Why film will stay the king...

[David Rasberry]

The Aeronauts, shot on Monstro with Panavision lenses, is a visually stunning example of state of the art digital production.
It cedes nothing to film in terms of aesthetics.

[video]https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2766257945?ref_=vp_rv_ap_0[/video]

 

[Gabriel Mann]

10 years ago I was told it was dead for sure.

I didn't listen either.

Maybe next year!

View attachment 121228

So 52% of 0.0000000000000001% of all productions would be......

 

[Gabriel Mann]

There are a dozen recalcitrant DPs keeping film on life support. Were they to shoot on a RED or Alexa, nobody would know the difference, and their already amazing lighting and composition choices would look...amazing, all the same. Pull the plug.

 

[Phil Holland]

Film is still a beautiful and valid medium. Though we can make digital look exactly like it, there's always going to be visible, tangible, and intangible differences at the end of the day.

There's lot of hyperbole surrounding "film being dead", on many levels it is, on many levels it's still a medium that some will choose to create with and it's doing slightly better in the last few years.

The reality outside of click bait is the industry as a whole whether we are talking theatrical releases, broadcast television, streaming, and other content is about 95-99% digital as of now.

We've passed by it on technical merit, but aesthetics and desire are tied to much of what we do professionally and personally.

 

[dio Zafi]

Hello all, like a lot of you, i'm really impatient to put my hand on a dragon camera, but to be really honest, i didn't see any "crazy footage" coming from this little beast..
Maybe "Run", by Melina Matsoukas (the false Beyonce's teaser), but when you see a 2010 teaser like this one :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh0gSuQWRVw


You say to yourself "Film is Film, no matter what, it will stay the king".. Look at these textures and colors, it has this magical something that i would love to see in dragon..

+1

True, I shoot half on digital cams and half on film

Not to compare(there just different processes) and depends on the job and the artistic choice

For sure I’m glad it’s in my tool kit

The good thing is I’m not married to either

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Though we can make digital look exactly like it,

We've passed by it on technical merit

Highlight range, motion - nope.


: )

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Highlight range, motion - nope.


: )

Maybe with a global shutter you will see the motion aspect improve dramatically.

As for highlights, you would think that this has been conquered by now, but in the real world it hasn't. I find that a little surprising. We have had over 20 years of commercially available sensors and the highlight problem persists.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Maybe with a global shutter you will see the motion aspect improve dramatically.

Not enough.

As for highlights, you would think that this has been conquered by now, but in the real world it hasn't. I find that a little surprising. We have had over 20 years of commercially available sensors and the highlight problem persists.

People have trouble conceptualizing exponential increases, let alone what it takes to achieve them, and are generally tucked in illusion of linear.
With sensors, targeting higher number with prefix "mega-" reconfigures the list of priorities in development.

Film has 135 years.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Looked At Ad Astra on my 4k projector. A beautiful ”film” film. super nice texture and very organic look Heute is just getting better and better. But then again the film has a massive amount of shots mady fully in cg... Those looks possibly even more cinematic than the in camera shots. Not that the in camera shots lack organic feel. But I find very often when shooting digital not the same amount of grain is added, peaple tend to keep it clean and then post and vfx follows and often that result in a glossy less lifelike image. Look at avangers or such for example, to me it has no feel what so ever, but if the source footage would have been grainy then the post would have follow.

So in a way with big blockbusters the choice to shoot analog kind of dictates all that follows in post, gateweave, grain flaring etc. When starting with a clean image rarely they take out the turns the the same extent.

Another nice one is Sangrens First man, same there s lot of noisy imagery and rhe vfx work follows beautifully.

 

[Matt W.]

Looked At Ad Astra on my 4k projector. A beautiful ”film” film. super nice texture and very organic look Heute is just getting better and better. But then again the film has a massive amount of shots mady fully in cg... Those looks possibly even more cinematic than the in camera shots. Not that the in camera shots lack organic feel. But I find very often when shooting digital not the same amount of grain is added, peaple tend to keep it clean and then post and vfx follows and often that result in a glossy less lifelike image. Look at avangers or such for example, to me it has no feel what so ever, but if the source footage would have been grainy then the post would have follow.

So in a way with big blockbusters the choice to shoot analog kind of dictates all that follows in post, gateweave, grain flaring etc. When starting with a clean image rarely they take out the turns the the same extent.

Another nice one is Sangrens First man, same there s lot of noisy imagery and rhe vfx work follows beautifully.

+1

I like the CGI in Spielberg films and credited it to him integrating vfx elements into the wide shot instead of getting too cutty (there's a lot of interaction)–and to him keeping the camera moving. But I watched some of BFG (shot on Alexa, I believe) and it didn't feel so good. This is a really interesting take. The heavy use of nets and Classic Softs might be at work, too?

What techniques do you use for re-graining? How do you simulate a Classic Soft (screen on an out of focus image)?

I am still amazed by the match moving in Minority Report and War of the Worlds. How? How did they do it?

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

What techniques do you use for re-graining? How do you simulate a Classic Soft (screen on an out of focus image)?

I am still amazed by the match moving in Minority Report and War of the Worlds. How? How did they do it?

Re-graining: would you not just do a film-out? Yeah it's not that simple but it would make sense.

I have seen both of those films but I'm not totally sure what you mean. Do you mean how CGI objects moved in the scene?

 

[Matt W.]

Re-graining: would you not just do a film-out? Yeah it's not that simple but it would make sense.

I have seen both of those films but I'm not totally sure what you mean. Do you mean how CGI objects moved in the scene?

I meant adding grain to CGI to match film grain for compositing. I've been trying different things from automated match grain plug ins to adjusting grain by eye per channel to overlaying film grain stock to overlaying individual channels of film grain stock and it still too often feels like an "overlay." The film image itself is made up of grain and has a subtly differently look to me.

Doing a film out is a good idea, I think, for getting a digital project to look more like film, but I was referring specifically to compositing CGI into film. (Or fully CGI shots treated to look like film.)

Yes, tracking the 3D camera. There's a lot of handheld and steadicam work in those films that looks like it would be very difficult to match move. I found a video about it that answers my question:

https://vimeo.com/137569797

I used Syntheyes a bit ten years ago, I taught myself in a couple hours to do a basic track. But what he's doing here is mind-blowing to me still. A lot of those whip pans look untrackable to me. I guess I just need some training.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Even if you work with only 3D tracking for a few years there is still a lot to learn. Most people dont realize how deep into it you can get.
Messuring your set and having known correlations between your tracking points helps. Having suporting camera angles helps. Having a known lens /camera and lens distorsion helps. Having a lidar scan of the whole scenery helps a huge lot. There is so many things you can do to get things more accurate, open the clip in syntheyes and hit autotrack is not one of them. Hand tracked points that is weighted correctly is the way to go and most people have little understanding how the different points in a scene render into the result depending on thier paralax chsnge.
Speilberg and such guys for sure have very skilled vfx crew on set that mesure thing down and also the resources to get it done right in post. 3D tracking is pretty much the base for all 3D integration, if not done proper everything else will fail aswell.

For grain match I dont find it so important, if lightning, colors, textures etcetra is all correct then things tend to bend well. A simple grain match with background or grain remove of the background and then adding a grain over the whole cake to add the clip before and after. But also quite comon to do such procidure for a whole scene if there is a lot of composite shots simply add the same treatment even for the in between straight out of camera shots.

I usually try to add gray film stock grain with an overlay transfer mode in log space to let the grain land pre grade then I find it to behave more natural, become less noticeble in highlights and surface more in shadows etc. A mixture of flame grain match tools and scans of celuoid noise is what I usually ends up with.

 

[Matt W.]

Even if you work with only 3D tracking for a few years there is still a lot to learn. Most people dont realize how deep into it you can get.
Messuring your set and having known correlations between your tracking points helps. Having suporting camera angles helps. Having a known lens /camera and lens distorsion helps. Having a lidar scan of the whole scenery helps a huge lot. There is so many things you can do to get things more accurate, open the clip in syntheyes and hit autotrack is not one of them. Hand tracked points that is weighted correctly is the way to go and most people have little understanding how the different points in a scene render into the result depending on thier paralax chsnge.
Speilberg and such guys for sure have very skilled vfx crew on set that mesure thing down and also the resources to get it done right in post. 3D tracking is pretty much the base for all 3D integration, if not done proper everything else will fail aswell.

For grain match I dont find it so important, if lightning, colors, textures etcetra is all correct then things tend to bend well. A simple grain match with background or grain remove of the background and then adding a grain over the whole cake to add the clip before and after. But also quite comon to do such procidure for a whole scene if there is a lot of composite shots simply add the same treatment even for the in between straight out of camera shots.

I usually try to add gray film stock grain with an overlay transfer mode in log space to let the grain land pre grade then I find it to behave more natural, become less noticeble in highlights and surface more in shadows etc. A mixture of flame grain match tools and scans of celuoid noise is what I usually ends up with.

Thanks, Bjorn, this is really good information. I am watching some of that guy's work and I don't even know how he does the rotomation with deformation etc.

Like I don't even know what application you would use.

https://vimeo.com/mattmerk

Truly another world from the one I work in. Is he building meshes with IK rigs and animating over by hand? Or is there a way to correlate tracking markers with points in a deformable mesh?

How did you know my Syntheyes workflow? (Well, it works 8 times out of 10.) Do you find Syntheyes to be the best option for the price or is PF Track better for the money?

Ah okay that makes sense with grain. Do you use Cinegrain or what grain pack? I find their 4k pack to be lacking in color. It's very monochrome and feels like an overlay. Also what do you do for highlights? Film highlights can have texture remaining, which an overlay transfer mode would not retain. I guess luma key then add it in separately? This isn't really a big problem for me just curious what you do on a higher end show. I think my problem is Cinegrain is just too monochrome or at least the old pack I was using is.

Surprised to learn entire scenes are degrained/regrained on the higher end stuff. I always felt like a hack doing that.

 

[Jeffery Anderson]

10 years ago I was told it was dead for sure.
I didn't listen either.
Maybe next year!

I think it's movies as an art form that's dead

Film nowadays is about self-indulgent, over-hyped/commercialized, theater as a spectacle

I don't believe that film help create better content or experience for theatergoers

 

[dio Zafi]

Linus Sandgren’s film masterclass in April ASC magazine offers a lot of insights