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GOODBYE FILM, HELLO DIGITAL!


Alexander Winfield

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If you look at musicians today, many of them tour and make money from concerts and merchandise. All of this because they’re not making money from record sales like the music industry used to. Maybe this is the future for the filmmaker, traveling the state or country with their film. Maybe not playing in traditional venues like movie theaters but renting out cool locals where their movie could be shown providing a unique experience. If the talent comes along, that’ll be even more of a boost.

 

I believe musicians, especially 'rock band' types, and that music business was more like publishing, where the band received 'advances' on record sales, and were under contract to produce a number of records. This led to a state where the band 'owed their souls to the company store'.

 

The record companies owned the 'band', their 'works', etc. and in many cases leaving nothing for the band, or at least not enough.

 

The 'high' life style of course didn't help the band in money management...

 

In some cases this led to involvement in various mafia schemes, and the like.

 

The 'mega performances' aside, there has been a rise in small venue performances. The 'internet' digital age and even 'piracy' has not stopped this process.

 

For me the last rock concert I attended was at a university baseball field... Here's a poster...

 

temppink5.jpg

 

 

Pink Floyd may still be a name some set of people recognize, and still see on the concert tour... but Hot Tuna???... Leon Russell???

 

But you know what... from the Internet references those guys are still around too...

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The whole film-digital story would look different if video cameras had only 25 to 50 ISO speed.

 

 

BBC's new Tudor drama "Wolf Hall" was apparently filmed with Alexa, at least for the candlelit scenes. Yet I think period movies always seem to look better originated on film. Maybe it's something to do with the colour palette, or the fact that we want a different kind of look, something special, not like your average modern soap/drama. Certainly Wolf Hall is exquisitively lit and filmed, but if Stanley Kubrick could do this kind of filming on 35mm all those years ago with Barry Lyndon, one wonders why film could not have been attempted. Better film-stock now and quite fast lenses for S.16. Yet I haven't noticed any new film dramas or documentaries on BBC, despite their apparent change of policy towards film.

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BBC's new Tudor drama "Wolf Hall" was apparently filmed with Alexa, at least for the candlelit scenes. Yet I think period movies always seem to look better originated on film. Maybe it's something to do with the colour palette, or the fact that we want a different kind of look, something special, not like your average modern soap/drama. Certainly Wolf Hall is exquisitively lit and filmed, but if Stanley Kubrick could do this kind of filming on 35mm all those years ago with Barry Lyndon, one wonders why film could not have been attempted. Better film-stock now and quite fast lenses for S.16. Yet I haven't noticed any new film dramas or documentaries on BBC, despite their apparent change of policy towards film.

 

I didn't have a problem with "Anonymous"(2011) shot with an Alexa... I'm sure there was an army of people with fire extinguishers just of the frame edge...

 

anonymous-foto-dal-film-1_mid.jpg

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It doesn't matter what materials and tools you use, be it oil paint or water colour, a biro from office works or charcoal, hand made paper or photocopy paper, film, video or digital. Or all of them.

 

It's about making something with whatever you can get your hands on, whether it's your first choice, or the very last thing you'd ever choose. But in these situations (or in any situation for matter) one shouldn't treat the materials and tools you use as inferior to any other material or tool. Why? Because otherwise you'll just create rubbish. If the materials or tools are not right, then just don't use them in the first place. But if you do use them (if you have to use them) then it's really about coming to terms with the nature of those materials and the tools that you have, and exploiting their particular characteristics. Sometimes it might require inventing a project to work with the materials at hand. The last thing you want to be doing is trying (and ultimately failing) to make them behave as if they were something other than what they are. Because when something tries to mimic something else, (unless that's the idea of course) the result is just so deeply unsatisfying. For you the filmmaker, let alone anyone who might watch it. It just ends up looking lame because it is lame.

 

So, for example, if you have to shoot 35mm film, where your first choice would have been mini-DV (just to pose a counter-intuitive example) then come to terms with the nature of 35mm film and what can be done with that. Don't try to make it behave or look like mini-DV. Unless that's the idea of course.

 

C

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Yes the new 4K Black Magic camera footage looks really nice for video, a real step up..... from traditional broadcast video. Technically, it's very sharp with intense color but for some reason the image hurts my brain. That's because film and video affect the brain differently. The difference is very apparent to me and I think it is to the general public. It's just that the general public can't explain the difference and naturally assume that everything they see is some kind of digital image. That's what the hype promotes while film information is silent. I could easily shoot the music video i'm working on with a decent Canon 7D. It will be sharp and of high technical quality for what it is, But will look like every other DIY video project out there which is forgotten the next day. I'm not against video for it's many useful applications of story telling or getting a message out, but film is art while video is utilitarian. When people watch my S8 films on Bluray, they are fascinated by even the most mundane content. Why? because that's what film does to your brain.

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So, for example, if you have to shoot 35mm film, where your first choice would have been mini-DV (just to pose a counter-intuitive example) then come to terms with the nature of 35mm film and what can be done with that. Don't try to make it behave or look like mini-DV. Unless that's the idea of course.

 

C

 

Great point, Carl, as to the limitation of each tool, while knowing each tool's strong points.

 

 

That's because film and video affect the brain differently.

 

Yes, I find when I watch film, my eyes are rested, I can concentrate on the story. But when it's digitally shot (depending what the content is), I find it to feel more like work.

 

But I still do watch digitally shot stuff, I really enjoy Celebrity Apprentice, and stuff like that, but as for drama and cinema, I tend to watch older stuff on tv that was shot on film.

 

In regards to story, I always go back to the police cam on the cruiser dashboard philosophy. There are entire shows of crazy stuff that has been captured on police dash cams and many of times, the viewers are glued to the screen, the picture sucks (although has been getting better lately), but the viewer is watching those ten police cars chase this one guy who just lost a rim on the freeway and is pushing his car to the very end, then trying to get away on foot after that. It's the story and picture matching that's keeping that viewer interested.

 

A realism story told with a realism picture works. But if you try to tell a cinematic story with a realism picture, will that work as well? I'll leave that to you to decide. My personal opinion, it hasn't worked that well. But because of tech, $$$, the latest thing, people will reason that a cinematic story could be told with a realism picture.

 

When I first saw the Hobbit, 48 fps, IMAX, digitally shot on the red, I'm sorry, but it just didn't match the adventurous storybook tale that is the Lord of the Rings collection. The first third of the movie looked like a soap opera. I didn't even bother to see the second two films, and I was a diehard fan. Now I did see Titanic in 3D IMAX with the 1.78 aspect ratio (as opposed to the common 2.35 as it was normally released) and it was AMAZING. I felt like I was on the ship and seeing more of the frame was a treat.

 

So the picture has to match the story. I guess it's this simple equation that every artist should have in their arsenal.

 

One thing digital cameras have not perfected, not sure if they could, IMO is motion blur. In that regard, film will always be more dream-like.

 

 

Great posts!

 

Alexander

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I think the Black Magic camera footage looks like stills from a point and shoot digital camera. The highlights still scream "VIDEO!!" to me. The colors seem odd, as well. Too saturated and not natural looking. Film is so much nicer. What has digital brought us? It's brought us washed out colors and low contrast, overly manipulated color at "glorious" 2K... most of the time. Seriously, what is better about digital in the end? You don't get real blacks in your image, the projection resolution is pathetic, and the colors are more often than not, wretched.

 

I'm sorry, but it's sad the way things have gone in cinema. The storylines have changed, too. Movies have to constantly be moving, have background music, or constant action. There's never any quiet time in movies anymore. Most people probably can't sit through 2001 anymore, whereas it was popular in it's day. Sorry if this seems like a general rant, but as someone that is visually aware, digital cinema and television just doesn't seem all that great.

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Yes the new 4K Black Magic camera footage looks really nice for video, a real step up..... from traditional broadcast video. Technically, it's very sharp with intense color but for some reason the image hurts my brain. That's because film and video affect the brain differently.

 

I guess I'm immune to these sorts of effects. On my BMD Pocket camera I shoot log format, and if anything the visual 'out of the camera' is incredibly 'flat', and 'unsaturated'.

 

I'm just getting into the the 'how to grade' learning curve, but all my clips have to be manipulated into 'intense color'.

 

So it maybe that many people grade their BMD content to 'sharper/saturateder' colors...

 

There is the issue of no Optical Low Pass Filter, which may lead to 'sharper' but also more noticeable moire under the 'right' conditions... Film film covers 'moire' a bit by the random grain size/pattern, which really is akin to introducing a random noise signal, which soften 'jaggies' and thus reduces that effect.

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The "picture match the story" concept also works the other way: to create a story (for want of a better term) that matches the picture.

 

Or better, to treat both (picture and story) as a result of some prior concept - where the subsequent division, into picture on the one hand, and story on the other, is purely for organisational (or administrative) purposes, rather than any creative end.

 

To write a film can be done entirely using the camera as one's pen, and the film stock as one's paper.

 

And by "camera" can be meant "printer", "editor" or "projector" for that matter.

 

Everything else can be regarded as preparation and/or rehersal, rather than a necessity.

 

C

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There is the issue of no Optical Low Pass Filter, which may lead to 'sharper' but also more noticeable moire under the 'right' conditions... Film film covers 'moire' a bit by the random grain size/pattern, which really is akin to introducing a random noise signal, which soften 'jaggies' and thus reduces that effect.

 

There is no "moire" in film. Its not hidden. It's just not existent in the first place. Moire is a result of high frequencies in a signal masquerading as lower frequencies in the sample (and called "aliasing" for just such a reason). It is caused by a sampling frequency being lower than higher frequencies in the sampled signal. An interference pattern (or moire pattern) results and it's the visual equivalent of the beat phenomenon in audio.

 

Film does not have any cutoff in it's sampling frequency. Indeed to speak of sampling frequency in film is to entertain a fiction of sorts. For film to exhibit moire, the grains in the film would have to be arranged, at least, in a repeating pattern.

 

So there's no need to employ any anti-aliasing system (such as an optical low pass filter) in the film exposure system.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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I should add to that last post that if you see any evidence of moire in a film transfer, it's the result of the transfer, not the film. Look at the same film in a film projector and the moire will not be there.

 

Film can also reproduce moire created prior to the film exposure, for example, if rephotographing a digital image that already exhibits moire, the moire can be reproduced in the film.

 

Film can either reproduce pre-existent moire patterns, or otherwise mediate (without in any way making any contribution of it's own) any moire created in the relationship between source and destination.

 

Film itself does not play any role in the creation of moire patterns.

 

Carl

Edited by Carl Looper
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If there is any moire created in a film transfer (as distinct from any pre-existant moire baked into the film) you can get rid of it by redoing the transfer with an optical low pass filter in the transfer. The filter needs to be customised to the sampling frequency of the digital sensor used in the transfer. Indeed this fact proves the film itself is not responsible for the moire in the transfer. The effect is due entirely to the sensor being used. Where moire has already been baked into the film (due to moire being created prior to the film) there's not much one can do other than go back and reshoot the offending signal with a low pass filter - but once again - a filter tailored to the sampling frequency of the last sensor in the mediation chain. There may be some computational methods to identify moire patterns in a digital result and do something clever with them - but it wouldn't be a one click solution.

 

Another approach would be to build a new type of digital sensor in which the sensor cells are not arranged in a regular pattern in the first place, but could be arranged more like the sensors in our eyes (or the sensors in film). I suspect some sensor developers have probably already twigged to this if not already designing or even manufacturing such sensors. I don't know if any do this as I haven't been keeping up with the latest innovations in sensor designs. Another method is to randomly jitter a sensor, perhaps using some peizo-electric material, in which the jitter is also factored into the encoder/decoder pipeline. Again, I don't know if any sensors are doing this but ideas along this line can go some way to avoiding the creation of interference patterns, and possibly yielding better looking digital images anyway.

 

C

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....Another approach would be to build a new type of digital sensor in which the sensor cells are not arranged in a regular pattern in the first place, but could be arranged more like the sensors in our eyes (or the sensors in film). ........

 

Another method is to randomly jitter a sensor......

 

 

Aaton had a vibrating sensor. You may still be able to read up on it on their website.

 

As to the idea of having a sensor with randomly distributed, sized and shaped pixels with each pixel somehow expressing the photon distribution within that pixel rather than just counting those photons...There may be some hope there. But isn't this a bit like trying to reinvent the human genome, or any other naturally occuring genome, and then patenting it. Is there a hole deep enough to hide from the shame of even intending to try.

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If you wanted to test out "random" sensors, you could, in theory, take 3 sensors each with a random distribution/size of pixels, through a prism block and then use a random number generator to decide which of the 3 sensors to record for any given frame which would give you 3 options per frame or 282429536481 combinations per second @ 24p.

 

Random thought for the night.

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Hey Adrian,

The pictures appearing under your name are really intriguing. Is this one the "I've just had a bourbon" one?

 

You think that three set pixel distributions are enough. I was thinking more of a quasi organic structure of photo sites that could quckly change (hey, why limit ourselves when imagining the future?)

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Ha; it's my facebook profile picture. I've been playing with layering multiple images together and aligning them etc; just fun.

 

I think that 3 would be a good start, since we had/have the ability to put them behind a prism block and pull out some old HD Optics.

 

Ideally, there's be someway to actually vary the photo-sites on a singular chip, and randomly distribute them; but I think that's some material science currently a bit out there.

 

One could think, perhaps, of the way cuddlefish change color by "contracting" and thus changing the optical properties of areas-- one could think to try to do this to get some form of bayer data; but then that wouldn't be able to be random if you were to be able to recreate your RBG data-- or so my tangential mind goes currently.

 

I think the easiest solution would be multiple chips each with a known distribution/pattern just randomly sampled in enough variations that you'd not see a repeated pattern over a few seconds; give the mind the chance to "forget," ya know?

 

anyway dunno if any of that would work and certainly don't have the technical expertise to do it; but a thought. If you know anyone who could actually do it; hell by all means put it in their ear.

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But isn't this a bit like trying to reinvent the human genome, or any other naturally occuring genome, and then patenting it. Is there a hole deep enough to hide from the shame of even intending to try.

 

Yes, I don't quite understand what the moral high ground would be for those who in anyway obtain any more advantage, over anyone else, out of a commonly acquirable god given concept. Even if patent law provides for just such an appalling idea.

 

But in general one isn't re-inventing the retina as such - or maybe one is - but it's more about being inspired by such. Isn't art about being inspired by nature? Well, some art is. In more formal terms there's a movement in industrial design called bio-mimicry which I think is a perfectly fine idea. A camera and lens is inspired by the eye. It's a form of knowledge - making such things.

 

C

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If we're looking for inspiration from an eye, we can see the eye doesn't need to change it's pattern of sensor cells on each tick of the tock (so to speak). However, the eye is is in motion, and this is also useful. Now interestingly we don't see the world swinging back and forth all over the shop using our eyes. Why we don't is a question. The answer is perhaps to be found in why we would think that would be the case in the first place. We no doubt think it from familiarity with cameras. So it's a matter of unthinking such.

 

For eye motion, a randomly vibrating sensor would be an adequate correlate. One could store some numbers regarding the sub-pixel position of the sensor, from one tick to the next tock. And of course, have a lookup table regarding the distribution pattern of the sensors. This information can then be used to "unthink" sensor data into the world of cartesian grids and conventional displays.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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... A camera and lens is inspired by the eye. It's a form of knowledge - making such things.

I always thought of a film camera that way. Are we suddenly not differentiating between a film rather than digital camera?

 

When examination of objects and the analysis of their parts becomes almost exclusively the means of knowing, as it has become in the modern world, then I don't think the "knowledge" word is well deserved.

 

Being inspired by a thing one has some resonance with the thing? Some sense of connection with something intrinsic to that thing? One hopes so, but many are just opportunistic eclectics who make use of some minor element or principal.

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Yes, we're moving into territory where instead of just choosing from this or that tool, or arguing the merits or otherwise of this or that tool, we're thinking of tools we might build ourselves.

 

Some experiments can be done along these lines using already available technology. For example, one might mount a digital camera on an XY positioning stage (or a rotational one) and jitter the stage around a little, storing data on the position of such and then processing the data to test certain ideas, and creating some sort of result. Needn't be R&D towards some brand new digital camera - can be just the basis for an artwork in it's right.

 

C

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Film does not have any cutoff in it's sampling frequency. Indeed to speak of sampling frequency in film is to entertain a fiction of sorts. For film to exhibit moire, the grains in the film would have to be arranged, at least, in a repeating pattern.

 

Film does have a cut off frequency, it is usually found in the MTF charts of the film. There are a number of other features of 'film' which contribute to the overall transfer function, such as random size and orientation of the film 'grains', photon scatter in the medium, etc. thus contributing to the filtering of 'sharp edges'

 

And both Digital and Film motion capture alias time such that 'wheels' appear to go 'reverse' etc.

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Film does not have a cut off frequency.

 

The cutoff in MTF graphs for film represents where the measurements are stopped - not where that which is being measured cuts out.. There is no significance in where the curve is terminated..

 

Its like counting to infinity - at some arbitrary point, you decide to stop counting, and just assume the rest. It doesn't mean the numbers themselves stop - only that you have wisely decided that there are better things to do in life than counting to infinity.

 

The same in an MTF graph. The choice of where to stop measuring frequency response is a choice you make - not a choice the film makes. And you'll typically choose that in terms of response - not in terms of frequency. So one might choose to stop making measurements below a 30% response level, or below a 10% response level.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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