I've noticed I don't pay for digital movies at the theater anymore.

[David Mullen ASC]

Nonsense -- "Selma", "Unbroken", "A Most Violent Year", "Gone Girl", "The Theory of Everything", "Birdman", "Ida", "Into the Woods", and "Mr. Turner" do not look like sitcoms!

[John E Clark]

Digital looking movies are driving people to piracy!

 

As far as I can tell, pop music is 'alive and well'... personally I'd rather it disapear but apparently some people like Justin Bieber enough to make his income last year to be in the 10's of millions...

 

And I'll note that the music industry has had 'digital' pirating a lot longer than films, and even in the olden days, there were 'pirate' records either of studio sessions that never saw the official light of day, or ripped from concerts that were not officially recorded and distributed...

 

There may be markets were pirating is far more significant, but in the US, its not, even if all the torrents and pirate bays were closed... there are places were 'institutional' piracy seems to be the norm, and out of reach of US law.

 

I do think the industry is changing, but I don't think it's going to 'disappear' due to piracy...

 

The reason for the drop in attendance may be more due to the waining enthusiasm for All Things 3-D, and the running of franchises to the ground... or rebooting them for no good reason...

[Heikki Repo]

I don't think one should not go watch movies shot on digital just because of the medium. It's not just the medium.

 

Having said that, I do however have to note that thus far film is the only medium that really let's me just focus on the story. With digital I seem to get disconnected from the story every once in a while. Somehow blown out whites and the really sharp clean picture remind me that I'm watching something shot on video and then I imagine actors standing in front of the camera, director watching the monitor and scenes being played. While it doesn't make much sense I can't help it.

 

But to be fair, not all digitally shot movies make me feel that way.

[Bill DiPietra]

I kind of understand the sentiment of not going to watch movies that were shot digitally.

I will still be going to cinema, because I like to see the movies presented in the best possible way, but there is a bad filling that I am supporting an industry that is degrading (imo) an aspect of the moviemaking that is important to me.

Come on, man. Seriously? A good story is a good story. Period.

[Mark Kenfield]

Personally, I find that kind of film snobbery patently ridiculous. Beautiful images are beautiful images, and stories are stories and I don't think it matters a rat's arse the medium they're captured on, only the impact they have.

 

With the quality of digital cinema cameras these days, there are so many aspects that matter more to the impact of a film (story, actors, soundtrack, production design) than the specific shooting medium used, that I really find the debate kind of silly now. Film was and is wonderful, but the paradigm is primarily digital now, and you know what? ...as terrifying as that prospect was initially, now that it's arrived it's really not that big of a deal.

[Peter Bitic]

Come on, man. Seriously? A good story is a good story. Period.

Sure thing, but I'm not talking about the story, I'm talking about the medium on which the story is shot and presented. If that is important to someone (like it is to me), I could understand why he would choose to boycott movie theaters even at the expense of missing all the great stories. That is not saying that he thinks medium > story, but that he strongly dislikes the way industry is heading in this regard and wants to do some kind of symbolic act against it. It's not necessarilly a rational decision that can be logically explained or justified.

[Peter Bitic]

Also, there is no doubt that digital images can look beautiful, aesthetic etc. It's not even about that for me, it's hard to explain. Digital is "fake" to me, and not in a visual sense, but more in a philosophical sense (for lack of better words). If you could 100% emulate film digitally, I would be against it.

It started with DI, and then shooting digitally, and now we are projecting digitally, and I think we are now missing something important that was present before all that. Not important in the sense that we now can't tell good stories anymore, or that movies can't look beautiful anymore - not important in this reductive sense where you isolate one element and compare it, but important nevertheless.

I can totally understand, though, that someone who doesn't feel like I do, would view my ramblings as almost crazy and certainly unproductive. It is paralyzing to think like that if you have a passion for filmmaking and live in increasingly digital word. I have been going back and forth on my stance on digital, because I really wanted to convince myself that it doesn't really matter what you shoot at, and I have succeeded for couple days, but in the end I simply cannot sustain that position for long, no matter what kind of arguments I use.

Edited January 7, 2015 by Peter Bitic

[David Mullen ASC]

Being a film history buff, I'm as nostalgic as the next person. I'd love to shoot on many obsolete or near-obsolete technologies like 3-strip Technicolor or even Kodachrome. We always lose something when one technology is replaced by another. It's not like there has been one continuous upward rising line of image quality from the invention of cinema.

 

But that doesn't mean either that I want to be stuck in the past when 25 ASA was the fastest color film available, or when all movies had to be 4x3. That may be fun for one project but would otherwise be limiting in terms of turning modern scripts into real movies.

 

Most cinematographers could see the difference when 3-strip Technicolor was replaced by Eastmancolor, especially when the prints were Eastmancolor too. But many also appreciated no longer being stuck using those huge 3-strip cameras in blimps that took four men to lift. And as the sensitivity of Eastmancolor got beyond 25 ASA, most cinematographers appreciated that too. At some point, the advantages start to outweigh the disadvantages even though the particular beauty of 3-strip Technicolor and dye transfer prints were never truly replicated. It's now lost to us. We can't even make new dye transfer prints of old 3-strip negatives anymore.

 

But in general terms, we have all the tools we need at our disposal to tell stories with images that contain the mood we need to support the story, at sufficient resolutions for large screen projection. Most of us work in the real world where we make the best of what we have to work with. If I honestly thought I could no longer create interesting images or capture beautiful lighting with today's digital cameras, I'd quit the business, but obviously that's not true. We've already seen digitally-shot movies win Best Cinematography Oscars over ones shot on film; and even if you didn't agree with the particular choice of winner, most of us (the sane ones) recognize that digital and film can compete head-to-head now in the making artistic images.

 

I feel lucky that I got to shoot almost 30 features in 35mm but I don't plan on giving up just because now I have to use digital cameras, and in truth, there are many aspects of digital that I enjoy more than film. With film, you'd get a bad lab report a day later and spend half your mental energy, while still trying to shoot the day's work, trying to figure out where in the chain things went wrong -- in the camera, in the stock, in the mags, in the camera loading room, at the lab, in the telecine, etc. Too many steps where something could be screwed up. Not that digital images can't be screwed up, but generally I go to bed after a day's work on a digital show without wondering what will show up in tomorrow's dailies. In fact, with digital shows, the dailies aren't for me at all, they are for other people, I already know what I shot and how it looks.

[Freya Black]

The thing with this restriction of only seeing film-shot features in theaters is what do you do with the hybrids that shoot film for day work and digital for night work, like "The Homesman", "Lone Ranger", and I believe "Nightcrawler"? Walk out into the lobby every time a night scene comes up???

 

Personally I have no issue with Hybrids. It's kind of a good point except that night work has always been a bit more restricted in what you were able to achieve. There are a lot of films were they shot under sodium vapor lighting or whatever which already restricts the light spectrum and the films will at least be shot on 500ASA film assuming it isn't even pushed. So you are kind of only replacing the parts of the film that were already having to be compromised by the night context anyway.

 

I actually think it can be a good compromise although I have to confess that I love film shot at night too!

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

That's a really good argument Bill! :)

I havn't seen AntiChrist but I have seen Melancholia by Lars Von Trier and I loved the slow motion opening stuff.

Really, really loved that part.

 

Also I think that digital stuff can sometimes work a lot better in Black and White. I think the movie I have seen where I most liked the digital cinematography was Francis Ha. That really worked for me whereas I'm not impressed by the colour digital cinematography I see out there for the most part and some of it is surprisingly bad.

 

Freya

 

 

The images produced by the Alexa and the Red are very impressive. You also have to factor in the fact that not everyone working with cameras are as skilled as some others. It's still relatively new technology for a lot of people. But to say it has hardly any dynamic range and that the actors look like clay people is simply ridiculous. I remember when I saw the opening montage of Lars Von Trier's AntiChrist. I was absolutely floored by the gorgeous black & white photography. I think that was the first time I was fooled. And I have a very fine eye. When I found out it was shot on the Red One, that's when I realized that there were digital cameras being made capable of producing real quality images.

[Freya Black]

Lord of the Rings was shot on film BTW. I suspect you must be thinking of "The Hobbit" series.

 

Have to say, it isn't all about the story for me but then I have a background in experimental film and still love that stuff.

However even in narrative cinema I love a lot of things that are more about the visual component than the story.

There was a film a few years back called "Beyond the Black Rainbow" and it got really terrible reviews. All style no substance. Disjointed storyline. Beautiful visuals but hard to follow etc etc. Both myself and a friend were very much like "we must see this movie! Sounds great!"

 

Also while I wasn't that into the movie "Vallhalla" and wasn't keen on the extreme digital look, I have to confess that I much prefer it to most of the stuff that turns up on the BBC iplayer that I can't even be bothered to watch but that probably has a better written conventional story.

 

I must be strange as some considerable years ago I used to love to go to the cinema to watch film prints. I loved the dancing grain and the whole cinema experience. Digital projection has definitely taken a lot of that away so I no longer enjoy just going to watch anything at the cinema. It doesn't help that I am surrounded by people who tell me that the cinema is a waste of time and that you can just watch everything at home now and it's less hastle. I can't really disagree. I don't find digital projection in the cinema to be that much better than digital projection at home.

 

However there is a bigger thing at play. I recently won tickets to the cinema to see whatever I wanted. (I drew an outfit for Ryan Gosling!) It's an arthouse type place ( and almost certainly digital screens) but I havn't been able to find anything I want to see! I really, really wanted to see Interstellar but I was going through some nasty stuff at the time and couldn't make it to the cinema. By the time I cleared my schedule it had just vanished from the cinema. There was nothing else I could find that I wanted to see and that problem is still ongoing. I had noticed this a while back when I used to go to an arthouse cinema with cheap tickets. I was going less and less because there was less and less interesting movies being shown. Now it seems really hard to find anything I might want to see! It's really opened my eyes. Free tickets. I can go whenever I want but so far I can't find anything. Sooner or later my number must come up but I've been very surprised because the cinema has multiple screens of stuff I'm not interested in at all.

 

Freya

[John Holland]

David i could not agree with you more !

[Peter Bitic]

David, most of what you are saying, I agree with, and let me again reiterate that I am not talking about the artistic or visual deficiencies of digital. While for my tastes film currently looks better, I know that can change with the advancement of digital cameras (and I agree with Freya: digital B&W looks stunning). I also recognize all the benefits of digital that you mention, but as a person who is watching a finished product, I don't care about the hassles and worries crew had on the set as long as the film doesn't suffer too much as a result from that.

About the technologies that are always changing: yeah, but I see a real break here with the change from analog to digital. It's not the same as a switch from one film technology to another. It's a switch from an organic and tangible imprint of the world to a series of information that to me feels unnatural in the sense that it is broken and yet strangely perfect (it doesn't change itself when it interacts with the world).

 

I find it hard to articulate what it is that bothers me with digital, and it may be just some stupid psychological effect (nostalgia, resisting new stuff (despite being in my 20s, lol)) coupled with post-hoc rationalization. But it certainly is very persistent.

Edited January 7, 2015 by Peter Bitic

[Alexander Winfield]

Incredible views, well said everyone. My perspective has certainly broadened on the subject.

 

Although being a proponent of film, and wanting to capture cinematic moments on film, I am also aware of change. Blockbuster showed me that. They were too late in changing their business model, and thought since they were so big, who can stop them? And then Netflix kicked them to the curb and Red Box finished off whatever was left. So it's either change, or get pushed out. I clearly understand that.

 

But my BIGGEST concern in shooting motion picture film for my projects is "What if later this year, we have another 2008 style economic crash and Kodak goes belly up? Where will I get film for my Arri (which I'm about to buy) or moviecam?" I mean, let's be real, Kodak does not have the best financials. Then we have all the subsequent cascading effects like film labs closing, and well, you pretty much get the picture.

 

(I'm always looking ahead, and I have been learning about the economy for a while now so these thoughts come to mind.)

 

I shoot a roll of still photography film a week. In that case, I can stock up on those little rolls and develop them in my living room if need be. But how can I buy and store 400' or 1000' foot reels of 5219? Will I even be able to find them if Kodak disappears? If so, where will I be able to process them?

 

In this case, I would have no choice but to go all digital in moviemaking and hopefully find a way to make it work where I'm satisified with the product.

 

Someone please tell me that there is an underground black market company deep in the heart of Russia that makes film stock and ships them economically to the U.S. :)

 

So maybe in the past, people have thought of the life and longevity of film to be based on the demand. But what if it's financially impossible for the manufacturers of film to produce the product due to a big bump in the economy? So this is my only concern with film. Not demand waning, but the bottom falling out of the economy.

 

As for me, I will probably buy my movie film camera and shoot as much as I can while learning more about digital on the side, and if or when the film window closes, I'll just switch over.

 

Much regards,

Alexander

[John Holland]

The main problem is the lack of labs to process motion picture colour neg , world wide .

[Michael LaVoie]

This morning I was reading this months issue of American Cinematographer Magazine. There was an article on Wild. Shot on the Alexa. After reading all about the production, I decided to catch a 1:30 showing in the theater. The film looked good but it did seem like the overall look was reminiscent of Dallas Buyers Club. It's kind of a 2 tone muted look that's all too common.

 

I don't think however that the average movie goer who isn't reading A.C. magazine is going to notice or care about the medium it's shot on. Not at all. We are all way too close to weigh in on it. I'm sitting there wondering what saturation the "M31 or equivalent" LUT is on shot by shot. That's not what the average moviegoer is thinking about.

 

But in general, the story of the film kept me interested and I was only distracted by the look on occasion when I felt it was "familiar".

[Bill DiPietra]

Sure thing, but I'm not talking about the story, I'm talking about the medium on which the story is shot and presented. If that is important to someone (like it is to me), I could understand why he would choose to boycott movie theaters even at the expense of missing all the great stories. That is not saying that he thinks medium > story, but that he strongly dislikes the way industry is heading in this regard and wants to do some kind of symbolic act against it. It's not necessarilly a rational decision that can be logically explained or justified.

 

You are preaching to the choir.

 

In 2010, I organized a petition to keep Kodak from eliminating Plus-X. Some people on here may still remember that. You see what the result was, but that was not the point. Myself and a lot of other people put up a fight for a stock we loved. I even got a reply from Kodak. But I digress...

 

I still shoot 16mm film on my Arriflex and cut it on my Steenbeck (and this will probably be the last time I do that unless someone else starts making black acetate leader.) Many of us feel that completely replacing the medium of film is absolutely wrong as it eliminates an artistic choice for filmmakers. And as long as it is around, I will keep shooting it. But I am anxious to get my hands dirty with a high-end digital camera as well. I'd love to shoot on 35mm, and I'd really love to shoot on 65mm one day. And I am very disappointed to see how digital technologies have taken over.

 

With all this said, I have never walked out of a theater or boycotted a film (or series of films) because of the medium it was photographed on, nor do I plan to. All you are doing in that case is robbing yourself of an experience that could potentially make you a better story-teller. I've seen films that have been captured digitally that have made quite an impact on me. And I can honestly say that I had the "film purist/anti-digital" philosophy about 7 years ago, but never to that degree.

 

When I was a TA at grad school I always used to tell my students to watch as many films as possible, because that's what makes you a well-rounded story-teller. And at the end of the day, isn't that what we're all doing here?

[Tyler Purcell]

I think the critical point for me is finding reasons to visit the cinema.

 

I'm a filmmaker and like most filmmakers, I enjoy movies and likewise have invested in a high quality presentation method. I have a better stereo then most theaters, a 6 foot wide screen and a very nice high-lumen DLP cinema projector. With modern distribution of movies on BluRay and HD streaming/downloads, the quality difference between home and theater is narrower then ever. The sad part is, as prices rise on theater tickets, the point of seeing a movie in the theater has all but disappeared for me. Film is important because it's something different, it's a reason visit the theater for an experience you can't get at home.

 

Most people go to the movies because they're bored and have nothing else to do. That's why the biggest demographic of movie watchers is still females under 18. Theaters are no longer something special, they are simply babysitters. Filmmakers and cinemas target that demographic like used car salesmen and it's disgusting. The switch to digital projection wasn't about increasing the quality, it was all about saving money and thats the sick part. They raised ticket prices in order to help cover the cost of upgrading and the theater goer's aren't really getting anything better. I have yet to visit a normal theater and see excellent digital projection. Only at specialty theaters with 4k projection, have I ever been "impressed" with digital cinema, but dismayed with the $20 ticket price. Heck even at the Cinerama dome, their digital projection lens, doesn't take the contour of the screen into account. Yet the ol' 70mm projector is flat-out perfect. Not like 18 year olds go to the Cinerama dome, but seriously? Nobody else even notices how horrible the digital image looks there?

 

When the music industry went digital, everyone was jumping up and down for joy. However, what they produced sounded like poop. Digital audio for all its amazing dynamic range, has no smoothness, it sounds harsh. Engineers fought for years to develop solutions to this, some even resorting to mastering on 1/4" half-track tube preamp 30ips reel to reel tape decks. Over the years, more and more studio's brought in tube gear and some even record directly to tape. Using the tape as a "master" and then doing the mix-down in pro tools, using outboard tube based effects. Tubes, yes.. tubes the technology we left behind in the 60's, have made a HUGE comeback in the music industry, especially with home stereo's. With 600 gram deep-groove LP's, new albums are being directly pressed off masters and they are the premiere delivery format for music lovers everywhere. Gone are the days of 16 bit 44.1hz CD's, we've reverted back to the early 20th century and amazingly enough, it is absolutely amazing what these new 600 gram LP's sound like.

 

Motion picture film has a very similar story. Everyone is hyped up about digital cinema, about theoretically saving money and advancing technology. Digital cinema has given hope to young filmmakers like myself, who can't afford to shoot film anymore. It's also revolutionized the way we think about post production and distribution. However, like the music industry, with all the advancement in technology, there is a perceived loss in smoothness. Images are more unnaturally controlled in post production in order to make them look half decent. Sometimes cinematographers are forced to shoot images in a very flat way, so they can be built in post production, rather then in-camera. What do our modern movies gain in quality by having artists roto and color each individual person in a scene with motion tracking? Does this make the films any better or is the digital intermediate process we use today, just another way for people to make money off technology.

 

Now that you can do everything digitally, you can "george lucas" anything you want. You don't need great actors anymore, you just need a digital artist to throw two takes together into one shot. You don't need to build that set, just shoot everything on a green screen and build the set digitally. Heck, lets have the camera fly all over the place like a bird to bring you onto our digital set because, why not? Filmmakers have lost all sense of reality in the digital world. Now that they have the tools to manipulate all, most filmmakers choose to do that instead of focusing on good stories and good actors. Where did all the truly great films go? When was the last time you saw a movie and said; "thats one of the best movies ever made". It just doesn't happen anymore and the reason is two fold. One of which is financing is harder and harder to get, so financiers aren't willing to take much risk. The other is filmmakers playing with technology instead of telling a good story. Films like Gravity, which was absolutely stunning technically, was a waste of time in the story department. Just look at the Golden Globe nods this year, not one of them is a truly great film. Worst part is, filmmakers who go out of their way to make good cinematic films like Interstellar, Birdman and Grand Budapest Hotel, they get will never get the recognition deserved. It's not about cinema anymore, it's about money and unfortunately, cinemas will go out of business unless something changes.

 

There needs to be a cinema revolution. There needs to be a reason for people like myself to visit the theater. Perhaps Arri's new 65mm 6k cinema camera and a future 6k projection system is the answer. Though part of me hopes like the music industry, studio's wake up and realize that good stories should using analog equipment and distributed in a way which makes them special. I'm not taking 35mm, forget 35mm even exists. I'm talking 65mm 5 perf principal photography and distribution with 70mm/15 blow-up's. Take what Interstellar did and bring it up one notch. Quentin Tarantino may just be the first to prove that it's worth while and here is hoping if he does it, others won't be far behind. I do believe 35mm principal photography will be phased out in the next 10 years, but due to IMAX, 65mm will be the last "gold standard" of cinema and perhaps the longest lasting one. I don't think digital cinema will ever elapse the quality of 70/15 and even the new IMAX 8k laser projectors, are still pretty far away.

 

Sorry for the rant.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Tyler Purcell

[Kenny N Suleimanagich]

 

 

I still shoot 16mm film on my Arriflex and cut it on my Steenbeck (and this will probably be the last time I do that unless someone else starts making black acetate leader.)

Not to derail or digress, but unless you haven’t, maybe contact Orwo North America for ordering leader? They’re located in Brooklyn and their rep is very helpful, and very accommodating.

[James Lundblad]

I saw Selma yesterday and noticed that the night interior scenes had very high black-levels like the projection had a problem or the film was not encoded properly. I am wondering if anyone else noticed this and it was an artistic choice. I read Bradford Young uses available light and some other aspects of the cinematography were unusual. I pre-ordered the bluray but I'm very curious if this is how he intended it to look. I have seen a couple films on Amazon streaming where the black-levels were clearly too high and it freaks me out that there isn't better quality control with content on services like that.

[David Mullen ASC]

If you mean by "high" as in "lifted" blacks, I think that is a choice, sort of the "thin negative" look that Young did for "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" by underexposing film but in this case, underexposing digital.

 

Sometimes stuff on the internet though has the wrong gamma applied and the blacks are screwed up.

[Peter Bitic]

I went through the list of 150 U.S. top grossing movies of 2014, and here is the breakdown: 90-18-7 (digital-film-mixed; animated movies, documentaries and movies without the relevant technical info (imdb) omitted). I knew the number of movies shot on digital was very high, but didn't know it was that high.

I guess I understand why CGI-heavy movies are shot digitally, but for many comedies and dramas I don't see a good reason not to shoot on film. So who is pushing those Alexas and Red Epics? Directors? Cinematographers? Producers? Studios? And why? Do cinematographers and directors think digital looks better/is visually more suited for the majority of movies? Do they simply like the digital filmmaking process and are willing to sacrifice visual quality because of it? Do producers and studios think it makes more sense financially? Does anybody have any insight into why the current default choice seems to be Arri Alexa instead of 35mm film?

It doesn't make sense to me. It's like everybody just decided they don't want to shoot on film anymore.

(BTW, I was surprised to see that Boyhood grossed only 25 millions (100th place). I live in Europe and somehow got an impression that the movie was huge in U.S.)

[James Lundblad]

Thanks, I'll have to look at "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" now. :)

[David Mullen ASC]

The high-budget films can afford to shoot whatever they want, but a lot choose digital because they are CGI-heavy or are shooting native 3D. The small ones mostly choose digital because they don't want to spend the extra money on film (and no matter what someone tells you, it generally costs more to shoot on 35mm film unless you want to work with a very low shooting ratio.)

 

So that sort of leaves the few mid-budget movies to opt for film, and many do not for various reasons -- they are also heavy in terms of CGI, they have a lot of low-light night work, they plan on a high shooting ratio, they want to maximize the money spent elsewhere, etc. And now that the number of labs are shrinking, some don't want to deal with shipping their film to another city for processing; that's one reason Tim Burton chose the Alexa for "Big Eyes" -- Vancouver had just closed their lab. And some are action movies that plan on using a lot of small digital cameras mounted in small spaces.

 

Typical 10-million dollar movie would probably shoot almost 150,000' of 35mm stock these days. You can do the math and calculate the cost of the stock, processing (with shipping to labs out of town), telecine for dailies, and scanning for the D.I. -- all of which are costs that a digitally-shot movie don't have. Sure, there are higher camera rental costs for digital and the costs of back-ups and transcoding for dailies, but that doesn't come close to the costs of dealing with 150,000' of negative through post all the way to scanning for the D.I.

[Aapo Lettinen]

I have noticed that I very rarely want to pay for a 3D movie, preferring to see all movies in 2D if in any way possible.

The problem is, here in Finland there is practically only ONE company which runs all the cinemas and almost all 2D versions are showing in small screens or very early, even at the middle of the day ONLY :wacko:

The last Hobbit was OK in 3D but the colours were very dim like in the previous parts, almost like a half bleach-bypass. This has to be caused by the HFR screening, the theaters are quite good in general with proper screening and bright image