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More blockbusters shooting film?


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Well, not necessarily... Look at all the franchise movies shot on Alexas, those have decent budgets also. Don't get me wrong, I favor film all the time. Matter of fact, I have a few projects this year that I will be shooting on 35.

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If it's got a decent budget, chances are it'll be shot on film.

Oh, I don't dicount the fact that there is a significant number of budgeted features being shot on Alexi with decent budgets, GENERALLY SPEAKING though, most features with budgets over 1.5 mil are shot on film. Most of the time Alexi are used on movies which have a significant amount of VFX because it saves money over all to use digital acquisition on an FX driven feature. It's simple economics.

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Black Mass, a Johnny Depp movie about Whitey Bulger, is shooting here in Boston on 35mm Panavision. Not sure if it is anamorphic or spherical.

 

I am SSOOO waiting for this film!! Depp as John Dillenger in 2009s "Public Enemies" was one of the BEST portrayals of gangster life and noir I've ever seen. I LOVED that movie. I can hardly wait to see what he does with Whitey Bulger, one of the last old school gangsters.

Edited by James Steven Beverly
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It really seems to me that a good majority of the movies out there are shot on Alexa & that shooting 35 mm film is really rarer than shooting digital. There's just no contest overall, I've pushed to shoot my first pro short in 35 mm 2 perf and it's going to happen, and I just couldn't imagine shooting on the Alexa or else, there's just no soul to it, and although there are movies or some tv shows shot on Alexa that look great, the super clean & smooth look is just not my thing. There's just so much texture with film, so many of those beautiful movies shot on 35 mm (lately, I'm thinking The Spectacular Now, Mud, Out Of The Furnace, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Moneyball, Warrior, Inside Llewyn Davis, etc) would lose so much being shot digitally.

Edited by Manu Delpech
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I'm hopeful, in all honesty, that as the pendulum has swung towards digital for awhile, people are now realizing the need to differentiate themselves more and more and so it swings back towards film.I think this is all cyclical-- and happened in a much smaller way back in the Genesis days-- a much smaller way mind you, but there was a big todo about digital "arriving" with the F900s and the like, and using them became a way to get a certain style differing from all the stuff on film-- and now that is reversing a bit.

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I agree with Manu on how digital lacks life. I just saw Transmormers in the movies, and realized how much film is richer than digital. All of the previews were shot on digital of some sort that looked like HD channels on a big screen. Despite how much the movie sucked, it still looked like a movie.

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@Adrian: I think most definitely, I know for myself that there's also a feeling of "so many short movies or even movies are shot on Alexa, they all tend to look the same, shooting on 35 mm would equal more production value, more personality & standing out more".

 

Resolution is gonna keep going up though & lots of directors will probably go along, but film is safe I hope, with guys like Jeff Nichols, Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out Of The Furnace, soon to come Black Mass), or Chris Nolan, it's not going anywhere & it's just so comforting. NOTHING, just nothing beats 35 mm film (I like super 16 mm but it tends to be a bit mushy & soft to me), those colors, those skin tones, that delicate texture, that grain being part of the texture, that beautiful emulsion taking place, not some 35 mm film stock you can just slap on digital footage & expect it to look like "film". Ain't nothing more beautiful.

 

Even on super low budgets, just check out (if you haven't already but they're kind of "old" now) George Washington, David Gordon Green's first movie, shot on anamorphic 35 mm & a $50.000 budget, or Shotgun Stories, Jeff Nichols' first movie in anamorphic 35 mm once more & a $50.000-60.000 budget.

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One thing that would make film stand out even more from digital is if they'd go back to stocks that didn't show so much mid-range. Back in the S8 days, It seemed to me that Kodachrome was rich without necessaril being able to see EVERYTHING ... and that fit with what I read the EASY RIDER DP said when the mastering of the DVD happened. The colorist wanted to dig into the shadow to show more detail, and he said, 'no, that wasn't the intention.'

 

Film looks like film when it has that different way of dropping off/going to shadow, rather than the graduated one I've been annoyed by in the last 15 years or so. To me it is like scanning 35mm at 2K ... you can wind up clipping off the very values that made you want to originate on 35 in the first place. So many movies I saw theatrically never had the richness on home video until Blu-ray ... I've felt in recent years that only now can I really recreate the experience of seeing HIGHLANDER in the cinema. I'm tempted to rent a mediocre movie, LADYHAWKE, on dvd or br just to see if the incredible contrast and clarity I experienced when it was projected is there again. I thought the flick sucked but saw it a few times first-run just because it looked so incredibly rich.

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  • 1 month later...
Guest Stephen Murphy

Not a movie, but Paul Cameron is shooting HBO's Westworld series on film.

Awesome. Best news Ive heard all day. I love his work and loved the original film so ill keep an eye out for this!

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