difference if they had been conceived at Weta Digital:

http://tinyurl.com/mcmjhp

http://tinyurl.com/a7pnw7

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

There's just a different feel to film vs. video, and I believe there always will be.

I would take that bet. Because I can guarantee that today using existing technology you could be fooled in a film vs video shootout.

It's short sighted to say that technology which has only approached film quality in the last 5 years will *never* be able to do everything exactly as well as the other. In 5 years we've gone from the F900 to the F23, RED and Genesis. It's already getting hard to tell what was shot on one after post processing.

You speak about noise vs grain. Digital cameras in 10 years will be effectively noise free. If you have 16+ stops of dynamic range and you want a picture to look like digital you can just clamp the bottom 3 stops and get a nearly noise free image.

Once you have a plain vanilla HDR image free of noise you can apply film scanned grain. Heck in 10 years you could probably simulate the actual crystalline exposure process.

If you want the EXACT color response of an EXACT film stock you'll be able to do it. If you want the EXACT grain from a specific film stock you'll be able to do it. Even if you like the look of film (which I do) you'll be able to get any look you want out of digital. That's why digital will always win. It's so mechanically predictable. That's what can make it sterile and boring, but if you're going to paint something it's always easiest to start from a blank canvas--which is precisely what HDR, noise free, perfectly characterrized digital provides you. An accurate representation of the real world. How you want to degrade a pixel perfect representation of the real world is up to you.

----

Re: Digital archive is impossible oh noes!

Before we know it we'll all have petabyte drives in our laptops (<10 years). At that point you can just send a copy to three professional data storage services and put 3 copies in your vault. Give a copy to the director. Give a copy to the DP. Give a copy to your friend down the street. If you're willing to put up with some largely unnoticeable compression (RED Ray?) You could fit 125 feature films onto a single $79 hard drive. That's like a year's worth of feature films in 4k. Most are only in 2k. So that means 500 feature films could fit onto a single $79 hard drive today assuming you want a 2k mostly visually lossless format.

If you're a movie studio buy 1,000 drives for $80,000k and start cloning. I guarantee you one of those 1,000 drives in 30 years will have all the data you could possibly need to reconstruct the film. And in 30 years image synthesis will be so good it'll be able to uprez the films to 4k, add 3D and remove all compression artifacts. You don't think films actually come out of the vault 30 years later looking great do you? They look terrible and then people spend a lot of time and money to try and restore them.

The easiest solution to backing something up is to just make a bazillion redundant copies and scatter them across the globe. If even 10 of them each only had 30% uncorrupted you could still probably assemble a working drive.

 

[Humberto Rivera]

Thank Wesley Scoggins

“Well digital cinema is in it's infancy, it's BRAND NEW, new this decade people just said that digital and film will ALWAYS be different. If we go back and look from Muybridge's motion experiments and the Lumiere's short films, and then compare and contrast those to the Wizard of Oz, you'd see how clearly and how quickly film developed from a scientific oddity to a artistic medium completely new and unique.”

“By 2015 the discussion between what film and what digital is capable of will have largely disappeared, and as time wears on, it's only going to get better.” Well said Wesley Scoggins.

Times change from the early days, to the talkies, to Technicolor Tri Strip process, to color film in one negative, to digital transfers, to digital cinema, and beyond! Before we know it, we’ll have a 28K sensor that realistically cannot be process today, but it will be in the future! It’s just that Red is ahead of the curve, someone is too. Meanwhile our great grandfathers, our grandparents, and parents have a different perspective on the history of film, be it “Film or Digital”!

Humberto Rivera

 

[Joe G.]

Oh brother.

Yeah, in future decades digital sensors may EMULATE what film does right now for most of the industry, worldwide.

Still prefer film.

Digital, to me, is just a stepping stone to try and get to the big leagues. I am unimpressed with the current state of the digital cinema art. It's certainly passable (so are fart jokes), but could be better by a wide margin. That's my opinion and see you later.

 

[david m friedman]

continuing with the archiving issue... from another source.

http://www.thewrap.com/article/even-digital-age-studios-find-old-fashioned-film-best_4353?page=1


you can even go to the academy site www.oscars.com, search for 'digital dilemma' and download their take on the whole archive issue.

 

[Wesley Scoggins]

Oh brother.

Yeah, in future decades digital sensors may EMULATE what film does right now for most of the industry, worldwide.

Still prefer film.

Digital, to me, is just a stepping stone to try and get to the big leagues. I am unimpressed with the current state of the digital cinema art. It's certainly passable (so are fart jokes), but could be better by a wide margin. That's my opinion and see you later.

Did you see Benjamin Button, Knowing, or Slumdog Millionaire?

Lots of GREAT looking movies have been released the last year that were shot primarily digitally, and I think the idea that they are by default visually inferior to film to be completely the opposite of what i've seen produced digitally just in the last year.

 

[Wesley Scoggins]

continuing with the archiving issue... from another source.

http://www.thewrap.com/article/even-digital-age-studios-find-old-fashioned-film-best_4353?page=1


you can even go to the academy site www.oscars.com, search for 'digital dilemma' and download their take on the whole archive issue.

Eventually storage mediums will reach a level of data density and reliability to beat analog storage mediums in every way. We've already got plenty of methods in prototype that are (theoretically) able to last for thousands of years.

I just don't think that film is a standard that we want to rely on in the long term, especially when you're dealing with something like high-end Epic footage.

It's got resolution limitations, and introduces grain structures not in the original footage. Not to mention the cost of scanning it back in digitally, then having to deal with grain structures introduced in the filmout process.

I think 3D holographic mediums will be the high-density format of the next few decades, and will address most of these issues. After that, quantum storage options will take over, and realistically you won't be able to put much data into matter after that without relying on compression algorithms.

People complain about the volatility of storage medium now, just think, it took film a while to move away from nitrate film... Once again digital is a infant medium, and it will take progress a while to come up with methods that are hardy and reliable, but it can and will be done.

 

[Alex Finlayson]

Im a film production student and in our first term at university we still use 16mm B+W film in a spring wound Bolex to shoot a 30 second piece, we then edit on a steenbeck - using traditional editing methods. And I ask myself why we do this - why dont we just shoot a 30 sec movie using HD Cameras then wack it into Final Cut where we can cut and re-cut and do what we like to the footage?, and my reply from my tutor is: You only get 200 ft of stock for your 30 seconds so it really makes you think about all the elements in more detail, you will only have one take for each shot so it encourages you to rehearse more thoroughly, think about your cinematography etc and all the other things in much more detail. Also by editing on a steenbeck, once you've made your cut that should be it - you're literally cutting through your footage with scissors.

My point of all this is that if there is a massive battle between the formats how will the new trainee's and students ever learn if Digital Technology aims to mimic film to the point of wiping it off the face of the planet. Just because we have new technology shouldn't mean that we want to use it to get rid of old mediums. I feel that instead of trying to mimic film - Digital has its own pro's and cons and visual identity which makes it what it is, emulating the past doesn't help push the future I think. I'm very glad that we still get to learn about film at University because it allows us to learn about some of the traditional methods that make up our craft. I also think that I will use Film or Digital or even a crappy handicam just as long as the script justifies the use of that particular medium and the medium helps the story to be told.

 

[Stephen Williams]

Did you see Benjamin Button, Knowing, or Slumdog Millionaire?

Hi,

I thought Benjamin Button looked very very good, I had issues with the other 2. I suspect the post budget of BB would have allowed for shooting in 65mm if they had wanted to.

Stephen

 

[Tony Brown]

If some big name director was really, really into film he could pretty easily afford to gut an old film camera, hide a new digital camera inside, run the data cables into the film mag and then hand it off to a post house which will get it back to him later in the day or next morning.

...just like film.....