Nicolas Courdouan

Film vs digital should be a debate left purely to each filmmaker's artistic sense and personal taste. All this talk about which one is better revolving around resolution, dynamic range etc. is hopelessly irrelevant. No one should choose one over the other just because they're wondering what resolution the recording format should be, that's not what it's about. You either love film or not, it either fits your idea or not. Same thing about digital. I can't believe there are still people feeling endangered by digital technology, and others who are too insecure about their love of it that they feel the need to write pamphlets against celluloid. The film vs digital debate has to be the single most boring topic a cinematographer can spend their time arguing over. And yes, that means I'm out.

Fair enough. It is plainly obvious the numbers I quoted were just pulled out of my crack (a hundred times more, a thousand times more, etc...) and I cannot hope to teach you anything about computer science, my last science lesson was fifteen years ago, so I'll take your word for it. I do expect constant innovation, the fact that it is slowing down is irrelevant, I think things will always improve, even if it takes longer than expected looking at the speed things have improved at until today. Looking at the way digital has improved exponentially until now, is it that unreasonable to think that in fifty years the maximum resolution it affords will have increased at the very least five times? It could be, it's just a genuine question I'm asking myself. The world has always been full of people saying "This is impossible" and other people showing them how they did it. Even if digital eventually plateaus at a resolution of 30K, and even if it takes two hundred years to get there, it will still have gone beyond what celluloid offers. The only thing I'm sure of is that all the bullshit that has been cluttering this thread and turning it into another one of those "fim is better - no, digital is better" nonsense is completely irrelevant. Yes, Episode II looks like a bad video movie. But Episode II is no more than a step along a path of discovery that has consistently freed filmmakers around the world by giving them more options to shoot with and making people happy. I don't see why anyone here should feel entitled to mock George Lucas or the countless others who have followed him since. It's everybody's right to say his films are bad, the only thing I have a problem with is people feeling insulted by the advent of digital cinema when they should just ignore it and move on, or embrace it. I just don't see what's so terrible about digital technology. Does the fact that filmmakers embrace digital cameras somehow negate their ability to enjoy celluloid? To use it?

I don't see how stating this is anything but open-minded. Technologies always get better, that's the way it works. By the same token that your phone probably now holds five times as much computing power than a full desktop station from 15 years ago, and a million times as much as the first computers from 50 years ago, one day digital camera will be ten, a hundred, a thousand times better than what they are today. You can find it sad or be excited about it, it doesn't change the fact that it will happen. In fact, it is a bit narrow-minded to think otherwise. And let me stress again that film will never disappear, and I am fully happy with it. I am not one of those "digital is better" type of guy. I am just saying that digital will improve and get better, while celluloid will plateau due to its intrinsic nature that takes up physical space. There's only so much space around us that we can grant the medium we shoot on, and it would be impractical to shoot on something five times as large as an IMAX roll. On the other hand, you can definitely count on digital getting smaller and smaller, while it ups its resolution, storage capacity, dynamic range, and everything else. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if in ten years a new algorithm allowed digital cameras to mimic the qualities of celluloid to the extent that professional DoPs won't be able to say what's what. But really, again, the question is "Who cares?" Embrace the possibilities and leave out the rest. You don't like digital? Shoot film. You don't like film? Shoot digital? You like both? Shoot both. Film will always be around. Things just don't disappear, that's against the cyclical nature of the word. Things come and go, and move in and out of fashion. Again, look at vinyls. People have a craving for nostalgia, they'll keep film alive. In two hundred years, when digital cameras will capture images with a hundred times the resolution of 70mm film, people will still shoot celluloid, "just because". So let's celebrate.

If and when a sudden blackout happens, we'll all happily go back to shooting celluloid. Or maybe find something even better, to quote the great Dr. Malcolm, life finds a way. Who cares really? The point is that having a choice is good for us, not a threat.

I'll leave the attempts at personal insults aside because, frankly, I'm so above that :) . Let's just pretend your post was as courteous as it should be. There is no irony in the fact that the new SW films will be shot on film. There would be if Lucas was making them though. He is not. What this shows is that Abrams prefers film, when Lucas favoured digital. You are discussing filmmakers' personal tastes as if they were somehow indicative of a general, absolute truth, which they are not. Lucas wanted to go in the direction of the all-digital, which like it or not is happening. It's not a matter of right and wrong, or better and worse. Digital will improve until it has surpassed film in every single way, except for its nostalgia value, and you'd be fooling yourself if you thought otherwise. That doesn't mean film should or will be buried at all, but as a physical medium, it has limitations that digital will never encounter. In theory, there is nothing stopping technology to reach 100K, 1000K, 1,000,000K digital cameras, and people will get used to those and find film to be severely lacking in all but this nostalgia factor, which also allows vinyl records to survive - some would say "thrive" - in the age of iTunes. Do I want 1000K digital cameras? As of today, I couldn't care less. I'm happy with the way things are now. But I'm even happier to be able to choose. The reason digital is improving is not because someone somewhere decided that it would be so, but because experienced and trusted filmmakers chose to trust digital, and put it on the front of the stage so that more people would notice it and rally behind it (or against it) and things would start happening. I think Lucas has done his part. On a related note, I don't think Jar Jar Binks was Episode II's biggest problem either. Clumsy dialogues, wooden acting, uninspired set pieces and cartoony action were. Jar Jar had perhaps 20 seconds of screen time in Episode II - and I'll grant you that it's more than enough, but he wasn't the ubiquitous fool he was in Episode I, a film he genuinely helped bury into the abyss of mediocrity.

Episode II had many problems, and its resolution wasn't one of them. I'm sorry to say I don't really understand the purpose of that thread. Is it to diss one of the great pioneers of 20th century cinema? To poke fun at what is arguably his worst movie? Or is it yet another one of those "Film is and will always remain better than digital" nonsense that misses the point that both can coexist and live happily ever after? Lucas did not choose digital over film to get what he thought would be a better picture. He did it to try and get people to notice and invest in digital, so that it could develop and achieve the status that it has today. When people start shooting with 50+K digital cameras in the future, they'll have Lucas and his 1440x1080 movie to thank - in part - because he had the guts to try and shoot a hugely popular film with an emerging, experimental technology. And this is how things get made, by experimenting, noticing the flaws and improving upon them. There are far better films than Episode II that were shot - partly or entirely - on DV format. I'm thinking about 28 Days Later and INLAND EMPIRE, to name but two of them. Let's not forget that what makes or breaks a movie is the idea(s) behind it, not how many lines it can fit on one frame.

Well, I am by no means a cinematographer, but I don't really see how the size of the screen should affect your choice of lens at all. In a nutshell: Prime lenses - higher quality (sharper, crisper pictures) - Wider aperture (which allows you to get less depth of field) - more expensive Zoom lenses - More flexibility - less expensive Now of course, this also depends on the make and model of the lenses you are using, and a high-end zoom lens will get you a better picture than a low-end prime lens. The questions you need to ask yourself are more about flexibility and DoF than about the size of the screen. Do you have access to a follow focus? A focus puller? How good is s/he? Are you shooting night scenes? day scenes? Interiors? Exteriors? Do you have access to lights? Will there be camera moves? Are you shooting handheld? On a tripod? Will the actors move around a lot? The 5D is notorious for being a nightmare when it comes to focus. If you are shooting at wide apertures, you'd better make sure your actors hit their marks and that your focus puller is reliable, otherwise the focus will be all over the place. If you don't want to shoot wide open, then that's one less advantage in favour of prime lenses. If you have the budget for it, you should go for one zoom lens that covers all the major focal lengths you plan to use (whatever they are), as well as two prime lenses. An example of lens package would be a 24-70mm zoom lens, a 50mm prime lens and maybe an 85mm prime lens. However if you like wide angles and do not plan on using longer focal lengths, you could go with a 16-35mm zoom lens, a 20mm prime lens, and a 35mm prime lens. If you only like longer lenses, then go with a 70-200mm zoom lens, an 85mm prime and a 120mm prime lens. It's all down to what you want to use depending on your tastes and how practical it would be for your short (confined spaces, etc.). In the event that you can only afford one lens, go for a zoom lens. They are -usually- cheaper, and will afford more variety than if you shoot everything using the same focal length. Unless that serves the story! Hope that helps

Congratulations Richard. Must be a blast to see the end product made directly available to the masses!

A lot of directors and DPs have their favourite, "signature" focal lengths. Ridley Scott rarely if ever uses anything wider than an 85mm lens. Like so many other things in this business, there are no specific rules. You can pick what you like, or what is the most practical for a given situation. If you have to shoot handheld or in confined spaces, you'll have a hard time with longer lenses... There's an aesthetic choice that can be made, but if you're unsure you can also take a look at your story and identify the shots that would benefit from a certain type of lens in order to better represent a character's journey or state of mind. To isolate a character and make them appear extremely small in a vast open space for example, the distortions created by a wide angle will be exactly what you're looking for.

Good job! I really like it. I now feel like watching Apocalypse Now, for some reason ;-)

I thought so too at first, and it is certainly true in the case of Star Wars anyway, but if we look at LOTR, there was a good deal of digital FX in them. With a few exceptions, namely the infamous "Legolas-jumps-on-horse", that looked horrendous because the animation was off, the LOTR films looked great (Gollum, The giant talking and walking trees, the ghosts from the third instalment, the creatures seen here and there, etc...) while the goblins and orcs from The Hobbit look extremely fake. I particularly hated that Goblin king from the first hobbit film, and that white orc who is shaping up to be the big villain of the new trilogy, but looks like he is made of PVC.

I meant that the special effects from the original trilogy, which was shot on film, look far more convincing that any of the special effects from the prequel trilogy, shot on digital. I did not mean to say that film is better for special effects driven movies. But there are certainly examples of series of films where the instalments shot on film look far superior to their digital counterparts. Like Star Wars, which had prequels looking like TV cartoons all the way through. Or yes, like the Hobbit, which suffers from the exact same thing, while LOTR looked beautiful (of course, there are always exceptions, and it would be easy to point to a particular shot in the LOTR trilogy that looked crap, such as the bowing crowd moment mentioned above. However, taking the whole movies into consideration, the film instalments looked far more real than the digital ones).

I also think he may have meant Star Wars as in "A New Hope" (1977). And he would have a point.

I second everything that has been said. Another great movie by Spike Jonze. Required viewing.

Hello, I find it very odd that your image is totally black at f5... What ISO and shutter speed were you using? The 5D's biggest advantage is also its most annoying feature: It is always an uphill battle to get deep focus shots with it. Have you considered using a 7D instead? Are you using a prime or zoom lens? Do you have access to more practicals? Different light bulbs? Lamp shades? Is the lamp in the foreground meant to be switched off?

Oh and how about the WALL-E influences as well?

Yeah, well to be honest I thought Oblivion had a lot in common with a lot of different recent SF movies, not just Moon. I remember spotting some District 9 here and there as well. And the plot made heavy use of the big SF tropes that have been around since the genre became popular in the 60s. I was able to predict all the major beats long before they appeared on screen. Even the score sounded familiar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVm_ljDSdwA, around the 40 seconds mark). Not really a criticism though I suppose. It's true that everything has been done before, and it's all become about how you put your own twist on old ideas. I didn't really see a twist there however.

Apparently (Apparently), Oblivion was written in 2005, but Kosinski was having a hard time selling his screenplay at the time, so he had a comic-book studio turn it into an as-of-yet unreleased graphic novel first, which was then used to get movie studios on board. So yeah, Oblivion and Moon have a lot in common, but if you believe the official word, it's all fortuitous.

Haven't seen it yet, but could it all be intentional? I thought the idea to make all these flamboyant, self-conscious characters rather fitting if you consider they are all con-men, pretending to be something they're not. A totally exaggerated, over-the-top form also seems like a good choice to me based on the subject matter and outrageous retro-70s look they were going for. But it would have to be well done of course, and not just feel like a rehash of all the similar films that came before.

More like 1200 pages, actually.

Movies: - Blade Runner, Ridley Scott - The Mirror, Andrei Tarkovsky - Mulholland Drive, David Lynch Directors: - David Lynch - Andrei Tarkovsky - Georges Méliès Cinematographers: - Vittorio Storaro - Jordan Cronenweth - Roger Deakins

I would agree if the rich were the people not drinking, not smoking, not eating out (in unbelievably expensive restaurants), and not gambling. Because it would mean that the poor are poor because they spend what the rich save up by not doing those things. The problem is that the rich actually do all these things too. So being poor or rich has nothing to do with these activities. Why would a "poorer" person not be entitled to the same sins and unnecessary luxuries that the richer take for granted? It makes no sense. Again, that would be true if all the people working in this industry had made it by offering something special. But that is not the case. Many people end up being successful in this industry even though they have nothing to offer.

That's very arrogant. There doesn't have to be a divide between smart and entertaining, and I don't like it when people from either side of the argument argue one's merits over the other. The industry should strive for big entertaining blockbusters which also provide food for thought, move and inform people. As for the "cinema you don't see", it has always existed, even back when film was invented. There have always been unseen, unheard of jewels that went under the radar and died a quick death. Is it a shame? Certainly. Are people free to investigate and find out about independently released gems if they so wish? Absolutely. I know I spend all my time at my local arthouse cinema and rarely ever go to watch a film in a multiplex anymore. If I'm free to do it, then everybody else is, and that "small" cinema is doing very well. Let's not be overly pedantic here and claim that we know what's best for others. If people swarm up to see the latest Fast and Furious, then maybe that's because it genuinely ticks all their boxes.

Some websites have embedded video ads on their pages, that only start playing XX seconds or minutes after the pages have been opened. I'm not sure I've ever encountered these on YouTube, but this could be what you're dealing with here. The good news is that they are not superimposed over nor embedded within the soundtrack of the video you're watching, they're just regular video ads which should be fairly easy to spot if you scroll down the page. The bad news is I don't know of a good way to avoid them. The only thing to do is wait for them to start and pause them. You can also refresh the page and hope that the following one has a different, silent ad on it. Or avoid those websites altogether of course...

I absolutely agree with that statement, if we're talking about the salary (and not the financial rewards that come with a major success at the box-office). And it applies to many other jobs. Certainly not surgeons, etc., but professional athletes and bank execs... The amount of money they make is staggering, which isn't the problem in itself. The problem is that it is disproportionate to what they bring to society in return. Anyway, I absolutely agree that no producer should earn millions -again, as a fee- if the rest of the crew barely get enough to afford a rent and food. Now I'd really like to get a few examples of actual cases where producers were granting themselves tens of thousand of dollars, pounds, euros as a fee and did not pay the crew far above their minimum or recommended wage as well. Social injustice does exist, but I'm sure most producers have nothing to do with it. As Freya has pointed out several times already, the problem comes from the system, not the producers. And if that recent French law is anything to go by, we could even say that producers actively fight against social injustices regarding the financial security of their crews. We too often tend to forget that producers, even though they are at the top of the food chain when it comes to the microcosm of a film crew, also have to answer to a lot of people. There is always a bigger fish.