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

[David Mullen ASC]

I shot "Jackpot" in August 2000 using the Sony F900, which was the first 24P HD camera on the market. It was followed by other 24P cameras: I seem to recall a Panasonic 480P 24P (recorded at 60P) camcorder in 2000 just before the Varicam was released in 2001 and prosumer DVX100 in 2002.

"Jackpot" was in the theaters in August 2001, two weeks before "Session 9", and several months before "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones", which got the F900 first.

24P HD was all the rage in independent filmmaking for awhile and then there was a lull until the next generation of 24P technology. The Thomson Viper came out in 2002 but was limited by data recording technology of the day. The Dalsa Origin was the first single-sensor 35mm-sized digital camera in 2003 followed by the Panavision Genesis in 2004. The Dalsa again was limited by data recording technology of the day (particularly for uncompressed 4K raw data) but the Genesis had the new 1080P HDCAM-SR tape format to record onto.

In 2007 you saw the release of the Silicon Imaging 2K camera (16mm single-sensor) which recorded compressed 2K data and the Red One camera (35mm single-sensor), which could record compressed 4K raw data.

The success of "Avatar" (2009) brought a wave of 3D digitally-shot movies and the conversion of movie theaters from 35mm to digital projection to show them. 2009 was also the year of negotiations over the new SAG contract, causing TV pilots to switch from film to digital in order to work under the AFTRA contract. I shot the pilot to "The Good Wife" that spring on the Panavision Genesis camera; the series (which I didn't shoot) used the Sony F35 until the ARRI Alexa came along.

By 2010, the loss of TV shows that normally would shoot film was a big blow to the Kodak and the film labs in terms of the volume of negative processing; at the same time they both were dealing with the loss of 35mm print processing from the conversion of theaters to digital projection.

So I would say that it was really in that period of 2009-2011 when the industry experienced the most change.