Steven Spielberg & Martin Scorsese: the joy of celluloid

[Freya Black]

...and then, rather bizzarely the comments come and the digital people feel all angry for some reason. Maybe they feel left out or unloved or something, who can say! Anyway I think it's an interesting article:

 

Guardian Article

[Dom Jaeger]

Nice article, thanks Freya.

 

I liked Spielberg's description of film grain as "the visible, erratic molecules of a new creative language", both photorealist and impressionist. And Keanu Reeve's perspective as an actor was interesting.

 

Still working on Goddard's comment - I guess he's saying that the move from analog to digital is a step towards regimentation and loss of individuality (ordered little pixels as opposed to free and scattered silver halide), which is the preferred environment of totalitarian power structures? Well, maybe.. :unsure:

 

Best was Dick Pope's description of his rainforest tribal shoot. Priceless!

[Gregg MacPherson]

Scroll down about 6 screens through the comments to see the first post by Leuan where he talks about the different brainwaves (alpha vs beta) observed in people watching film vs digital.

[Keith Walters]

????

I'm sure I posted in this thread.

I think there were more replies too.

Or was a different one about the same subject, that's now been moved...?

 

Edited to add:

Nope, the posts were definitely there:

 

11 hours ago - Steven Spielberg & Martin Scorsese: the joy of celluloid .... Salinger, Keith Walters, Marty S, Christian Nelson, Benjamin G, Liam Robert Dawson, Tad Howard, ...

 

WTF?

Edited October 14, 2011 by Keith Walters

[Phil Rhodes]

"The joy of celluloid", say two people who never have to pay for it or be involved in the inconveniences of it, and who are multimillionaires even if they did receive the invoices themselves.

 

I've said this before, but the biggest proponents of film tend to be the big cheeses who get to play with it but are never exposed to any of the inconveniences.

[Marcus Joseph]

"The joy of celluloid", say two people who never have to pay for it or be involved in the inconveniences of it, and who are multimillionaires even if they did receive the invoices themselves.

 

I've said this before, but the biggest proponents of film tend to be the big cheeses who get to play with it but are never exposed to any of the inconveniences.

Too true, but I guess Scorsese and Spielberg have already shot digitally, well Scorsese at least for live-action.

[Patrick Cooper]

"The joy of celluloid", say two people who never have to pay for it or be involved in the inconveniences of it

 

Let's not forget Spielberg's foray into Super 8 when he was a kid!

[Pat Murray]

Let's not forget Spielberg's foray into Super 8 when he was a kid!

 

Or the difficulties surrounding the shooting of Jaws before the Steadicam.

 

Taxi Driver was no walk in the park either as the cinematographer and director shot many scenes crouched in the back of a taxi cab trying to use as much natural light as possible.

 

It's a shame that art would be disrespected by such issues as money and convenience, even if it is the reality. The way it should be is both mediums should thrive giving movie artists choice. If it was just about convenience and money, we wouldn't have oil landscape artists anymore, people would just shoot a picture with a digital camera. It is, after all, cheaper and more convenient. How would we like to visit the Louvre and be confronted with a digital print of the Mona Lisa? The original trashed because it was too expensive and inconvenient to maintain as the artist intended.

 

To a true artist, it should be offensive all this talk of money, convenience and the underlining "get with the cool kids" attitude the companies producing digital are pushing/brainwashing onto their consumers to sell more and more product.

 

True, for the majors, it is show BUSINESS, but that shouldn't be considered acceptable to an artist and more needs to be done to promote film as art and not just a means to sell popcorn.

 

The ideal situation is not a zero sum game, but an industry where all mediums are available to the artists so that they can use the medium (digital or film) that best suits their project.

 

I don't want to live in an all digital world, nor do I want to live in an all film (analog) world.

[Dom Jaeger]

I don't want to live in an all digital world, nor do I want to live in an all film (analog) world.

 

It's funny, in my family we have an iPhone, a Canon 5D, hell if I wanted I could borrow an Alexa for the weekend, but quite often I choose to spend $50 on 4 minutes of Standard 8 film and processing to record my daughter's first years.

 

Why? Because I absolutely love the process and the aesthetic, and because I know that if I store them well those rolls will still be there for my daughter and maybe her kids long after I'm gone, easily viewed on my Bolex projector or transferred if need be.

 

My mum just unearthed a roll of Pathe 9.5mm footage of her from 1938 when she was 4 years old and it's perfectly viewable, which just reinforced my attitude. Hours of footage I recorded on digital cameras only a few years ago are already lost because the files were too big to sort through and the equipment to store them too short-lived.

 

And even if the archival issues surrounding digital capture are eventually sorted out, I'll still want film as an option simply because it's beautiful and tangible and somehow more real. Also the cameras are so much cooler. B)

[Brian Drysdale]

"The joy of celluloid", say two people who never have to pay for it or be involved in the inconveniences of it, and who are multimillionaires even if they did receive the invoices themselves.

 

I've said this before, but the biggest proponents of film tend to be the big cheeses who get to play with it but are never exposed to any of the inconveniences.

 

I'm not sure about inconveniences, it just takes longer, but the kick you get is that much higher when you view the rushes.

 

I've had to buy my own film stock and pay the lab bills pre NLE days, so it's not multi millionaire stuff.

[Marcus Joseph]

The joys of seeing film you've waited maybe a week to see and actually finding it to be not so bad is one of the most enjoyable aspects for me. I can think for days about the complexity of all the decisions made rather than see everything immediately.

[Gregg MacPherson]

I don't know if anyone looked at the comments posted by by Leuan in that Guardian article. For me it brings up

some ideas that are crucial for considering the differences between film and digital.

 

I didn't yet try to explore the experiments he refers to. Some experiments were made measuring brain wave activity

for pople watching film vs digital motion pictures.

 

Film watchers had higher alpha waves. These waves are normaly associuated with subjective experience, like

meditation, maybe some contemplative experience. I think there was some speculation about the function of the

alternation between the complete projected film frame and the black screen with the closed shutter. Do we fall into

a subjective state, transcend, between the film frames? To me this is analogous to how experience itself can be

described. It's all in the gap.

 

Digital watchers, showed an increase in beta waves, the waves associated with active experience objective

experience. These styles of experience, the objective vs subjective, may not be simultaneously compatible.

 

So my imediate thought was that digital media as an unstoppable modern trend is part of the movement to a more

objective and particular world. It's a wold where subtlety, subjectivity and wholenes are harder to find. It's a world

populated by increasingly discrete and separated looking things, that have an increasingly hard time finding

connection or relationship or a comfortable sense of context or belonging.

 

The fact that this modern trend is expressed everywhere or is unstoppable does not mean that it is in every sense

good.

 

So will some artists enjoy the then exstinct film medium. I think so. Maybe I can suggest that artists are of two

kinds. There are those who sense or anticipate the coming changes in the world, and even if those changes are

destructive, offer a facinating portal or intuit insights into the future qualities of experience.

 

There is another kind of artist, at least in theory, who's function is to remind us of our nature, whether it's emotional,

spiritual, or basic sense of identity as human beings.

 

As the wave of digital overwhelms us, those working in the film industry have to adapt and survive. But I'm hoping that some artist will use this medium indefinately.

 

Cheers

Gregg.