how about a new subforum?

[Max Jacoby]

I didn't see the whole movie (the film projector died ironically) but apparently at the end of "28 Days Later" there is a 35mm sequence.

It's the very last scene in the countryside. Ironically the sequel '28 Weeks Later', which is about to be released, is shot on film.

[Ralph Oshiro]

I guess now this thread would be better served in the Canon XL-1 forum . . .

[Carl Brighton]

so, how about a subforum "film and or against digital".

 

Why can't we have a permanent heading to the effect that:

NOTE: Just because somebody thinks that certain statements made by certain manufacturers of video equipment are arrant nonesense, that does not mean they: "HATE VIDEO".

It just means they object to B.S. and those who choose to spread it...

 

I'm not pointing the finger at manufacturer in particular by the way:-)

 

Even Jim Jannard has acknowledged that he understands now why so many people were so skeptical a year ago, which is surprising considering he's actually done what a lot of people thought was impossible. It's usually at this point people are scratching around for excuses :lol:

 

My only opinion now is that if you're going to shoot digitally for cinema release, there seems to be no reason why you shouldn't use the RED (well, when they become freely available of course). If you have the budget and inclination to use film, use film. If you want or need to use video, use the RED.

 

But neither film nor the RED is going to make a successful cinematographer out of you, just as a word processor isn't going to make you into Stephen King!

[Ralph Oshiro]

Hey there, Carl! Did you get a chance to see the demo at the RED booth at NAB?

[Ralph Oshiro]

But neither film nor the RED is going to make a successful cinematographer out of you . . .

Yes, but to paraphrase another member's post, it's MUCH easier to shoot ugly video than it is to shoot ugly film. The aesthetic and technical challenges have been so much greater in the "electronic cinematography" world. Anyone remember the Ikegami EC35? Let's face it. Video sucks. And has sucked for a long time. For video, you have to light scenes to a fraction of the contrast ratio of what a film DP can light to. When the first Digital Betacam cameras came out, Sony claimed an 11-stop dynamic range . . . I mean what were they smoking? Video loses detail in its highlights faster than you can say, "DCC." Video has "noise"--not "grain." And noise NEVER looks "organic" or "filmic." Noise just looks like sh-t. And another thing, video has traditionally had this horribly narrow, ugly color gamut. I mean, how many horribly DP'd F900 "films" have you seen? I was watching this DP light this F900-lensed, major network MOW once. He lit it like a f--king soap opera. I don't know why. He had a nook light bounced into the ceiling on some Foamcore--I mean there was f--king light EVERYWHERE. But I digress. Up until recently, 2/3" imagers were IT! And that 3:1:1 color sampling scheme? What was the deal with THAT? Okay, so now we have SR. Big deal! It weighs a ton, and the VTR costs a $100K! Might as well shoot on 1" videotape again! Hopefully, RED has and will change some or all of this.

[Walter Graff]

I was interested in the idea that 28 Days Later was shot on DV, so I looked up the specs. ALLOCINE.CO.UK listed it as: Colour Film negative format : 35 mm.

 

http://www.allocine.co.uk/film/fichefilm_g...film=46940.html

 

I'm wondering if they are referring to 35mm film-out.

 

 

It was distributed on film. It was shot with a Canon XL-1 with Canon primes and an Optex adapter. There are numerous articles online about teh shooting of this film and an article in AC July 2003.

[Ken Cangi]

It was distributed on film. It was shot with a Canon XL-1 with Canon primes and an Optex adapter. There are numerous articles online about teh shooting of this film and an article in AC July 2003.

 

I found a few of them. Thanks for the info.

[jan von krogh]

Your posts lead me to believe that you are very much a small business owner or surely more of a business technician than film guy.

 

Hello Adam,

 

quite interesting from the production POV that you see these aspects as contradictions.

Mastering the artistic, technological and economic aspects of a production is what makes a good director/producer, imho.

If you want to know more, have a search in the d20 forum, i just recently posted there what kind of stuff we are doing and where we came from.

 

I'm involved with two projects in development by two different feature directors. One of them is a knowledge machine, knowing easily as much as I do about photography but encouraging risk, with an eye for really creating mood and environment with all heads of production. I'm helping him in various ways and will probably end up as an operator/AC on his show as there's a more commercially exp. DP on board. The other guy knows very little, if anything at all, about film, coming from the DV world, and only wants to get another movie under his belt to put onto the legitimate DVD market. I'm the DP on his. The thing they both have in common is wanting 16mm to be their medium.

without knowing the scripts - they probably both would get a proposal of hdcam or uncompressed 1080p from me, if i would be interested in the productions at this moment in time.

~ august/sept we would offer red if the different DOF makes sense to them, or red with our s16 glass.

if they still would be interested to use s16mm instead of uncompressed 1080 or red, i would probably try to understand why, arrange a 1080p->s16 look session in the DI and then decide upon their reaction, if i want to participate.

 

So if he came to you and you tried to tell him how stupid it was to shoot on S16, do you think you'd have any of his business, ever? No way. The 'just get it done' director might come to you and not be able to compete with your tech talk, but his Producer's rep surely knows more than you do about his project's needs.

its no only tech talk, adam. technology is always a source of good creativity, but never is its origin.

our basic approach is usually to give such projects 2-3 days for testshooting & DI. thats the creative part.

some wanted to stay 35mm instead of 1080, none s16 so far - since 2002.

then -money talks. thats the biz part. if i am really eager to get into a movie, i´ll accept most things, s16 being a side issue.

if i am only interested, then i do my pondering and so far opted out on all the s16 longform projects we could have been participating in the recent years.

with short form, i couldn´t care less. we have a s16 zeiss 1.2 primesset, s16 cameras are cheap to rent and if its shortform the stock isn´t so problematic.

 

Who are you to argue with either guy?

usually i don´t argue. i am interested or not.

furthermore, you don´t start conservations in the restaurant while the production meetings with a formal "Who are you to argue with us", but rather with smalltalk.

 

You'd just end up hurting or confusing the 'just get it done' guy and you'd end up looking really, really ignorant trying to talk film vs. video with the other guy. Either way, you'd not do any $$ with either one, ever again.

gronk. you mean "boddington" him?

however, i suppose you don´t understand how we do our productions.

usually it takes 6 months to 2 years until a production is prepared, financed, casted, dp & director are choosen etc.

especially when we put our money in a production, i try to be quite selective about the inner circle of a team.

if we do a co-production, partnership and trust is paramount.

if its only rental, the guys might be interested in our zeiss s16 1.2 primeset, but its pretty uncommon that they rent from us them, as in most rentals, the house who rents the camera then asks us & offers the lenses under their name to the customer - and that won´t be our company if its s16 shooting.

 

So good luck with that.

thank you very much. our Di suites and cameras are booked well, the recent projects are sold and we do have nice scripts in the pipeline, so a little luck wouldn´t hurt.

[Jeff Coatney]

I led a team tasked with creating a Digital Portrait system for theme park rides back fourteen years ago. It wasn't easy but we created a working system. The reason it wasn't widely implemented was because the company was photo-chemical film based and at that time in history, few digital printing options existed with the requisite throughput for a cost-effective hard-copy. In the process of creating this system, we had the pleasure of traveling to Kodak's advanced digital lab in Rochester, NY and also met with similar R&D teams at Fuji, Polaroid, Sony, Nikon, Canon and Ilford. Kodak, Polaroid, Fuji and Ilford were all trying to crack the Digital problem. Meaning, that they were all trying to find a role for their photochemical film to play in the digital future, so their core businesses could still function, still thrive, still grow like they had in the past. When pressed by me about their plan to transition to digital, they were evasive and vague about any such plans. It became obvious that there were no plans at any of the large companies to deal with emerging imaging technology. I met no one in that time that could have imagined the utterly dizzying speed with which Digital imaging overtook the consumer photography market. Back then I marveled at Kodak and Nikon's $30,000 digital SLR. The same camera used to take the iconic photo of the lone protester standing against the tanks in Tienamen Square. Now we have cameras on our phones, none of which carry the Kodak logo. Now we can buy 6+ megapixel cameras for under $200. Most of them don't carry the Kodak logo either. My point is that had Kodak acted differently thirteen years ago, we could have seen their logo on a lot more digital still cameras today.

 

I could relay the same tale about typesetting and commercial printing. In the early eighties I operated a stat camera, in the late eighties, a Macintosh. I still remember seeing a parking lot of one of the printers I used in the early 90's filled with stat cameras, many of them just a few years old, all of them headed to a junkyard.

 

To me there is no debate. There is no comparison between film and digital. Digital IS the next step in the evolution of film. I've seen this transition twice before in my life, as I've indicated, and I can predict with accuracy at least one thing. Digital will supplant photochemical film faster than you can imagine. There will be no migration to 65mm film, no 120mm film, no IMAX "film". I doubt they will even coexist for more than a year or two as alternatives for each other. Film simply is no longer economically viable. Soon we will see 4K digital Cinema projectors cost less to install than the maintenance on the old Christies cost in a year.

 

Movies are the last refuge of the old technology. I love the things we all love about film. They will not disappear. But if you think film has a future beyond two or three years, I think you're kidding yourself. The RED, the Phantom 65, the Viper, The DALSA, you name it, the technology has arrived at the price/performance threshold required to supplant the old technology. Film has evolved past the need for a photochemically based incarnation.

 

Think about it this way: The Audience eperiences the Movie digitally via DVD, HDTV and digital projection in theatres (soon every theatre). Digital imagery pervades the Pre-Production phase in the form of animatics, pre-vis, storyboards, concept art and virtual sets. Post-Production is completely Digital with Avid, Final Cut, After-Effects, Shake, Maya all gaining ground along with the DI as a finishing solution. With such enormous pressures at both ends of the movie production workflow to create in a digital space, photochemical film as even a Production acquisition medium is doomed. You shoot film, you process it, prep it for telecine, then you DIGITIZE it! The unnecessary steps like processing and telecine are going to be eliminated. Soon.

 

The factories that produce the Raw Stock 35mm you shoot are huge, covering acres of valuable land, requiring the stock-piling and subsequent remediation of chemicals, precious metals and vast amounts of waste and effluence. They will be unsustainable enterprises as the demand wanes for photochemical film. The labs like Deluxe and Technicolor that produce exhibition prints will see their viability challenged with the coming revolution in digital projection. Telecine will no longer exist. This transition could very well be counted in double-digit months, or single-digit years.

 

The Panavision, the Arriflex, the Moviecam are going to see their value drop as precipitously as the high-end 35mm SLR's of the still photography world. As publishing and Consumer and Commercial photography go, so goes the Motion Picture industry. I predict you will have very little say in the matter of whether or not you shoot film. The economics will dictate the choice. The Producers and Distributors will decide because they have the power of the purse. This will not limit creativity, it will not mean that image quality or aesthetic decisions will suffer. I think you will find that as film dies away, it will be replaced by a much more robust and flexible imaging toolset.

[Brian Drysdale]

I think you're overlooking that we are also dealing with an art form as well as an industry. Surprisingly, people are still shooting Super 8, even though it would be lot cheaper to use mini DV. Having both film and digital gives an option, not unlike choosing between acrylics and oils. As has also been stated on numerous occasions, above a certain budget the film stock costs are a small percentage of the costs on a feature film. Spielberg still edits his films the traditional way, which does bring a different way of thinking to your use of images.

 

Someone said that the greatest handicap to creative writing has been the word processor because you can spend so much time endlessly go over material without progressing. Whereas with the manual typewriter, you could only keep going on putting your story down, regardless of the mistakes. Make what you like of that comment.

 

Shooting HD has been driven by the economics of television, which is analogous to the drive to digital in the print media and also advertising.

 

Personally I love shooting on both, but digital does have it's own set of limitations. However, the exciting thing about film is how it can always surprise you, what you thought was going to be terrible turns out to be wonderful. It also reminds you how wonderfully bland digital can be at times.

 

I'd rather be allowed the freedom to decide, with the production people, if digital or film (or both) best suits the film we're trying to make rather than having no choice at all.

[David Mullen ASC]

Movies are the last refuge of the old technology. I love the things we all love about film. They will not disappear. But if you think film has a future beyond two or three years, I think you're kidding yourself. The RED, the Phantom 65, the Viper, The DALSA, you name it, the technology has arrived at the price/performance threshold required to supplant the old technology.

 

I think you're the one kidding yourself if you think all the rental houses and camera owners in the world will abandon their 35mm gear in only three years. For productions that can afford film and directors and DP's who prefer shooting it, they will be doing so after three years from now, I can bet real money on that.

 

You're under the delusion that people make decisions only on price & performance for one thing. If you are happy with the performance of film and you can afford it, what's the incentive to shooting digital? You can afford the price of film and you prefer the performance.

 

There are simply too many film cameras worldwide now for the new digital technology to replace it all, even in three years. And the new technology is very new. I think you're jumping the gun here.

 

You've come to a logical conclusion for yourself personally, but other artists and filmmakers won't come to the same conclusion that current digital is just as good as film, so if they can afford to shoot film, they will.

 

I'd give film at least a decade for MP work, but that's an academic discussion, and even after that, it still may be used, just in the minority.

 

For digital to become the majority, it has to meet several criteria:

1. It has to achieve technical parity with 35mm color negative or surpass it

2. It has to be convenient to shoot and offer all the features for film cameras, including sizes and frame rates

3. It has to fit into common post workflows

4. It has to be proven to be reliable

5. It has to be readily available to rent worldwide

6. It has to be as cheap or cheaper to shoot and post

7. People have to want to switch

 

So what we're talking about it worldwide distribution of 4K digital cinema cameras that offer all frame rates and are in convenient sizes, as cheap to rent as 35mm equipment, and proven to be as reliable. Now maybe you think that the RED camera meets all those criteria, but it's too new to be proven reliable and there won't be as many bodies available worldwide to rent as film cameras in only three years.

 

So we may reach that point in three years where all these criteria fall into place, and then it will take a few more years for a transition to take place, and even then, there will be significant hold-outs at the highest and lowest levels. There are a number of people who would rather shoot Super-16 than any digital format for one thing.

 

So three years until film is gone is not realistic. Three years will pass in the blink of an eye. It won't be until two years that people will even start to see enough 4K digitally shot movies in theaters to make a judgement. The RED camera won't really ship until later in 2007, most people using it won't be doing significant work until 2008, and most of that won't be released until 2009 due to the cycle from shooting to distribution when it comes to features. So you're being premature.

 

Maybe the moderators should just ban or delete any "film is dead" predictions for now. They have no practical value for the moment.

[Alexander Joyce]

To me there is no debate. There is no comparison between film and digital. Digital IS the next step in the evolution of film. I've seen this transition twice before in my life, as I've indicated, and I can predict with accuracy at least one thing. Digital will supplant photochemical film faster than you can imagine. There will be no migration to 65mm film, no 120mm film, no IMAX "film". I doubt they will even coexist for more than a year or two as alternatives for each other.

 

Just out of interest, is your take on this from a technical or a creative pov? It sounds very much like tech talk.

 

I have a 39MP Hasselblad H3D here. Great camera and everything, but I still have my old Hasselblad's, the 501 and SWC and I still use them. I love the look and feel of the film texture and digital is way out of it's league here.

As a sidenote I think the H3D is a sad camera in many ways as Hasselblad with their H series broke off one of the most holy of bonds in the photographic world when they parted with Zeiss and had Fuji create the H body and H series lenses.

 

Thing is that even though it might not make sense to you to shoot on film, the fact remains that you are not dealing in a world always defined by logic. This is a creative industry and if there are compelling reasons to shoot on film then we will. 35mm release prints might very well be going the way of the dodo, but it's going to be many many years until film is displaced as the de-facto medium for high end dramas, commercials and such...

Edited May 5, 2007 by Alexander Joyce

[Guest]

Maybe the moderators should just ban or delete any "film is dead" predictions for now. They have no practical value for the moment.

 

Can we also add all the comments made mainly by Red people that once they have Red the gates of Hollywood will open and they'll be rich beyond their wildest dreams. Because the only thing stopping them right now is the cost to shoot on 35mm.

 

As for film is dead....I'll publically predict that there will be PLENTY of people shooting film 30 years from now when I retire. I have no doubt about that. DV hasn't even been able to killl Super 8 for pete's sake.

 

R,

[Dan Goulder]

To me there is no debate. There is no comparison between film and digital.

Funny, this same observation is made by people who prefer film.