Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

The death of film???

Hi there,

I just became a member of this forum and I´m following this discussion with great interest. I´m not surprised to see so many different opinions here. Being 40, I´ve been working in both the analog and digital world. I always loved working with film, but also appreciated the ease of use with digital equipment. Generally, I´m convinced the equipment always has to be chosen regarding the kind of project that lies ahead. Film always was the choice for me for if the best achievable quality was required. BUT:

After seeing "Crossing The Line" at IBC in Amsterdam this year all I can say is: I´ve seen the future in filmmaking. We´ve been there with four experienced industry professionals in row one, watching it on a 25m wide screen in 4K projection. We are all well at home with film, one of us even from the vfx field, working wtith 35mm every day and saw the presentation twice. We were sitting there with our jaws dropped. I must have seen thousands of movies in different theaters, all projected in 35mm and I always thought there would be nothing to beat the quality of film. I must admit I´ve changed my mind. This projection was the best I´ve ever seen. Not only were the pictures extremely sharp and clear, without any noise or artifacts at all, but also was there an extraordinary beauty in them, the beauty one might refer to as the "film look". Even our vfx guy just said "sensational". May the resolution of film still be greater, the absence of any noise or grain in the RED material while maintaining the "look" makes it´s quality better than film for me.

After that Amsterdam experience, I must say I don´t see a reason to keep on shooting with film. My company will order a RED One asap.
 
I've also seen Crossing at the IBC in 4k. It looked amazing. Almost to sharp.
It's a new way of looking. But I realy liked what I saw. To make this clear, I love film but the RED images look so great, that I realy have no problem, if digital cinema goes in that direction.

It was funny to watch the bourne 3 right after crossing. In the first 15minutes I thougt there was something missing, till I realized that the bourne3 was in 2K and there was tons of grain etc. The RED images had so much more punch and detail. 4K is the future. It will be the reason why people will go to the movies again.

Film is not dead, but RED brings a lot of options for us moviemakers. RED has it's own quality which I realy love so far. I can't wait for my cam.

It's gonna be all good.

Cheers
Tim
:w00t:
 
Tim, I agree. I was stunned by the sharpness of the projection and my first thought was also that it was too much. Then I was just mesmerized. But I think that´s because we´ve all grown accustomed to a certain quality in projection over the years which actually wasn´t good at all.

I, too believe that the movie theater´s future lies in 4K. According to what I read about the release of Spiderman 3, which was relaeased in both, 35mm and digitally, the audience figures were much better for the digital release.

Anyway, RED seems to me a new and much better way to produce films and I can´t wait to get my ONE.

Frank
 
Hi Frank

The nice thing about the RED picture is that it's so sharp and clean to work with. The basic image is just super clean. That's always a good starting point.
From there you can go almost everywhere. I don't hate grain but I just love clean images. Grain can help you tell a story but I more and more like to ad it later in post. So you have all the control till the end.

Im also amazed by the clean sill images. I never could extract such a clean picture right out of a movie. Its killer.
I also played with scratch at the IBC. It's crazy how hard you can hit the RED images in DI and they still don't fall apart.

Yes RED is not film, RED is different but in a very good way.
Change is good when it looks like RED.

Cheers

Tim
 
Somebody asked me: how was my grandfather doing?
I told him that he was dead.
We all loved him, and still do; nothing changed.
It was long time ago and the family has expended. We have aunts and uncles, brothers and cousins. Some bad and some wonderful.
Can anybody take a place of my grandfather?
NO
Can anybody replace anybody from my family?
NO
Live goes on and things change.

Hello RED
I am liking you already.
 
This post has more to do with stills, but:

I switched to shooting 35mm stills with a digital a little over a year ago. I loved shooting film, especially cross-processing. The thing that I liked about film was the unexpected results sometimes when pushing/pulling or processing slide for negative.

As far as doing professional work for business, digital just made more sense. I could see what I was getting right away.

I also used to own a Mamiya 7ii medium format rangefinder. I could only afford one lens, but the pictures were fabulous. The downside was my scanner took 30 minutes to scan one 200MB tiff.

Earlier this summer I ended up selling my Mamiya to buy a 17-35mm f/2.8 Nikon zoom for my Red. I definitely regret selling the Mamiya now and will probably sell the 17-35 as I am getting the Red 18-50.

This is not to say the 17-35 is a bad lens. It takes fantastic pictures with a d200.

As far as motion pictures go, I am very excited about the possibilities of the Red One as I am upgrading from an HVX.

And if I want to shoot 120 film again I suppose I can borrow my friend's Yashica tlr or maybe he'll finish his 11x14 camera (how many megapixels do you think that would be?).

Over all (and this has been said before) Red and film are two different formats, and Red is the one I can afford, and if money was no object, I would still probably choose Red for most projects vs. 35mm. If I could afford 65mm I could borrow my friend's Photosonics, although it weighs 150lbs+.
 
Hi Guys,
There is a big risk here with this "film/HD is dead" stuff
to do the whole Red project a major disservice.
A lot of very well known DP's come to this site and others to
get some Red info and just leave because of this "film is dead"
rubbish. Most have seen and heard it all before with Sony and
Cinealta.
Because of this Red is fast getting a reputation as the *camera for wankers*.
I'd hate to see this happen as I'm interested in this box and
will be getting into a digital cinema camera of some sort next year.
I'm alarmed that the same stuff is on the Red website in one of the
testo's. Is JJ trying to shoot himself in the foot here.
If you guys want Red accepted as a seroius alternative for motion
picture production, stop behaving like a bunch of schoolkids and please
refrain from punching up the rest of the well established hard working
film and television industry with the "everything is dead Red rules" stuff.
Film is alive HD is alive and Red is now alive and working, at least last
time I looked. You guys with the cameras, let's see some moving H.264
pics, enough with the digital stills, they look great but they don't move.
Ah, that's please can we see some more moving pictures, sorry Mum.
Mezmo
 
Next Generation is 3D Movie for Big Guy.
 
mezmo said:
Hi Guys,
There is a big risk here with this "film/HD is dead" stuff
to do the whole Red project a major disservice.
A lot of very well known DP's come to this site and others to
get some Red info and just leave because of this "film is dead"
rubbish. Most have seen and heard it all before with Sony and
Cinealta.
Because of this Red is fast getting a reputation as the *camera for wankers*.
I'd hate to see this happen as I'm interested in this box and
will be getting into a digital cinema camera of some sort next year.
I'm alarmed that the same stuff is on the Red website in one of the
testo's. Is JJ trying to shoot himself in the foot here.
If you guys want Red accepted as a seroius alternative for motion
picture production, stop behaving like a bunch of schoolkids and please
refrain from punching up the rest of the well established hard working
film and television industry with the "everything is dead Red rules" stuff.
Film is alive HD is alive and Red is now alive and working, at least last
time I looked. You guys with the cameras, let's see some moving H.264
pics, enough with the digital stills, they look great but they don't move.
Ah, that's please can we see some more moving pictures, sorry Mum.
Mezmo
Click to expand...
I tend to agree with you Mezmo. As a reservation holder myself, I come here for all the latest info on my camera-to-be. While there's nothing wrong with genuine enthusiasm and folks being upbeat about this exciting camera, some of the rah rah, "fanboy" stuff can get tiresome and does lower the apparent professionalism of the site in my view. I'm not sure it puts off all the well-known DPs but it certainly puts me off at times. I believe film will have plenty of use for the foreseeable future as will HD simply because it's the latest infrastructure of the broadcast industry. So anyone declaring its imminent dead is a little previous I would say. Perhaps if the title of this tread was something like: "The expected effect of RED on HD utilization", the intent of the original author might have been better realized.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top