Not another film vs Digital debate, however...

[Gregg MacPherson]

Carl,

Did you, like me, miss AJ's post? We are spanked, chastized, reined in.

To be fair I was ready to stop some time ago.

Consciousness can be conscious of itself. No object required. We can disagree on that. But, this is why we humans do become self aware, or at least how we do.

 

Don't let AJ call the Film vs Digital debate "silly". That desrves injury.

[Carl Looper]

Not another horse vs car debate.

 

In terms of getting from A to B, the car is an obvious choice. Not as much hassle as a horse.

 

But if you want to go out for a horse ride, it's only an idiot who thinks driving a car would be an equivalent substitute.

 

C

Edited July 1, 2015 by Carl Looper

[Tyler Purcell]

From a practical standpoint, projecting film was archaic.

It's true, nobody bothered updating the standards set during the 1930's. If you look at technology, standard vertical 35mm is the most archaic way to shoot and project film.

 

The problem is, once those standards were set, nobody wanted to change them. Rolling loop horizontal projectors are a far better technology, one that would have worked well with 35mm due to a substantially larger image size.

 

So film as a medium isn't the problem, the problem comes down to super old technology that should have been retired in the 50's and wasn't because the industry was looking for cheaper and cheaper methods to make and distribute content.

 

We had to keep our booths at a specific temperature and humidity…

Digital projectors are just as sensitive to temperature. Plus, the DLP chips can very easily fall out of alignment on their own, something theater owners are less likely to bother fixing.

 

A film projector can not be re-wound, so any missed seconds or minutes will be unseen by the audience, a worse crime than "showing on digital".

I've never seen a problem where the film is rolling with no lamp or something and it needed to be rewound. That's just being a poor projectionist and I would ask for my money back, even if they COULD rewind it. Has nothing to do with the format. Most theaters where I grew up, stopped the film before the credits rolled completely so they could fill the house with more people and squeeze in an extra screening each day.

 

Digital projection has been a step in the right direction for better image quality and control at the exhibition level. There is still a big debate about bulb brightness between theatre chains, but nonetheless a better and consistent image than film. Digital projection ensures the movie looks closer to what the filmmaker wanted than film.

Rolling loop horizontal film projectors are a step in the right direction. Cleaning the film before it enters and as it exits the projector, is a step in the right direction. Projection booths being "clean rooms" is a step in the right direction. Wait… are we talking IMAX? I've seen IMAX prints that have played for 6 months, 10 times a day which look perfect their first showing and their last.

 

With film projection, if the print is made properly, all the projector has to do is shine a light through it. The "image" is developed in the lab, making the job at the theater more of a personal one. A talented projectionist can project a film properly without too much fuss even if they're controlling multiple theaters at once.

 

With digital projection, the image doesn't exist until it's at the theater. Nobody can inspect it, nobody can verify it's OK, what you see is what you get. It's not the "directors vision" it's whatever the calibration level of that particular projector is that day.

 

There are many problems with DLP, the biggest one is imager mirror size and shape. Imagers are generally the same size as 35mm film projection. However, the pixels inside that imager have square edges. So when they flicker, you get aliasing on any hard edge. This is particularly noticeable on any credit sequence or shot with solid square edges. The DLP chips themselves get super hot due to all that light hitting them all the time. They use a liquid cooling system to help keep them working, but it's not very efficient and they tend to get super hot. When they cool down during after-hours, the chips tend to shift ever so slightly. That shifting causes color bleeding over time. Plus, the colored glass elements fade over time, which causes substantial color shift. Even with laser DLP technology, imager shift is still a huge problem. You can't avoid it because when you try to take three things and make them line up perfectly, it's never going to be perfect forever. Calibration is a constant battle and most theaters won't bother.

 

In terms of contrast ratio, the top of the line laser DLP projector is 2,500:1, which is about the same as 35mm film. So nothing really unique to the format what so ever. Projection in theater is limited in contrast ratio due to how much light is being pushed through the system.

 

With that being said, David's point on researching your local theatre never changes. Your local theatre has anti-aliasing frames? Looks like they cheaped out on their projector, installation, or projectionists. Do your research and find the theatre that suits you best.

Burbank AMC, Arclight Cinema's in Hollywood, The El Captain and the Chinese theater are the FOUR test beds for developing projection technology in the US. So if it looks like crap in those theaters, it's going to look FAR worse in others. The Arclight and El Captain have never blown me away, they look OK, but not anything crazy. I was impressed with the new IMAX laser projectors looked when I saw Jurassic Park. They have a true 4k source and overlay two 4k projectors to equal 8k of total resolution. It's a gimmick which will work for a while and it looked pretty good. Too bad each projector is $1.5M and there are only 4 theaters in the US which have them. Let's face it, theaters aren't in the business of spending money, distributors already rape their profits, so what do they care. The industry said no more projectionists and that was it, everyone bought cheap Barco 1920X1080 projectors and laid off their projectionists. They could care less what is better quality, for them it's a cost savings.

 

So back to what I said about film projection earlier. If the lab's do a good job, what comes out of the lab will be the same thing the filmmakers saw in their final screening before release. It should look the same at any theater around the world, the projectionist will be the only person capable of ruining that experience. With digital projection, nobody really knows if it's calibrated or not. Besides, you aren't seeing the full color range with DLP because it's only dealing with three primary colors and mixing them to create whatever the digital data entails. Film has FAR more substance within it, the color gamut isn't confined to three colors mixed together.

 

Sure. digital technology will change over the years, but theaters have already been forced to invest in the current lineup of projectors. It's doubtful they will put in any effort to do the same thing in another two or three years.

 

I know it's too late, but it's annoying. Digital projection is amazing, it's killer technology, but it's really a toy compared to photochemical. The only reason we can't see photochemical prints properly is due to projection technology and it's sad nobody tried to make that a reality.

[Carl Looper]

Most people do take the blue pill though.

 

The Matrix is, in part, based on Plato's allegory of the cave.

 

"Plato has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to designate names to these shadows. The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners."

 

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

 

In The Matrix, those who take the blue pill, are effectively playing the role of Plato's prisoners: prefering to stay in the cave, believing the shadows on the walls to be reality.

 

But the shadows on the wall are reality. Plato doesn't understand this.

 

But artists can. It is what artists have been doing since the birth of art - developing an understanding of the sensory domain (images, sound, etc).

 

But in Plato's Republic, artists are to be banished.

 

However, The Matrix is a lot more interesting than Plato's allegory. The ones running the matrix (aliens, or robots, or software ) can be understood as an embodiment of Plato's reality. A reality in which Formulas are the primary reality, and images are a secondary function of such formulas. The computer generated image is like this. But we could extend this concept to the photographic image as well, as if it were no different - that it too would be a function of formulas (if alien or god like in origin).

 

It is against such a concept of reality (as a formula) that the heros of The Matrix can be understood as operating. It is against a Platonic "closed eyes" concept of reality.

 

C

[Gregg MacPherson]

 

The Matrix is, in part, based on Plato's allegory of the cave.

Need to find a better place to play with these thoughts. Perhaps it's own topic, where one could play very occasionally, like a very slow intermittent chess game.

 

Do you know what the Warchowski's intended references were? Does anyone talk about that, or is Plato just the common reference used by people trying to understand the film. The film itself, or the trillogy, is quite broad and inclusive in its references to the arcane. There is a saviour who is only just becoming enlightened, a consensual shared illusion, Maya....

 

At some point, Neo transcends the physical boundaries of the physical, disabling a sentinel by intention. If Plato's Cave can't cope at that point then the highly structured and complete omniverse of ancient Vedic knowledge could.

 

I always imagined, hoped that, the Warchowskis had developed their idea intuitively, without making studied references.

[Carl Looper]

 

I always imagined, hoped that, the Warchowskis had developed their idea intuitively, without making studied references.

 

Intuition is not incompatible with study. Indeed we might say that to be inspired by something studied, requires intuition. But not in the Kantian sense, of some built-in capacity for such, but one in which intuition would be a gift that is received, rather than created. An understanding. It is not from within that intuition develops but from without. From the world at large, wherever it can be found.

 

There is a scene in The Matrix where Neo has hidden some illicit software in a book. The book is called "Simulacra and Simulation" by Jean Budrilliard.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

 

To hope that the Warchowski's did not study this book, or any other, is to hope for a fiction - to hope that creativity would be the result of some internal process, in no need of help or inspiration from without.

 

C

Edited July 3, 2015 by Carl Looper

[Carl Looper]

Apparently, not only did the Wachowski's study Baudrilliard's thesis, but the cast and crew were required to study it as well (along with other texts):

 

"The actors of the film were required to be able to understand and explain The Matrix.^[7]Simulacra and Simulation was required reading for most of the principal cast and crew.^[34] Reeves stated that the Wachowskis had him read Simulacra and Simulation, Out of Control, and Evolutionary Psychology even before they opened up the script,^[17] and eventually he was able to explain all the philosophical nuances involved.^[7] Moss commented that she had difficulty with this process.^[17]"

 

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix#Pre-production

 

The film itself is not necessarily in agreement with Baudrillard's thesis. It is not a propaganda film. It maintains virtues of freedom, including freedom of thought. It plays around with ideas as creativity should. Neither for nor against. It is inspired by thought rather than controlled by such.

 

There is, however, an apparent inability to abandon the notion of a causal mechanism for images - there is always a demon of some sort (eg. aliens) playing the role of some cause. But in Baudrillard's fourth stage of the image there are no demons behind the illusion. There are no aliens. No gods. There is only the image. But it is very hard to let go of a reality principle.

 

Even more difficult is deconstructing the idea that images are illusions.

 

In Baudrilliard, as much as Plato, the image remains an effect, just no longer identified with a cause (as Plato would otherwise have it). In other words Baudrilliard is unable to completely abandon a platonic world view. Images remain an illusion, or simulacra. Such is Plato's legacy - projecting an immense stranglehold on both Ancient and modern thought, the latter having been re-established in the Renaissance, as neo-platonism. And on post-modern thought as well.

 

An effect of this effect (so to speak), is a somewhat ugly idea: that there is no escape from illusion. No freedom from such. Descartes turns to God for relief from this.

 

However there is freedom to be found, and it's to be found in the very thing that is positioned as otherwise: in images themselves.

 

Simply put: images are not illusions in the first place.

 

C

Edited July 3, 2015 by Carl Looper

[Gregg MacPherson]

You misunderstood me, though what you follow with is quite interesting.

 

My hope was that at the gestation of the concept for their film(s) they were flying by instinct, intuition, using the sum total of what they were, their own self awareness if you like, which includes the impact of everything they had ever experienced....including the read or studied.

 

As opposed to...having the partially cognized kernel of an idea and then furiously foraging for useful references...by reading and study.

 

The Matrix is an idea where, thinking of it's conception and development, the distinction in value between intuitive means vs eclectic or pragmatic means is very sharp for me. But we differ on what intuition is. Along with art, life, consciousness and self.

 

Let's move this somewhere else.

[Carl Looper]

You misunderstood me, though what you follow with is quite interesting.

 

My hope was that at the gestation of the concept for their film(s) they were flying by instinct, intuition, using the sum total of what they were, their own self awareness if you like, which includes the impact of everything they had ever experienced....including the read or studied.

 

As opposed to...having the partially cognized kernel of an idea and then furiously foraging for useful references...by reading and study.

 

The Matrix is an idea where, thinking of it's conception and development, the distinction in value between intuitive means vs eclectic or pragmatic means is very sharp for me. But we differ on what intuition is. Along with art, life, consciousness and self.

 

Let's move this somewhere else.

 

Or we can steer the conversation back towards the divide between film and digital, or re-read "our" tangent as having never really left that particular thread in the first place.

 

Whether the self is limited to a bounded thing that we leave behind as a dead end, or capable of expanding to address issues outside it's original perimeter, or capable of giving birth to a different self or consciousness which could do the same, we arrive at the same place: talking about something other than the self. Otherwise this self, or 'consciousness' is more akin to an imploding object than an expanding one. A black hole. That which would suck. So to speak.

 

[insert quantum jump or leap of faith here ]

 

Between film and digital there are two divides: one is to do with a difference between a traditional photographic image, and a computer generated image (of the photo-realist variety), and the other is to do with a difference between film and digital capture/projection systems. This thread is obviously more about the latter than the former. However they are related.

 

C

Edited July 4, 2015 by Carl Looper

[Carl Looper]

In new media theory (not so new any more) the theorists with a certain power are those such as Lev Manovich, who will call photochemical cinema an "art of the footprint" by which is intended a put down of such.

 

Although this attitude gains traction prior to the digital camera/projector revolutions that have taken place, Manovich's put down would equally apply to a digital camera image. Such an image would be no less an "art of the footprint".

 

In this theory there would be no fundamental difference between a photochemical or a digital camera image.

 

And perhaps Manovich is partly correct here - not in the derision - but in that theorisation which would unite both: the art of the footprint.

 

However, against this art of the footprint, new media theory champions the animated. The traditional cinema will be repositioned as having been born of animation - where the cinematographic is positioned as the animation of photographs.

 

Against this obvious love for animation, how might artists of the footprint work?

 

Would both digital and photochemical cameras work equally well?

 

Is the dividing line to be established in this way? Between the art of the animated and that of the footprint?

 

C

[Carl Looper]

If new media theory theorises cinema as being born within animation it is because it gives primacy to space over movement (and ultimately space over time).

 

Movement is regarded as an illusion. Created by animators.

 

As if the image begins in space and acquires movement.

 

Against this we can say that movement (and ultimately time) is there before there is space. Or at least at the same time (so to speak). Movement in the cinema is not added to a still image, but is already in the interval between one frame and the next. There is a coding system in play. Between encoding movement and decoding it.

 

If the frames are "animated" it is only because they were first "de-animated". by which is meant that movement was firstly decomposed, into individual frames, and then re-composed (during projection), restoring such movement. This decoded movement is only an illusion if one buries the original encoding. If one treats the individual frames as primary material or raw data, as not yet part of a creative process.

 

But creativity belongs to the outside of this encoding/decoding system as much as any work within such. It certainly does not owe anything to a proposed origin within the middle of such.

 

C

[Gregg MacPherson]

Speaking to anyone interested in the original topic....

Sorry if the sidebar by me and Carl distracted from what you were doing.

We could move it somewhere else. Just ignore us and carry on.

If we shift it, we'll let you know.

As Carl infers, there is a relevence between the seemingly obtuse philosophising and the topic at hand.

[Satsuki Murashige]

Just ignore us and carry on.

 

Oh, don't worry, we have. :)

[Gregg MacPherson]

Oh, don't worry, we have. :)

 

Yes, I see you have the first part down. Still waiting for the carry on though. (smiley face)

[Carl Looper]

"When the media covers exceptional events such as social upheavals, revolutions, and protests, typically they just show you a few professionally shot photographs that focus on this moment of protest at particular points in the city. So we were wondering if examining Instagram photos that were shared in the central part of Kiev would give us a different picture. Not necessarily an objective picture because Instagram has its own biases and it’s definitely not a transparent window into reality, but would give us, let’s say, a more democratic picture. So we’ve downloaded over 20,000 photos shared by 6,000 people, and using visualization we created a number of different views of reality with patterns contained in the data. And we were particularly interested to see how the images of the everyday exist side by side with images of extraordinary events: how images of demonstrations, confrontation with government forces, fire, smoke, and barricades exist next to selfies, parties, or empty streets." - Lev Manovich (emphasis mine)

 

source: http://hyperallergic.com/159820/painting-with-data-a-conversation-with-lev-manovich/

 

"definitely not a transparent window into reality" Manovich will say, as if the photographic (professional or otherwise) were once upon a time, (or still was) understood in this way. Against this understanding Manovich will work.

 

"Perhaps one thing we can highlight is the idea of expressive visualization. As an artist I am also interested in the question of how can I present the world through the data. So let’s say a hundred years ago I would be taking photographs of a city. Now I can represent the city through 2 million Instagram photos. Thinking about landscape paintings in Impressionism, Fauvism, or even Cubism, how could I represent nature today through the contributions of millions of people? So I think of myself as an artist who is painting with data." - Lev Manovich (emphasis mine)

 

Manovich asks how to represent nature today, as distinct from how it was represented a hundred years ago.

 

But ...

 

"It’s very clear that we’re taking ideas and techniques that have been used by modern artists. The difference is that we are pulling out data and writing open source tools. We’re taking in this case social media, works that were not created by us, and then putting them through different kinds of combinations. If you think about modernist collage of the city from the 1910s or 1920s, using pieces of newspaper and other existing media, what we’re doing exists in the same tradition." - Lev Manovich (emphasis mine)

 

Manovich wants to bury the photographic as old (a hundred years old), but not modernist collage. Such will be, instead, a tradition.

 

C

Edited July 7, 2015 by Carl Looper

[Phil Rhodes]

I've avoided this topic given the rather apologetic title, but I have to say the initial thesis is crazy. A live screen - that is, fundamentally active but with black picture displayed - is visible in either digital or film projection and neither technology is capable of dead black. About the only thing that does is OLED, to an extent that people sometimes complain that it's not very representative because nothing matches it.

 

P

[David Mullen ASC]

Nothing is dead black but some blacks are blacker than others on a theater screen.

 

I'd say from worst to best for density of blacks on a screen, it would be:

 

4K Sony LCOS

2K DLP

Kodak Vision print

Kodak Vision Premier print (obsolete)

Technicolor dye transfer print (obsolete)

Skip-bleach print

 

I haven't seen laser projection yet.

[Tyler Purcell]

I think I'm done with digital cinema projection until there is a substantial technology change.

 

I'm in Boston right now on a lil vacation and we just saw the 3rd movie since I've been here and ALL of them have looked like complete crap. Not the filmmakers fault, clearly too much noise reduction in post production and too much clean up work. I just got home from watching Rogue Nation and boy was it disappointing visually. The film was shot well, but the IMAX digital presentation had no sharpness, no crispness at all. There were many shots which had halo's of MPEG-looking noise. Any camera pan's or fast movements were noisy as well. Now, this is IMAX, in the "big" Boston Loews complex. That theater with a standard 35mm projector looked great, but they didn't do much to "upgrade" for IMAX projection. This isn't some small town in Wisconsin, this is the entire city's premiere theater, in their biggest screen.

 

If the filmmakers saw how horrid this looked, they'd probably be flabbergasted. Mind you, 13 years ago when I lived here full-time, the theaters looked great. In fact, they had all-new projectors and they were flat-out the best 35mm film projection around. Now, it's all just sub-standard, sold to the lowest common dominator. People leave the theaters accepting MPEG noise, accepting fuzziness, accepting low-contrast and motion blur that doesn't belong. They accept it because they have no choice and that's my problem. If we had a choice, then I wouldn't mind. I was all for digital projection at the beginning because I could see both, but now that we have no choice, we're stuck with even the best certification companies (IMAX) delivering us sub standard product, charging $20 per ticket and leaving the audience thinking this was the filmmakers intention.

 

Frustrating… upsetting… and I think it's worth while to state, cinema is a thing of the past.

[Simon Wyss]

The direction the electrical imagery is taking with LASER projection seems to be drops. New technical possibilities need not necessarily mean progress, human progress even less. I can well understand, it’s human to try something out, so why not play around with LASER colours. Still more saturated colours, it’s nothing else than what the photochemical industry has been after in the past 90 years.

 

Cinema can now be acrylic but it can also be gouache or oil. And pencil

 

Matter of taste and culture

[Ed David]

Amazing thread guys - going from the blacks from film vs digital and the history of it all, and mixing in some discussions on what it means to be an artist, or post-modernist theory on the self - and it's pretty epic, and it reeled itself back in.

 

This is my new favorite forum.

Thank you all.

 

That's why I gave $50. Keep this site alive - amazing how you guys all handle yourselves so well.