Thoughts on Film and Digital

[Kenny N Suleimanagich]

I keep an X-Rite Passport in my bag and shoot it at the head of every setup. Makes it a lot faster in post and especially with getting dailies back. Though the dailies timer I work with tends to get things the way I aim shoot them anyway. I try and keep it a few feet away from the frame in whatever lighting I’m going to be shooting in primarily. If anything it makes scenes match better, especially if it’s run-and-gun doc work.

My friend and I shot this using one in every setup. The artist, who also directed it, wanted a very specific look referencing documentaries from the late 1980s, which were often 16mm and have lately experienced new HD revivals from their original VHS releases. For the rooftop material, we switched from Daylight to Tungsten, taking care to also shoot a chart at the tail of one stock and head of another.

 

Edited July 5, 2016 by Kenny N Suleimanagich

[Satsuki Murashige]

Also, I want to be clear that my preference for film imaging comes down to very specific imaging artifacts. Very few people other than cinematographers would probably notice or care. Little happy accidents I had forgotten about that are very minor in and of themselves, but when taken together make the image feel a bit unpredictable and thus exciting, at least to me.

 

- Creamy highlight roll-off and the freedom to radically overexpose. (Girl on stairs lit by sweeping 1x1 mirror probably 6+ stops over, I didn't bother to meter it)

 

- Red halation around highlights as the anti-halation backing starts to fail. (Girl tying hair in bun, subtle glow around her left arm and neckline)

 

- Gate flare. (see above)

 

- Rich color depth in deep shadows, especially skintones. (Girl's shoulders in apartment hallway lit by tungsten practical 3 stops under, wood staircase banisters, bright orange fingernails 2 stops under in hair-tying shot)

 

- Cool daylight blue rendering on tungsten film. (Apt interiors ambient skylight filtering thru cyan curtains)

 

- Film grain enhancing hard textured surfaces, especially backlit tile. (Apt exterior hallway, aluminum kettles in kitchen)

 

- Film grain softening skin texture while keeping eyelashes and hairs sharp. (Exterior CU in hard midday sun)

 

- More forgiving of slightly soft shots. (CU exterior street)

 

- Organic mechanical shutter motion blur (hands)

 

I've also certainly shot a lot of crap on film stock in the past, so film is not some magic cure-all for badly shot footage. But I think if I had shot the exact same thing with an Epic, Alexa, or F65, it would have lost something special in my opinion. Actually, I think the F65 would have looked the closest.

[Satsuki Murashige]

Do you have to fill the screen to get enough resolution for it to work when you shoot, or can you simply crop it in and DaVinci figures out the rest?

 

I shoot the chart so it fills the frame. I don't let Davinci do any automation, I just eyeball the chart until it looks right and check scopes. The chart works great because you can see skin tones and CMY/RGB all at the same time. Plus the gloss black patch gives a better estimation of where to set your blacks without crushing too much.

[Satsuki Murashige]

Satsuki,

 

Thanks for the explanation. I wasn't criticizing your images. I'm guessing you shot without an 85, hence the cool tones throughout, but the skintones, particularly in pic #4 seem as if they have been timed warmer.

It's all good Stuart! I didn't have enough stop for the 85 inside, so I just went without for the whole shoot. The actress's apartment had white walls and was all lit with natural ambient skylight, so it was quite a bit cooler in color temp. She also had cyan curtains in the bedroom.

 

The stairwell had a skylight with direct sun bouncing around, hence the warmer color temp. We used the patch of sun to reflect back the 1x1 mirror at her, as if reflected from passing cars below.

 

The hallway just had a few dim tungsten practicals overhead (probably 40w or less) so it was even warmer in there.

[Satsuki Murashige]

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXtzcViZPGA

Looks dope Kenny! Love the colors.

[Giray Izcan]

Tyler,

Did you say you have never shot charts before? Hmm...interesting. Coming from such a huge advocate for film acquisition. I can't keep up with your wide array of expertise ranging from a camera tech to cinematography to post production. I must say wow... I admire you I suppose. I wish I could say the same myself.

[Giray Izcan]

To dig in even deeper, your post production expertise includes editing and color timing. Should I say one man band?

[Tyler Purcell]

Did you say you have never shot charts before? Hmm...interesting.

I haven't tried using charts in DaVinci, which is what my post was about. Sorry it wasn't clear enough.

 

Should I say one man band?

Unfortunately. As I always say, I know 80% of everything and 100% of nothing. :(

[Aapo Lettinen]

the reason why I am shooting film at the moment is that it is both cheaper and more practical for the stuff I do (hilarious isn't it :lol: )

for getting VISUALLY the same impact I would need to rent something like an Amira or Alexa Mini and it would cost about 5x per day compared to shooting on 35mm (I'm shooting small amounts per day and almost only MOS stuff). It is of course great to get a good looking image most of the time but the main reason is practical. I also shoot a lot with digital cameras and I'm happy with them.

 

btw why anyone would want to shoot film with only a SINGLE look? I know that Kodak has aimed to it and the main reason people like Alexas is because they emulate that "universal Kodak movie look" but still it's kinda boring... you can shoot the "Kodak look" either with grains (real film) or without grains (Alexa) or fake grains (Alexa + film emulation) :blink:

[Kenny N Suleimanagich]

Looks dope Kenny! Love the colors.

 

Thanks man, wish it could have looked as cool as yours :)

[Satsuki Murashige]

Thanks man, wish it could have looked as cool as yours :)

I thought it did. Unless you meant color temperature-wise - then for sure it didn't :)

[Shawn Martin]

Maybe this isn't a very useful or constructive post, but why not be honest: When it comes to the differences between 35mm and digital, I've found, especially within the last year, or year and a half, that I've just stopped caring. (I've stopped caring about a lot of things, actually.)

 

For years I used to be all rah-rah about 35mm, being a projectionist who ran a ton of 35mm for years before my theater went digital, and a photographer who's taken a ton of 35mm and digital pictures. Now it's like, "whatever", especially seeing so much D-Cinema since 2012 or so.

 

I just watched the all-digital Our Kind of Traitor tonight, and besides some of the glaring, blurry wide-angle shots and what looked like some GoPro footage, I didn't really notice or care.

 

Some 35mm stuff is even becoming annoying to watch, for some reason, like the daytime scenes of Nightcrawler.

[Aapo Lettinen]

if the movie is good and the format choice is justified, then it should not matter. some films work best when shot on film and some work best on digital.

of course the shooting format matters but more of if it's a wrong choice and thus makes the end product worse than it could be

[Manu Delpech]

Maybe this isn't a very useful or constructive post, but why not be honest: When it comes to the differences between 35mm and digital, I've found, especially within the last year, or year and a half, that I've just stopped caring. (I've stopped caring about a lot of things, actually.)

 

For years I used to be all rah-rah about 35mm, being a projectionist who ran a ton of 35mm for years before my theater went digital, and a photographer who's taken a ton of 35mm and digital pictures. Now it's like, "whatever", especially seeing so much D-Cinema since 2012 or so.

 

I just watched the all-digital Our Kind of Traitor tonight, and besides some of the glaring, blurry wide-angle shots and what looked like some GoPro footage, I didn't really notice or care.

 

Some 35mm stuff is even becoming annoying to watch, for some reason, like the daytime scenes of Nightcrawler.

 

Sad to hear.

[Tyler Purcell]

Maybe this isn't a very useful or constructive post, but why not be honest: When it comes to the differences between 35mm and digital, I've found, especially within the last year, or year and a half, that I've just stopped caring. (I've stopped caring about a lot of things, actually.)

That's how the studio system win's and the little guy looses. The more we don't care, the more we're forced to do whatever the industry tells us.

[Phil Rhodes]

I honestly can't get into all this conspiracy theory stuff.

 

Digital acquisition has been very successful because it does very similar things while being gigantically cheaper.

 

I don't relish the loss of classic techniques or the skills associated with them, and I hope they can be maintained, but we don't need to invoke tinfoil hat theories about this.

 

P

[Satsuki Murashige]

To each their own, I suppose! It's good that you're happy with the choices available to you. :)

 

I have also stopped caring what other people decide to shoot on. Whatever works for each person is great. I'm just realizing now that film is an intrinsic filter through which I view the world. I always pre-visualize images while reading a script and prepping a project. I was pleasantly surprised to re-discover that on a good day, shooting film gets me something better than what I had in my head.

 

Most of the digital projects that I've shot and graded in the last few years have gone thru Filmconvert and a minimum of 3 nodes to achieve something close to that same feeling. Probably a better colorist (which I most certainly am not!) would be able to get there faster and simpler. It's been a lot of work and rather frustrating at times. In comparison, the 35mm I shot recently was so quick and easy to get the image where I wanted it you couldn't even call it a grade, more like a quick one-light correction. Very liberating!

 

So it's an issue of meeting my own expectations more than anything else. Nobody else would probably care, but I need to feel that I've lived up to the pictures in my head. Maybe those images will change someday, but I don't think the itch to hit the bullseye will ever go away.

[Tyler Purcell]

I don't relish the loss of classic techniques or the skills associated with them, and I hope they can be maintained, but we don't need to invoke tinfoil hat theories about this.

You're absolutely right Phil, but from what I've heard, film's disappearance was highly political. There is absolutely more going on behind the scenes then meets the eye. You don't just close all the big labs in the world simultaneously and physically destroy the only two high speed duplicators left, unless you really want something gone. The stories I've heard from many different people are absolutely disgusting. How DeLuxe literally rolled both 70mm flatbeds into a garbage can for the insurance money for instance.

[Brent Powers]

Well, the more of us who press for film, the better. It needn't be an armed uprising or rallies and candidates, just keep the old (and soon new) cameras rolling, and film will continue to be an option. I am an amateur, an enthusiast. No one is standing over me, telling me what format I should use; I can shoot with an old Kodak or a refurbished Beaulieu, anything at all. But then, I have no influence on producers or the content providing establishment. It's up to you chaps in the profession to bring your influence to bear upon the matter. There seem to be some passionate members here. Unite and fight, etc.

 

You know, we do have to thank Guy Maddin, but that's another thread I intend to start.

[Stuart Brereton]

film's disappearance was highly political. There is absolutely more going on behind the scenes then meets the eye.

It was simple economics. When high quality digital projection became possible, it meant the studios didn't have to pay for thousands of expensive prints to be made. Without selling tens of millions of feet of print stock, Kodak and Fuji couldn't sustain production on just negative sales alone, and the labs couldn't survive either. Fuji got out of the game and Kodak went into Chapter 11. The labs that survived longest were the ones with the highest volume of throughput, and that were integrated into other areas of the industry.

 

 

You don't just close all the big labs in the world simultaneously

They didn't. It happened over a period of years.

[David Mullen ASC]

The studios had deals with Kodak and Fuji for prints because this was a major cost factor, especially if you were talking about 4000 to 6000 prints that had to be shipped worldwide for the same opening date in order to minimize piracy.

 

What kept them from transitioning to digital projection faster was mainly about getting the theater owners to go along with it, since most of them had 35mm projectors that had paid for themselves years ago. But between the deals they made with theater chains to subsidize the cost of the transition plus the 3D craze, which gave theater owners an excuse to buy digital projectors and then charge more for tickets, the demand for 35mm prints suddenly dropped like a rock, and it was printing that was the main profit generators for the labs, Kodak and Fuji.

 

In terms of television production, the SAG contract dispute (in 2009 I think) allowed production companies to push TV production into digital so that they could be made under the AFTRA contract. TV production was probably the biggest user of film negative in both 16mm and 35mm, and since the AFTRA contract required digital origination, it allowed the production companies to force the creative people into shooting digitally. This was the sudden drop in film negative usage that caused labs like in Vancouver to close shop within a few years. I recall an exec at Technicolor in Vancouver saying that they had something like an 80% drop in business in just one year because of the switch in TV production away from film.

 

You can call that a political reason or a financial reason, in Hollywood the two are tied together. From the network standpoint, all that mattered was reducing production costs and by 2009, they were chafing at the bit to get showrunners and TV directors to switch from film. At places like Showtime, they had pushed for digital years before everyone else.

 

So between the loss of film printing due to the transition of digital projection, accelerated by the 3D craze, and the loss of film negative usage due to TV switching over to digital and using the SAG contract delay as a convenient excuse, the drop was fast enough to cause a number of labs to go out of business. People had expected the transition to be nice, even, and gradual but they didn't factor in external events, just as the transition from HD tape to data storage was pushed forward by the 2011 Japanese Tsunami that shut down tape production for awhile.

[Tyler Purcell]

Yea, I always forget about the SAG AFTRA deal, that was a huge turning point.

 

Still... the ending of release prints closed many theaters, there were plenty of prints being made, it was just less quantity. Had the labs stuck around, we'd have choices/options for theatrical runs and theaters that couldn't afford digital projectors. It's not that simple though, when you rip the labs to shreds, it's over.

 

Those lower end theaters that switched to digital, they have worse equipment then people at home do. It was a HUGE downgrade for those people and it really sucks. It was those theaters the studio's wanted to put out of business in the long run, they hate those low-price places. So in the end, they got their wish and no more film, so no more small theaters.

 

Plus, 150,000 jobs were lost between 2009 and 2013. Shippers, lab technicians, projectionists, service technicians... all gone. Now some computer nerd sets up the digital projectors. Lame. :(

[Tyler Purcell]

It was simple economics. When high quality digital projection became possible, it meant the studios didn't have to pay for thousands of expensive prints to be made.

Prints were $1500 a pop for most movies. Plus, a lot of theaters were already digital. So print use was already decreasing at an exponential rate.

 

Without selling tens of millions of feet of print stock, Kodak and Fuji couldn't sustain production on just negative sales alone, and the labs couldn't survive either.

That's very true, but at the same time the demand only went away because people were forced to change. There was a deadline set of the end of 2013 for all theaters to be digital.

 

They didn't. It happened over a period of years.

Actually technicolor and Deluxe went under at nearly the same time at the end of 2013 I believe. Both for different reasons, but both labs were busy making prints the weeks before the cut off date. They were fully working facilities with no reason to shut their doors. Technicolor didn't want to invest in another lease and Deluxe's owner, felt film was dead, so they closed up shop.

 

Had there not been a single date... had there been leeway for theaters to PAY for their own prints, instead of the studio's (many would have done that), this problem would have never happened. We'd still have prints today. Instead the studio's promised the theaters more profits and less money spent, but in the long run, the theaters pay MORE for showing movies then they did with film prints and the cost to maintain the digital projectors his higher. So in the end, it's FAR more expensive for everyone to do digital distribution then film distribution, that's why the ticket prices have skyrocketed.

 

In the end, the industry is dying very fast. It's dying because the ticket prices are high, which is a direct result of this move from film to digital. Had the status quo continued, with a slow ramp up to digital over 20 years, things would be very different today and I bet ticket prices would be A LOT less then they are today.

[Stuart Brereton]

Those lower end theaters that switched to digital, they have worse equipment then people at home do. It was a HUGE downgrade for those people and it really sucks. It was those theaters the studio's wanted to put out of business in the long run, they hate those low-price places. So in the end, they got their wish and no more film, so no more small theaters.

 

Why would a studio want to put a small theater out of business? Those places are paying to exhibit their movies, and they're not competing with first run movie multiplexes. Saying that 'they hate those low price places' makes no sense.

[Tyler Purcell]

The big theater chains own the studios.