Michael Most

That's either a bit of an exaggeration, or requires a bit of explanation. Comedies have been shot primarily on video for a number of years now, basically since the advent of the Sony F900 back in the late 90's. Dramas have been the mainstay of film for television since that time. For the current season, the film/digital split on dramas is about 50/50. There are more dramas that are still on film than everyone seems to think these days.

Not really, at least not the way I see it. I think at this point in time, the best combination of quality, reliability, consistency, and presentation is a picture that is shot on film, finished through a properly managed DI process, using either 4K scans or at the very least, 4K down to 2K scans, and presented via digital projection (4K is good, 2K is usually fine except on the very largest screens). I think that gives you the best image capture (film), and the best theatergoing experience (properly set up digital projection). If everyone could see studio prints in studio level screening theaters - as I often can - that might tilt the scale a bit. But they can't, so to me it's a moot point. You might want to do some more investigating into digital projection and just how stable and trouble free it is proving to be. You might see it very differently.

Not sure I would. Film projectors require continual cleaning and maintenance if they are to run smooth and clean. Granted, it's not complex, but it needs to be done and it needs to be done continuously. In theatrical installations today, there are large platter feeders that send the film through sometimes complex pulley systems that also need to be maintained, not to mention the cleanliness of the booth itself, as well as any splicing equipment that's used. Digital projectors actually require very little attention or maintenance. About the only things that need to be done are keeping the lens reasonably clean, and adjusting the lamp level every few days. Lamp replacements on many models are usually done by replacing the entire lamp housing, sending the old one back and having the lamp itself replaced by them (lamp life is usually regarded to be about 1000 hours, so the lamps need more frequent replacement than film projector lamps). And even when you do replace the lamp itself, it's really not a whole lot more involved than replacing a film projector lamp. The stability of the DLP Cinema system is such that once it's set up (usually done by whoever's supplying it), it can run for literally months without any noticeable drift. That might sound ridiculous to you, and I can understand if it does - but it's absolutely true, as observed by me and many others. In a theatrical environment, the only real changes in projector settings are lamp level (set by software, no hardware tweaks), and color space (only needed if you're showing something other than a studio supplied DCP). Color spaces and format settings are all presets and are stored as files in the projector itself, so you simply call them up as needed. Other than fans, there are really no other moving parts (well, I guess if you count the mirrors on the chips as "moving parts" that's not entirely true, but you know what I mean) so there's nothing to lubricate, clean, or check for physical wear. Now, as far as useful life, that's an unknown. One of the nice things about film formats is that they're all based on a single, stable standard - 35mm, 4 perf prints (we'll leave out 70mm for the purposes of this discussion). So the only changes necessary to accommodate different film formats are different projector gates, different lenses (anamorphic, in particular), and adjustable screen masks. The projector itself remains the same. Once you get into the world of electronics, formats are often married to hardware. This is true of HD, but it's also true of 2K and 4K. This is one of the reasons the DCI came up with a specification for distribution elements, in the form of the DCP. This limits the number of physical formats, and it also brings at least some assurance that projection formats won't become obsoleted in the short term. But in the long term, it is an unknown. At some point, the DLP chips will likely need to be replaced, by the estimated life for those components is quite long, so there's no real way to tell how long it will really be. So in short, I think over the long term there are issues, but they're not the issues that you seem to be concerned with.

Karl, I don't know how much experience you have with digital projectors, particularly the DLP Cinema variety that are the most common in theatrical installations. I happen to have quite a bit, and in my experience, they are not only among the most trouble free devices I've used, they're also, by far, the most stable display devices I've ever seen. I think most engineers (I'm not an engineer, but I had to deal with engineering issues on a fairly regular basis) in post facilities that use these projectors would agree with that assessment. I don't know what you're basing your statement on.

You and I also go back to the days when the lab (well, MGM Lab, at least) would high speed dailies every night. I got more than one call at 5AM from Bill Bickford back in the day....

I was pointing out that awards for "Cinematography", issued by two respected organizations, were given to a project that was shot on different mediums, thus reinforcing my definition of the term "Cinematography" as being the art of creating moving pictures and not the act of doing that on one particular medium, in this case, film. I wasn't making any comments about the relevancy of awards, and my guess is that everyone here other than you found that pretty obvious. I don't know what you have against me, or why, but I really wish you'd stop applying your own prejudices and interpretations to every single word I write.

That is NOT what I said. Allow me to quote myself: I didn't say "theater goers are complaining about flicker." I cited it as one of a number of factors as to why they generally prefer digital projection. And what I meant by that is that digital projection - at least as commonly exhibited today by DLP Cinema projectors - has no discernible flicker. Film projection has flicker caused by multiple issues - 48Hz refresh rate (with a 2 bladed shutter, common in theatrical projection) with part of that period blanked, inconsistency in prints and an exaggeration of that inconsistency over time, and lamp issues. A DLP Cinema projector has none of that because there is essentially no blanking period, no physical media, and lamp failure is usually catastrophic and so the lamp is replaced. If you're going to paraphrase me, please do it accurately.

Simply saying "it all sucks" is not very constructive. If one really wants to say something that addresses the issue, rather than simply continuing to point out that there ARE issues, one needs to offer some explanations and solutions. So here are mine: 1. Why does it all suck when it didn't used to? The answer is that in the days when "it didn't used to," there were far fewer screens and far smaller resultant print orders, even on the widest releases. When that was the case, most if not all of those prints were made in one lab, with tighter QC, and with better control of things like print light interpretation. Today, the print orders are 4 to 5 times larger, the prints are made in different labs in different cities in different countries simultaneously, with all of the attendant differences that brings, and with far less ability to tightly QC every print that gets made. They also are made under tighter deadlines, thanks to the need for waiting until the last minute for things like visual effect revisions. So you're trying to do more, with less time, in multiple labs at once. That is a recipe for inconsistency, no matter how you look at it. 2. What can be done? What is already being done - which is moving to a digital distribution system that puts the consistency and QC requirements in the hands of the exhibitors rather than multiple labs working under tight deadlines. Because the files distributed are direct copies of the original, variations between distributed elements are eliminated. Digital cinema projectors - in particular, DLP Cinema projectors - are probably the most stable display devices yet built. Once properly installed and set up, they require very, very little further adjustment for months at a time, other than periodic lamp replacement (I speak from direct experience on this, under conditions more stringent than theaters). You can't turn back the clock. The fact is that the more screens there are, the more conditions become ripe for inconsistency with print based distribution. To some degree, it's a victim of its own success. The notion that suddenly everyone is going to start running fewer prints and doing better QC in order to ensure better quality at a time when the labs are barely making money to begin with is just not sensible. One needs to look to the future, and fortunately, there are solutions on the way that are, in the end, better than anything that has come before, regardless of one's own sentimental attachments.

Well, clearly you have a lab background - which actually explains an awful lot about the views you've expressed here. I worked in a lab for the last 3 years - not directly in the lab, but in a combined lab/electronic facility run by someone with about 25 years of lab experience, from whom I learned an awful lot. But I've also been around this business for a very long time, most of it spent dealing with film, and over all of those years I learned a few things, one of which is that there's theory and there's reality. I worked with some of the best labs in our industry (I started out at MGM, so MGM Labs was where I picked up most of my earliest film experience) and although I never ran the lines, I did talk an awful lot to those who did. And one of the things I learned over years of watching dailies, answer prints, and release prints - as well as more recent experience with DIs - is that regardless of the control, regardless of how well it's done, the reality is that there are always variations. If I asked for a new print on one reel of a 5 reel television show there was always just as good a chance that the reprint would come out a bit red or a bit yellow or a bit blue compared to the original print. Not necessarily night and day differences, but enough that if I A/B'd them you could easily see the difference. You can talk about the exact nature of film lab science all you want, but the evidence that I've seen over the years says otherwise, at least regarding print processes (I always found negative processing to be pretty consistent). So no, I wasn't just guessing and I wasn't making it up. The statements that I've made are based on a lot of time in screening rooms and a lot of answer prints. And most of them in some of the best labs in the world. And I stand by my statement that photochemical print processes - while very good - are not perfect. And they're not as consistent as digital processes can be.

Except that ship has already sailed. DI is now the standard. A production generally has to get studio approval to do a photochemical finish. I think you need to look at this as two steps forward, one step back - but a step that will be followed in time by another 3 steps forward. Everything changes, and often improves, especially in the area of digital processing and the cost factors involved in it. What we do today is not going to be what we're doing 3 years from now. Your concerns will be addressed, you just need to give it some time. One could argue that CD's were a major step backwards from vinyl recordings, but many if not most of the complaints about early CD mastering were eventually dealt with as time went on and mastering engineers gained a better understanding of the medium, not to mention technical improvements that led to things like the DVD. I think you're actually coming around to some things I was trying to point out earlier. The eventual answer to this is digital projection, but at a higher quality than you've seen up until this point. A 4K pipeline is a good answer, there might ultimately be other good answers. But taking the chemicals out of the equation when dealing with supplying thousands of screens with consistent images is ultimately a good thing, regardless of how one feels about film as an origination medium. As for color shifts on reel changes, adjacent reels can be and usually are printed on different printers and developed in different soup. All film elements are balanced on <2000 foot reels for printing. The order in which they get printed can be very random, as can the time of day. As much control as large labs run, chemicals are inherently an inexact science. Minor fluctuations can and do result in noticeable shifts. That's just the way it is, and one of the many issues that, quite frankly, digital projection really does solve.

Oh, I get it. Now I don't care about what I do. Reporting the practical side of the industry, the one in which very few can actually afford things like 4K DI processes, and the one in which directors are always demanding that something look different than anything else that's ever been done, and the one in which directors of photography want to take advantage of the ability to highlight the area of interest more than they could in practical photography, and the one in which producers want to be able to use multiple formats interchangeably for creative purposes - and reporting all of this as opposed to living in a dream world in which everything is captured perfectly in principal photography, all post work is photochemical, everyone shoots on 4 perf 35mm (or better yet, 65mm), all production and post budgets are unlimited, and all labs treat every release print as if it's a custom one-off print - means I don't care, regardless of how many years I've spent in the industry attempting to improve the state of the art both practically and artistically. I see. OK, Karl, I give up. Everything digital is counterproductive. We should go back to only photochemical imaging, no matter how much it costs and no matter how creatively limiting it might prove to be. The cinematography in television today completely sucks, the DP's working there are complete hacks, and clearly everything in the 60's and 70's was far more creative, original, and artistic. We should eliminate 2K altogether because clearly nobody thinks it's any good and theatergoers aren't going to stand for it. We should get rid of DI's in general because they clearly do nothing but ruin otherwise great cinematographic achievements. Nobody should be concerned with cost - ever - because it's all about art, and you can't put a price tag on art. And once we do this, we'll have a thriving lab business once again, nobody will be able to make a movie unless they're highly qualified, 65mm theaters will be built and flourish, we'll travel down chocolate rivers and see rainbows every day. I hope you're happy. But as for me, I'm done.

You can't sell what your customers don't want. And you can only sell what they do want. In general - there are exceptions - directors of photography, directors, and producers today value the flexibility that a DI brings more than they value the more pristine quality of contact printing. Nobody talks them into DI. In some cases, it's a necessary part of the process - for instance, if the picture is shot on 3 perf (it's technically possible to assemble 3 perf negative and optically print to a 4 perf IP, but not too many places in the world can do that today), or 16mm, or a digital format, or a mixture of formats. Or if they want to achieve some sort of unique look, a popular sentiment these days. But in any case, it's the DP's and directors that have pushed the rise of digital intermediate, not the vendors. Company 3 was talked into doing DI work by Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer, not the other way around. If you think it's somehow evil electronic, money grabbing post companies that have perpetrated some sort of scam on the industry, think again. That's not how any of this happened. And, BTW, digital intermediate and electronic post in general are some of the most notoriously low profit businesses in the industry. If you don't believe that, talk to some colorists and editors who have either had their salaries slashed in the last few years or been laid off altogether. Or talk to those who worked for long standing industry vendors who have had to shut their doors (Pacific Title comes to mind..).

You don't know me. And if you did, you would never say what you just said. One can live in the real world and try to make it as good as it can be. Or one can live in a fantasy world and spend the rest of their lives complaining why the real world isn't like that. I choose the former because I enjoy actually making a living.

If you really believe that the shooting format is a determinant of a picture's commercial success, then there's little we have to discuss. Put something on the screen that people want to see and you've got a success. Put something up that they don't want to see and you have a failure. It's as simple as that. What it's shot on has no bearing on this. Since the vast bulk of studio pictures are shot on film (and continue to be), there's likely to be only a small percentage that are shot on digital formats that are hits - simply because there's a fairly small percentage of studio pictures shot on digital formats in the first place. But I would contend that's for reasons other than some sort of guarantee of commercial success. In fact, the #1 picture at the box office for almost 3 weeks recently was "Final Destination", shot on a digital format. Another one was "District 9." And perhaps you're forgetting a little picture called "Star Wars Revenge of the Sith," a few years before Red even existed. I don't attribute that success to what they were shot on any more than I attribute "Transformers 2"s success to being on film. And if we're going to talk about Soderbergh, he has always ridden a line between commercial success and personal, quirky projects. He likes doing that. He shot "Full Frontal" on hand held DV cameras. He shot "Bubble" on F900's. And, yes, he shot Che, The Girlfriend Experience, and The Informant on Red. So what? Possibly unbeknownst to you, he almost shot Oceans Twelve on the Viper. Would that picture have been any more or less successful as a result? I seriously doubt it. Regarding Peter Jackson, I consider your comments to not only be a bit inane, but also disrespectful of someone who has shown himself to be quite a visionary director. If you think his name as a producer carries "no weight," you are blissfully unaware of how District 9 came to get made in the first place. And as for the Hobbit pictures getting shot on Red, my sources tell me you're likely wrong there, too. For someone who I have to assume wants to find some serious success in the film industry, you certainly seem to be very bitter towards those who already have.

Well, he's got a reasonably high profile picture coming out pretty soon ("The Lovely Bones"), and as a producer, he produced the recently released and reasonably successful "District 9," and will be producing the upcoming Hobbit pictures. I wouldn't exactly call that "not much of anything anymore." No, I think he probably meant the man who made "Sex Lies and Videotape," "Solaris," "Traffic," and three very successful "Oceans" pictures, among other more experimental projects. For some reason, you seem to be very dismissive of pretty successful people with a proven track record.

The digital projection rollout - 2K, 4K, doesn't make any difference - as a whole has stalled because of the current worldwide economic situation. The adoption curve that was predicted as little as 1 1/2 years ago has changed considerably because of that.

You stated that Regal Cinemas, specifically, was "sending back" 4K projectors. Articles I found say very much the opposite: http://www.dcinematoday.com/dc/PR.aspx?newsID=1443 http://www.sonyinsider.com/2009/05/19/rega...eater-near-you/ None with actual product at the moment. By late next year, at least 2 TI DLP Cinema manufacturing partners are expected to have 4K DLP product. That depends on 1) screen size, and 2) whether the viewer prefers better contrast (the DLP Cinema technology has noticeably better blacks than the Sony SXRD system) or smoother edges (primarily visible only at very large screen sizes).

Saying that an entire theater chain is "sending back" 4K projectors is a pretty major statement that I or anyone else would be pretty foolish to take on faith from a post on an Internet forum. I did attempt to find even one article anywhere that corroborated your statement, but all I could find were articles - quite a few of them - detailing the deal between Regal and Sony to supply all of their theaters with Sony's 4K projection equipment. So no, I don't trust your "learned opinion" on this when I can't find any way to confirm its truth, and particularly when I only find information to the contrary, either in print, electronically, or via conversations with people I know who are deeply involved in such things.

No, it isn't. Cinematography is the art of creating images in motion in order to tell a story. Sometimes the story is true (as in a documentary) and sometimes it is fiction (as in a narrative script), but there is always a story to be told. The tools of cinematography include light, shadow, framing, and point of view, all shot with a camera. Notice I said a camera - not film. Film is just a recording medium. So is videotape. So are digital files. The point is, it doesn't matter. The art of telling a story visually is what cinematography is all about. What you record it on is simply what you record it on. The fact that "Slumdog Millionaire" - which was shot on both digital and film mediums - won both the ASC Award and the Academy Award for best cinematography - should be all the proof you need of the truth of that statement.

Cite your source for that. Because, just as you for some reason doubted some of the things I posted, I sincerely doubt this one. Unless, of course, they're sending back units they already received to be replaced with 3D capable newer units. Your opinion, not fact. And not shared universally. Studio pictures with reasonable budgets for the DI usually manufacture multiple printing negatives digitally, so the prints for these pictures are all "first generation," at least in the sense of being from the "original" negative. Other DI's usually manufacture one "original" negative, and then make an IP (or multiple IP's) from that, and multiple printing negatives from the IP - essentially the same process as a photochemical finish, but without the need for the scene to scene timing step. Yeah, we get it. You don't like EFilm. I don't know why, nor do I care. I'm quite sure that not having the Karl Borowski seal of approval is not going to substantially hurt their business. Not to mention that I think it will come as a surprise to the producers and directors of photography of pictures like "Iron Man," "Angels and Demons," "Revolutionary Road," and countless others that their movies looked "crummy." The rise in popularity of DI finishing has rarely, if ever, had anything to do with reducing costs. It has always been far more expensive to do even a "budget" DI than a photochemical finish. The fact that it also yields a video master has been one of the factors that made it financially practical, but certainly not cheaper. It has happened because it offers flexibility, both creative and technical, that allows DP's and directors to utilize certain abilities to (hopefully) tell their stories better visually. By allowing things like contrast changes and secondary isolations - both unavailable in a photochemical process - it has allowed them to enhance practical photography, fix production problems, achieve better shot matching in difficult shooting circumstances, better matching of visual effects shots, and other things. It has also allowed the use of things like 3 perf, which can achieve a stock and processing cost savings while not sacrificing quality (the active image area is esentially the same as 4 perf if the aspect ratio is 1.85 or wider, and it directly translates to 1.77:1 video). Not to mention the ability to easily integrate multiple formats, both film and electronic, within the same show. But all of this comes at a price. And yes, part of that price is that electronic color correction is, at its heart, a destructive process. Excessive color manipulation adds noise and other artifacts. But the creative and practical format freedom that DI brought to the table has long since been accepted as a step forward for storytelling, not a step back. It's not all about pristine photographic quality. It's about telling a story and affecting an audience visually. Your view that quality trumps all other considerations is, to me, simplistic and somewhat myopic. It's about entertainment, at a level of quality that an audience expects. You seem to think that audiences crave film projection, and that anything less is seen as a "reduction of quality." I and many others think just the opposite. I'm never going to convince you of that, and you're never going to convince me or a lot of other people. So I'm going to stop trying, and, in all likelihood, so should you.

I have to completely agree with you on this one.

Do you know what Super 35 is, or why and how it's used? Karl was likely referring to shooting Super 35 for anamorphic release, which requires either an optical step for both the anamorphosing and blowup, or a DI to create a 4 perf anamorphic frame digitally. Not to mention that much of what is shot in Super 35 format today is shot on 3 perf format, which cannot be contact printed to 4 perf release formats. Nobody shoots Super 35 with the intention of releasing that way, and it is basically impossible to build a projector for it because it covers the area normally used for a soundtrack. So unless you're projecting silent films, that's just not a possibility. And your constant criticism of a company trying to make money is getting very tiresome. You are really in way over your head here. Everything you just said is completely incorrect. The term "megapixels" is normally used for describing a Bayer pattern digital still camera. Digital cinema projectors are referenced by the horizontal resolution, in most cases, 2K or 4K. Current 2K projectors have 3 chips, not one. So if you actually wanted to talk about megapixels - even though that is completely incorrect terminology - a 2K DLP Cinema projector would actually be 6.6 megapixels (2048x1080x3), but as I said, nobody uses that terminology. The current 4K projector made by Sony has three 4K chips, yielding a total of over 26 megapixels, if one actually wanted to refer to it that way. The only DLP projectors that use color wheels are single chip projectors sold for industrial and home theater use. DLP Cinema projectors all have three DLP chips and use dichroic filters to separate a constant light source (Xenon) into three color components, one for each chip. None of the issues you describe exist in DLP Cinema projectors. I would say that one shouldn't post things that are out of one's area of expertise and state them as fact here, but clearly very few people would actually listen.

"The Goods", if you're referring to the recent Jeremy Piven movie, had a DI done at Laser Pacific, by Mike Sowa. Sorority Row was a DI done at Technicolor by Jill Bogdanowicz. I'm not sure about "Extract," so I won't offer information on that. A hard matte has nothing to do with whether it's a DI finish or not. It has more to do with whether it is shot in 4 perf format or, these days, the more common 3 perf format. If a picture is shot in 4 perf, it's usually a studio delivery requirement to supply a "full frame" digital negative. If it's on 3 perf, that's not possible because the "full frame" is 1.77:1.

Uhhhh... OK. Good luck with that.

I have never, ever said that there are any problems with "the 35mm production process." If anything, I have argued in favor of film origination, and have worked in film production for almost 30 years. All I've talked about is digital **projection**. That has absolutely nothing to do with origination.