"Film is Finished"

[Charles Papert]

Take the "union jobs" part out of the equation, folks. The IA has much bigger fish to fry than the nuances of staffing requirements, such as maintaining our health plans (and has been slowly eroding the mandatory staffing as a concession towards that, even before digital took over). Everyone in the business has gotten used to digital workflow, or gotten out.

Me, I haven't shot a frame of film for three years and at this point, it will be a surprise if I do again. As long as I can keep getting Alexas on my jobs, I'm satisfied.

[Karl Eklund]

Originally Posted by Peer Landa

Simply because Hollywood is quite conservative when it comes to technical/engineering evolution. Today the only way to see a difference between film and digital depends solely on how well the footage is graded in post.

-- peer

Well, my point was kind of lost since it more refers to studios and franchises that have been using digital but are going "back" to film, The Amazing Spiderman 2 is being shot using film, alexa and epic, when the first one was solely epic.... Films like Slumdog and Avatar have also shown studios that digital is OK for both "artsier" and blockbuster movies, so for at least four years now you shouldn't be getting weird looks if you suggest "digital".

[Jon Fairhurst]

In photography, I've been shooting B&W on a 6x6 Bronica S2A lately. I use my 5D2 as my "light meter", so I often see the same shot on film and digital. I develop the film at home and scan it for the convenience of digital (processing, sharing, archiving), but I enlarge it in analog when I want a large print.

I think film for stills offers three advantages in this order: 1) a potential retro look (with fast, grainy film), 2) the "art" and the value of rarity when making single, unique prints with manual dodging and burning, and 3) the way that film handles tones and dynamic range.

Regarding the retro look, this is film's strongest advantage - when it's desired. Could you imagine Eraserhead being shot on anything but film? The Artist was digital (and successful) but I couldn't help but feel that it was a bit contrived. With my medium format shots, non-experts simply believe that the images are retro. You want retro? This is how to deliver it honestly.

The "unique art" thing doesn't really apply to moving pictures. We don't print singletons with burning and dodging. We scan and do digital effects. We can make as many digital replicas as we want.

The tones and dynamic range, even when not shooting fast and noisy for a retro look, are still in play, but the gap is narrow. I shot the same "looking down" waterfall shot with the 6x6 (400 T-MAX) and 5D2 and even with the scan, there's something richer about the film image. I can mess with the tone curve on the digital picture and get very close, but there's simply more power in the film copy. But is the extra time and cost worth it? Unless you're making a large analog print, probably not.

So, would I shoot a moving picture on film today? No. Not unless I was going for a true retro look with fast, grainy film. But for the general tone or for art's sake? No. It's too costly for too small a margin.

And for stills, I'll only shoot medium format or larger on black and white. For 35mm, it's digital all the way.

[Murray Christian]

Apropos of no comment in particular; as much as I love it too, it is easy to over estimate the desire for a 'retro look' outside filmmakers themselves who have a breadth of aesthetic influences and goals.

Beyond that there's pretty strong desire for a 'crisp clean' image it seems to me. It's the look that sells televisions and impresses your friends in the living room. It's the one that people try to get on TV forums (and that has techs explaining the complexities of electromagnetic radiation over help lines). It's the thing that Bluray remasters increasingly try to achieve (to varying degrees), with De-noising and increased saturation from the original film.
They backed off on that sort of thing a little since film purists want the original for their collectors editions. But I wouldn't bank on it going away any time soon.

The audience being generally visually unsophisticated and tolerant of a variety of image qualities is one thing. The gloss that appeals to the also unsophisticated but higher end consumer seems to be a fairly potent driver of a lot of things in taste and tech.

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Jon Fairhurst

The Artist was digital (and successful) but I couldn't help but feel that it was a bit contrived.

"The Artist" was shot on film (Kodak Vision3 500T 5219) with a digital post.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Re: The Artist, my mistake! I was told differently, but I apparently repeated bad info. (I mentioned it only because I thought it would be really odd to shoot such a film on digital.)

Re: The retro look, I don't think this would be for general use. But if "Not So Young Frankenstein" were to be produced, I'd definitely want it to be shot on B&W film. In fact, there are a number of indoor still shots I've taken with high speed B&W that totally remind me of old horror films. :)

[Andrew James]

The get a Oscar award the film should be interesting to see and the role of each character are portray well.

[Jason Garrett]

Originally Posted by Murray Christian

Beyond that there's pretty strong desire for a 'crisp clean' image it seems to me. It's the look that sells televisions and impresses your friends in the living room. It's the one that people try to get on TV forums (and that has techs explaining the complexities of electromagnetic radiation over help lines). It's the thing that Bluray remasters increasingly try to achieve (to varying degrees), with De-noising and increased saturation from the original film.
They backed off on that sort of thing a little since film purists want the original for their collectors editions. But I wouldn't bank on it going away any time soon.

The audience being generally visually unsophisticated and tolerant of a variety of image qualities is one thing. The gloss that appeals to the also unsophisticated but higher end consumer seems to be a fairly potent driver of a lot of things in taste and tech.

I was going to bring up something along these lines; I’m not a pro like most of you guys here – just a hobbyist with an enthusiasm for digital bringing ‘filmmaking’ to the hands of the common man sort of thing. I went up to the Tallgrass Film Festival to see Side by Side specifically last year, etc.

What has given me a new perspective on film vs. digital was a recent burglary that got my 40” lcd and in the process of pouring over the forums I was steered toward a Panny ST50 plasma and picked up on the nuance of the blacks plasma can reproduce. Not that I haven’t seen the comparisons, but I became far more acutely aware of the quality of plasma vs. lcd – not just the blacks but the overall warmth, etc.

I see a number of the ‘reference’ discs for plasma are shot on film. There are a number that are digital as well, but I recently ordered a few off the list and only afterward noticed they were Christopher Nolan ‘films’ – Inception and The Dark Knight Rises (I’m not the worlds biggest film nerd or I probably would have realized this beforehand obviously).

Anyway, looks as though plasmas days may be numbered. Backlit local dimming, etc. or OLED may pick up some of that slack, but the ‘masses’ are definitely probably not seeing any difference at home at least. I know it has been eye opening for me. I LOVE my new plasma btw! It is freakin gorgeous!

[Joachim Hoge]

Congratulations on your ST 50. I got the same after extensive research (and I'm a pro) and only the VT 50 can beat it IMHO, but for a price.
It's a pleasure to watch well mastered blu ray on this thing.
You certainly notice the difference from films shot digitally and analog.
I still prefere film to digital when it comes to drama, but my own work is a lot of extreme action sports as well as TVCs and docu work. For me personally my EPIC fits the bill perfectly.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Jason, just keep the curtains closed and the plasma will look great. But on a bright day, you'll want an LCD. LCDs can maintain calibrated color temps at much higher brightness levels than PDPs (hundreds of nits, rather than tens.)

[Galen Rath]

I watched a couple of recent movies at my son's home on his new 120HZ LED widescreen TV's. They looked terrible, like fake movies, just plain video like.

My son said when he first got the TV, he wanted to return it because of the way the movies looked, but eventually he got used to it, and doesn't "notice it anymore." He and his wife accept the way the movies look.

So every videographer is trying to get away from the video look, spending mega thousands to do so, but after all the effort, in the end people end up watching productions on a TV that makes them look NOT FILM LIKE.

Wierd.

[Jason Garrett]

Google on ‘Soap Opera Effect’ – I seem to catch a lot of these new sets have default settings that produce this that you need to dial out. That might be what you were seeing. I had one of the new Samsung 46” 6100 series lcd sets for a few days and it didn’t look ‘bad.’ Especially after I dialed in some generic calibration settings I found on the internet. It was very bright and more vibrant I guess you might say.

The Panny plasma ST50 is rich – the colors are just amazing!… I have some generic calibration settings and ran the Disney WOW disc on it and dialed it in a little more custom for my room and I love it!

How To Remove the “Soap Opera Effect” From Your HDTV | HackCollege

[Gints Klimanis]

Originally Posted by Galen Rath

I watched a couple of recent movies at my son's home on his new 120HZ LED widescreen TV's. They looked terrible, like fake movies, just plain video like.

Jason, agreed. Turn off the motion interpolation.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Consider these steps for a filmic look from your TV:
1) Turn off interpolation.
2) Turn noise reduction to the minimum acceptable level. (A bit of NR can help reduce codec noise. Too much and people look plastic.)
3) Reduce contrast to ensure no white clipping.
4) Adjust brightness to eliminate black crush - then go back to step 3 until the two controls are balanced.

Also, for LCD TVs, reduce your backlight to the minimum comfortable level. This depends on ambient lighting conditions. Some automatic brightness control advanced settings allow you to set limits for dark and bright viewing conditions. Optimize this and you can set and forget.

By dimming the backlight under dark room conditions, you can get closer to theater brightness levels. And, you'll save energy and lower your electric bills. :)

Hopefully, this post will close this side discussion. We should really be talking about whether or not "Film is Finished", rather than whether TVs display film properly. :)

[Peer Landa]

Maybe Jon's above post should be a sticky ;^)

-- peer