Movies shot on film aren't dead!

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Steve Hoffman, Jul 3, 2003.

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  1. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    This is from Salon.com today.

    Film's not dead, damn it!
    Interviews with some of today's leading cinematographers -- the real
    magic-makers of the movies -- suggest that George Lucas' overhyped "digital
    revolution" is mostly marketing buzz.
    - - - - - - - - - - - -
    By Stephanie Zacharek

    July 3, 2003 | The way we see movies is about to change -- tomorrow. Or
    maybe the day after that. Then again, it might not happen until sometime
    next week. But according to what we've been told -- by the media, by some
    filmmakers and, perhaps most significantly, by the people who actually
    manufacture the necessary equipment -- we do know for sure that digital
    technology is poised to revolutionize the moviegoing experience.
    But not many people have asked the essential question: How are these movies
    going to look?
    The best people to ask are the ones who have the most at stake, the people
    who have built careers and reputations on knowing what it takes to make a
    movie look just so. Cinematographers are at the vanguard of the changing
    technology; many of them are familiarizing themselves quite rapidly, and
    happily, with digital editing processes, for one thing, particularly in the
    case of movies that feature lots of special effects.
    But last summer a controversial, and not exactly astutely researched, Los
    Angeles Times article depicted contemporary cinematographers as a bunch of
    aged Luddites quaking in their boots as they face an onslaught of bright
    youngsters brandishing fancy new digital cameras. At the center of the
    article was "Star Wars" emperor George Lucas, who had invited a group of
    big-name directors -- among them Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Zemeckis,
    Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg -- to his private screening room to sell
    them on the wonders of digital technology.
    The article was essentially just another version of the "Film is dead"
    rallying cry -- a triumphant shout that's been around for so long now that
    it's more like a feeble cough. Film isn't dead, although it is of course
    changing, and changing fast. But the Los Angeles Times article, and others
    like it, suggested that today's cinematographers are nervous about those
    changes, when in fact, they'd be the first to acknowledge that staying on
    top of them is part of their job. How many photographers, of any stripe, do
    you know who don't jump at the chance to fool around with new equipment?
    The cinematographer's artistry depends on knowing what tools to use --
    digital or otherwise -- and when to use them.
    Steven Poster, a former president of the American Society of
    Cinematographers, calls it a kind of alchemy. "It's what we do, the magic
    of deciding, 'I'm going to use this kind of film stock for this, or this
    kind of digital camera, or this kind of technology or technique. I'm gonna
    use these lights, I'm gonna make it look like this.' We have to stay
    abreast of these developments at all times. There's constant learning
    within the field, of knowing what our tools are capable of."
    The problem isn't that cinematographers don't like digital technology; it's
    simply that they know what its current limitations are. There has been
    plenty of hype surrounding digital technology as it's been used in
    filmmaking. And there are certainly pictures, like the first two entries in
    the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, that wouldn't look half as beautiful as
    they do without the use of that technology.
    But remarkably few people have bothered to ask cinematographers -- the
    people who should know best -- what the technology's current strengths and
    limitations are. People like George Lucas like to think they're on the
    vanguard of these new methods and modes of filmmaking. But it probably
    hasn't occurred to most moviegoers that the "Film is dead" movement may be
    more strongly driven by forces in the marketplace than by artistic
    considerations.
    In other words, there are some big corporations that would like us to think
    that digital filmmaking is ready for prime time. And cinematographers may
    be the last line of defense between those massive marketing forces and the
    rich visual heritage of movies. Even though most moviegoers think they know
    what cinematographers do, it's likely they don't even know the half of it.
    But in the rapidly changing world of filmmaking, their role as
    preservationists -- as preservationists of the quality and vitality of
    images -- is more important than ever.
    When Terri Gross interviewed cinematographer Gordon Willis for her National
    Public Radio program "Fresh Air" last fall, she introduced him by playing a
    few clips from movies he'd worked on: Marlon Brando's opening scene from
    "The Godfather"; an exchange between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in "Annie
    Hall" that captures the sparks flying between their his-and-hers non
    sequiturs.
    You'd think that audio clips would be the worst window into the work of a
    cinematographer. The surprise lies in how vividly we can see those scenes
    just by hearing them. You can't hear Brando's voice in that clip without
    picturing the hollows of his eyes, both as empty and as full as undersea
    caves. And the mere sound of Keaton's and Allen's tentative chatter
    resurrects visions of a muted '70s New York skyline cloaked in smog and
    romance -- we can't distinguish one from the other, which is precisely the
    point, their commingled beauty is so intense.
    You can't take the measure of a cinematographer's work just by listening to
    it. But if a sound clip can serve as a miniature testimony to the resonance
    of a cinematographer's images, it can also heighten the ways in which
    moviegoers sometimes take the cinematographer's job for granted. In one
    sense, cinematography should be invisible, since it exists mainly to serve
    the story that's being told. But movies don't shoot themselves. Unless a
    movie features lots of pretty natural scenery, moviegoers -- and sometimes
    even people who are themselves involved in the making of movies -- don't
    always recognize how much thought and care goes into making the kinds of
    images you can actually hear on the radio.
    "Even within the enlightened community of fellow filmmakers who are not
    cinematographers," says cinematographer John Bailey, "there has been this
    confusion or misperception of cinematography as pretty pictures." Bailey's
    30-year career has included numerous collaborations with the director Paul
    Schrader, among them "Cat People," "Mishima" and 1999's lovely but
    little-seen "Forever Mine." Bailey says viewers tend to be most easily
    impressed by the prettified Ivory-Merchant aesthetic: "I'm not picking on
    Ivory-Merchant, but they're kind of a shorthand example -- in other words,
    period films, beautiful costumes, lush landscapes and impressive exterior
    photography."
    But, Bailey says, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with
    cinematography, other than the fact that you put a camera there and capture
    the whole thing on film. "I think a cinematographer's foremost requirement
    is to use all of the visual aesthetic skill that he or she has to find a
    style," he says, "a combination of aesthetic and technique to enhance,
    enlighten and expand the dramatic, emotional and narrative momentum of the
    screenplay. In the same way that the screenwriter uses words to tell the
    story, and the director uses the performances of the actors to reveal the
    subtext and the nuance of it, the cinematographer uses all of the tools
    that he or she has, focused through the lens of the camera, to reveal and
    enhance and expand the story."
    In other words, it's a job that requires an unusual amalgam of technical
    prowess and visual artistry -- in addition to management and diplomacy
    skills, not to mention knowledge of equipment, lighting, film stock and
    postproduction processes. That may or may not explain why directors of
    photography don't surface much in media coverage of new pictures. Actors,
    directors and screenwriters are interviewed all the time, but no one ever
    thinks to talk to cinematographers, maybe because they're perceived as
    eggheads who just want to talk about lenses and film speeds.
    When you sit down and actually talk to one, you realize that
    cinematographers mostly just want to talk about movies -- not just about
    the techniques used in making them, but also about the ways their visual
    textures and moods can affect us so deeply and so mysteriously. You can get
    a sense of that simply by watching Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy and
    Stuart Samuel's superb 1992 documentary "Visions of Light," a beautifully
    detailed thumbnail history of cinematography. "Visions of Light" isn't
    noteworthy so much because it explains precisely what cinematographers do
    (you'd probably need 10 two-hour documentaries for that) but because it
    captures so perfectly what the legacy of their profession means to them.
    The cinematographers featured include just about everyone's favorites:
    Conrad Hall ("In Cold Blood"), Vilmos Zsigmond ("McCabe and Mrs. Miller"),
    Lászlá Kovács ("Shampoo"), Haskell Wexler ("In the Heat of the Night"),
    Vittorio Storaro ("The Conformist") and Néstor Almendros ("Days of
    Heaven"). It's telling that many of them seem more interested in talking
    about their colleagues' work than their own, and especially about the work
    of the great directors of photography who came before them -- people like
    Gregg Toland ("Citizen Kane"), James Wong Howe ("From Here to Eternity")
    and Russell Metty ("Touch of Evil").
    For people who spend so much of their time considering how things are going
    to look on film, cinematographers seem surprisingly good at talking. "Most
    of the directors of photography I know and associate with are more like
    Renaissance men than people from any other parts of the business that I
    know," says Steven Poster, whose own credits include two very
    distinctive-looking recent releases, "Donnie Darko" and "Stuart Little 2."
    "We need to be able to take a space or a room or a large expanse and create
    the type of lighting that will indicate a mood and allow the actors to move
    within that space and be lit at any given spot that will tell the story."
    At the same time, cinematographers are also busy being managers. "We're
    managing relationships, we're managing budgets, we're managing equipment,"
    Poster says. "And we're managing egos of many other people. It's a
    multifaceted job. What we really are is Tom Sawyers getting people to
    whitewash our fence, so we can be off doing the art that we love to do.
    That's our little secret."
    We've all been trained to be skeptical of anyone who's involved in the
    making of Hollywood films who actually uses the A-word. Given the state of
    the movie industry today, it's easier for most moviegoers to be cynical
    about Hollywood than charitable toward it. We've convinced ourselves -- and
    unfortunately, too often the movies themselves have proven us right -- that
    movies are made by committees whose sole aim is to make money, instead of
    by people with eyes and ears, brains and hearts.
    Cinematographers seem to be the antidote to Hollywood cynicism -- not
    because they don't have to finesse their share of studio pressure (there
    are certainly times when they do), or because they claim that every movie
    they work on is going to be a lasting contribution to the canon (they
    don't), but because they believe so wholeheartedly in doing the best work
    they can on each given project.
    After a screening of the recent stinker "The Recruit" (shot by Stuart
    Dryburgh), I remarked to a colleague how good it looked. "It's amazing how
    much TLC goes into crap," he said, and he's right. Forget plots that don't
    work or performances that fall flat: Someone still had to figure out the
    best way to capture the je ne sais quoi of a particular car chase, or to
    light, say, a bridge in a way that captures the essence of bridge-ness.
    Beyond that, flexibility has to be part of the cinematographer's art. Every
    collaboration between a director and a cinematographer is different; what's
    more, cinematographers may do two or three pictures a year, working in
    different styles with different directors. Poster likens the process of
    making a movie to entering a marriage, complete with a courtship, a
    honeymoon period, the actual work of the marriage and an eventual breakup.
    Even if you work with the same director on another picture, the new
    marriage will have different characteristics.
    In writing about movies, most critics consider the director to be the guy
    or the gal holding the bag -- not necessarily because they believe the
    director is the sole and exclusive author of the work but because it's a
    kind of shorthand. If you're trying to describe what action was taken to
    make a movie move or feel or read as it does, you need a noun to go with
    your verb, and in most cases, the director is your noun. As a colleague of
    mine once explained it, the director's vision is the one through which all
    other visions are filtered, which is as good an explanation as I've ever
    come across.
    I suspect that directors get most of the credit for the success of a
    picture (or lack thereof) precisely because movies are such a collaborative
    process. Sometimes it's easy to separate the strands of who deserves blame
    or praise; but in many cases a great moment on film that we automatically
    give a director credit for may very well be the result of some sort of
    communication, spoken or un-, between a director, his or her D.P., a
    production designer, a costume or makeup person and any of the actors
    involved -- all of whom are working off a script by one or more
    screenwriters, who may also be on hand. And don't forget about producers,
    people whose degree of hands-on involvement in a picture can vary from not
    much to a whole lot.
    It always feels corny to talk about the magic of movies, but
    cinematographers don't seem at all uncomfortable with the word. "It seems
    like magic to us, too, to actually do it," Bailey says. He compares looking
    at a finished film with what a composer like Gustav Mahler might have felt
    when he finally heard one of his complex, conflicted and infinitely layered
    symphonies played by actual musicians. "How awesome it must have been! In
    filmmaking, there are so many dozens, if not hundreds, of people involved
    in making a film who, in the right environment, where the producers and the
    directors give them the opportunity to really express themselves and put
    themselves into it, can create this incredible thing. When you go and see
    the finished film, it has an existence of its own, somehow beyond you. It's
    so much different than, say, writing a book or a play."
    Meanwhile, film -- the medium in which cinematographers have been working
    for some 100 years, a medium that in its relatively short history has given
    most of us more joy and pleasure than we can possibly measure -- is dead.
    Or at least, people like George Lucas would have us think so.
    Every now and then, a major news outlet will run a feature sounding a tinny
    but trumped-up death knell for film as we know it. Last summer, Los Angeles
    Times staff writers P.J. Huffstutter and Jon Healey jumped on the
    bandwagon, detailing the way Lucas had tried to convince his colleagues of
    the supremacy of digital technology by holding that powwow in his private
    screening room. He showed them two identical clips from "Monsters, Inc.,"
    one completely electronic (in other words, stored on digital tape and run
    through a digital projector), the other on a reel of film that had already
    done four weeks in a local multiplex.
    The electronic clip, the story noted, "looked less like a motion picture
    and more like an open window onto a real world." Compare that with the
    jiggly, scratched-up image that limped onto the screen via the poor,
    pathetic stepcousin known as film.
    Lucas had gathered his colleagues, ostensibly, to issue a warning: It was
    time to leave film behind, or get left in the dust. Lucas, after all, had
    broken some ground of his own with "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the
    Clones," which was shot entirely with high-definition digital cameras --
    that is, a new breed of cameras that record images on videotape instead of
    35-millimeter film, but with crisper detail and a wider range of color than
    video cameras have traditionally been able to capture. "Attack of the
    Clones" was also edited with digital equipment and, in the relatively few
    theaters equipped to do so, projected digitally.
    So because he'd been able to make a stiff, crummy-looking, overblown
    faux-epic on a new plaything, Lucas felt completely justified in
    foretelling the death of film. The L.A. Times article played right into his
    phony argument, in language that sounds borrowed from that most filmic of
    news sources, a World War II newsreel: "Lucas' blunt message stands at the
    center of a schism in Hollywood over the fate of film in the film business.
    New high-definition video cameras and digital editing equipment challenge
    the longtime supremacy of film. They are cheaper and more flexible. But
    they also frighten directors and cinematographers who understand every
    nuance of film. A creative misstep can tarnish a career, so many of those
    established in the film industry blanch at the thought of showing their
    inexperience with the latest technology. A colossal mistake, seen by
    millions of fans, might reveal that they are passé storytellers -- easily
    replaced with younger, cheaper and more tech-savvy rivals."
    Aside from a quote or two from cinematographers Roger Deakins ("With
    digital, it's all very businesslike. We're not businessmen. We're artists
    and magicians") and Emmanuel Lubezki, who shot portions of Michael Mann's
    "Ali" using a high-definition camera ("This is different from film. Not
    better or worse but different"), cinematographers were woefully
    underrepresented in the piece. Considering these would be the guys who'd
    understand better than anyone the potential advantages, or lack thereof, of
    digital video, it undoubtedly seemed more convenient to not even bother to
    ask them.
    One of the chief problems with the Times article -- and with Lucas'
    argument in general -- is that it makes no distinction between the various
    uses of digital technology. As Poster explains it, "One of the things
    journalists and the public are confused about is that when you use the term
    'digital cinema,' you lump it into one kind of thing, but it's really three
    things: It's image acquisition, it's postproduction and it's exhibition."
    Digital applications are currently most widely used in postproduction, the
    steps taken at the end of the moviemaking process before the definitive
    print -- called the answer print -- is struck. That's the stage at which
    cinematographers color-correct the film, which generally means sitting down
    with a lab technician and making sure every frame looks the way it's
    supposed to. "Stuart Little 2," for example, included lots of special
    effects that had to be added during postproduction. The entire film -- even
    those portions of it that didn't feature special effects -- was digitized,
    and Poster used some new digital tools to complete the color correction
    before transferring the whole thing back to film.
    "We edit digitally, we do visual effects digitally, and now we're starting
    to finish the film digitally," Poster says. "The tools are tremendous, and
    it's just developing into something that's going to become ubiquitous
    within the next year or two. Finishing a film digitally will be the norm,
    not the exception." That's a case of the technology being used to make the
    process more efficient, but it also, of course, works in the service of
    maintaining the visual integrity of a film.
    Poster is less enthusiastic about digital technology as it has so far been
    applied in terms of exhibition -- that is, projection. As moviegoers, we've
    all seen our share of dingy prints at the multiplex: By the time a picture
    has been shown five or six times a day over a period of several weeks, any
    print is going to show some wear and tear. No D.P. likes to see that happen
    to his or her movie. But there are still too many variables involved in
    digital projection to make it an immediately viable solution, Poster says,
    no matter how "clean" Lucas' digitized "Monsters" may have looked.
    For one thing, there's no worldwide standard for digital exhibition of
    movies. "Film is a worldwide standard," Poster explains. "You can send a
    35-millimeter film to Bangladesh and get it shown." But various different
    standards are competing in the digital realm, with no single version in a
    dominant position.
    Also, the cost of equipping a theater to project movies digitally is still
    prohibitive. Poster puts it at around $150,000 per screen, and because the
    technology is changing so rapidly, the equipment could become obsolete in
    as few as five years. (Whereas a regular old motion picture projector costs
    around $30,000 and might last 20 years.) And how will people be trained to
    maintain digital-projection equipment and play digital movies so they look
    as good as they should, when most of the big movie chains have done away
    with most of their union projectionists? "It's a much more complex
    technology than we're ready to deploy," Poster says.
    On a more fundamental level, Poster also says we don't really know how
    images shown on film, as opposed to those captured or projected digitally,
    affect audiences on a subconscious level. He wonders if maybe there isn't
    "a perceptual quality to motion pictures that exists maybe because of the
    flaws of motion picture film." The very slight "jiggle and weave" of film,
    as opposed to the much-touted steadiness of digital images, may have
    something to do with why we respond to movies as we do. "There's the
    granularity of film, which changes on every frame. There are all these
    perceptual components, which create a hot medium for the audience. It
    engages the audience in a way."
    The point isn't that Poster and his colleagues are resistant to digital
    technology. They want to make sure any new technology they adopt is better
    than what they've already got, in subtle ways as well as obvious ones.
    Today's cinematographers see what's coming in terms of technology and
    equipment. When it's good enough for them to use, they say they'll be
    ready. We're still in the infancy of "high-definition technology" in the
    movie business, Poster explains. "But high-definition technology, which has
    been said to be the death of film, the be-all and end-all, is in a
    rudimentary form that is rapidly changing. So this technology that was
    supposed to replace film is, within the next year, going to be the old
    technology."
    It's crucial to note, though, that the term "digital technology" doesn't
    mean much all by itself. Cinematographer Wally Pfister's credits include
    "Memento" and "Laurel Canyon," but because he began his career as a news
    cameraman in the early '80s, he knew how to shoot on videotape long before
    he ever shot a frame of 35-millimeter film. As much as he loves working
    with film, he's convinced that within 15 to 20 years, electronic media will
    replace it. But for now, he says the quality of digital images is nowhere
    near that of images recorded on film, in terms of resolution, richness or
    subtlety.
    Pfister believes that large electronics corporations are using the term
    "digital" to sell the idea of something revolutionary and hot, even though
    this "new" technology, at least at this point, is no improvement on the old
    one. Sony and Panasonic both manufacture high-definition cameras, and have
    a stake in getting their products used and accepted (not to mention plugged
    by Lucas), whether they produce satisfactory results or not. It's easy to
    see how a multinational entertainment conglomerate like Sony -- which owns
    Columbia Pictures -- would benefit if its equipment became the standard
    among filmmakers.
    "The buzzword is 'digital,'" Pfister says. "It's the same buzzword that's
    used in the consumer world -- the same word that was used to sell CDs and
    DVDs and anything for home computers. But it's not an accurate way of
    describing it. The images are collected and processed digitally, but
    really, it's videotape. It's a video camera, and the images are recorded
    onto a video chip." Yet the companies that make this gear, he notes, are
    trying to act like they've invented "a whole new device."
    In fact, Pfister is enthusiastic about the fact that digital technology
    could help democratize the world of filmmaking. "Anyone who wants to tell a
    story can afford to," he says, "by picking up a camera for $1,000 and
    buying computer software for another $1,000. That basically allows them to
    write, produce and edit films entirely on their own." Pfister, Poster and
    Bailey all note that there are instances where the new high-definition
    cameras can be put to good use, particularly in episodic television -- the
    image quality looks just fine on TV.
    The problem, Pfister says, is that digital technology is being pushed for
    theatrical exhibition purposes even though it's still an inferior medium.
    Manufacturers of digital filmmaking equipment are hoping to take advantage
    of the fact that the technology is changing so rapidly -- today's
    top-of-the-line high-definition camera is sure to be tomorrow's garage-sale
    Brownie. Obsolescence guarantees a steady revenue stream, as most of us
    know from having to replace our computers every other year.
    At the moment, for the serious cinematographer's craft, Pfister says,
    high-definition cameras are simply not the best option. "It's like asking
    us to work with crayons rather than oil paints. You can do some incredible
    works of art with crayons. But with the current videotape format, you're
    never going to capture the textures, the depth, the richness, be able to
    see into the absolute subtleties and the shadows, that you can with
    35-millimeter film.
    "Most cinematographers, we have a great passion for the artistry involved
    in our jobs. And what we love the most is painting with light. If somebody
    tries to tell us that the paintbrushes that they have are better than the
    ones that we're using, we're gong to be leery. And we're going to be the
    ones to decide whether those paintbrushes or that particular paint is as
    good as it should be. Because we know it better than anybody else does."
    - - - - - - - - - - - -
    John Bailey says that a few years ago at the Sundance Festival, when one of
    the "film is dead" factions of young directors was making itself rather
    noisily heard, he decided to shoot something on digital video, just to find
    out what it was like. He thought he might end up doing a small project, a
    10- or 15-minute student-type film. Then Jennifer Jason Leigh approached
    him to shoot the feature she was making with Alan Cumming, "The Anniversary
    Party."
    "So I decided to really embrace the D.V. aesthetic and make it as much like
    a film looks as I really could, given the technology and the equipment,"
    Bailey says.
    In retrospect, Bailey says, both he and Leigh realize there was no reason
    not to have shot "The Anniversary Party" on 16-millimeter film and then
    blown it up to 35-millimeter, given the time, effort and cost of doing the
    project digitally. But the experience of making "The Anniversary Party"
    helped him define some of the difference between film and video. He
    realized that there were some independent features -- he cites Neil
    Berger's "Interview With the Assassin" -- that have really benefited from
    embracing new technology.
    Digital technology and celluloid technology have also converged in recent
    years, he says, "to create images and propel stories in a way that was
    impossible even six or seven years ago." We're seeing more and more images
    that are being created completely through computer-graphic technology --
    images that couldn't possibly exist in the real world.
    "This kind of incredibly rich, complex and highly artistic image creation
    on computers becomes sort of a new norm and expectation, sort of an image
    default position," Bailey says. "It has the possibility to desensitize our
    ability to look at beautifully captured, real, natural images.
    "I'm not trying to pick on any particular film, but I'm thinking of a film
    like 'The Two Towers,' or even the first one ['The Fellowship of the
    Ring'], where there's just so much incredible stuff that's created only on
    computers. There are now studios that are thinking about going and shooting
    in New Zealand. Admittedly, New Zealand is incredibly beautiful, and those
    movies had some wonderful natural landscapes. But those studios are going
    there looking to capture images that were captured only on computers."
    In other words, they want to shoot on location in Middle Earth.
    "It's a very exhilarating time and also a very anxiety-inducing time for
    all filmmakers and especially for cinematographers," Bailey says. "I've
    been joking to a lot of my colleagues that I think given the surfeit of
    energy and speed and lushness in films today, the most revolutionary and
    the most daring images you can create are very simple images, very directly
    captured images." Bailey recently had another look at a 1966 Tony
    Richardson film, "Mademoiselle," shot by David Watkin (in widescreen
    black-and-white, something of a rarity in itself), in which Jeanne Moreau
    stars as a sexually repressed schoolteacher who wreaks havoc in her small
    village, poisoning wells and burning things down.
    "It's incredible, but the fascinating thing about it is there's not a
    single camera movement in the entire film," Bailey says. "All the action
    happens within a static frame. This film is, like, two hours long, and it's
    absolutely riveting. It's so unlike anything that you would ever see now."
    If you spend enough time going to the movies, you begin to realize that you
    never quite know what's going to inspire the filmmakers, the
    cinematographers and the screenwriters of tomorrow. In 10 years, will every
    mainstream Hollywood feature look like "The Matrix Reloaded"? Is that what
    audiences will expect and demand?
    Maybe. But for every movement, every trend, there's a backlash. For every
    10 kids who decide they want to be filmmakers after seeing the Wachowski
    brothers' action-fest, there might be one strange little tyke who manages
    to catch "2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Vertigo" or "Night of the Hunter" or
    "Blue Velvet" and decides she wants to make a movie that looks like that.
    Change is coming, as it invariably does, and the only hope for people who
    love movies and care about their future is to bet our money on the strange
    ones. The revolution will not be televised. No matter how it plays out, it
    will be coming to a movie screen near you.
    - - - - - - - - - - - -
    About the writer
    Stephanie Zacharek is a senior writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment.
     
  2. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Interesting article, Steve.

    I hate to make an audio analogy, but it seems kind of fitting:

    In 10 years will movies shot/displayed in 35mm be the vinyl LPs of today? Sure you can get great sound/picture, but never quite sound/look the same twice. Scratches, pops and softness lend to it's familiarity, but it can also be remarkably beautiful.

    DLP or other digital cinema might be akin to HiRez audio of today. Maybe like recording at 24/96? A high resolution movie can be easily digital downcoverted to consumer formats like DVD easier than film, just like 24/96 recordings get processed into 16/44.1 CDs every day of the week. Easier to store, playback and less wear 'n tear. I feel economics will eventually decide in favor of a digital medium for us at the cineplex. I'm all for it, as the more DLP showings I see, the more I come away impressed.
     
  3. Henry Love

    Henry Love Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicagoland
    Great peek into film making today.My guess is it won't go all digital and the cineplex will be the last link in the chain to implement it.
     
  4. Ed Bishop

    Ed Bishop Incredibly, I'm still here

    Yes, quite the fascinating--and lengthy--article, Thanks, Steve.

    I do hope Lucas and MATRIX RELOADED are not the future of cinema: all nice and neat and fancy, but for me, too much sensory overload, and the stories seem to suffer when so much effort is expended on all the SFX. When the actors seem generic and interchangeable--as they seem to be in these films, there's a decided lack of charisma--you know you're in trouble.

    I've also been wondering if there isn't more to RELOADED's drop in box office, a dip harsher than was predicted--at least by Warners. Saw it twice, came away reeling both times....not a bad film, but way too much going on visually, and the sound is just relentless. It's as if the filmmakers were competing with themselves, trying to top one scene with the next to just keep pushing until your mind numbs. Razzle-dazzle can be fun, but it's like a rollercoaster ride--one ride per trip is enough for me.


    ED:cool:
     
  5. Roland Stone

    Roland Stone Offending Member

    I think it's problem is that it simply isn't a good movie. Build films around the special effect instead of the other way around, and you get TWISTER or MATRIX RELOADED. Nice demo discs for the Ciruit City home theater room, but . . .

    Compare the approach in those films -- "we have a new toy and we're going to use it!" -- with the relative restraint shown by Steven Spielberg in the original JAWS or JURASSIC PARK. The mechanical shark was an unreliable contraption, and Spielberg shot and edited around it, creating an air of menace. But even when he had the budget and means to do anything he wanted in the dinosaur film, he kept the monsters hidden from view until the end. Most of the chase scenes involved human-sized raptors. And he used little touches -- like the oft-imitated ripples in the water cup, or the condensation of the T Rex's breath on the car window -- to convince you these digitally-created images had weight and substance.

    I just don't see that kind of attention to detail in most other blockbuster films. It's just explosions, stop-motion photography, and really bad CGI.
     
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  6. Dave D

    Dave D Done!

    Location:
    Milton, Canada
    M Night Shamylan is a perfect example of someone who needs no special effects to drive home suspense and keep you interested. As long as we have people like him around, the art of movie making will survive, and movies like Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, Son of Matrix, The Courtship of Eddie's Matrix, Abbott and Costello meet The Matrix......will be forgotten very quickly.
     
  7. John Moschella

    John Moschella Senior Member

    Location:
    Christiansburg, VA
    While movies shot on film are certainly not dead their days are numbered for sure. The reason is obvious in that there is more money to be made via digital storage/projection. This always drives the mass market and we are taking mass market when it comes to the movies. The industry shoved CDs down our throat and now they are going to do the same thing with digital projection once the captial costs come down. I don't like it but that is just the way its going to be.
     
  8. Dan C

    Dan C Forum Fotographer

    Location:
    The West
    Excellent read.

    This article seems to be as much about the artistry of cinematographers as it is about movie technology. Those guys will obviously be all over the latest technology, it's in their blood.

    I actually said "film is dead" in a thread I started after seeing "Finding Nemo" projected digitally. I said it out of enthusiasm over seeing a brilliantly made animated movie projected by some razor edge technology. It was simply amazing.
    I also said that the trailers originally shot on film and projected digitally looked wonderful as well. I believe that film and digital will coexist for some time, but film's days of dominance are indeed numbered.

    I'm not anywhere near the league of those cinematographers, but when I was in school on the first day of a computer class, the first words out of the instructor's mouth was "Film is dead!". He said it again and again while giving examples of the shifts in visual technology. We were all pissed for days, grumbling about what a freak he was.
    Ten years later I couldn't dream of using film on assignment, much less sloshing around in photo chemistry in a darkroom. The idea of not being able to instantly access my images and transmitting them anywhere seems like ancient history. I'm guessing that the next decade will bring some pretty revolutionary technology to movie making and presentation.

    Dan C
     
  9. Todd Fredericks

    Todd Fredericks Senior Member

    Location:
    A New Yorker
    Steve, again, it is very clear that you love film and that's great! :)
     
  10. Khorn

    Khorn Dynagrunt Obversarian

    Film vs Digital

    My great-uncle was the projectionist at the Loew's State Theater Times Square NYC for many many years. As a kid back in the 50's I spent time in the projection booth there as well as visiting other projectionsts in theaters in the vicinity. I grew very used to what film stock could do. I also worked as a pro Photog for most of the 60's & early 70's so I am very familiar with the attributes of film. For manipulation of image the digital domain is supreme. For ultimate image quality and resolution digital doesn't come within a mile of a good fine grained emulsion.

    If I were to invest in a "working" camera outfit today for still photography today it would without doubt be a Nikon F5 film camera. There is a LONG LONG way to go before digital catches up with film from a resolution aspect and, that's the thing that counts.
     
  11. Evan L

    Evan L Beatologist

    Location:
    Vermont
    MatrixMan meets The Matrix?:laugh:
     
  12. -=Rudy=-

    -=Rudy=- ♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♫♪♪ Staff

    Location:
    US
    I believe the biggest shift to digital will be when it's a cheap(er) commodity item. Look at how CDs and digital recording in studios are so commonplace today. When the big studios find they can pay less for handling digital vs. film (from production to delivery of media to the theaters), it just may happen. Whether we like it or not.
     
  13. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    Exactly. It's a money thing not an art thing.
     
  14. xios

    xios Senior Member

    Location:
    Florida
    Don't forget that film is not a fixed target- it is a moving target, and it improves over the years as well. I started shooting B&W 16mm stock (neg and reversal) in the '70's and just making copy negs was a depressing experience with the jump in grain. The new stocks of the early 80's made it look more like 35mm. I used to shoot titles on 16mm Kodachrome with great results- looked like Technicolor. And personally, I like nothing better than a Steenbeck and a guillotine splicer and feeling the film in my fingers...
     
  15. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    And just to bring this (very old) discussion up to date: here's an article from 2015 about 38 feature films shot [in whole or in part] on actual celluloid as of last year:

    Boyhood
    X-Men: Days of Future Past [partial]
    Jurassic World
    SPECTRE
    Cinderella
    Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice
    Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
    Tip Top
    Edge of Tomorrow
    Kill the Messenger
    The Double
    The Immigrant
    Dracula Untold
    Fury
    The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    Star Wars: Episode VI – The Force Awakens
    Transcendance
    Noah
    Foxcatcher
    Non-Stop
    The Other Woman
    Before I Go To Sleep
    Felony
    The Rover
    Snowpiercer
    Magic in the Moonlight
    Jealousy
    Leviathan
    Million Dollar Arm [partial]
    The Monuments Men [partial]
    Nightcrawler [partial]
    Tammy
    The Judge
    Hector and the Search for Happiness

    Note that quite a few of these filmmakers, particularly those overseas, say that this will be the last feature they shoot on film, because of the lack of film laboratories in certain countries. Even in the United States, I think there's only about two large labs capable of handling a major feature production, one on the East coast, and one on the West coast.

    Full article here:

    http://filmmakermagazine.com/88971-39-movies-released-in-2014-shot-on-35mm#.VLl1bkuppFw
     
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  16. reeler

    reeler Forum Resident

    Some directors like the extra freedom of digital, some remain faithful to film and its unmistakable qualities. Some like to mix both. There's a pretty good documentary on film Vs. digital by Keanu Reeves called "Side by Side". I went to High School with Wally- he used to carry around a GAF View Master (anyone remember those things?).
    http://photobylytro.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GAF-ViewMaster.jpg
     
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  17. Mal

    Mal Phorum Physicist

    Sawyer's (Belgium) Model C, E and G and a gaF (USA) Model H here :wave:

    http://www.viewmaster.co.uk

    Sawyer's Model C
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jan 16, 2015
  18. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    How come the photographers of the world have embraced digital technology and sing it praises, while the cinematographers have such a big problem with it? Probably because the cinematographers don't have to pay out of THEIR pockets for the film, developing, printing and wasted shots. The only problem I see with digitally shot films is they still haven't gotten the moments when a camera pans correct. You still see this digital smearing. Those are the only artifacts that make me say: "Oh, this was shot digitally." As far as the rest, the images look just fine to me -- better than most of the cinematography you'd see in the average film from the 70s, image-wise.
     
  19. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Actually, there is no "digital smearing" if the camera has a global shutter. All the cameras with rolling shutters do have a distinctive "jello" effect with vertical detail and pans, and that includes the Red One, Red Epic, Red Dragon, Sony F55, and Alexa. I can say with the Alexa they've reduced the problem quite a bit, and there are more and more cameras that are going with a global shutter -- though the flaw is that this process reduces exposure range. There's always compromises.

    What I always said, in 25 years of working with film every day, is "if you screw up with negative film, chances are we can save it." Not so much with digital. I've worked on many, many digital projects where bad decisions were made and so a terrible look got permanently "baked in" to the project. We have far less weasel-room to fix problems with digital, particularly with overexposure.

    Note also that with any film with a budget over $20M, the cost of film or digital doesn't matter. At best, the film adds $500,000 to the budget, which is miniscule for major productions. My joke is that the catering bill for these films probably tops $500,000. Don't forget that digital cameras are at least three or four times more expensive to rent these days than film cameras, and the lenses, grip equipment, and lighting packages still cost the same. Film negative is dirt cheap, processing is not that expensive, and dailies are a modest cost.
     
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  20. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Mainly because it's easier to handle still image frames as opposed to whole video. In a sense, still photography was the low-hanging fruit that was ripe for exploitation first, especially when the market was huge with the point-and-shoot crowd. This led to rapid advancements both in the consumer and professional sapces.

    It's inevitable that the same trend will, and is, occuring in cinematography. The flexibility of the digital medium is just too compelling. And when everything does become digital, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be some retro-revival subculture that rises to promote the virtues of analog film! :)

    I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could you expand?
     
  21. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    I see it all the time when the camera does a whip pan, there's a momentary loss or smearing of the image. It doesn't have film equivalent. It's the one time when the image decidedly looks like video.
     
  22. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    As compared to films we used to shoot as kids and those rolls of Ektachrome were like gold. Getting the cast together was nothing, it was coming up with the damn film! I will admit to once "liberating" a roll from K-mart to finish a spy picture: "James Blonde." Tsk, tsk. My reckless youth.
     
  23. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Do you see it at the theater or on TV? If it's more noticeable at the theater, then I guess I wouldn't be seeing it as I don't go to theaters much. However, I am aware of the smearing effect as seen on TVs or computer monitors, but that's down to the display technology (ie, LCD, plasma, etc) and picture processing. I didn't think it was a part of the source material itself.
     
  24. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    I see it at the theater.
     
  25. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    long read! thanks Steve...I enjoy film, but I enjoy the film contents just as much on other formats...but, we grew up with film so it has the feel we love! Indeed...
     
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