When did digital electronic cinematography become a thing for Hollywood movies?

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

In 2002 Sony came out with a brochure on digital electronic cinematography. When did digital electronic cinematography become a thing for Hollywood movies?

Full brochure:

Sony Digital Electronic Cinematography Brochure 2002 D. D. Teoli Jr. A. C. : D. D. Teoli Jr. A. C. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

P.S....

Do you have some material related to the early years of film to digital transition? If so, send me digital files or I can scan for you for free.

Please, no low-res garbage scans. 

Write direct

w1000w@aol.com

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[Joerg Polzfusz]

That’s the first movie with a lot of CGI sequences:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter

Probably the first major movie that was entirely shot on video: 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Episode_I_–_The_Phantom_Menace
(And there only crappy versions of this.)

[Brian Drysdale]

Frank Zappa's "200 Motels" could be the first, although not digital.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/200_Motels

[Daniel J. Fox]

1 hour ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

That’s the first movie with a lot of CGI sequences:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter

Probably the first major movie that was entirely shot on video: 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Episode_I_–_The_Phantom_Menace
(And there only crappy versions of this.)

The Phantom Menace used the Sony HDC-750 for one sequence, I believe the midichlorian scanning scene. The majority of the film was shot on 35mm using Arriflex 435 ES and 535 B cameras.

[Daniel J. Fox]

The first American movie shot on video tape and transferred to film for theatrical and TV release was the weird, but rather unsettling 1971 movie "The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler" starring Leslie Nielsen.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067669/

[Robin Phillips]

2 hours ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

That’s the first movie with a lot of CGI sequences:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter

Probably the first major movie that was entirely shot on video: 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Episode_I_–_The_Phantom_Menace
(And there only crappy versions of this.)

episode 1 is quite clearly shot on film. the main cameras were 535s along with some 435 and vista vision use. model unit was all film, mostly (maybe entirely) vista vision. there is at least one digital test shot in it. 

episode 2 was digital on the sony F900, which came out the same year as 28 days later which was all on the canon XL1

[Karim D. Ghantous]

I have a few issues of AC from the early 2000s. I'll have a flick through them.

[Dom Jaeger]

There was the odd film shot digitally before the 2000s but nothing particularly noteworthy until after Sony released the F900, spurred on by George Lucas, who wanted to pioneer the use of digital cameras for cinema. I was working at Panavision Sydney in 2001 when we supported the Attack Of The Clones shoot at Sydney's Fox Studios and remember the hullabaloo over the new Panavised cameras and lenses. We spent a considerable amount of time making accessories and cables for that thing, and dealing with issues with the new workflow.

Another notable film shot digitally in 2001 I recall was Russian Ark, shot in one take in the Hermitage Museum. It hadn't been possible to shoot an 87 minute take before.

The Panavised F900 led to the creation of the Genesis a few years later, which shot some great looking movies like Apocolypto in 2006, and films like Avatar and Slumdog Millionaire in 2009 certainly proved that digital cinema could be wildly successful, but film was still by far the more popular medium until Arri released the Alexa in 2010. By 2013 digital had overtaken film, and by 2016 film was a niche format, with less than 10% of movies shot on film. 

[Aapo Lettinen]

they did this kind of gradual transition where first the vfx-heavy and low light scenes were digital the rest usually film if it was not low budget production. Then slowly migrating to fully digital capture. F900R, Thomson Viper, Dalsa Origin, Panavision Genesis, Si2K, Sony F23, Sony F35,  Red One, Alexa, Red Epic.

Stuff like Collateral (35mm with low light scenes on digital), the Apocalypto (most of the movie on Genesis I think except some select handheld A-minima etc footage), some mid 2000's comedies (Genesis all the way) . most of the later 2000's film originated stuff had high speed stuff shot on Phantom or Weisscam cameras on digital when they became available though there was exceptions too like the 300 where the slow mo scenes were Photo Sonics on film.  For early digital cameras it was common to have low top framerates if wanting good image quality and thus it was common to shoot slow motion shots on film up to something like 2010 I think?? if the framerate was such that the arri 435 could do that but higher than the main digital camera could do, so the 80fps - 150fps stuff was usually on film even if the rest was digital.

Then there were movies like Sin City (it was some kind of small sensor Sony all the way, was it F900R or F950 ??) and Planet Terror (Genesis ), the Benjamin Button and the Public Enemies (F23). Che (I think it was the first feature film fully shot on Red One Camera??) and District 9 (Red One) and Cloverfield (panasonic with some select heavy vfx stuff on higher end camera, I think it was Viper or F23) which were fully digital too. Slumdog Millionaire had Si2k. 

Avatar of course, I think it was a mix of F23 and some custom Sony cameras. Tron Legacy was F35 even when other options were already available.

Then there was the Hobbit trilogy shot on Red Epic cameras, I think the first major production using them. the more common Red One MX was already used in 2009-2010 on some major films. When the Alexa came out it sped up the digital a lot and I think from 2010 forward it became normal to shoot the whole film on digital and it not being exceptional at all. Game of Thrones first season still used some 35mm shot on Arricams on early scenes but they quickly switched to the Alexa exclusively and it became rare to mix film and digital in the same production, if there was some tiny merits on shooting on digital then the whole movie  was just shot on Alexa or Red and film not used even on daylight scenes for example, they just tried to manage with the digital camera all the way even if having some drawbacks like the IR issues and low-ish dynamic range and weird colors of the first Red cameras.

The re-emergence of 3D movies somewhere around 2007-2008 I think??? sped up the full-digital-origination a lot because they wanted to use beamsplitter dual camera rigs which made film impractical as shooting medium. Though the post 3D converted movies were occasionally better depending on context and allowed camera move more freely etc. When the anamorphic capture resurfaced some 10 years later (like it always does after the 3D craze, it is a cycle repeating every couple of dozen years and has happened exactly similar many times before) then it became allowed to shoot on film again. so film made some kind of limited comeback when all the theatrical movies did not need to be 3D anymore to collect wide audiences.

----------

The low budget, fx heavy and tech test type movies switched to digital earlier. The mainstream high budget followed. In mid 2000s it was commonplace to shoot comedies on digital already but epic and drama and some types of action stuff took much longer to adapt and needed higher quality digital cameras to come out, especially in terms of dynamic range and colour reproduction

Edited June 2 by Aapo Lettinen

[Aapo Lettinen]

I remember clearly when the Che (2008) movie came out and it was the first fully Red One using major feature. I went to the theater to watch it just for that reason, to see how different it would be to watch a fully digitally captured film with the newest generation cameras. The movie was pretty good too but the "digital factor" was the reason I went to see it really, back then it was still exceptional for a movie to be fully digitally originated.

Two years later was so common that no one cared anymore. So I would draw the line to somewhere around maybe 2009 or so when the Red One MX started to be common on productions and other digital cameras like F23 and F35 common too but just before the Alexa and Red Epic started to roam the rest of the field. I remember seeing the Red Scarlet MX first time on set of a student film back then I think late 2011?? we all collected around the camera the first day, was so cool it was so small and had a touchscreen display which was not common on cameras back then and all that stuff. And so lightweight too! it was very unreliable but no one cared because it was so much smaller and easier than Red One and weight when kitted up was like 1/2 or 1/3.

the Epic style of cameras changed a lot because before it was common for digital cinema cameras have that huge SR tape recorder or some kind of large data recorder or even separate computer set to capture the footage. The solid state "memory cards" changed that a lot. Red One already had possibility to use CF cards and later ssd drives but the camera itself was still pretty large and heavy and often still used the separate hdd drive compared to the Epic series which was all about compactness and small handy ssd cards, perfect for newer style camera drones which came out a few years later.

There was some interesting "film camera style" digital cameras like Arri D21 but they were never really common and only used on couple of movies. The Sony stuff and Red stuff and later the Alexa changed the film industry and the largest changes were somewhere between about 2009 and about 2013 I think

Edited June 2 by Aapo Lettinen

[Geffen Avraham]

14 hours ago, Robin Phillips said:

episode 1 is quite clearly shot on film. the main cameras were 535s along with some 435 and vista vision use. model unit was all film, mostly (maybe entirely) vista vision. there is at least one digital test shot in it. 

episode 2 was digital on the sony F900, which came out the same year as 28 days later which was all on the canon XL1

sadly, f900 was not yet up to the task it was given. the f950 used on episode 3 was much better, but lucas was dissatisfied with panavision's 3-chip anamorphics, and shot it spherically - meaning it had to be cropped down to 818p in post.

Revenge of the Sith's native resolution is 1920 x 818.

The first digital camera that was worthy of Lucas's vision was the F35. Its 6K striped sensor can still outperform a Red Komodo today, and pairs easily with the C-series.

[Jon O'Brien]

4 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

"... The Sony stuff and Red stuff and later the Alexa changed the film industry and the largest changes were somewhere between about 2009 and about 2013 I think"

And 'twas around this time feature movies at the cinema started to go downhill. But, of course, it could merely be a coincidence. 

And yet ...

Imagine "American Graffiti" shot on an Alexa, or a RED.

Edited June 2 by Jon O'Brien

[Aapo Lettinen]

10 minutes ago, Jon O&#x27;Brien said:

And 'twas around this time feature movies at the cinema started to go downhill. But, of course, it could merely be a coincidence. 

And yet ...

Imagine "American Graffiti" shot on an Alexa, or a RED.

yes they started to cheap on stuff. All the producers were talking about was "digital will make this movie cheaper to shoot" and how much they could save on lighting budgets and how "stupid" it was to need to send film rolls to lab and wait for the dailies come back when you could ask the dit to play them back on set to ensure they were OK, and so on. And if someone would shoot down some of those statements then they bringing up the "we want to release a 3D version of this" to shut down any arguments how film could be an option. And that they want to shoot on places where there was no film lab (to cheap on costs) and thus it was "impossible" to regularly ship the film to the neighboring country for developing.

so they created this mindset that shooting film was "absolutely impossible" and thus digital was the only option to make movies anymore.

of course there was the financial collapse of the 2008-ish which affected it too, but still.

I wonder how Kaurismäki was able to shoot the Fallen Leaves on film a decade later when the shoots were in Finland and the lab was in Belgium. Other examples too.

It is the techno-religious mindset that the newest technology is always the only option and it is "stupid" to use anything else. Then making crappy movies with the cool new triollion K digital cameras. large format 3d of course. Maybe part of it is that the "craft" aspect of filmmaking was lost when they started to concentrate too much on cutting corners and promoting newest technology. They though that the one with the newest technology wins no matter what mediocre crap they write and shoot...

[Jon O'Brien]

What you say is true Aapo.

What happened to Hollywood movies? We've figured out the "When", in the OP, but what is the "Thing," that took over Hollywood? I can't shake this question that, really, is generally unanswered. People have various theories as to what happened to the movies (at the cinema). We're just in a current slump, they say. It's happened before, they say.

Well, never as bad as this. I've been around a bit and I've seen prior slumps.

Maybe not entirely but to a large extent, I believe that it was this "cheap" production outlook you mention. This is from the producer side of things. And also, what you call the "techno-religious mindset." This is from the DP and director side of things. As I observe it, the belief is that things evolve for the better always. And that this "evolution" is a thing we must respond passively to. Sony invents or adapts a new cinema camera, that George wants to use, because, well, George never was too fond of the on-location filming bit and just liked to be back at the editing room, and frankly, he was kind of sick of working with film. Plus the timing was right, for Sony, etc. And then Arri came onboard ... we know the story. But if it hadn't been George it would have been some other big name.

I believe digital wasn't an advance for cinema. It's cheapened it, and the kind of technicians working behind the camera now have a different outlook and, really, a different visual taste. They like what they see, but I don't. Many others don't, too, clearly. Enough time has gone by to now look back and see this in hindsight.

Shoot film and see the cinema bounce back. Because if you have a cheap outlook it will eventually show in your output. If you lack taste, it will show. Audiences know, though they might not be able to articulate why movies aren't really all that great any more.

 

 

Edited June 2 by Jon O'Brien

[Jon O'Brien]

Film is more prone to "techno-religion" than music, which explains why in some ways music has better survived the digital revolution. It's easier and much more immediate to see the less than fantastic effect that digital tech has on music than in film. In music, everyone and their dog can tell that Mozart and Beethoven are better on a traditional acoustic piano or acoustic violin than they are on digital piano and digital violin.

Film is a bit more difficult to see immediately, and the effects of digital on the film industry can really only clearly be seen down the track, in trends, years later. We're seeing and eating the fruit of the digital revolution now. It's taken over a decade to shift things to the point where it's now obvious a major shift has occurred. Before, it was easy and cool to say bye to film. It's not so cool now. There are so many videos on YT talking about how to try to get your digital to look like film. Just shoot on film for goodness sake. If you can't afford it then stop buying expensive digital gear.

[Jon O'Brien]

What is a great movie? It is a piece of art.

How do you make a piece of art?

With sacrifice. With hard work. With sweat. With pain. With struggle. With expense. With sacrifice.

Want to lounge back and have fun and be cruisy? Yes, those things are necessary and very good and you need to have those. In your time off, though, not on the job. Cinematography has to be difficult. Those cruisy dudes on YT who go on about digital cinematography, I bet you anything they couldn't shoot a compelling and great movie. Lounge lizard cinematography is boring to look at because there's just no sweat or sacrifice in it. There's no art.

[Dom Jaeger]

While I love film and film technology, and have invested a large portion of my life learning the mechanical intricacies of analogue cameras, I'm of the opinion that you can make art from anything. The important thing is the talent and the passion of the artist.

I used to look down on photographers a little, having studied drawing and painting, which I considered a truer and more superior art form. Closer to the hand of the artist, no technology interpreting things, nothing smoothing out the individual quirks of a singular human vision. But great photography and cinematography pretty quickly disabused me of that notion. I still looked down a little on digital artists, who used programs to draw and colour their work. But watching my daughter master drawing on a tablet made me realise that her creativity still shone through, despite the pixels and program limitations. 

I play a bit of guitar and some players are utterly gear fixated - they have their valve amps and vintage guitars and know exactly how to achieve the sound they want. Then there are those who can pick up any old piece of crap instrument and make it sing. 

Having recently watched the Dylan biopic, I'm also reminded of the furor that erupted when he went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, and how quaint and silly that seems in hindsight.

I guess my point is that being fanatical about a medium is kind of pointless. Use the medium you love and let the work make the argument. If it inspires someone else to try film, or play a Fender or paint with watercolours, then the medium lives on. I think there are some fabulous movies and series that have been shot digitally in the last decade, and as long as film is still an option I have no problem with it.

The death of art I'm utterly against right now is AI, which takes all agency away from humans and steals from actual artists. Compared to that, shooting on a digital camera versus film seems a very minor disagreement.

[Aapo Lettinen]

yes, AI generated "art" is a disgrace to humanity and its main purpose is scamming people. They generate a cheap imitation of human art and then try to pass it as man-made to gain attention and respect, and try to sell it to the consumers for the same price than a real human made product would had cost. The purpose of AI generators is to "fake, distract, scam, grab and run", there is nothing good they have ever done to humanity (except some few good political memes which are important for democracy. but those could have been just photoshopped instead).

they want to replace human made music with AI generated "music" too! some pop artists have already copied their persona to the AI generator and are now generating new "songs" by pushing a button. They don't want to work, there is no art, they just want to grab your money and run.

greedy producers want to replace VFX artists with AI to cheap on costs when making movies. but that does not mean the movies would be cheaper to the consumers, quite the opposite. The companies still charge premium for the end product which is half the quality than before and they keep all the profits by themself.

the fkin AI slop fake content should be killed with fire!  I don't mind people shooting movies digitally as long as they really make the movie personally and not trying to fake and scam by using AI generators to cheap on costs and claim it doesn't matter.

 

[Jon O'Brien]

21 hours ago, Dom Jaeger said:

While I love film and film technology, and have invested a large portion of my life learning the mechanical intricacies of analogue cameras, I'm of the opinion that you can make art from anything. The important thing is the talent and the passion of the artist.

I used to look down on photographers a little, having studied drawing and painting, which I considered a truer and more superior art form. Closer to the hand of the artist, no technology interpreting things, nothing smoothing out the individual quirks of a singular human vision. But great photography and cinematography pretty quickly disabused me of that notion. I still looked down a little on digital artists, who used programs to draw and colour their work. But watching my daughter master drawing on a tablet made me realise that her creativity still shone through, despite the pixels and program limitations. 

I play a bit of guitar and some players are utterly gear fixated - they have their valve amps and vintage guitars and know exactly how to achieve the sound they want. Then there are those who can pick up any old piece of crap instrument and make it sing. 

Having recently watched the Dylan biopic, I'm also reminded of the furor that erupted when he went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, and how quaint and silly that seems in hindsight.

I guess my point is that being fanatical about a medium is kind of pointless. Use the medium you love and let the work make the argument. If it inspires someone else to try film, or play a Fender or paint with watercolours, then the medium lives on. I think there are some fabulous movies and series that have been shot digitally in the last decade, and as long as film is still an option I have no problem with it.

The death of art I'm utterly against right now is AI, which takes all agency away from humans and steals from actual artists. Compared to that, shooting on a digital camera versus film seems a very minor disagreement.

I agree with you. You can make art with any kind of medium, and it's the talent alone that's important. A talented musician can pick up anything and sound wonderful. That said, if it's a pro musician, while they can indeed play on anything and sound great, I've also noticed that without fail they have a great instrument. I know and have known a lot of musicians (you probably have, too) and that is always the case. Top guitarists always have a top instrument.

Yes you can make art with digital gear. I'd be a snob if I didn't think so, and I'm not a snob. If you knew me you'd see that. The most important thing to me is people being free to be people, and that means being creative if they're so inclined.

Digital has given and still gives great things to the world. The digital revolution needed to happen to film & TV because the system couldn't cope with all these many miles of film prints. Plus, digital cinematography is perfect for what it's best at.

My comments here at cinematography.com regarding the film/digital thing are always aimed specifically at cinema-release feature movie production. They're not aimed at all the many areas in which digital video cameras are so apt and perfect for. What I'm really saying is that for a certain niche of film production, that film really is generally better than digital. And that there's no question about that. But, of course, that's how I see it. You disagree, and that's fine. I use digital cameras more than film cameras currently and am using one this weekend for a shoot.

I feel that I'm the one that is responding to a fanaticism: the strong belief that digital video is better and now universal and film has been superceded, which, where I live, is a universal belief. So, I think it's a matter of where I live. I'm a voice crying in the wilderness (don't worry ... that was a joke). I was in Sydney the other day and went to the "Super 8" shop in Newtown. Wherever I go I seek out real film people and places. There's nothing like that in Brisbane. And on the north coast. It's like film has cobwebs here and there's an ancient spinet or harpsichord being played by a dusty skeleton whenever film is mentioned.

I'm all for digital and film coexisting. There's many things about digital video that I think is fantastic. For one, I love that scanning has improved so immensely that scanned film, projected digitally, now looks very similar to an optically projected film print. In some ways, even better. But I often love the look of digital cinematography. The many fine cooking shows on TV are beautifully photographed by artist cinematographers. Just recently I adored the look that Lea Beavers got for an episode of Roux Down the River. I felt like contacting him and asking for information. Digital is super cool and I love it.

But, ... something's got to be done about how digital - so often - lets a feature film production down. Not enough are saying it, and it needs to be said.

Digital can kill the atmosphere and vibe of a feature movie that could really have been significantly better if it had been shot on film. I watched a film last night, or tried to, we had to give up on it. The vibe and feel of a feature movie just wasn't there. It felt like excellent actors in front of a video camera doing screen tests. I can't believe more don't comment on this type of loss of vibe and feel in some productions that were shot digitally. I won't mention names of crew but it had Mel Gibson in it and it had great sets, great actors, great art direction, great everything, about a great topic, but it lacked something important that, I believe, shooting on film could have given it.

Stephen here at C.com has mentioned this in feature films too, how many that are shot on video, especially period era stories, feel like a bunch of actors doing dress ups. Exactly.

On an entirely different note, here is an encouraging note about recent cinema attendance. I have no idea how either of these movies where shot and I don't care. Anything to get more people into cinemas is great news to me. I concede that I may be wrong about shooting on film specifically helping cinema attendance to improve but I know that, somehow, there's some kind of problem there with many current productions that, really, I've never seen before at the movies. What is it? Talent?

I haven't read this entire article, but the gist of it:

https://hollywoodheretic.substack.com/p/the-cinema-will-save-us?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

 

Edited June 4 by Jon O'Brien

[Jon O'Brien]

Where I differ from some is that I consider the current situation in cinema release narrative feature movies and their quality (maybe just as an audience member and nothing more!) as being much more serious than anything to do with AI. But it looks like many people are very worried about AI. I just couldn't care about anything to do with it at the moment but I don't make a living from vfx or concept art, or online content creation so called.

Is AI going to inhibit or ruin the jobs of wedding videographers, to use one example? Not one bit, surely. Or, hardly.

There's all sorts of things that bring about a death of art. Man, that's a long list. I just get on with making art where I possibly can.

Yep, a fair point about just stop talking about it, and make films. Yes, I can and should do just that. I wish though I could get more people excited about shooting on film in my area. I guess it will happen, eventually.

Edited June 4 by Jon O'Brien

[Aapo Lettinen]

11 minutes ago, Jon O&#x27;Brien said:

I wish though I could get more people excited about shooting on film in my area. I guess it will happen, eventually.

workshops and gear availability would help a lot. if having a possibility to try different gear without renting and maybe shoot a roll or two together then getting it developed and watched together would definitely gain interest towards film based workflows

[Dom Jaeger]

1 hour ago, Jon O&#x27;Brien said:

. I wish though I could get more people excited about shooting on film in my area. I guess it will happen, eventually.

I have at least 10 clients from Queensland whose film cameras I’ve serviced over the years, probably more if I counted, so there are definitely filmmakers up there shooting on film. Not sure how you connect with them though. It’s a big state too, some are from far north, but most are Gold Coast/Brisbane based. 

[Jon O'Brien]

I'm thinking about starting a Facebook film shooters filmmaking group , Sunshine Coast and/or Brisbane based. Though, I'm now starting to network with a few local people for video jobs so might not need to. My videography only started to take off recently. The reality is that you have to offer your services for free at first, then for a very small fee, and so on. So many videographers around, both pro and semi-pro amateur, nearly one in every family. Getting into digital myself was a good move. It all takes time to learn.

Am filming on a IIC soon, just a test, that Dom made a battery for. After that I might have to get a 35-3 looked at as it seems to have very specific power needs and the motor doesn't run reliably with the current power supply.