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Could Digital Kill Film?


Max Field

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Given the contemporary need to vomit when the word "art" is mentioned, perhaps the "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" should be renamed something else, such as "Academy of Motion Picture Makings and Sciences". Myself, I have no problem with the word "art". Of those filmmakers I call artists I mean by such that I hold them in high regard.

 

C

 

"Academy of Motion Picture Entertainment and Sciences" maybe?

 

most of the movies have not much to do with "art" anyway, they are like pop music = pure entertainment for the masses where the "artistry" is limited to certain art and creature design related things...

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Given the contemporary need to vomit when the word "art" is mentioned, perhaps the "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" should be renamed something else, such as "Academy of Motion Picture Makings and Sciences". Myself, I have no problem with the word "art". Of those filmmakers I call artists I mean by such that I hold them in high regard.

 

C

 

 

Even Artists made a living.. .Rembrandt ,Stubbs, Turner Rodin Matisse... all businessmen too.. and had to paint stuff they didnt want to.. Monet made alot of money.. you should go to his house !.. Picasso was very clever in his marketing and courting of the rich Euro trash of the time to buy his paintings .. Dali also.. Michelangelo had to lay on his back for years being hassled by monks painting the Sistine Chapel.. maybe Van Gogh was a true artist.. he didn't give a monkeys about money or courting buyers.. but there again didn't end very well for him.. the film industry.. are you kidding.. they started hanging sheets from poles at the circus.. of course its about money.. but you can still have good films .. even with a message .. I Daniel Blake was very powerful and made only 2 years ago.. and it made money too..

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Everyone has to live in the world we've created (or otherwise found ourselves in) no matter what we do, be it art, engineering, science, entertainment, business management, living off the grid, or whatever.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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Distributors care about only one thing; Can they sell the film? They don't care what it was shot on, as long as they can sell it. So it really comes down to whether the distributors think that a film-originated movie has a bigger audience than a digital movie. Now, seeing as the vast majority of the film-going public neither knows, nor cares what a movie was shot on, it would seem that the answer to that is No.

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Distributors care about only one thing; Can they sell the film? They don't care what it was shot on, as long as they can sell it. So it really comes down to whether the distributors think that a film-originated movie has a bigger audience than a digital movie. Now, seeing as the vast majority of the film-going public neither knows, nor cares what a movie was shot on, it would seem that the answer to that is No.

 

I've been out of the hobby for ten years (was never in the business, just touring). That's interesting. I read one of those books everyone had back in the day about independent film, and I don't remember the name of the book or the name of the director being interviewed, but I'll never forget the anecdote he told.

 

He said he approached a potential distributor during a film market and the distributor asked "Was it shot on film?" The director said "yes" and the distributor said "then we can talk".

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He said he approached a potential distributor during a film market and the distributor asked "Was it shot on film?" The director said "yes" and the distributor said "then we can talk".

 

 

That was the attitude in the late 1990's through most of the 2000's when some indies were shooting on DV and other prosumer video equipment... the assumption was that if they couldn't afford to shoot film, then their production values must be very low. Today there is less of that assumption that you'd only shoot digital if you had no budget since big budget movies shoot digital.

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That was the attitude in the late 1990's through most of the 2000's when some indies were shooting on DV and other prosumer video equipment... the assumption was that if they couldn't afford to shoot film, then their production values must be very low. Today there is less of that assumption that you'd only shoot digital if you had no budget since big budget movies shoot digital.

It's funny because now the big guys are looking to differentiate themselves from the small guys and :cough: going back to film or shooting in IMAX or 8k digital nonsense. This is one of the backlashes of democratization, once every yahoo wannabe filmmaker can have a 6k Red Dragon, which is more then enough quality/resolution, what separates YOUR product from the 100M+ budget products? Both can shoot on green screens, both can have amazing VFX, both can have actors and crew, just one costs sub 250k and one costs 100M. Of course there is more to it, but as I always tell people who are interested in using film, it's something that differenciates you from every other production and has all the ancellary benefits of the format.

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Or more to the point.. a "Manchester by Sea ".. can be.. well was .. alot better film than quite a few $100m plus budget films released this year.. regardless of one RED or 20 of them blasting away.. I wonder about the money people at these studios .. there have been quite a few massive budget flops lately.. they still churn them out thinking anything else is risky.. but why not churn out 50 x $5m films.. far more chance is a winner.. and a much better for audiences and the industry as a whole.. .. Hell I could run that Saloon.. whats up with those guys.. Ill see they never eat breakfast in this town again..

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Or more to the point.. a "Manchester by Sea ".. can be.. well was .. alot better film than quite a few $100m plus budget films released this year.. regardless of one RED or 20 of them blasting away.. I wonder about the money people at these studios .. there have been quite a few massive budget flops lately.. they still churn them out thinking anything else is risky.. but why not churn out 50 x $5m films.. far more chance is a winner.. and a much better for audiences and the industry as a whole.. .. Hell I could run that Saloon.. whats up with those guys.. Ill see they never eat breakfast in this town again..

 

I was once told that about HALF of the budget of a 100M+ megabudget film goes to the marketing and distribution. so it is really a 40 or 50million budget movie with "some" marketing money added on top...

studios ARE doing the small budget stuff also, it has traditionally been good business to do the cheap b-comedies and such which every film brings a little revenue and the risks are small.

 

maybe todays audience just would like to see some good scripts and acting and directing occasionally and the studios are just trying to feed them some crappy badly written mega budget stuff which worked couple of years ago but is not that reliable anymore

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Or more to the point.. a "Manchester by Sea ".. can be.. well was .. alot better film than quite a few $100m plus budget films released this year.. regardless of one RED or 20 of them blasting away.. I wonder about the money people at these studios .. there have been quite a few massive budget flops lately.. they still churn them out thinking anything else is risky.. but why not churn out 50 x $5m films.. far more chance is a winner.. and a much better for audiences and the industry as a whole.. .. Hell I could run that Saloon.. whats up with those guys.. Ill see they never eat breakfast in this town again..

 

Again. "Hollywood accounting". They make money by losing money. Those huge budgets are a crazy way of keeping the big studios in business. Let's say Huge Studios wants to make a movie called "Megabudget Flop". They create a company called "Megabudget Flop Productions (MFP)" and give them millions to produce the film. MFP buys services and rents equipment from Huge Studios, which is set to distribute the film. Huge Studios charges very high for those products and services. $1000 for a roll of gaffer tape, etc. The film opens and flops. MFP declares bankruptcy and disappears. But Huge Studios is still there and making their share of the earnings.

I think they explain better here: https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/hollywood-accounting1.htm

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I was once told that about HALF of the budget of a 100M+ megabudget film goes to the marketing and distribution. so it is really a 40 or 50million budget movie with "some" marketing money added on top...

Actually, advertised budgets DON'T INCLUDE P&A at all. So when you see a 100M movie, ADD ANOTHER $50M for P&A. Sometimes P&A budgets are DOUBLE production budgets. So when you see the boxoffice numbers, realize that for any movie to make "profit" they need to TRIPLE their budget.

 

but why not churn out 50 x $5m films.. far more chance is a winner.. and a much better for audiences and the industry as a whole.. .. Hell I could run that Saloon.. whats up with those guys.. Ill see they never eat breakfast in this town again..

Studio's have tried and failed. The problem is that in today's market, good actors, good crew, good locations and travel expenses are just off the hook. It simply costs more money to make a blockbuster then it ever has. All of the sub 10M movies that the studio's have released in recent years have come and gone so fast, they've barely been blips on the radar.

 

Right now the magic number is around $20M + $20M for P&A, so basically a $40M investment. If ya make a good movie, this model has the potential to work in 2017.

 

$5M is just impossible today, it's "dead" model. Too much money to recoup off video and not enough money to play any significant role in theatrical. Even if you put $5M into P&A, even that's nowhere near enough.

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Again. "Hollywood accounting". They make money by losing money. Those huge budgets are a crazy way of keeping the big studios in business. Let's say Huge Studios wants to make a movie called "Megabudget Flop". They create a company called "Megabudget Flop Productions (MFP)" and give them millions to produce the film. MFP buys services and rents equipment from Huge Studios, which is set to distribute the film. Huge Studios charges very high for those products and services. $1000 for a roll of gaffer tape, etc. The film opens and flops. MFP declares bankruptcy and disappears. But Huge Studios is still there and making their share of the earnings.

I think they explain better here: https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/hollywood-accounting1.htm

Studio's rent equipment from standard rental houses. They buy expendables from normal expendable houses, nothing comes from the "studios". Some rental houses do have long-term contracts with certain studios and filmmakers, but the deals are miniscule. In fact, the "studio's" today are just facilities people rent to make their movies. Sure many also have a distribution arm, but the financing arm is generally not directly from the pockets of the studio itself, more like a financial conglomerate who is "associated". So yes, there is an LLC made for each movie to separate it from the studio.

 

So when you're "greenlit" by a studio, they will "find" the money in most cases. This way, the studio is off the hook for any major losses, all they do is "win" thanks to backend money from distribution. Also, investors have insurance policies on films to insure they don't lose their shirts. Studio's have insurance policies on P&A to insure they don't lose their shirts. So even those complete and utter flops, they generally make a lot of their money back to a certain point. Yes there are always going to be losses, but nowhere near the level of catastrophic like it use to be decades ago.

 

I was shocked to hear that Disney is going to take 65% of all ticket sales on The Last Jedi. It would be the highest profit margin for a studio in recent history. I assume this is to make up for a bad year overall for them, with very few releases.

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I wonder about the money people at these studios .. there have been quite a few massive budget flops lately.. they still churn them out thinking anything else is risky.. but why not churn out 50 x $5m films.. far more chance is a winner.. and a much better for audiences and the industry as a whole.. .. Hell I could run that Saloon.. whats up with those guys.. Ill see they never eat breakfast in this town again..

 

Because the studios want billion-dollar hits, and those are usually the very expensive films. Sure, it makes more sense to make smaller films that are almost guaranteed to make a profit (or at least to not lose much money) but they're willing to risk making giant flops if it means they have a chance of knocking it out of the park.

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Because the studios want billion-dollar hits, and those are usually the very expensive films. Sure, it makes more sense to make smaller films that are almost guaranteed to make a profit (or at least to not lose much money) but they're willing to risk making giant flops if it means they have a chance of knocking it out of the park.

 

 

But this seems to be harder and harder to achieve.. audience viewing habits are changing.. its an out dated business model .. there are only so many spinoff Star wars/Comic book stuff that will gain these audiences.. its like Norma Desmond was a studio.. see I like old BW films too.. :)

Edited by Robin R Probyn
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I actually quite clearly see a green shift and loss of color contrast in skin highlights with Alexa, while the negative, given it's Kodak '05 or V3 in general, looks like it's slightly too thin.

But, well, I'm also one of those people who use a 1/8 Coral Grad, so take it with a grain of salt...

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But this seems to be harder and harder to achieve.. audience viewing habits are changing.. its an out dated business model .. there are only so many spinoff Star wars/Comic book stuff that will gain these audiences.. its like Norma Desmond was a studio.. see I like old BW films too.. :)

 

I don't see audiences getting tired of Star Wars, Marvel, and DC any time soon, but some of the other tentpole attempts (Valerian, Geostorm) haven't done well.

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The only real problem with Yedlin's test is the assumption that the question being asked, in a film/digital debate, is a question regarding which medium to use.

 

In the case of filmmakers who already use film, (or already use digital), or already use both, the question can be entirely different. For example, if using digital, one might ask "what kind of result can I get that I can't get using film", or reciprocally, if using film: "what kind of result can I get using film that I can't get using digital". In other words one might very well be looking for a way to differentiate between the two mediums, rather than minimise such differences.

 

Yeldin's work is certainly fascinating in that he is using digital processing to get what he calls a "film look". But what does he mean by a "film look"? For elsewhere Yedlin argues that it's not the materials that give you a certain look (as such he calls just raw data) but will be in the way you then prepare such. He will argue that is in the processing of such data ("preparation") that a certain look obtains. Does he mean by this that digital processes provide for such preparation, where film does not? Certainly film is more limited in terms of the processing work that might be done, but it's not as if it is completely absent of such - as if it automagically produces a "film look" (or any other look). In film, one can work towards a particular achievable look, as much as one might pursue some alternative look achievable in digital. And the material/workflow differences between film and digital will not be irrelevant.

 

Demonstrating that one can prepare both film and digital in such a way that they both have the same look (what Yedlin calls a "film look") merely demonstrates that there is a small overlapping domain between the two mediums/processes where such an in-common look can be obtained.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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