JamieG Analysis

Lately I have been talking to a number of people involved in the production of films in Australia.  From those with some budget to those with little.  A common question I like to ask them is..

“Do you plan to shoot digital or traditional film?”

Like you would expect, those with limited budget seem always to lean towards digital.  Those with a budget lean towards film.  I still found this quite strange.  As a person who does a lot of work in digital cinema technology, a fully digital path from camera to projection, in nearly all cases, if done correctly, leaves film behind in colour reproduction and detail on screen.

To follow up these comments, let me tell a few stories.

Many years ago, I worked for 9 month contract for Kodak on the Cineon project.  I was employed as the site administrator and build officer.  Ie, I made sure all the changes in the code would build every day as well as making sure all the systems and super computers ran smoothly.

During this time I was exposed to some very interesting information.  One of note is based around the notion of where 2k and 4k resolution for film comes from.

Basically, the research came back from the Film department about digital scanning film.  A brief overview is this.  In general, hi-quality film has a grain density that was equivalent to 2k across (That is if we always had the smallest possible grains uniform thought the film. Ie can be 2k but never really is).  Film grain is not uniform (Ie the grain has different sizes.) So, if you want to keep the full quality on the film you need to sample at half the smallest grain size to ensure to obtain the data.  ie film could do 2k, but scan at 4k to ensure there is no rounding errors (Ie light spill from one grain to the next) when printing back to film.

That was quite some time ago, and film has improved slightly over the years, however, film cannot deal with duplication very well at all.  An answer print (Taken from the exposed in camera negative) is the best possible image you will get on the screen from a film camera.  And yes I expect that to be slightly better then 2k.  HOWEVER, before we see any film in a cinema, it needs to be copied in general 6 times.

Well 3 times really as each time it needs to go from inter-pos, to inter-neg, transfered to two other negs to archive an extra print.  As film degrades slowly, usually you strike of 10 prints from the priceless master neg, then 10 from them, then whatever from them to give you the number you need.  And that is if you’re doing a small release.

Due to the fact that film is made up from non-uniform grain, its quality degrades very fast.  So in general a standard print in a cinema is nowhere near 2k resolution on screen.

Now let’s hear about a story on film and color.

When my post production studio was in full swing many years back, we use to make many cinema commercials.  With my knowledge of film, we build a film recorder in our company.  We did many kine transfers. (Ie converting video to film.) My brother/partner even wrote some leading plugins to improve this process dramatically.  Anyway, we usually had to do a cinema test screening with the advertising agency when we did this.  As such, we tended to get a few prints made for the screening so we did not have to keep re-spooling the film. (Film takes time to rewind so to speak)

During one of these sessions, the agency noticed how the prints where slightly different in colour.

“I like the second grade. go with that!!” shouted the agency representative.

“No problem..”, our response…  God knows it was a waist of time trying to get them to understand the issues.  And they didn’t really need to.. They got what they wanted…

You see, both prints were done at the same time from the same neg, but they where definitely slightly different in colour.  YES, THIS IS TYPICAL WITH FILM.  The baths that the film runs though changes over time as it reacts with the film.  So if the same neg goes through the baths, then later goes though again, as in this case.  The colours are not going to be identical….

Another example of this is when you’re going to shoot with film.  You need to order as much film as you plan to use at the very start.  This is so you ensure you get the same BATCH of neg from Kodak.  As typically, each batch will react and look slightly different.   That’s film for you.

SO WHY IN HELL SHOOT FILM WHEN YOU CAN GET DIGITAL CRISTAL CLEAR IMAGES AND SEE THEM MINUTES AFTER YOU SHOOT THEM?????

Good question.

And from what I have seen, it comes down to this..

Shoot what your comfortable in.

If your spending too much time trying to figure out how the technology you choose works, you’re not spending enough time making sure your getting exactly what you want to obtain the final result.  ie. The quality will suffer.

As we still have a lot of DOP’s around that know FILM backwards, it is not worth them learning this new digital technology.  Let them shoot the way they know how.

And that is what it really comes down to.  Digital or film, the results are very similar.  It’s getting the desired result that is the important issue here.

But really, film is a dying medium.  Look at film in consumer cameras.  It’s been dead for quite some time now.  Film in cinema will take considerably longer as it is a generation issue.  I would find it very unusual if any 25 year or younger potential DOP is not all over the digital technology, and like the digital stills camera in their hands now, they will not bother with film for cinema when it becomes their turn.