141 Children of Paradise

[Lance]

Greetings my new grain purist friends (and foes),
I can assure you that many of my cohorts in business would think me an insane madman for jumping back into the middle of this wolf pack to defend my comments/honor or retort to those add-ons that have compiled since my first post, etc, but I promised to do so out of both honest respect for what I do, and respect for the time and passion you all have taken here as well, I can only promise to do my best.

ON THE TOPIC OF SPELLING...
I could not agree more. Bad spelling is poor form, and I owe you all sincere apologies; that was not a reflection of the amount I care or respect your time, but actually quite the opposite – do understand I was typing with a beet-red face, with steam shooting out of my ears, angry as I am sure all of you have been from time to time, trying to convey my thoughts on a late Friday afternoon (after having been working to keep my small business going in a tough economy) without fundamentally offending people (a skill a few on this list lack, BTW; blatant name calling is a larger reflection of poor form than bad spelling ever will be). After 30 minutes of typing a passionate rebuttal (and, admittedly, an average-at-best technical response after a long, long work day) and a fast re-read I was ready to get the hell out of my office and have a beer (thank God for beer). It is never easy to be the source of piled-on ire – in fact, it has not happened to us so it was a strange and nearly out-of-body experience. I am a mechanical engineer (and yes, a human being as well), but I do care about spelling. I admit it was a shameful effort on the first go, but I assure you this response will be (neeerly) error free, so let us move on.

ON MY RESPONSE
There are so many responses, accusations, rebuttals, and inputs here please forgive me that I will not call out any individuals, I will simply do my best to respond to the spirit of the concerns. If I miss something, I am not purposely avoiding answering any direct questions, unless they are obvious insults which deserve no response from me or anyone else. We should be above this.

ABOUT ME
I am human. I care about film as much as anyone on this list. I do not care if you believe me. I do not care if you lay a thousand tons of proof at my feet to the contrary. If I did not care I would not be in this business. I am a purist, only of a different ilk. I am open-minded. I admit when I am wrong, am adamant when I think I am right, and am smart enough to know I may learn something tomorrow that completely changes my thought process or how I view the world. I am spiritual but no extremist. I employ about 10 people with good work, and I listen to critics and praise alike. Respect my space and I will honor yours. Come at me drooling with a hammer and I will defend myself. Come at me with a pen and paper and I will listen.

ON THE TOPIC OF MY COMMENT ABOUT USING THE TOOLS AT THE TIME
I appreciate some of the historical context here. I agree and disagree. I have been involved with some very interesting restorations of many flavors (let us leave out the technical for now and speak solely philosophically). I can assure you that the filmmaker’s intent has always been to tell a great story first, grain is not why filmmakers make movies, it is a fortunate (yes I LOVE grain) byproduct of the technology for which they tell them at the time they produced the film. Film is a wonderful medium to tell it, but sadly it is on the out. I have made indy films myself, it is how I started in this business; I shot a feature on a CP16 with B&W reversal. It was both an artistic choice and a budgetary limitation, in truth it was a combo of both. I know how it feels to hear the sound of film going through a camera; it is like hearing the heartbeat of magic itself. I then edited this film myself over 5 years before screening it in NYC two days before the World Trade Centers were destroyed – I believe completely that I have a destiny in film that was forged with my own mythological journey - a story very long and interesting but I will not bore you with it. I struggled with the film and the edit tools, I struggled with image quality and I wondered how artists were going to possibly make anything that looks as lovely as those films of yester year with the video tools? So I invented Cinnafilm in my basement – a technology initially designed to make video look like film – and I carved it by hand out of technical stone for 8 years until it worked. It worked so well that we added the ability to remove noise as well, and then ARRI found us. I tell you this so you know that an ARTIST at heart created it.
So here is a question – did the filmmaker catching the imagery of WWI in the trenches with his 18 fps camera really want it to be super chunky and at a poor frame rate? A: of course not; he just wanted to live through it and get the film back to the museum. If we can repurpose that material so it is watchable for the eons, then we all have contributed a priceless gift to the race of humans of which I am a proud to take a small part.
I am sure some of you will go off the handle about how crazy I am, egocentric, etc – be my guest. You will do so regardless of what I type here because you are the kind of person who looks for any human flaw regardless of how petty (spelling, for exmmaple) to make your point that only a barbarian could be behind the curtain. But a few of you will begin to understand that the force that guides this technology and the impact it is making is well beyond me or my company, it is a needed tool so cope. At some point we have to move on to cell phones from the ones plugged into the wall. We have to move on from horse draw carriages to cars. Fact is, the human race moves forward with or without the ones who sit and pout. If you spend all your time on a topic like film grain levels on one single film you will miss the big picture and the amazing things happening to the whole industry. I mean, I can take a 5D camera, a copy of Adobe Premium, my Dark Energy for After Effects, and I can cut a film that looks as amazing as anything in the theater next year. The stories are coming in floods and we need them to save us, and they will look terrific if people take the time to do them right. That excites me.

ON THE TOPIC OF GRAIN MANAGEMENT
This is optional. Everything done to a classic title is. Restorations can be done well, they can be done poorly, they can be done so no one even knows about it (DE allows users to dial down by a % to lower the heaviness but not alter the original structure one bit), or it can simply not be done at all. Who’s to say how it is done? You all? Who made you the judge of all things restoration? Was this something ordained to you by (fill in your deity of choice)? I was not aware that optimizing and saving content had to go through your special committee prior to distribution so that the rest of us inferior masses could simply enjoy the content. I will certainly let the studio heads know of this new procedure. I guess it must be because you are paying the bill for the restorations so that the films don’t simply age into oblivion – that must be it. Question - are scratches and dust specks also the original artists’ intent? Is grain management more important than story? You see, I can be snarky too – but it lowers my credibility. I apologize for the above commentary.

ON CHILDREN OF PARADISE
Again – I saw the 4k master at the Academy and it looked terrific. I hope it transferred well to blu-ray. I had never seen it before. I was enthralled with the story, and enamored with the characters. I still have visions of it in my head.
NOW – that being said, I am going to totally razz myself here. I am the biggest Star Wars fan in the universe to my knowledge. If one frame changed a tiny bit I would be up in arms and pretty worked up, I don’t have time to be on forums to complain about it, but I would at least facebook it ten times. I saw the re-mastered versions – and guess what, they tinkered with the film grain, and it does not look as good as I would like (they did not use our product set). But I ask, which is the higher offense – that or the digital re-do of Greedo shooting at Han first? To me, I spend my vitriol on the re-formation of Han Solo’s character by that one ridiculous redo, because the story has been affected and that is far more upsetting to me. I say all of this to tell you I do understand your concerns as people who are true fans of these films, they are valid and while I disagree I accept the complaints as important.
Finally – I have heard you all loud and clear. I appreciate the concerns and have processed them. I have soaked them into my psyche. I hope you have taken equal time to consider my side – and, hopefully, as open minded people you may understand that in some areas of assumption you are technically incorrect. I am an engineer. I design components for rockets on the side. I know the difference between technical correctness and incorrectness – it is not opinion here. Grain management can be done well with our tool.

ON THE TOPIC OF WHAT WE REALLY DO AT CINNAFILM
We are a software company. We sell two toolsets – Dark Energy, and Tachyon. Dark Energy is a dustbuster and a texture management toolset. DE is used in a variety of places for restoration and for modern digital cinema. Tachyon is a format converter and broken cadence corrector, along with a scaler and proper deinterlacer. Both of these tools employ a real time motion vector engine that is, to my knowledge, the best on market. We employ a variety of techniques both spatially and temporally with real time feedback to ensure that image quality is optimized – image quality is our #1 focus. We have done literally thousands of tests and have saved material from being tossed in the can. We are not the only ones in this business, either. We always get better at what we do. I am going to personally spend some more time next year ensuring all of our users are trained up again – this is a result of this thread and discussion (who said complaining never got you anywhere!). But be aware more training does not mean anything other than that. In the end the film owners make the calls on how things are restored. If you have further beef, talk to them.
I have seen a ton of ARRI scanned content of very old prints – sometimes they look awful in the higher resolution (due in large part to aging), some almost unusable. I can assure you that removing grain, then working on it, then putting back the original grain or new grain is a technique that works well if done right. You all will have to simply accept that as fact. If you are that opposed, go work for those companies, become the restoration managers, then convince them and the film owners that the aged, dirty prints are the original artist’s intent. Choosing me as the sole point of your pain only gets you long, and hopefully well-spelled, diatribes that sound more like random ramblings from a crazy man in the mountains than a good rebuttal.

ON THE TOPIC OF OPTIMIZATION
OK this is one topic I know very well. Besides selling a texture management tool we also sell tools for transcoding and standards conversions – a very, very tough technical achievement. We also sell tools to help remove broken cadence patterns, and we have helped restore a lot of original content that was very poorly transferred on telecine last century. So all-in-all, I can confidently say our company is on the forefront of restoration that matters on a large variety of content. We work tirelessly with studios and broadcasters to help them get the very best frames out of some of the worst situations. But we are the tech company – the real work is done by the amazing artists in the post houses that tirelessly work with a wide variety of tools to save older content. They are the true heroes doing amazing work and I give ALL the real credit to them.

FINAL STATEMENTS
Cinnafilm’s de-noiser is the best on market for re-texturizing. If it is used incorrectly, as with any digital toolset, it can damage the image. If a company wants to denoise an image they will do so with or without us, and you should hope they use Dark Energy instead of an inferior toolset. You get what you pay for in this business.
Your comments about detail loss are completely out of context and technically incorrect. Looking at individual frames on the internet is a ridiculous method to evaluate a technology properly and make valued opinions on, it actually makes you sound more like a harping complainer than an expert in your field, which I doubt some of you are. The best way to really evaluate any toolset of this nature is to sit down in a real DI suite with a 50 foot screen (not sit at home with an ipad and stale coffee) – that is where I cut my teeth in this business and sold this tech to the people who know what they are talking about. I have never sold Cinnafilm with website samples; no one that knows anything about this business buys technology without going through months of proofing evaluations. I have seen MORE detail come out of an image using our tech than is lost – you don’t believe me and frankly I don’t care. If you want proof let’s meet at a DI suite in Los Angeles and I will show you personally - but until that happens your arguments are simply incorrect and baseless, and I doubt many of the folks on here have any idea about how any of this technology really works, or are involved with restorations first hand.
If you don’t like what the owners of a film are doing with the film then contact them. Contacting me is like telling me you are mad at me for inventing better scalpels for the surgeons. It’s the surgery that is your rub, not the scalpel. Dark Energy is meant to be the finest texture toolset – not some big wash and bake like “we don’t care how it is done as long as it looks terrible” tool. Grain management should be with a very delicate hand (like color) and ONLY when it is value add to the overall presentation. It can be done beautifully or harshly. I prefer the former. I cannot control either.
I love grain; I have a passion for it. Grain is not noise to me – it is a beautiful pallet of randomness that makes each frame a gem. I love it so much so I started a company and forged a place for it because it needed to be done PROPERLY. I think before you knock our grain modeling you should check it out. If you saw Act of Valor, we helped remove the compression noise of the 5D content and modeled new grain so believable when it was first projected folks did not know it had never gone film out. Are you telling me their vision was to keep the awful compression noise? Fact; cameras are almost gone to 100% digital, so is distribution. And they do not look as good as film, IMO. So do you want plastic faces and buzzing noise for the next 1000 years? I sure as heck don’t’. My focus is on retaining the quality of digital cinema and Cinnafilm exists so we can enjoy good looking imagery for years to come, and it also exists to help save the amazing work from last century when there are few other options. This is the big picture, folks. I suggest you take the whole picture into your mind’s eye and sleep on it.

At some point the spirited discussion ends, and we all move on with our lives. I have a business to run and I truly appreciate the commentary, even if it is rough and spiteful in parts. Bottom line, if you don’t like the blu-ray, then don’t buy it. Move on and find something else to complain about, there will always be something.
With sincerest respect,
Lance

[Jeff]

Is grain management more important than story?

To Marcel Carné? No.

To the person entrusted with preserving the look of the celluloid image in a manner that looks as close as possible to projection on the film's initial release? Yes.

[Gregory]

I stopped reading at

Who’s to say how it is done? You all? Who made you the judge of all things restoration? Was this something ordained to you by (fill in your deity of choice)? I was not aware that optimizing and saving content had to go through your special committee prior to distribution so that the rest of us inferior masses could simply enjoy the content. I will certainly let the studio heads know of this new procedure.

Others will surely have more patience, but I guess I'll just go back to my role of faithful and passive consumer. After all, I certainly don't have a destiny in film forged with my own mythological journey and tied to the forward progression of the human race or anything swell like that.

[triodelover]

I apologize for the above commentary.

Please. If you were sorry you would have edited out the language. Honesty is a key component of credibility. Yours just took a hit.

[Drucker]

Lance, all "the people" really want is for the film to look as close as possible to how it was shot and existed on film for decades, which is the only way we can read into what the director wanted. Comparing it to Lucas is silly for so many reasons, but among them, Lucas is the ONLY person who has the right to do what he did.

There is a lotta silly to digest in your post, but the fact that this all came up with regards to Paradise and you possibly hadn't seen it before your own companies tools were used in a 4K scan really harm the leg you might be trying to stand on with this incident.

[swo17]

I'm not a technical expert. It's my understanding that some degree of grain removal/management is necessary in many (most? all?) cases, and I don't doubt that Cinnafilm's products can work well in the right hands. It's entirely possible that I've seen other films that have been run through a similar process and I've thought they looked fine. Indeed, some (maybe half?) of the new Children of Paradise transfer looks excellent. (Les Visiteurs du soir looks uniformly excellent as well. Was Cinnafilm involved with that transfer at all?) The problem here is--and I suppose this comes down to a fundamental difference of opinion--I just think the texture apparent in the rest of the transfer (primarily in close-ups) looks plain bad, overly waxy and artificial-looking, whereas "before footage" of the same scenes, though exhibiting signs of damage, does not share this same problem. I should mention: I've never seen this film other than through home video. I'm not pining for it to look like it did for me ages ago. But I do watch a lot of films, and a lot of films of this vintage. Maybe Carné would have shot this on a RED today, maybe in color. Maybe he would have envisioned it as a graphic novel, a cooking show, or a series of YouTube videos. He didn't. He made a film. Children of Paradise is a film. When Carné would look at dailies, it's probably true that he cared more about scene composition, the quality of takes, or how the story was progressing more than whether the footage looked like it was shot on film. But that's because, as he was in the business of making films, it was a given that the film he was then making would look more or less like a film. If he had been screened footage from the film and it looked like it was covered with wax paper or confetti or little multi-colored candy sprinkles instead of film grain, he surely would have demanded retakes. Because he was making a film. Children of Paradise is a film. It doesn't entirely look like one on this new Blu-ray. That is all.

[triodelover]

There is a lotta silly to digest in your post, but the fact that this all came up with regards to Paradise and you possibly hadn't seen it before your own companies tools were used in a 4K scan really harm the leg you might be trying to stand on with this incident.

This is an excellent point. Not only is it apparent that he was unfamiliar with the film pre-restoration, there's no evidence in either of his lengthy posts that he's actually seen either the Criterion or Second Sight BDs, which is what everyone here is working from.

[Brian C]

I find pile-ons distasteful, but this guy really deserves it. He completely fails to engage any of the arguments that the actual experts in this thread are making, he makes a bunch of highly questionable statements that he can't possibly substantiate and even says in at least one case that he's unwilling to try (i.e., "I have seen MORE detail come out of an image using our tech than is lost – you don’t believe me and frankly I don’t care."), and he makes comparisons to defend himself that have no bearing on the actual topic at hand (e.g., Star Wars, Act of Valor). Furthermore, he shows no understanding of what film grain actually is beyond the very superficial aesthetic aspect of it (i.e., something that 'looks like film').

I'm not an expert, obviously, but I don't see where anything this guy says makes any sense at all, and to think that he has a role to play in preservation is frankly chilling. I hope that he's just a troll lying about who he is, a possibility that I don't reject outright but which seems too good to be probable.

[vsski]

Arrgh! Why is the main argument folks are making here so hard to understand or considered inflammatory (even if some of the snide side comments may be).
At the heart of the issue all people are asking for is to preserve a film that was made 70 years ago as close as possible to its original look and keeping the grain structure intact goes a long way to achieving that effect.

We all know how difficult these restorations are and given the source material they can't be perfect, but the 4k restoration was a beauty and the opportunity to preserve it got squandered in the transfer, whether intentional or by using tools incorrectly. So people point this out and lament this fact.

No one knows what Carne would do today and whether he would use a Red to shoot his film. And I think we all agree that he would have liked better film stock and shooting conditions at the time he made the movie - again not the point here.
Just because technology moves ahead and things that couldn't be done 20 years ago are now possible doesn't justify altering the work done 20 years ago, especially if not done by the original author.

If I had a painting that needed restoration I certainly wouldn't want anyone to alter the brush strokes of the painter, even if said painter today paints entirely different.
Enough said.

[rspaight]

I am sure some of you will go off the handle about how crazy I am, egocentric, etc – be my guest. You will do so regardless of what I type here because you are the kind of person who looks for any human flaw regardless of how petty (spelling, for exmmaple) to make your point that only a barbarian could be behind the curtain. But a few of you will begin to understand that the force that guides this technology and the impact it is making is well beyond me or my company, it is a needed tool so cope. At some point we have to move on to cell phones from the ones plugged into the wall. We have to move on from horse draw carriages to cars. Fact is, the human race moves forward with or without the ones who sit and pout. If you spend all your time on a topic like film grain levels on one single film you will miss the big picture and the amazing things happening to the whole industry. I mean, I can take a 5D camera, a copy of Adobe Premium, my Dark Energy for After Effects, and I can cut a film that looks as amazing as anything in the theater next year. The stories are coming in floods and we need them to save us, and they will look terrific if people take the time to do them right. That excites me.

I have no idea what you can do with digital tools today has to do with how to present what Carne did with film 60 years ago.

It seems obvious that digital will replace film, just as cell phones are replacing land lines and cars replaced horse-drawn carriages. But that is utterly irrelevant to the topic at hand. De-graining Children of Paradise does not make it look like state-of-the-art digital video, it makes it look like film with the grain (and fine detail) wiped away. Photoshopping the cord off of a Princess phone won't make it look like a cell phone, either. They are fundamentally different things, superficial similarities of purpose notwithstanding.

[Ishmael]

...blatant name calling is a larger reflection of poor form than bad spelling ever will be.

I am sure some of you will go off the handle about how crazy I am, egocentric, etc – be my guest. You will do so regardless of what I type here because you are the kind of person who looks for any human flaw regardless of how petty (spelling, for exmmaple) to make your point that only a barbarian could be behind the curtain.

[David M.]

I'm not a technical expert. It's my understanding that some degree of grain removal/management is necessary in many (most? all?) cases,

No, not really. I've taken scans of a negative and sent them straight to NTSC DVD without degraining. BD can easily handle it.

Although for a more complicated case like Children of Paradise, grain management (nice euphemism?) is a way to level out the differences between the different film elements used. Although the grain was "managed" into almost nothing.

[tenia]

If you are that opposed, go work for those companies, become the restoration managers, then convince them and the film owners that the aged, dirty prints are the original artist’s intent

Nobody needs to be an electrician to complain when your electrical switches are not properly working even if it has been done by a professionnal electrician.

Moreover, I think that I can speak for everyone when saying that the original artist's intent does not lie in aged dirty prints, but with what's below it, which is celluloid, and with it, grain.

To do further than just removing the dust, dirt and wear of time is not restoring, it's revisioning.

So "removing grain, then working on it, then putting back the original grain or new grain" might be "a technique that works well if done right", I truly trust you on this. It's just not restoring. It's tweaking pictures. It's going far beyond the job of the companies that do restorations. As said above, it's assuming stuff, like assuming Da Vinci has been using a special paint without knowing it was bad, so if he would have known, he would have done it otherwise, so let's do it otherwise.

The restoration process should bring back the picture as it were at the time. Not less, not more.
You see, I'm not asking for much, in fact.

vsski explains it very well : having the tools that are very good to what they are done for doesn't mean that you need them at all.

[Gregory]

This all sounds completely reasonable to me: He has a destiny in film. He made a film that coincided with a cataclysmic historical event. He then created a tool, carving it by hand out of technological stone for 8 years until it was so perfect that it could overcome limitations imposed upon his predecessors, which they suffered under without even realizing it, unable to see the future beyond their lifetimes and their limited ideas of what is possible. As an ARTIST, he put the technology to work fulfilling the historical fate of these ancient works, "repurposing" them to belong to the future, a priceless gift to the race of humans, all as part of a plan so immense that no one person can fathom it.
Those who merely sit on the sidelines can never understand the greatness of this, but no matter. They will be crushed under the wheel of history. Anyone who does not understand the unseen force that guides this technology is a fool to question it. If you do not hear it when it speaks, then you cannot hope to even glimpse the glory of the future it will help to usher in. How much of this grand scheme can any of us hope to witness, 80 years, 90? Compared to the timeless expanse in which repurposed works exist, we are like the motes of dust that the Machine will sweep away into the ashcan of history, as progress continues, oblivious to any of our petty concerns about the past or the present.

This all sounds reasonable for someone working with devices with names like Dark Energy. Speculation: Cinnafilm's offices have rough-hewn stone walls and lots of dry ice and strange liquids bubbling through tubes and beakers. The townspeople won't go near the place, and rumors abound regarding the nocturnal activities of Cinnafilm's henchmen. Many of those who vocally opposed Cinnafilm's plans later mechanically say they approve and seem to have mysterious gaps in their memories of past dealings with the company. Lance was recently seen speaking to the daughter of the local tavern owner, who treated him with suspicion. He fixed his gaze upon her, she backed away slowly, shrieked, and then fainted dead away.

[David M.]

It can be summarized even more succinctly:

What's wrong with films looking like films?

[zedz]

Gregory's elucidation rang a few bells, so I stuck Lance's big post through Google Translate and this is what came out:

Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.

[Artform]

I've been reading CForum for years. Mr. Lance has compelled me to join with his long, drawn out, well spelled diatribe for the benefit of self promotion or should I say, product promotion. Quite frankly, I could care less about his tools. I could care less if the tools were a cauldron, a wand and few eyes of newts, as long as film looks like film and not a step or two away from a video game. Film that looks like film is part of the wonderful experience of watching a movie.

The Children of Paradise was one of my most anticipated upgrades. It is terribly disappointing to what has happened to it. I will refrain from buying the blu.

[PfR73]

Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted.

[David M.]

Arguably, Ed Wood would have modelled the spaceship on a 3D workstation.

[peerpee]

I have nothing else to add. Goodnight Vienna!

[Drucker]

So are DVNR, color timing, Regrain and all the other software processes now occurring in a production environment in which no regard whatsoever is paid to original resources including prints?

I fear so, if you look at the growing number of fuckups this year alone - toll so far Bande a Part for Gaumont, Lola for Arte, and a particularly startling one the UK BD of the 62 Cape Fear which has totally removed grain for the first 90 minutes and then - poof! - the last m2ts file comes good for the remaining 30 minutes with the grain structure back and intact and a perfect picture. This one seems to have had the same tech falling asleep at the desk as Marnie. And more coming, especially if they're using Cinnafilm for their digital cleanups.

I don't remember the exact thread (I read, and re-read many oldie, goodie ones at work throughout the day!) but somewhere Nick says something to the effect of the prevalence and danger of how many new tools and gadgets there are for people helping bring our releases to life. Lance all but confirms, to me, our greatest fears. That literally one or two dudes and their opinion of how something probably should look somehow makes way to the end product.

All I can say is God bless the likes of James White! This Lance dude sounds like he's been hanging out with Rudy Martinez

[Lance]

Good morning from the “Troll” (ok, so maybe I do or don’t deserve to be called that…)
I logged on this morning to see what exciting conversations were stirring in my absence. The first thing I did was re-read my post and I thought to myself, “Good grief, parts of this sound nasty!” What I thought had been an interesting, thought-provoking and clever/sarcastic response to defend my business reads to me now like a somewhat curt, facetious and defensive ramble. Embarrassingly enough, I sounded like the very people I went into business 8 years ago to defeat, and I don’t blame you for not taking me seriously or returning snarky comments.

I’d like to apologize for my personal retorts, broad assumptions, and poor handling of the discussion at hand. I used straw man arguments instead of addressing the problem head on. In fact, some of my comments were uncalled for and rude. Yes, a few of you thought it was fair to say some unkind things about me personally, but it is with this apology that I hope we can move forward in this discussion leaving personal rants/jabs in the past.

In an effort to understand more clearly, I’ve gone back to page one and re-read every post carefully end-to-end, trying my best to see the bigger picture of the serious and justifiable concerns at the center of this entire discussion. I truly appreciate reading your comments and agree that this issue needs to be addressed. In general the commentary on this thread has been more about the technology, the approaches, and the effects. Now able to read beyond what initially caused my defenses to rise, I have found this topic to be deeply intriguing, problematic and yes, in need of further discussion.

I then read Nick’s article, ‘Crimes against the Grain,’ which is extremely well articulated and without tech-bashing. Like some comments in this thread, the article has some technical points I would like to clarify; but overall – his concerns are valid on many levels. I would very much appreciate speaking with Nick directly to obtain a better understanding of his views and concerns, as it seems he really has a handle on this. With more knowledge under my belt, I can take real steps toward educating and informing those we work with, which in turn will ensure we are doing our best to maintain the integrity of the work at hand, which we can all agree is extremely important.

One final thing I hope to leave you all with today: Cinnafilm’s only goal is to make moving images look better. As with any technology, ours is ever-changing and constantly advancing toward a higher-quality outcome. Just as da Vinci experimented with his media, so shall we. Sometimes an idea works, sometimes it doesn’t. Thank goodness for the human ability to create, learn, and better the methods previously available.
Thank you for this enlightening discussion.
Lance

[J M Powell]

Now that's a class-act response. Nick, I hope you take him up on that offer.

[Michael Kerpan]

Thank you for this enlightening discussion.

Welcome to the Forum. ;~}

[tenia]

Thank you for this enlightening discussion.

Welcome to the Forum. ;~}

Sometimes, I think people think we're just a bunch of never-happy cry-babies when most of our concerns are fully motivated.
Glad to see that the discussion seems to take a positive turn.