Did I Make A Mistake

Freya Black · May 25, 2016

That's the assumption everyone has, but nobody has come up with a solution. Most internet today isn't fast enough and we currently produce more content then we can afford to store. Most of the people I know, produce well over 128gb a month worth of stills alone. Just uploading/managing all of that content is a job most people won't do. Plus, there is no "free" service to upload that much data. Everything costs money and the moment you stop paying, you could loose all that data. Plus, there is no instant access to any of it since it requires internet. So most people walk around with 1000 or so pictures on their phone that's not backed up which cover years worth of their life and that's it. Then their mobile device fails or is lost and they loose everything.

It's not the assumption I'm making. There is a lot of talk of future proofing etc but I expect content to be more ephemeral. With so much new content being created all the time there is not as much of a scarcity and thus older content is less valuable than it even was before. The cost of archiving such content may well outstrip its commercial value.

I'm also assuming a 720p future if 4K blu-ray fails to take off because it is just very practical. Whereas presently 4K and even 1080p are not so practical. For a lot of purposes 720p is good enough and also efficient.

In short I'm expecting the current trends to intensify and continue and to that end I'm also seeing some nasty things that I should have foreseen but sadly managed to overlook somehow.

The digital revolution will continue.

Mark Day · May 25, 2016

I beleive digital media, both audio and digital, will continue to progress, but me being 60 years old, I can't see myself getting rid of the vacuum tubes or the vinyl in my lifetime.

Heikki Repo · May 25, 2016

I predict that the future will be even more medium-pluralistic than it has ever been.

While the mainstream is nowadays in the music world about downloading (or better yet, streaming) at the same time analog medium has come back. Who would have thought when CD broke through that we'd see the day when CD is dying of unpopularity and some bands are instead selling their albums on cassettes on their tours again? Or that vinyl would be this strong?

How and when will this play out for motion pictures? I think it already has. Digital is strong, we have Netflix, YouTube...but at the same time there are people exposing film and making experimental bucket processed films that won't be distributed widely, perhaps only shown as a part of some performance. And we have everything in the middle of these extremes.

Digital is improving and won't go away. Quite probably film is also staying and won't go away. It might even get its own share of improvements, who knows.

I for one will keep on shooting super-8, ds-8, super16 and 135, 645 and 4x5. My mobile phone and its camera will best serve the more throwaway needs of WhatsApp messaging.

Will Montgomery · May 25, 2016

Original 35mm negative is around 4.5k and original 5 perf 70mm negative is around 8k. So if you want high res on a shelf, that's the way to go.

I still think its amazing to watch some of these older TV shows like Space: 1999 or World At War where they went back to the original film and re-mastered them in 2k. They look amazing. Even these old concert films shot on 16mm throughout the 60's, 70's, 80's and even into the 90's...when they are rescanned with modern scanners to 2 or 4k and colored well they are drop dead gorgeous. That must be such a boon to the producers and content owners that can see a brand new revenue stream 30 years or more later.

All the content shot in 1080p or 2k today is stuck in that. Yes, it can still look passible on a 4k TV but nowhere near what a re-scanned, well-shot 35mm negative will look like. Maybe 4k is the sweet spot for film scanning and 8k will be a diminishing return for 35mm film scanning, but all that content over the last 100 years of film is still usable in a 4 and 8k world. I guess shooting 4k is the current way to "future proof" a project.

Since filmmakers like to think of their productions as lasting for the ages, I would think the film medium would be extremely appealing for this reason too.

Mark Dunn · May 25, 2016

David Attenborough's "Zoo Quest" natural history shows (1956-61) were originally transmitted, of course, in b/w and the BBC had very few VTRs so most of the shows only exist in telerecording (kinescope). However it turns out a lot of colour neg, presumably 7248, was shot when there was enough light and it has just turned up. It looks quite extraordinary- deep blue seas, lush forests and so on. Grain aside, it could have been shot last week and transmitted in HD it's as sharp as most run-of-the-mill 35mm. features.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Mark Dunn

Phil Rhodes · May 25, 2016

Next time you're at the theater, stand up during the show, walk up to the screen and you can see those lines. If you do that same test with film, there is no grid, no lines, it's just moving/roving grain.

My feeling has always been that digital projectors should be defocussed such that the pixel boundaries are not visible. Theoretically this would be low-pass filtering, but whatever we call it, it should be done.

P

Tyler Purcell · May 25, 2016

Actually, most projectionists do de-focus digital projectors purposely. However, even with the de-focus you can still see the problems.

Peter Bitic · May 25, 2016

David Attenborough's "Zoo Quest" natural history shows (1956-61) were originally transmitted, of course, in b/w and the BBC had very few VTRs so most of the shows only exist in telerecording (kinescope). However it turns out a lot of colour neg, presumably 7248, was shot when there was enough light and it has just turned up. It looks quite extraordinary- deep blue seas, lush forests and so on. Grain aside, it could have been shot last week and transmitted in HD it's as sharp as most run-of-the-mill 35mm. features.

Just watched it. The 16 mm part is so much more pleasant-looking than the digital part when you see them side by side. There is also something about the film that paradoxically makes stuff shot on it feel more real, despite being more soft, having grain and less accurate colors than digital (this is my general observation, not just based on this documentary). You can almost feel the texture of different materials, and animals and people feel more alive.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Peter Bitic