The great analog vs. digital debate
- Thread starter Al M.
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I love the way film looks and have myself believing I get a bit of that mojo back through my old Panasonic Plasma. It'll be a sad day when it gives up, because it truly can't be replaced. And when i walk into a store and look at their TVs...they just look too real...antiseptic.
Tim
Tim
Hello, Tim and good afternoon to you. I thought that as well when I first saw them. I maybe wouldn't have used the word "antiseptic" but it did almost look "too real". Then I went home and saw my TV's and was yearning for more of "the real". Of course, this is coming from someone who doesn't necessarily like the digital platform for TV's. I much preferred the old tube TV's via airwaves but over time, I have accepted the digital imperfections and one could say that I am used to them by now. The new 4K OLED's or whatever they are called of today put my TV to absolute shame.......even though at times, they (like you say) seem "too real". Truth be told, some of the newer high tech TV's almost remind me of a photo taken from a very nice camera...only these camera's are in action.
The article reminded me that (much like audiophiles and mastering/recording trends) it really doesn't matter what we prefer. It's up to the industry and it sounds like there are a few die-hards that seem to like things the old way while mainstream filming is going a different direction. At least most of the movie makers DO care about the sound though and for me? That's a plus.
Tom
The article reminded me that (much like audiophiles and mastering/recording trends) it really doesn't matter what we prefer. It's up to the industry and it sounds like there are a few die-hards that seem to like things the old way while mainstream filming is going a different direction. At least most of the movie makers DO care about the sound though and for me? That's a plus.
Tom
What's interesting to me here isn't so much the "analogue vs digital" aspect, it's the idea of artistic control from start to finish. Tarantino has made an artistic decision to use 70mm film to shoot the movie because of the way it looks, but he would also prefer the playback/projection to be done on 70mm with well-defined standards and rules to complete the effect. This, sadly, is where the audiophile case differs. The artist or engineer might make an artistic decision about the recording, but their control over playback is minimal. It may be the case that some artists record with a particular playback system in mind, but I imagine they're few and far between and confined to audiophile circles. If anything, the usual assumption seems to be for mp3, and we have loudness wars and other stuff to contend with instead. All told, the push for absolute quality is not one we often get to enjoy from most artists. I wish it were so. Instead, audiophiles must choose their poison as they see fit, and then spend all day trying to justify to all and sundry why they're right.
As always, "best" is in the eye of the beholder. Film is great when used artistically to create an effect (and don't get me wrong, I LOVE the effect), but it might not be the premier choice for a documentary, for example. I don't understand why anyone needs validation that their preference implies an absolute, but that's another story. It's tiresome in the extreme, but here we are.
As always, "best" is in the eye of the beholder. Film is great when used artistically to create an effect (and don't get me wrong, I LOVE the effect), but it might not be the premier choice for a documentary, for example. I don't understand why anyone needs validation that their preference implies an absolute, but that's another story. It's tiresome in the extreme, but here we are.
Nice post, Like Grindhouse, I'll go out of my way to watch Hateful played back on 70mm, and I'm certain I'll enjoy the experience. In time, when I watch it again on 1080p BR, based on past experience, I'm certain I'll enjoy it just as much.
Coming from a relative ignoramus ( Used to be a Photographer , even practiced the Zone System back in the days, but am back albeit timidly) I am learning Photoshop and dabbled with GIMP. It seems to me you can mimic the film look with digital hardware and the appropriate software add-ons. Here I am sounding like Blizzard but software can mimic most of what one sees in analog aka film. I have seen someone mimic the grain of a photo taken with a 50 MP to look like it was taken with a Kodak Tri-X.
Artists are special people: A writer friend doesn't use Word Processor to write her novels, another use pen and paper ... Maybe it is the case with film too, I tend to think it is. They like film. I have been trained to see what a good picture can be , the zone system saw
to that... I am not seeing Digital picture lacking anything if aything they are sometimes too revealing .. things that can dialed back in software.
Artists are special people: A writer friend doesn't use Word Processor to write her novels, another use pen and paper ... Maybe it is the case with film too, I tend to think it is. They like film. I have been trained to see what a good picture can be , the zone system saw
to that... I am not seeing Digital picture lacking anything if aything they are sometimes too revealing .. things that can dialed back in software.Tarantino films are not my "cup of tea", but reading about the 70mm roadshow, I decided to go. But I waited until the second week when it was also being shown digitally in the same multiplex. I watched the entire 10:00am digital presentation, and then watched 10 or 15 minutes of the 11:00am 70mm show in another auditorium. I must report, that for me, seeing a film on 70mm was not a "transcendent experience." It was very good, but I preferred the digital.
THe merits of this situation has nothing to do with technology or even the look of the movie. Production in digital is cheaper than film so that is the way studios want to shoot them. Now enter a hot-shot director. If you are successful enough, you get to demand terms. And one of those terms is shooting on film. Not because the director needs that technically. He needs it from ego/pride point of view to match the previous director who forces his studio to shoot on film. In other words, it is a demonstration that you have arrived as a director in Hollywood: "oh he got the studio to shoot it on film!"
The films are then digitized and to save money, edited in 2K. Now comes 4K video and HDR. You have to go back to the negatives and rescan them at great expense!!! Which ain't going to happen and slows to a trickle the availability of such movies in 4K/HDR.
The films are then digitized and to save money, edited in 2K. Now comes 4K video and HDR. You have to go back to the negatives and rescan them at great expense!!! Which ain't going to happen and slows to a trickle the availability of such movies in 4K/HDR.
This post tickles me on so many different levels, well played!
Another avenue to start yet another format debate.
It is truly an artist' choice for effect or end result if you may.
QT is one of those guys that you either love or hate, not much middle ground there. I am very much of the former group. I completely get where he comes from and totally get, understand and embrace his film making. Had a great conversation with Steve and his son on just that topic. To me QT just seems like someone I grew up with watching/listening and doing some of the same stupid stuff. I completely gel with his artistic mojo.
So I completely embrace his format choice for the film for what it is in relation to a Western of sorts. I will own it on bluray when its comes out no questions asked.
As some of you have figured out I am not loyal to any one format of any media, I like it all, I am in it for the experience. I think it all has its place.
For an artist to put this much thought into his project and care enough to bring his intended experience to you in the theater seat is amazing.
Like it or not, the journey is available to you if you so choose.
http://filmmakermagazine.com/88971-39-movies-released-in-2014-shot-on-35mm/#.Vo5U9s4qFss
Just the facts, ma'am - just the facts.
As an aside, I have a friend, Frèdèric, who works for a post-production facility in Paris who spent three years on Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit.
His job was to digitally grade the rushes (“dailies” - the footage shot in-camera each day) because, of course, shooting two cameras (for stereo capture for 3D, from a total of 48 cameras) at 48fps (47.96) at 5K generates a number of problems…
1) A 2K file on a RED shooting at 24fps generates about 11MB per frame (more-or-less, depending on compression settings and aspect ratio). So if we double that for 4K, and double it again for 48fps, and double it again for the two cameras, we’re generating about 88MB per frame per second, and it’s gobbling up hard-drive space at four times the normal rate. Given that there were multiple cameras operating for each shot, with second and third-units shooting simultaneously, you start to generate (conservative) numbers like this:
30 cameras X 5K resolution X 2 (for stereo images to make 3D) X 48 frames per second (each frame being filled with 5K pixels and color information).
- 1 Frame at 5K resolution @ 5,120 pixels X 2,700 pixels =*13,824,000 pixels or 13.8 million*bits of data (does not include color information or 3D)
- 3D doubles the data, so*27,648,000 pixels
- 48 frames per second is*1,327,104,000 pixels or 1.3 billion bits*of data for 1 second of the film
-10 bits for color information (we'll be conservative here, again) @ 13,271,040,000 pixels or 13.3 billion bits of data for 1 second of film
- 30 cameras @ 398,131,200,000 pixels or 398 billion bits of data for 1 second of the film
2) The ungraded footage looks like crap. In order to shoot at a higher frame rate, with two cameras, at 4-5K you need a lot of light. So much light you end up with a set that is so hot the actors can only work for a short period of time, you end up installing custom ventilation that’s so noisy you have to turn it off when shooting, and you end up with footage that looks like the worst-lit daytime television ever. So his job was to apply a grade to the rushes to bring back some contrast and colour to the footage that Jackson and the producers would watch at the end of the day’s shoot. And not just him - they had a whole team working 24/7 in shifts just to grade the rushes. That is not an inexpensive proposition.
3) All that data needs to be sent via a pipeline to a post suite waiting to take the garish footage and apply a grade so it can be sent back to set for Peter, which meant they had to build a custom pipeline to manage the extreme amount of data being generated every day. Which, unsurprisingly caused massive delays because you need to send it one way, grade it and then send it back. There were many instances of the graded rushes being late back to set, because the pipeline could not manage the data demands.
4) Because of 1 and 2 above, you then need to over-saturate everything in-camera, presenting a challenge for art-dept, makeup, prosthetics, wardrobe, production design, who are also working in extreme heat.
While this is somewhat of an extreme example, it’s not an uncommon one for major studio tentpoles and I haven’t witnessed budgets coming down “thanks to digital”.
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Coming from a relative ignoramus ( Used to be a Photographer , even practiced the Zone System back in the days, but am back albeit timidly) I am learning Photoshop and dabbled with GIMP. It seems to me you can mimic the film look with digital hardware and the appropriate software add-ons. Here I am sounding like Blizzard but software can mimic most of what one sees in analog aka film. I have seen someone mimic the grain of a photo taken with a 50 MP to look like it was taken with a Kodak Tri-X.
Artists are special people: A writer friend doesn't use Word Processor to write her novels, another use pen and paper ... Maybe it is the case with film too, I tend to think it is. They like film. I have been trained to see what a good picture can be , the zone system saw
True but doing 24 or 30 fps x 60sec x 2 hours is a LOT of images.
In the end it is an artistic decision. One of our companies which specialize in TV Commercials shoots with both film (ARRI) and digital (RED). One of our other subsidiaries in partnership with another company does Telecine (film to digital conversion) and heavy post. The client decides what look he wants and the choices of what to use follow. In recent years HD and now 4K is trending mostly for beauty products and food shots which are typically very lit and are shot up close. Ads that tell stories go for film treatment if the client can afford it so this limits the clients to large multinationals like Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Colgate Palmolive, and the like. The decision of what to use isn't ours, we just shoot, edit, post and dub then hand it over to the clients and their respective ad agencies.
In the case of Tarantino, I wouldn't be surprised if what he's after is the spectacle of a 70mm. I remember being little when we had a 70mm capable theater nearby. I would scan left and right. The screen was so wide. If it was shot that way I too would like to see it presented that way, not cropped and panned.
Tarantino lost me long ago. His movies have this painfully self-conscious quality, as if the director were sitting next to me in theater saying "Ooo, oo, see what we did here? Was that cool or what?" And that's ok, if you like that sort of thing, but it's movie geek movie-making, and the story-telling becomes secondary, if it matters much at all. But consider the source. My favorite movie this year was Love & Mercy. No CGI. No cinematic flash. No beautifully rendered scenes of ugly violence. But a great story. Great script. Great acting and directing. It's about as far from a Tarantino movie as movies get. And if someone had been leaning into my ear saying "Ooo, oo, see what we did here?" I'd be saying shut up, child, I want to hear the dialogue.
Tim
Tim
That's interesting, Jack.
Of all the TVCs and music videos I've worked on in the last five years, only one of those was shot on film (for Crowded House on 16mm). The Alexa and RED are pretty much de rigeuer for everything now (occasionally Sony's F3, F5, F900 and F55 make an appearance), and even the 5D in various iterations has crept in, especially for promos.
The other issue aside from the fact Fuji stopped manufacture of its 35mm motion picture film in 2013, is that when Peter Jackson closed Park Road Post's processing lab the same year, there ceased to be anywhere in NZ to process motion picture film, and within a year there was nowhere to do it in Australia either (although I think one lab re-opened in Australia, though not sure its current status).
In that case, the decision is pretty much made for anyone shooting in Australasia. Though it's possible to send 35mm neg somewhere else for processing, the world of advertising is pretty heavily weighted against such luxuries. If you're making a TVC in Australasia, you shoot digital.
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I should add that in my experience one of the key reasons I think agencies and clients have been so keen to embrace shooting TVCs digitally is that they get to watch back every take of every setup as soon as the director's yelled "Cut!"
"Can we watch that back?" has become the agency/client mantra heard behind monitors throughout studios the world over. With film, they never had that luxury, and needed to trust the director's instincts a lot more, rather than undermining them by constant second-guessing.
Just saying'.
"Can we watch that back?" has become the agency/client mantra heard behind monitors throughout studios the world over. With film, they never had that luxury, and needed to trust the director's instincts a lot more, rather than undermining them by constant second-guessing.
Just saying'.
And while I think of it...
There's also more and more camera-assists/operators and even DP's coming through who have never shot on film, and would have no idea of what to do if they turned up to set presented with a can of film stock and a black bag.
There's also more and more camera-assists/operators and even DP's coming through who have never shot on film, and would have no idea of what to do if they turned up to set presented with a can of film stock and a black bag.
Actually they did. In the last years of commercial film, the technology would allow you to shoot film and video (not digital) at the same time. The video was not quality, not high-res, but it gave you the ability to immediately look at a rough of what you had just shot. And that ability is a very powerful tool.
Tim
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