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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Steven Speilberg

With all due to respect to the master (Steve)

Get over it ! The soul is in the artist.

He should be pioneering and championing the format and new technology instead of sitting by the way side holding on to the pending relic that is film.

Saying it will lose it's soul is kind of insulting to every filmmaker out there embracing the technology; whether it be us, Lucas, Rodriguez, Jackson, Mann and on and on.

20 Years ?

He's in for a big surprise on that timeline.
 
wellsevans.jpg

​
People have been stubborn about their choice of medium before: Platinum printing was always famous for having a better handling of gradations than silver. History's greatest platinum printer and photographer Frederick Evans gave up photography altogether when platinum became unavailable in the First World War
 
OH Puhleeeese. Cmon! Its not like Spielberg is some indy type, character driven "vegan" equivelant of a filmmaker whos diet only includes healthy portions of formaldehyde and hydroquonine. This guy was one of the first to adopt digital technologies and special FX. This guy was one of the first to work with digital intermediates.. Give me a break. His mistress is digital and its only a matter of time before they get married.

One thing i do agree with him though is that the analgoue process (accross all disciplines) being taken away gives us less and less time to reflect on the decisions we make..Less time to sit down and "absorb" everything. Which is why its important for digital artists and filmmakers to take that time out as part of the working process I believe.

And we all have our comforts... The smells that give us longing, foods that bring us comfort, or habits that make us feel sane.. Cutting film for him is just part of that process.. its probably been the grounding practice of what he does. That plastic emulsion is the realest thing in Hollywood. What happens when that physical signifier goes away (Oh noez! Its all just zeroz and onez!). I also think he sees film as a living creature.. with its "magic" that has brought him fortune and success. But i dont think he's that stupid.

The camera has not rendered the painter dead.
 
Imagine being a chef and having to replace sugar with equal or splenda in all of your recipes. Sure it would still be sweet. But it does taste different. If people like Spielberg weren't really specific about the tools that they use and the choices that they make, then they wouldn't be at the top of their game. I don't see anything wrong with having the options to use the tools that you prefer for whatever the task may be.
 
Graeme Nattress said:
The art is in the artist, not the brush, or the canvas.

Graeme
Click to expand...

True, but filtering out the Artist from a million monkeys with brushes will make it harder, not easier, for the Artist.
 
As one goes through life one should strive to avoid saying things likely to end up in a desk calendar of silly statements. I can understand why Speilberg might get choked up over the twilight of the film era, but stating that digital film is incapable of soul is romantic absurdity. Filmmakers are fully capable of being imperfect, regardless of their medium. I'll bet if a digital filmmaker pressed him on it he'd be a bit more realistic.
 
Dear Mr. Spielberg...

Dear Mr. Spielberg...

Dear Mr. Spielberg,

Give me the money to shoot film the rest of my life and I'm right there with you. Cool? But, I think I'll stick it out with Jim and Co.

I'm poor, living in Atlanta, and have crazy ideas that I don't want to stuff through the Hollywood prism any more than I have to. Art is not a four letter word. $300M for ONE MOVIE?! Screw that.

Digital is freedom from the system.

RED is wings.
 
Gary Stone said:
I'm poor, living in Atlanta, and have crazy ideas that I don't want to stuff through the Hollywood prism any more than I have to. Art is not a four letter word. $300M for ONE MOVIE?! Screw that.
RED is wings.
Click to expand...

Gary, not to dash your dreams or anything, but out of a $300m budget, very little (less than 0.3%) would've been spent on film stock. I think the budget wouldve been the same had that $300m movie been shot on RED.
 
acehole said:
OH Puhleeeese. Cmon! Its not like Spielberg is some indy type, character driven "vegan" equivelant of a filmmaker whos diet only includes healthy portions of formaldehyde and hydroquonine. This guy was one of the first to adopt digital technologies and special FX. This guy was one of the first to work with digital intermediates.. Give me a break. His mistress is digital and its only a matter of time before they get married.

One thing i do agree with him though is that the analgoue process (accross all disciplines) being taken away gives us less and less time to reflect on the decisions we make..Less time to sit down and "absorb" everything. Which is why its important for digital artists and filmmakers to take that time out as part of the working process I believe.

And we all have our comforts... The smells that give us longing, foods that bring us comfort, or habits that make us feel sane.. Cutting film for him is just part of that process.. its probably been the grounding practice of what he does. That plastic emulsion is the realest thing in Hollywood. What happens when that physical signifier goes away (Oh noez! Its all just zeroz and onez!). I also think he sees film as a living creature.. with its "magic" that has brought him fortune and success. But i dont think he's that stupid.

The camera has not rendered the painter dead.
Click to expand...

Well said acehole... think first shoot later.
 
Its a conspiracy of elites, as soon as the boundries are approuched the lawers will construct a whole new set of barriers to get you back at the end of the line where in their eyes you belong ... To get into the club you need to be invited or play your game well enough to convince someone to deal you in because you have managed to aquire the illusion of pedegree ... A trophy here a trophy there and maybe you will be granted a break ... its still a lottery and the Red is a ticket but still the game is run by the house and as you know the house dont like you leaving with anything more than nothing.

Thats my take on the film vs digital argument.

DogDay
 
I think most people in this thread are misunderstanding Mr. Spielberg's main point -- with the exception of acehole, who gets it.

I'm a VFX artist and enthusiast, and while I would never ever want to go back to the days of optical printers (except as a novelty), nor am I unhappy that just about any single off-the-shelf computer today is more powerful than the entire room of computers ILM used to make Jurassic Park, I have to say I get where Mr. S is coming from.

I mean, take a look at Jurassic Park again. Those are f***ing dinosaurs. Liberal use of animatronics aside, the purely digital dinos hold up incredibly, even today, and that film was made 15 years ago. And yet a film with heavy digital FX made more recently will often not hold up visually.

Why? Because it's easier. Filmmakers throw in tons of visual effects now because it's easy and it's cheap. When something is hard to do, it separates the men from the boys, so to speak, because the people who REALLY WANT IT will try that much harder to make it work and get it right. When it's something you have to be passionate about to be able to withstand the arduousness of even approaching it, then you can be sure that the passion will translate into the final product. Whereas today, any yahoo with $1000 or so can be a "3D animator" and look at the visual dreck that comes pouring out.

Nowadays it's fairly quick work to get a visual effect 90% of the way there, and it's the last 10% that takes 90% of the work. And that's why most people don't bother. When it's easy to get something that's "good enough", it's easy to settle for "good enough." But when getting the effect 90% of the way there took 90% of the time, taking it all the way through the last 10% seems much more worthwhile.

This is not to say that there cannot still be artists in the new medium. Plenty of people have pointed out the fact that the art is ultimately in the artist and not the tool. I myself was "raised" on digital and will probably never shoot film, and I like to fancy myself to be, if not an artist, at least not "soulless".

But we see things like Robert Rodriguez on Sin City just leaving the cameras rolling and rolling and rolling. You would never, ever do this on film, because every frame is expensive and that makes every frame precious. And while perhaps allowing the camera to roll and allowing the actors to explore may open the door to vistas of performance yet untapped, it may also open the door to lazy, "keep doing it until the tape runs out and I'll figure it out in editing" directors.

Much has been made in the last 30 years of how fortuitous it ultimately was that the shark in Jaws failed to perform. More than perhaps anyone else, Spielberg understands that it is the limitations of the craft, not the freedoms, which give rise to the true creative choices. Spielberg has been a major proponent of digital effects and such, and uses them to great effect in his work, but he also sets a personal limit to the number of digital effects shots he will use in his films. He could afford to do like Lucas, where every shot is some kind of digital tweak, but he knows that this just makes for lazy "fix it in post" filmmaking. So he affixes an essentially arbitrary cap to the number of shots he will allow himself to use (last I heard it was 400), to make himself choose wisely what needs to be an effect, and what he can achieve and communicate by other creative means.

Again, does he have to do this from a practical standpoint? No. Spielberg wants, Spielberg gets, and anyone would give him any budget he wanted to make a film any way he wants. But from a creative standpoint, he understands that he must limit himself in some way in order to force himself to make strong creative choices.

I think Spielberg's comment -- speaking, as I do, as an outsider with no special insight into the man or his mind -- strikes me less as a judgment call on digital, and more of a plea to its practitioners: just because it's easier to do doesn't mean you should take it less seriously. Just because you have the freedom to do anything doesn't absolve you from making concrete choices every step of the way.

Don't shoot a wishy-washy, anything-goes film and expect to make something out of it. Make concrete choices, make bold choices, make occasionally irreversible choices. That's how your film finds a voice, that's how your work finds a soul. You have the technology to get anything you want, but you should still know what you want.
 
DorkmanScot,

unforunately Spielberg is over,

he doesn't have to say anything in his last films,

he showed that he is empty as an artist.

He is just rolling old stuff for years and unsuccessfully digging

for a right story that could make him somehow eternal in a film history.

But he could not nail it anymore after "Schindler's List".

Actually he is more like a very successful money-maker-producer oriented.

Also he is listed in magazine "Fortune" after big George Lucas as a richest director in Hollywood.

But art left him long ago or vice versa.

So he doesn't need a digital at all and film or analog would not safe him either.
 
Sanjin,

Way to miss the point of my post.

As to your other "point", I think Spielberg can be safely assured of his eternal stature in film history. It's actually the fact that he doesn't rest on his laurels and continues to try to challenge himself and make films outside his comfort zone that impresses me.

Does he always do them perfectly? No. But he gives it a shot, he makes the films he wants to make, and I for one don't see the need to slag off one of the most, if not the most, significant filmmakers in the history of American cinema just to be snobby about what is "art".
 
DorkmanScot,

could be but all the time rolling a Spielberg story digital/analog is just a boring one.

Let's do another young American to make it again.

"It's time to change" said one of the 2008 Presidential Candidates or even all of them are talking the same!?
 
DorkmanScott said:
I think most people in this thread are misunderstanding Mr. Spielberg's main point -- with the exception of acehole, who gets it.

I'm a VFX artist and enthusiast, and while I would never ever want to go back to the days of optical printers (except as a novelty), nor am I unhappy that just about any single off-the-shelf computer today is more powerful than the entire room of computers ILM used to make Jurassic Park, I have to say I get where Mr. S is coming from.

I mean, take a look at Jurassic Park again. Those are f***ing dinosaurs. Liberal use of animatronics aside, the purely digital dinos hold up incredibly, even today, and that film was made 15 years ago. And yet a film with heavy digital FX made more recently will often not hold up visually.

Why? Because it's easier. Filmmakers throw in tons of visual effects now because it's easy and it's cheap. When something is hard to do, it separates the men from the boys, so to speak, because the people who REALLY WANT IT will try that much harder to make it work and get it right. When it's something you have to be passionate about to be able to withstand the arduousness of even approaching it, then you can be sure that the passion will translate into the final product. Whereas today, any yahoo with $1000 or so can be a "3D animator" and look at the visual dreck that comes pouring out.

Nowadays it's fairly quick work to get a visual effect 90% of the way there, and it's the last 10% that takes 90% of the work. And that's why most people don't bother. When it's easy to get something that's "good enough", it's easy to settle for "good enough." But when getting the effect 90% of the way there took 90% of the time, taking it all the way through the last 10% seems much more worthwhile.

This is not to say that there cannot still be artists in the new medium. Plenty of people have pointed out the fact that the art is ultimately in the artist and not the tool. I myself was "raised" on digital and will probably never shoot film, and I like to fancy myself to be, if not an artist, at least not "soulless".

But we see things like Robert Rodriguez on Sin City just leaving the cameras rolling and rolling and rolling. You would never, ever do this on film, because every frame is expensive and that makes every frame precious. And while perhaps allowing the camera to roll and allowing the actors to explore may open the door to vistas of performance yet untapped, it may also open the door to lazy, "keep doing it until the tape runs out and I'll figure it out in editing" directors.

Much has been made in the last 30 years of how fortuitous it ultimately was that the shark in Jaws failed to perform. More than perhaps anyone else, Spielberg understands that it is the limitations of the craft, not the freedoms, which give rise to the true creative choices. Spielberg has been a major proponent of digital effects and such, and uses them to great effect in his work, but he also sets a personal limit to the number of digital effects shots he will use in his films. He could afford to do like Lucas, where every shot is some kind of digital tweak, but he knows that this just makes for lazy "fix it in post" filmmaking. So he affixes an essentially arbitrary cap to the number of shots he will allow himself to use (last I heard it was 400), to make himself choose wisely what needs to be an effect, and what he can achieve and communicate by other creative means.

Again, does he have to do this from a practical standpoint? No. Spielberg wants, Spielberg gets, and anyone would give him any budget he wanted to make a film any way he wants. But from a creative standpoint, he understands that he must limit himself in some way in order to force himself to make strong creative choices.

I think Spielberg's comment -- speaking, as I do, as an outsider with no special insight into the man or his mind -- strikes me less as a judgment call on digital, and more of a plea to its practitioners: just because it's easier to do doesn't mean you should take it less seriously. Just because you have the freedom to do anything doesn't absolve you from making concrete choices every step of the way.

Don't shoot a wishy-washy, anything-goes film and expect to make something out of it. Make concrete choices, make bold choices, make occasionally irreversible choices. That's how your film finds a voice, that's how your work finds a soul. You have the technology to get anything you want, but you should still know what you want.
Click to expand...

This guy gets it.

/Thread End
 
Pawel Achtel said:
True, but filtering out the Artist from a million monkeys with brushes will make it harder, not easier, for the Artist.
Click to expand...

I want a banana.

The Third Man said:
DorkmanScot,

unforunately Spielberg is over,

he doesn't have to say anything in his last films,

he showed that he is empty as an artist.

He is just rolling old stuff for years and unsuccessfully digging

for a right story that could make him somehow eternal in a film history.

But he could not nail it anymore after "Schindler's List".

Actually he is more like a very successful money-maker-producer oriented.

Also he is listed in magazine "Fortune" after big George Lucas as a richest director in Hollywood.

But art left him long ago or vice versa.

So he doesn't need a digital at all and film or analog would not safe him either.
Click to expand...


I disagree. Munich was incredible !

INDY 3 ? Bleh.
 
Munich was interesting, but there are much better films about the similar topic in a native Israel.

For example Assi Dayan, son of Moshe Dayan has more original film stories...

but he is not American...not Hollywood...
 
It is a sad reflection that Spielberg's name has now come to be associated only with digital technology and effects. To develop appreciation of film as a "critic" should go beyond simple visuals.

What makes a director great vs. others? Is it just special effects or film technique?

There are several moments in Spielberg's films where you wonder why did a director did things in a way that he did. In "Jaws" there is a scene where the community has gathered in a room arguing about something (can't seem to remember now, but must have been the shark). And if I remember correctly there was that side door which was closed. However, as soon as the camera moved between the audience to a key character, whose voice was only heard before, you see the same door behind him as open. Now why would any director do that? But in my estimation Spielberg did that because he knew that was a very key point in the scene where every body (including the audience in theater) are now focused on that person and depth perception is really helpful in creating a great visual to go with his persona. He could have kept the door closed or had him next to wall, but then the scene would have been too flat and he wanted to give him that depth to that moment.

Same in the famous dolly/zoom shot on the beach when there was an alarm regarding the shark. He could have the guy sitting next to that wall (if I remember correctly, there was something like a wall/tent/etc., near by), but he had him sit slightly off, so that you could see far in the horizon, and when they do that dolly/zoom the depth perception really make the audience feel the moment.

In master filmmaker David Lean's last film "Passage to India", there was a scene where they showed locals witnessing foreigners off-boarding a ship. A typical special effects-minded film director might have gone to great extent to show perhaps great visuals of the ship, an object. But David Lean understood the moment of the visual reaction of the locals to foreigners is more important than glorifying an object, and he just showed that ship in the background, and for all practical purposes he might have used a simple painting in the background. But he used the moment to great effect by that simple technique of putting that ship in the background.
 
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