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"Cinematography used to be a chemical romance, now days is a digital romance ."


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Not my intention at all, Just some quote from the net , and seeing articles about the masters shooting Digital ( Roger Deakins, Vilmos Sigmond, Darek Wolski,ect) I thought it was a interesting topic ,not as a violent passionate discussion but an intellectual high comprehensive one, my self I think film is is the best format overall but every day digital is improving its quality and the productions are turning more into digital and what it used to be a world full of chemical experiments is turning into a computer geeks world ,that clearly affects the kind of people that work with us on set and on post even on preproduction. Instead of having a person that could load a magazine without looking what he is doing following their instinct now we have a geek downloading the cards and playing on a computer.Not saying this is bad or good Just a different kind of people on our crews and the loader is just one example. Instead of having chemists on the labs dealing with the film we have computer guys dealing with color and and definition issues the type of professional involved in movie making is diferent even when you shoot film the post in most cases is digital ,so is a truth in most cases that "filmaking" is getting more digital everyday.

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They aren't chemists, they're lab tech's, and it isn't an interesting topic, those are people's jobs and livelihoods and skilled crafts that it sounds like you're trying to get other people to write your term paper on. I've been baited in again, but now I really am done.

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Bah ! what term paper ?? are you a grumpy moron? not interested ? just keep going and ignore my post. these lab techs they did study chemistry and maybe in your mindset this is not interesting, maybe in someone else it is.GFYS.

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Santiago, it is not a very prudent approach to come on here and start calling people names like "moron." If you disagree with people, generally you should use standard debating tactics and avoid ad hominem or other fallacies.

 

It sounds like your quote is just another attempt to start a "film is dead" thread and this is getting old. I started on this board in 2006 and people were saying film had died back then but strangely I still can't find a good deal on 16mm/35mm film gear because people are buying it all up! Imagine that?

 

Do you think the 8-track is dead? Perhaps since you can buy them at a thrift store for a few bucks. Tell me the last time you went to a thrift store and found an Arri SR3 S16 package in there? You haven't and you wont...ever. You can count on that.

 

You can shoot on whatever format you want and good for you. But I wouldn't go investing in the Alexa or Epic and thinking you are future proof either. I can guarantee you that the price you pay for film gear now will hold its value better than whatever digital cinema camera you can name. Case in point is the Canon XL2. I bought that camera back when it first came out for $5,000 + tax. You can pick those cameras up now on ebay for as low as $600. The film cameras I could have (and should have) bought back then have not moved down and in some cases went up in price to account for inflation.

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...I bought that camera back when it first came out for $5,000 + tax....

 

Right on...I purchased an HVX just days after release on the market for $6k with a 4G card...eech! Now going for <$2k on ebay. I hate to tell you what I recently paid for my 40 year old Scoopic. Ouch!

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I just want to say , I didnt start with the violent words, I think every one knows what BS stands for, this is a quote i saw in the web is not mine. My self I favor film capture over digital. Im not saying film is dead at all. But it is true that that digital capture have been growing in the professional hi end part of the industry, I dont say that film is going to "die" at all , i just think it is interesting how there are diferent kinds of crews diferent of how it used to be 10 years ago. im sorry for getting angry and "calling names " but i post here with respect and I expect the same. apparently some people cant deal with ideas without gettin passionate it looks like a politics discussion, not cool at all.

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I read the other day that Harry Savides used to give his AC's cans of film and ask them to bake them the day before the shoot or the first ideas of doing bleach by pass or flashing film ,and recently read in this month AC magazine about a director an DP that build their own digital camera system.All of the above are inovations and people experimenting with the craft. Is just seems like there is more inovation in the digital world than in the film capture,because most of the post now is leaning towards digital insted of doing chemical experiments. With all respect this are my last words in this forum. Peace and Respect to all.

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You can shoot on whatever format you want and good for you. But I wouldn't go investing in the Alexa or Epic and thinking you are future proof either. I can guarantee you that the price you pay for film gear now will hold its value better than whatever digital cinema camera you can name. Case in point is the Canon XL2. I bought that camera back when it first came out for $5,000 + tax. You can pick those cameras up now on ebay for as low as $600. The film cameras I could have (and should have) bought back then have not moved down and in some cases went up in price to account for inflation.

 

Moore's Law applies to anything digital, so this situation is certainly likely to persist, at least until technology hits a wall and Moore's Law is repealed. And it's clear to me that there are many ways in which film can only be emulated, not replaced, by digital. On the other hand, the labor costs that surround film processing keep the costs high, mostly due to the added complexity of physical processing and all the other things that go into handling and manipulating film. And I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir in saying that.

 

I find it somewhat sad that this tends to turn into a debate, and the reasons why are too many to treat fairly, considering how little time I have for this.

 

It's not all that remarkable that digital is gaining influence, when the innovations people can do with digital are so widely accessible and low in cost, other than the plentiful time needed to explore and experiment. And my sense is that at some level most film projects at this point tend to be a hybrid of film and digital, with each "side" having strengths the other might envy.

 

For the kinds of things I've tried to do, with little or no hope they would produce revenue, I could not have afforded to attempt them using film alone, unless I were even more foolhardy than I clearly am.

 

I am left with the general impression, though, that aside from the camera I bought several years ago as a self-teaching tool, any future projects aspiring to commercially-acceptable quality may well involve leased equipment, but as I understand it, that's something that hasn't really changed over time. At least not as much as some of the cheerleaders might have predicted.

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"Cinematography used to be a chemical romance, now days is a digital romance ."

 

would like to hear thoughts about this words

 

 

I think your mentality is what's wrong with most people these days. A lot of "filmmakers" can't differentiate between a cinematographer and the camera assistant. It's accepted to have a one man crew and have 4 positions on your business card.

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Justin, you bring out a good point and I think the digital "revolution" has a lot to do with it. If cost cutting and labor cutting becomes the dominate trend in filmmaking, where will it stop? Heaven forbid this industry becomes like the porn industry where one guy with a camera is shooting handheld footage with one hand while holding a funnel light with a piece of wax paper clothespinned to it in the other. Is that the future of cinema?

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Justin, you bring out a good point and I think the digital "revolution" has a lot to do with it. If cost cutting and labor cutting becomes the dominate trend in filmmaking, where will it stop? Heaven forbid this industry becomes like the porn industry where one guy with a camera is shooting handheld footage with one hand while holding a funnel light with a piece of wax paper clothespinned to it in the other. Is that the future of cinema?

For many, yes, this is the future. Micro budget filmmaking can be rewarding, it's just not a career that can pay rent and support a family.

 

A more realistic approach might be to teach for the rent and make films on the side. Many still photographers take this route. Isn't that how Ansel Adams did it? George Kucher ?

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Should it really be rewarding if it's being put together like this? Most everyone has just lost their minds. There's no specializing in your craft with most of these people coming out of college or starting up these days. How can you possibly call yourself something if you're dipping your feet into multiple waters?

Edited by Justin Simpson
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I agree Justin. As it is now, I can seldom find a DP to help me out without excessive problems associated with dealing with them. The short I was planning to shoot at the end of this month, this guy who is a DP who I wont name on here to call him out, tells me "from reading your script, I see no reason to shoot on film. I can make it look great with a 5D Mark II." I told him "I want the look of film and I'm also the Producer of this thing so lets do film. Once again he reiterates "how about doing some camera tests?" I tell him no thanks and later I said maybe we shouldn't work together.

 

This particular guy had more AC credits than DP and even some electrical stuff. Kindof like a jack of all trades, I suppose.

 

I used to idolize Robert Rodriguez and now I can't stand what his technique has done to cinema. Next we will see harnesses that attach to the Director that have a boom pole coming up out of them so we can be the sound mixer too!

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Isn't that how Ansel Adams did it?

 

I don't know if he ever taught but Ansel Adams shot a lot of advertising photographs, including the dreaded mundane product shots, to fund his landscapes and portraits.

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I would agree with this slightly except that I think digital cinema is more like watercolor.

 

Really? Watercolour painting is delicate, luminous, unpredictable and organically fluid. It takes years of practice and a solid understanding of how it will look before the mark is made. And it's very hard to correct a mistake.

 

I think the comparison with acrylics is much closer. B)

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Really? Watercolour painting is delicate, luminous, unpredictable and organically fluid. It takes years of practice and a solid understanding of how it will look before the mark is made. And it's very hard to correct a mistake.

 

I think the comparison with acrylics is much closer. B)

 

I said watercolor because no matter how skilled you are, it will always look flat and never have the depth and color rendition of oil.

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  • 5 weeks later...

I'd like to offer this excerpt from the March, 2011 issue No. 3 of the GAMMA & DENSITY JOURNAL....

 

Yuri Neyman, ASC: Obviously we cannot miss the issue of digital cameras. How do you think digital cameras will change what we are doing?

 

Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC: I don't think it will make a difference to what I am doing. I just shot a digital film in the summer in Hungary, a dance film, I just lit it the same way I would light a film movie. And it looks like how I would have shot it on film. It's interesting, you know, that I don't think anybody could tell that I shot it on digital because that's the way I approached it. Some people are forgetting that younger people, or newer cinematographers, working with digital cameras, may not have experience in lighting. We were trained to create the mood of a scene, mainly with lighting. And that is the problem.

 

Yuri Neyman: The base of cinematography is an ability to "write" with light .

 

Vilmos Zsigmond: Correct! [...] Roger Deakins uses lighting incredibly well, even when shooting with a digital camera. I am sure it will be beautiful and no one will be able to tell he used a digital camera. i don't care what tool it is. A digital camera is just a tool. I can't understand why people are so afraid of digital cameras.

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Dave, no one is afraid of digital cameras. Some of us just choose not to use them nor think they are special. Some of us also feel the digital is an inferior format to digital. The question isn't whether DPs can make a pretty picture with digital. The issue is that the picture doesn't able to be any better than the format we've used for over 100 years. Why replace something that is still superior?

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Dave, no one is afraid of digital cameras. Some of us just choose not to use them nor think they are special. Some of us also feel the digital is an inferior format to digital. The question isn't whether DPs can make a pretty picture with digital. The issue is that the picture doesn't able to be any better than the format we've used for over 100 years. Why replace something that is still superior?

 

Hi, Matthew.

 

(For the record, when I'm asked "Which is better, Film or Digital?" my answer is film. I've been a fan of 70mm since I was a kid).

 

What I understood Zsigmond to be saying — and what yanked me back to that article to excerpt it — was that anytime we ask "which is better, film or digital" we are actually asking the wrong question. Putting one versus the other doesn't matter!

 

The question we *should* be asking: "How is this scene gonna be lit?" When we ask that, the contest is forgotten.

 

We're *not* lighting for camera. We're lighting for story.

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