The Death of Motion Picture Film Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

853guy

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"Preaching for the accessibility of shooting on film, Kodak themselves has had to step into the void and form partnerships to open new labs in major production hubs. Today, Kodak announced a new partnership with the famed Pinewood Studios just outside of London – the shooting home of the James Bond franchise and number of recent large Hollywood productions – where they signed a five-year lease to build film negative processing lab."

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/05/kodak-film-lab-london-new-york-atlanta-cannes-1201817950/

I'm telling you, an audio cassette renaissance is inevitable and imminent.

853guy
 

BruceD

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Yes while Cameron/Jackson have embraced the Digital idiom for their productions Nolan is still film-Dark Knight /Dunkirk /etc.

Not finished yet!

BruceD
 

NorthStar

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In audio, the best sound is from tapes (open-reel).
In video, the best picture is ....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celluloid



Some of my favorite music and photographs are . . . in black and white, and from film/photographique pellicule...the best highs of my life, working in labs. :b



By the way, Carol (16mm) is a beautifully shot film.
_____

Today the highs aren't so high as they were yesterday...with Charlie Chaplin and Louise Brooks. Today it's Twitter and Instagram with Photoshop selfies.
Today is bland, cynical, clinical, plastic surgery, lacking lacquer, lacking highs. Today is OLED, in 2D only, lacking dimensionality, spaciousness, immersion.
That's part of my opinion.

If you don't follow the trend you are an outcast. The masses became the snobs of this new world.
The true artists are the hardcore audiophiles and videophiles from a higher ground. ...The ones who appreciate sounds and pictures provided by the best...open-reel-tape machines for both music and movie recordings. That's part of my opinion. I'm wide open, I like what I like, I respect the analogue world where we come from.

If celluloid is going to make a comeback in the motion picture industry, that'll be the day. :b
 

amirm

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Film processing is much more expensive than digital so studios do not like to use them. When a director makes it in hollywood (i.e. has a hit film), they like to think that they have more power than the studio and demand to have their next movie to be shot on film. It is a status thing. "Nolan got to shoot his movie on film, I want mine the same way." This is the only underlying current these days behind shooting on film. The battle against it has been fought and won on technical and economic matters.

For consumers, this can be a terrible thing. Because to save money in post production, the film is scanned and transferred at 2K and shipped that way to theaters. Then comes the time to do a 4K version and you have to go back and not only re-scan the movie, but also repeat all the editing and color timing (correction). Worse yet you have to get the approval of talent to release it that way. This is why so many movies can't come out in 4K even though they could.
 

NorthStar

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Yes Amir, you are right. It is interesting though to draw a comparison with the music industry...hi-res/CD digital versus vinyl/tape analogue.

Speaking of Christopher Nolan (great film director), he's a bit like Woody Allen; the former doesn't go pass 5.1-channel (he's not a "surround" sound type of guy), and the later is a mono type of guy, from records (LPs). ...Jazz. Both are unique. Both are great filmmakers who bring us a colorful multi-palette on film entertainment. There is a nostalgic prestige in celluloid, today a risky business. ...But it is also an art form. And true art is no snobbish affair, it's a renaissance, a reborn creation, ...like the vinyl spinning on the turntable. IMO

* An interesting link 853guy; it 'sparkled' some of my attention, and beyond.
_____

Bonus: Here's a short thread from another site that was just started very early this morning ? http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=291995
 
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BruceD

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Indeed there are some DOP's with quirks that are hard to shift from the film beginning-ha!

I know of the situ that they use the RED for Hi-Speed and Alexa for normal shooting.

The TV industry always had a minimum code standard for Digital capture and transmission but that now has relaxed somewhat--my good Friend Rodney Charters (24/Miami Vice)shot some Dallas2 and Shameless on Canon 5DIIs.

Film still has its place--in some DOP's minds :cool:

BruceD
 

BMCG

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bonzo75

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Yes Amir, you are right. It is interesting though to draw a comparison with the music industry...hi-res/CD digital versus vinyl/tape analogue.

Speaking of Christopher Nolan (great film director), he's a bit like Woody Allen; the former doesn't go pass 5.1-channel (he's not a "surround" sound type of guy), and the later is a mono type of guy, from records (LPs). ...Jazz. Both are unique. Both are great filmmakers who bring us a colorful multi-palette on film entertainment. There is a nostalgic prestige in celluloid, today a risky business. ...But it is also an art form. And true art is no snobbish affair, it's a renaissance, a reborn creation, ...like the vinyl spinning on the turntable. IMO

* An interesting link 853guy; it 'sparkled' some of my attention, and beyond.
_____

Bonus: Here's a short thread from another site that was just started very early this morning ? http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=291995

Sorry but Chris Nolan is no patch on Woody Allen as a director. Nolan tries hard to make his films unique and complex, but that's about it. I have watched all of Nolan's and seen over 25 Woody Allen movies
 

853guy

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Aug 14, 2013
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Film processing is much more expensive than digital so studios do not like to use them. When a director makes it in hollywood (i.e. has a hit film), they like to think that they have more power than the studio and demand to have their next movie to be shot on film. It is a status thing. "Nolan got to shoot his movie on film, I want mine the same way." This is the only underlying current these days behind shooting on film. The battle against it has been fought and won on technical and economic matters.

For consumers, this can be a terrible thing. Because to save money in post production, the film is scanned and transferred at 2K and shipped that way to theaters. Then comes the time to do a 4K version and you have to go back and not only re-scan the movie, but also repeat all the editing and color timing (correction). Worse yet you have to get the approval of talent to release it that way. This is why so many movies can't come out in 4K even though they could.

Actually, often, it’s a latitude and dynamic range thing.

Studio executives make decisions based on numbers (1), directors and DOP make decisions based on aesthetics. Producers try to balance the numbers with the elements of physical production relative to the vision of the director.

If you’ve ever been on a shoot (have you?), you’d be aware that not all projects are the same, and not all come with the same requirements. The reasons a director/DOP may choose to shoot on film will always involve consideration of the variables not limited to: The shooting budget, the number of shooting days, the shooting ratio (the number of takes versus what ends up in the cut), the shooting rhythm and length of takes, the number of VFX shots, the ability to control light for exteriors and interiors, and the post-production budget (on an indie/low-medium budget film i.e. under $15 million, the first budget to be cut is always the post-production budget, meaning if you hoped your horrible flat ungraded digital footage could be made to look “cinematic” by spending days and weeks at a post-production house because digital always allows you to “fix it in post”, you might be in for a shock). Aside from aesthetics, some directors/DOP prefer to shoot film because they do so in conditions in which digital becomes more problematic, say, where temperature extremes or remote locations are involved.

Although film stock is a cost that must be factored into the shooting budget, digital in-and-of-itself is not superior in terms of a shooting format relative to budget. If you shoot digital, do you send out each day for the dailies to be graded? Are you shooting 4K Cine or 6K or 8k? Are you a Fincher who likes to average 50 takes per scene? Are you a Jackson or Cameron who like to shoot in 3D at 4K generating millions and million of bits of data that needs to be workflowed via a village of digital imaging technicians and data wranglers responsible for data management, data integrity, data backup, and on-set colour correction? Are you shooting The Hobbit and generating 398 billion bits of data for each second of the film and therefore need a 24/7 team of colour graders working off-site just to correct the ungraded dailies (2)?

If you are, can your budget accommodate the greater number of people on set who all need to be transported, fed, and paid, not to mention those off-site in a lab or edit suite making your raw footage into something that looks palatable?

Perhaps the words of these two cinematographers speak most to the realities of film-making in a way that probably best sums up how decisions are made that, contrary to your opinion, have nothing to do with status:

"I found that film and film cameras are more robust and able to deal with the vagaries of temperature and conditions. Again, when you came to the DI [digital intermediate], we have grain, we have contrast, but yet when we want to open up the negative and create a paler side, the latitude is there for the earlier scenes in her house." Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC (Atonement, Anna Karenina, The Avengers, Nocturnal Animals)

"We agreed immediately we wanted to shoot on film. We actually shot all the night scenes digitally to capture them in candlelight or the dusk scenes with torches. It was the best of both worlds. We used film for what it’s best at—skin tone and nuance on faces and color of the landscape—then digital for low-light situations." Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC (Silence, The Wolf of Wall Street, Argo, Brokeback Mountain)

With more from the directors and cinematographers and the twenty-nine films shot on 35mm in 2016 see here: http://filmmakermagazine.com/101600-27-movies-shot-on-35mm-released-in-2016/#.WRwN1TOQ3dQ; the sixty-four films shot on 35mm in 2015 see here: http://filmmakermagazine.com/97320-64-films-released-in-2015-shot-on-35mm/#.WRwD6TOQ3dQ; and the thirty-nine films shot on 35mm in 2014 see here: http://filmmakermagazine.com/88971-39-movies-released-in-2014-shot-on-35mm/#.Vo5U9s4qFss

853guy

(1) Producer Daniel Hank, a former AMC network executive who had a hand in countless film, commercial and television productions that have been shot on film, including Breaking Bad and Walking Dead (why? “because HD gives away the makeup details too much”), (says): “We did one show for a director who had to shoot film and it cost $30,000-40,000 more per $3 million episode, or about one to 1.33 percent more.” (Bolding mine) https://www.moviemaker.com/archives...-expense-of-shooting-on-film-a-misconception/

(2) http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...digital-debate&p=367646&viewfull=1#post367646
 
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NorthStar

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Apocalypse Now, Lawrence of Arabia, Avatar, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit trilogy, Blade Runner, La La Land, Singing in the Rain, The Gold Rush, The Great Dictator, Pandora's Box, The Martian, The Revenant, Birdman, Gravity, Pan's Labyrinth, Baraka, Samsara, Planet Earth ll, The Matrix, Citizen Kane, 8½, Vertigo, The Birds, Once Upon a time in ... trilogy, Gone with the Wind, Doctor Zhivago, Mad Max: Fury Road, Julieta, Malena, The Legend of 1900, Man with a Movie Camera, ...

How many of them above were shot on photographique celluloid (film)?
The greatest films (cinematography, imagery technique, moving vistas, close-ups, ...) in moving pictures used various cameras , lenses, techniques, computers, digital, analog, all that camera jazz and like music there's no absolute except on tapes. :b

So there's just no way that film is going the way of the dodo because there will always be great cineastes filming on films for the next billion years to come; if not on this planet then on other planets from other galaxies of the vast universe. I think.

* Yesterday I watched few clips/interviews by Keanu Reeves on youtube from the documentary Side by Side. ...Cool stuff.

The Hateful Eight was projected in 70 mm film in some theaters.

Anecdote: "A guitar destroyed by Kurt Russell's character was not a prop but an antique 1870s Martin guitar loaned by the Martin Guitar Museum. According to sound producer Mark Ulano, the guitar was supposed to have been switched with a copy to be destroyed, but this was not communicated to Russell; everyone on the set was "pretty freaked out" at the guitar's destruction, and Leigh's reaction was genuine, though "Tarantino was in a corner of the room with a funny curl on his lips, because he got something out of it with the performance." Museum director Dick Boak said that the museum was not told that the script included a scene that called for a guitar being smashed, and determined that it was irreparable. The insurance remunerated the purchase value of the guitar. As a result of the incident, the museum will no longer loan guitars to film productions."

"Cinematographer Robert Richardson, who also worked with Tarantino in Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained, filmed The Hateful Eight on 70 mm film, using Ultra Panavision 70 and Kodak Vision 3 film stocks: 5219, 5207, 5213 and 5203. It is the widest release in 70 mm film since Ron Howard's Far and Away in 1992. The film uses Panavision anamorphic lenses with an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, a very widescreen image that was used on some films in the 1950s and 1960s. The filmmakers also avoided any use of a digital intermediate; the 70mm release was color-timed photochemically by FotoKem, and the dailies were screened in 70mm. The wide digital release and a handful of 35mm prints were struck from a digital intermediate, done by Yvan Lucas at Shed/Santa Monica."

Interstellar ... cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot the film on 35 mm in anamorphic format and IMAX 70 mm.

The Revenant ... http://variety.com/2015/artisans/production/the-revenant-cinematography-emmanuel-lubezki-1201661435/

How The Wast Was Won ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_West_Was_Won_(film)

_____

Films they come in all flavors just like paintings, photographs. A Monet or a Matisse or a Da Vinci or a Michelangelo or a Van Gogh or a Picasso or a Dali ... is a chef-d'oeuvre of uniqueness using its own technique and brush stroke/style. The eyes and hands of the masters are part of its equipment, like the canvas and colors material used.

@ the end of the picture frame there is magic in dimensionality of realism/surrealism that the best film connoisseurs and cinematography critics can only teach us from discoveries in the art of moving cameras.

There are so many films globally, and so many of them are just total crap/garbage. It's best to stay with the better ones, from the masters.
In the year 2017 everything is important; not only the moving pictures but also the music scores, the actors/actresses direction, the decors, and the story.
We are evolving, in our judgement with the new technological 'capture' tools. ...Some for the best and other for the worst.

I put great importance on smooth camera fluidity, on high frame rate, on natural imagery. ...No Batman monkey business. :b
I hate deeply camera shakes; it makes me vomit my brain out of my mouth. Fine film grain is better than soaps. ...Vision of speech.

The displays we use @ home to see the films we love; it's like the audio gear we use to music listening of the recordings we love.
And the vast majority of displays today are the digital ones. There aren't too many people using cathode ray tube TVs and reel-to-reel front projectors.
But some filmmakers still use open-reel projectors.

The other day I had a vision; she disappeared into my imagination...a beautiful vision.
 

still-one

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Film may hang on for some time but theaters capable of showing film will be harder and harder to find going forward. Major chains want nothing to do with the issues of dealing with film as compared to digital.
 

wisnon

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"Preaching for the accessibility of shooting on film, Kodak themselves has had to step into the void and form partnerships to open new labs in major production hubs. Today, Kodak announced a new partnership with the famed Pinewood Studios just outside of London – the shooting home of the James Bond franchise and number of recent large Hollywood productions – where they signed a five-year lease to build film negative processing lab."

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/05/kodak-film-lab-london-new-york-atlanta-cannes-1201817950/

I'm telling you, an audio cassette renaissance is inevitable and imminent.

853guy
I'm rootin' for 8Track. LoL
 

FrantzM

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Film may hang on for some time but theaters capable of showing film will be harder and harder to find going forward. Major chains want nothing to do with the issues of dealing with film as compared to digital.

IOW Film is dead and Kodak is bankrupt. :( The prestige of film is probably there but the future and logisitcs favor digital. No way around it and no looking back.
 

NorthStar

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Film may hang on for some time but theaters capable of showing film will be harder and harder to find going forward. Major chains want nothing to do with the issues of dealing with film as compared to digital.

I agree; film (celluloid) is becoming more and more a niche for the true connoisseurs, just like in audio/music with vinyl and tapes.

Vinyl is resurging though, and eventually it will outclass the CD. :b
If we look @ high-end audio shows there are more turntables today than music servers.
_____

http://montrealgazette.com/entertai...tal-star-wars-imax-screenings-reignite-debate
? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/70_mm_film

Some (few) IMAX theaters, and other grand venues of higher art caliber/class still project pellicule films. They are the ones to go after, like a fine cognac with a high grade Cuban cigar.
 

still-one

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I agree; film (celluloid) is becoming more and more a niche for the true connoisseurs, just like in audio/music with vinyl and tapes.

Vinyl is resurging though, and eventually it will outclass the CD. :b
If we look @ high-end audio shows there are more turntables today than music servers.
_____

http://montrealgazette.com/entertai...tal-star-wars-imax-screenings-reignite-debate
? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/70_mm_film

Some (few) IMAX theaters, and other grand venues of higher art caliber/class still project pellicule films. They are the ones to go after, like a fine cognac with a high grade Cuban cigar.

The mainstream consumer has already moved on to streaming from CDs. I am guessing that trend will pick up steam within the audiophile community too.
 

853guy

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Aug 14, 2013
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IOW Film is dead and Kodak is bankrupt. :( The prestige of film is probably there but the future and logisitcs favor digital. No way around it and no looking back.

Hi Frantz,

Do you mean projecting film is dead?

Just some more tidbits of info:

The fifteen films debuting at Cannes this week that were shot on either 35mm or 16mm.

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/05/15-cannes-movies-shot-film-1201818742/

Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip, Queen of Earth) on why as an indie filmmaker he can justify shooting film:

http://www.indiewire.com/2015/08/alex-ross-perry-indie-filmmakers-can-afford-to-shoot-film-58871/

As Perry says, "Once the footage is scanned and edited, it doesn’t matter what the origin was, except now you aren’t paying some tech nerd in a post house several thousand dollars to press buttons and adjust knobs in order to retroactively add an visual aesthetic to your movie that realistically, you could have just spent the same amount of money on set and had that texture and experience be genuine instead of inauthentic."

And if you want a list of the 132 films shot on 35mm in the last three years from 2014-2016, you can look here:

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...ly-Exaggerated&p=451380&viewfull=1#post451380

853guy
 

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