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Well, it looks like the end of film may soon be on us. Recently, Technicolor announced it will be supporting digital projection. It looks like Kodak will also move in that direction. It may be soon that those who want to shoot in film may not have that option and generations of kids will not ever see the magic of celluloid.

Now, I use the term cinema because in the last few years you really have not seen any classics. No Citizen Kane. No Godfather. We often hear that digital will save cinema. There will be a renaissance of small filmmakers making great films and the studios will not be able to prevent this. However, most of the films we have seen shot in digital are not up to par to the classics.

No film in the last 20 years has matched the Black and White contrasts of German Expressionism. Digital color is no where near Technicolor's dye process. Even the most advanced editing software has not produced a film that can compete with Battleship Potemkin. The technology now is changing too often. Cameras are now obsolete after a couple of years. Movieolas lasted us for half a century. If you don't have the latest edition of AVID, you're in the stone age.

As we potentially enter this brave new world of cinema, I want to know your opinions. Is it good? Is it bad? Will it happen? Will it die from overhype? Will film and digital coexist peacefully? You know my thoughts. I want to know yours.

It's my belief that celluloid is merely the majority medium in the art form that is film; metaphorically speaking, one shouldn't confuse the canvas for the painting itself. The real danger lies where I suppose it always did - in the filmmakers themselves. As far as I'm concerned, if the filmmaker has something that he or she deems significant enough to say and holds enough conviction to say it, then the medium through which they choose to express themselves becomes almost secondary.

My advice is to be patient and allow time for the technology to develop. For instance, you cite Battleship Potemkin as a potential masterpiece of celluloid filmmaking. Despite it being the oldest of all the films you reference, it still wasn't created for nearly 50 years after the invention of celluloid as a filmmaking medium itself.

pzman84 wrote:
Now, I use the term cinema because in the last few years you really have not seen any classics. No Citizen Kane. No Godfather.

What do you mean? What's a classic? How do you know?

Fair enough. I would define a classic under the Potter Stewart quote "I know it when I see it." However, if you can name me a classic film in the last 20 years, go ahead. However, please remember that isn't the topic of the board. Try to stick to it.

pzman84 wrote:Fair enough. I would define a classic under the Potter Stewart quote "I know it when I see it." However, if you can name me a classic film in the last 20 years, go ahead. However, please remember that isn't the topic of the board. Try to stick to it.

Pardon my assumption, but by that definition, you're asking kazantzakis to essentially predict a film that fulfills several, undetermined criteria that you - an anonymous person whom, to my knowledge, the former has never met - have yet to reveal?

...where's Andre Jurieu when you need him?

Under the melodramatic hyperbole this is the standard film vs. digital video discussion which we haven't had in a little while. I don't know if I can get worked up about it but I think digital video looks great now and the quality's improving as quickly as, say, any other digital technology. Pretty soon with some sort of motion blurring software and a PhotoShop grain filter you won't be able to tell the difference between the two.

Seriously though, it seems the whole premise of this discussion lies in the fact that digital technology does not yet look like film. Is this an essentialist criterion? That is, there is something inherently and absolutely (divinely even) superior in film versus digital that prohibits "classic" films from being made on digital format?

And how can you tell a classic when you see it? Depending on who is looking, classic films are made every day, even digitally.

And I even spell check now...so that no one gets a heart attack.

The thread is lockable because this discussion is already underway in another active thread ("What's missing in modern filmmaking or filmmaking in general").

Crying about the transformation of media is pointless conservatism. Film has advantages, but it is also expensive and highly limiting. The music industry has already gone through the transition from analog to digital and there is still plenty of good new music to be heard, music made entirely in the digital realm. If anything, digital opens new frontiers by expanding the limits of the possible. While an argument can be made for the creative benefits of technical restraints inherent in film, the potential of digital will enable a broader range of expressiveness that cinema has yet to discover. It's an exciting time.

nicely summarized, bunuelian. =D>

By the way, i think i may have finally woken up from my criterion/viridiana induced dream after 4 or 5 days.

I thought this was gonna be a thread about Weekend.

kazantzakis wrote:Seriously though, it seems the whole premise of this discussion lies in the fact that digital technology does not yet look like film. Is this an essentialist criterion? That is, there is something inherently and absolutely (divinely even) superior in film versus digital that prohibits "classic" films from being made on digital format?

Some speculate that film looks/feels/smells better than dv because of its random unit structure; that is, random splotches of chemicals vs. organized pixels and so forth.

I think this is an interesting notion, but if this is a problem, it can probably be overcome in time with technology (if it hasn't been overcome already).

And as for the last part of your question -- "that prohibits "classic" films from being made on digital format?" -- the answer is no.

I've seen "films" projected on "state of the art" digital equipment here in New York at a number of venues and the difference between that and real film projection is enormous. I am always confounded by those who contend either that you can't tell the difference or that digital is somehow better.

End of Film indeed.

We are still in the transition phase between film and digital. As someone who years ago considered themselves a photographer, I doubted that still photography would move totally to digital -- I was wrong . . . but also right. I was right in that I knew that artists would not move to digital until they could achieve the results they wanted. In most cases, they now can.

But photography is the art form -- film is simply the tool. When I was in school I heard people lament the end of glass plates.

There will be people shooting "film" years from now. It will be used just as people still produce black & white films. (Last night I watched Guy Maddin's film "Cowards Bend the Knee" -- it was shot in Super 8. I'm sure somewhere someone once wrote a column lamenting the death of Super 8.)

As viewers, we have been in a non-film era for a long time. In the 60's we watched feature films on Sunday night on ABC (Sunday Night at the Movies) on a small television (instead of a big theater). In the 70's and 80's we watched "films" on VHS tape -- now it is the DVD format -- soon Blue-Ray or whatever.

I miss the artistry of silent films, but do not lament the advent of sound. I am saddened by the demise of the studio system, but do not lament the rise of independent production. I will miss editing 16mm film stock on my editing bench, but would not trade it for my Mac setup.

I am more concerned with the monopolization of theater screens than I am a change in formats. I am more concerned with rising production costs and the constant increase in marketing dollars. That the use of film and film projectors in endangered is nothing to me compared to the fact that the majority of film studio executives could not name a film directed by Bergman or Fellini, let alone Tarkovsky or Vigo.

Not sure I follow. You are identifying a number of technological advancements that made for a better viewing experience. Digital is being promoted because it is cheaper, not because it is better.

Barmy wrote:I've seen "films" projected on "state of the art" digital equipment here in New York at a number of venues and the difference between that and real film projection is enormous. I am always confounded by those who contend either that you can't tell the difference or that digital is somehow better.

End of Film indeed.

End of Film yes. But you are judging the digital medium by its current state. There is no reason digital cannot mimick film perfectly in the future. Let alone have its own, unique identity.

I bet Barmy is one of those people who prefer records over the "metallic sounding" CD's.

numediaman2 makes an awful lot of sense if you ask me.

No, I hate vinyl with a passion, and have done ever since CDs were introduced. I think you are comparing apples and oranges. I would rather see a slightly scratchy projected film than a digital version with those telltale TVish hues and overall coldness/flatness.

I honestly don't see that difference on digital projection, but don't go in looking for something to be wrong.

But digital music technology, when it was in its infancy, had the same problems. Now artists will sometimes run their recordings through software that gives them a more analog feel. The random imperfections that give analog tape/film its character can be mimicked. There's no reason to think this won't be possible (if it isn't already) in digital cinema. The difference is that the artist can decide for herself how filmic she wants the final product to look.

pzman84 wrote:As we potentially enter this brave new world of cinema, I want to know your opinions. Is it good? Is it bad? Will it happen? Will it die from overhype? Will film and digital coexist peacefully?

I believe it was in the first number of Projections, where Boorman asked several leading filmmakers what film would be like in 100 years, and someone said, then we will experience Sound of Music in pillform.

It is so utterly naive to belive that we are entering a brave new world of film. We have done so for each generation the last 100 years. Each generation changed the look of film, from early silver nitrate, from early cellulose nitrate, from 2 stripe technicolour, from 3 stripe technicolour, from eastmancolour, from 70mm, from the poor Kodak stock of the 70s and early 80s, from digital components of the late 80s, from 4K digital.

When sound was introduced, Lillian Gish announced that this would mean the death of film, because now you didn't have to pay attention to what happend on the screen anymore. When colour was introduced, it was the death of film. When TV was introduced, it was the death of film. When Home Video was introduced, it was the death of film. If history has learned us anything, then its that film cannot die. It adapts.

If you want to see what beauty that lies ahead, watch three featurettes on digital cinema; The one about digital mastering on Terminator 2, "Painting with Pixels" on Brother where art thou, and the one about 4K technology on Phantom Menace. You can do things with film today, which no one ever dreamt of. And listen to the audio commentary on The Matrix.

If Welles was alive today, he would shoot everything in 4K, then to play all night with pixels. Just as he once said, that film was the biggest toy train set ever, so is todays technology.

No film in the last 20 years has matched the Black and White contrasts of German Expressionism.

No film has matched the black and white of German expressionism since 1929 or so. The black and white of European ex-patriots in the early 30s is different from the black and white of the late 40s. Wagner is different from Freund is different from Toland is different from Alton.

Even the most advanced editing software has not produced a film that can compete with Battleship Potemkin.

That is simply bullshit. While Potemkin is one of the key films for editing and textbook demonstration of the groundbreaking ideas of Eisenstein, it is sloppy and far from perfect in timing. Alot of its structure is only appreciated due to it being a product of early cinema. Many sequences are overly melodramatic.

What you have to understand is, that editing is films equivalent of jazz improv. You break down, you break apart and put it back together by feel. Great editors are like great jazz musicians. They talk about rhythm of a scene, about pacing, about mood, about feel, about flow. And the better the technology for them, the better edited films.

You may believe that nothing can beat the Odessa Staircase sequences, because that is, even today, extremely powerful. But then watch films edited by Murch or Nakai, by Schoonmaker or DeDe Allen, by Anne Coates or by IMO todays best editor Sarah Flack and her pupil Soderbergh. Look at the pace and intersequence rhythme of the seduction sequence in Out of Sight for instance or the Opening montage of The Limey, how its structured like almost like a sonette and how it takes advantage of mindflashing. With the introduction of tools like AVID, editors now have more freedom in their expression. Belive me, Eisenstein would have killed to have a tool like AVID, when editing Potemkin.

Movieolas lasted us for half a century. If you don't have the latest edition of AVID, you're in the stone age.

Its called progress. A Movieola is expensive, while AVID is not. A lifetime on a movieola and 5 minutes on AVID and you will never go back. Also, it is a display of complete naivity about the situation to call this the stone age.

No Citizen Kane. No Godfather... However, most of the films we have seen shot in digital are not up to par to the classics.

Film is a living entity. It develops, it progresses, it changes. It is not technology that makes a good film, it is a good story. Thus is always has been, thus it always shall be. Film should never be about the classics only. Film is about the beauty of an artform and while films like Kane and Godfather represent one form, modern film represent another. There are still classics being made. You just have to be open to them, instead of watching cinema with a mindset that only what textbooks says is classics is good.

A final comment on digital projection. Personally, it will take many years before it really becomes a standard. I recently discussed digital projection vs. film with cinema owners and film distributors and they dont see it coming for years, at least not in Europe. A digital projector costs a few hundred thousend dollars and has a lifespan of (today expected) 10 years. A traditional projector costs a fraction and has a lifespan of expected 70 years. In Europe very few multiplexes want to invest $1+ million for something which isnt really available in the first place and second will be obsolete in a few years. Eventually, it will all be digital, but not for at least 10-20 years.

Any chance of posting what you're talking about for non-members? I could just join the group but it's one of those approved membership things.

(I'd like to point out that if anyone is dragging out the next-gen format war it's the HD DVD guys, seeing how they insist on going forward with significantly less support from both hardware manufacturers and content providers, not to mention a technically inferior format. I suspect Toshiba would've folded awhile ago if Microsoft hadn't swooped in at the last moment, which has everything to do with their hate for Sony and Sun and nothing to do with helping the best format win.)

Is it just me, or do I find highly unlikely that a studio would decide to "destroy" their 35mm prints?

There is a difference between not making new prints (which seems to be the case above) and destroying them outright. I would imagine with any acquistion that things like repertory screening rentals would be frozen anyway until things are sorted out as there are probably a lot of people changing jobs, losing their jobs or being moved to other departments.

God that's depressing.

And still comes as something of a shock to me even though news like that has obviously been on the cards for a good while now.

The Economist on why Kodak went under and Fuji survived, despite being faced with exactly the same threats to their core historical businesses.