"The Digital Dilemma"

[steve hyde]

...some interesting new evidence for film or digital debates:

...the current 2K digital cinema standard is inferior to the quality of 35mm film and that digital storage media have a much shorter lifespan than film. The yearly cost of archiving a higher quality 4K master is $104.28 per running minute as compared to $8.83 per running minute for film.

source:
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/m ... 00061.html



and the NYT piece from today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/busin ... ref=slogin

[super8man]

Yup, and I am SOOO tired of seeing pixel blocks on the dark scenes on anything on TV...and have you noticed now that normal movies like "Next" now try to pass off the overexposed "we-are-shooting-another-sci-fi-washed-out-brightness-scene that is so much in vogue these days.

Let's face facts, the "quality" of lighting is better on 35mm movies. Period.

Cheers,
Mike

[steve hyde]

..yes there is the tonal range thing, but this study is about the long-term costs of archiving. It sounds like this report (not yet being distributed) will reveal more of the hidden costs associated with shooting digital.




Steve

[pbrstreetgang]

Yup, and I am SOOO tired of seeing pixel blocks on the dark scenes on anything on TV

cinema is worse still. Saw Rescue Dawn at my local cinema (which is thriving BTW) in digital projection (2k or 4k I'm not sure?) and it was like watching a movie on a blotchy LCD screen (highlights especially). Sure some scenes were good but you sure as hell know that it's digital and not film projection your experiencing.

The 35mm cinema experience is dead IMHO but hey... if you're 15 and under, who cares?

a...

[super8man]

You are correct Steve...so many reports are coming out about the hidden costs of digital...even in still photos, no one admits to the time/cost it takes to mange and deal with jpgs vs negatives....

To begin with, the hardware and storage media — magnetic tapes, disks, whatever — on which a film is encoded are much less enduring than good old film. If not operated occasionally, a hard drive will freeze up in as little as two years. Similarly, DVDs tend to degrade: according to the report, only half of a collection of disks can be expected to last for 15 years, not a reassuring prospect to those who think about centuries. Digital audiotape, it was discovered, tends to hit a “brick wall” when it degrades. While conventional tape becomes scratchy, the digital variety becomes unreadable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/busin ... ref=slogin

[Jim Carlile]

In other words, we could be watching Wallace Beery long after more contemporary images are gone. (NYT)

Wouldn't that be great?-- just desserts, I say. Movies today are such crap that nothing much would be missed. A hundred years from now, today's digital technology is going to look ridiculous, while film is going to be a desirable, collectible living artifact that you can hold in your hand. It ain't going' nowhere...

[David M. Leugers]

Just saw "Eastern Promise". Compare the lush, night-for-night photography in this film versus the flat night-for-night shot on HD you see.... give me a break. The eye candy of the visuals in this film makes the experience worth the price of admission. Shoot it in HD and project digitally? I'll stay home.


David M. Leugers

[npcoombs]

I´m still using my 35mm stills SLR and even with stock, developing and scan I think I am concurring less costs than buying a similar D-SLR with a close to 35mm size sensor. There are also great lenses available very cheap as people have been switchign to digital. The lens I use is a Tokin 28-70mm f2.8 across entire zoom range, which gives results similar to medium format in terms of depth of field. And it cost me only a hundred dollars second hand.

[onsuper8]

I'm doing the same too... love shooting B&W!

[steve hyde]

...The digital formats are excellent for many reasons. Maybe just not so good for archiving. I've seen lots of great digital films and look forward to making one myself someday. That day may be further and further out for me because I am still convinced that 16mm is the best value for what I do. This is mostly because I like existing light photography - not just for the way that it looks, but also because lighting equipment is cumbersome and for documentary makes no sense at all... archivability is important to me, but not as important as exposure latitude. This new report will be helpful for convincing technology-drunk investors that film is still a cost effective acquisition format.

When this AMPAS report comes out, I'm sure a handful of articles will follow. So far just one in Variety and the New York Times as far as I can tell.....seems like an interesting topic with solid new evidence worth discussing and appropriate content for Super 8 Today and publications like that....




Steve

[T-Scan]

I'm looking to shoot more 16mm and project prints on the old Revere. Doesn't get much better. Getting prints is cheaper than telecine, and can do 1 roll if you want. Last month I saw a fresh 16mm print projected at a festival. I was impressed they were using 35mm when I looked up in the booth and saw 16mm rolling. It looked freakin amazing on the big screen.

[MovieStuff]

I'm looking to shoot more 16mm and project prints on the old Revere. Doesn't get much better. Getting prints is cheaper than telecine, and can do 1 roll if you want. Last month I saw a fresh 16mm print projected at a festival. I was impressed they were using 35mm when I looked up in the booth and saw 16mm rolling. It looked freakin amazing on the big screen.

You've hit on something that I think a lot of people don't really stop to think about. It is all well and fine (and I agree) to take the position that a film original will outlast its digital counterpart. And if you have original reversal or film prints that you still have the capability to view via projection, then you're set for a long time. But when you create a personal project by shooting negative and then transferring that to digital or you transfer your original reversal to digital and then finish in the computer, all of the hard post work such as sound design, editing, music composition, effects, titling and the such are now pretty much digital bound.

Oh, sure, in theory you could have that footage retransferred on whatever digital format is around 15 years from now but I think the reality is that you probably would not do that because of the amount of post work the project represents and the possibility that, by that point in your creative path, it represents probably an old project and you may feel that you've moved on to better things, etc.

Therefore, the much vaunted ability to "hold film up to the light and still see an image" without the need for anything sophisticated is a great sound bite but, in reality, means little in terms of accessing the completed project and obviously leaves out the other important audio aspect of the film experience. After all, you don't hand out reels of film and magnifying glasses to your audience now so why would you do that in the future? Unless you complete your project totally on film, the ability to access it later on is going to be questionable unless you continually migrate your project from one digital format to another. And while none of us are partial to digital, you can't deny how easy it is to do post on digital and even easier to migrate the final product at the push of a button. So we have this love/hate relationship with digital because it allows a degree of polish on our post that would be otherwise hard to duplicate with physical splices and mag track. Not impossible, mind you, but certainly harder and more expensive, which means that comparing film vs digital costs is more than just comparing how much stock and cameras cost. ;)

Does digital look as good as it would if you projected film as a final proejct? Well, no, but if you aren't doing that now while it is still viable to do so, then why not? If one can not answer that question honestly now, then ignoring the higher costs of finishing a completed project on film and also bitching about an all digital future seems a bit disingenuous, IMHO. It isn't enough to just shoot film. I think that to extend the future of film to any appreciable degree, one really needs to think in terms of a total film finish because, if the labs that offer sound prints start to drop that service, then you have a situation where the only way to finalize a project is on the computer where constant migration of the digital final is the only practical option for guaranteed access to your completed project in years to come.

Roger

[marc]

Of course you always make good points Roger. And we definitely need digital as much as we need film. Indeed, it is digital that has revolutionized the use of movie film in many respects. But to acquire on film the moving images is still one step ahead of acquiring totally on digital even if one would have to "redo all of the post" if one's complete project, finished on digital, were lost in the future due to it's inherent archival weakness. Having some of the project, at least the visual aspect of it, gives you the potential to rebuild, despite the labor intensity involved, than having nothing to go on at all.

[Dr_Strangelove]

How bout archieving digital movies on 70mm film? Or is it not possible to produce good negatives out of digital information?

[steve hyde]

I'm looking to shoot more 16mm and project prints on the old Revere. Doesn't get much better. Getting prints is cheaper than telecine, and can do 1 roll if you want. Last month I saw a fresh 16mm print projected at a festival. I was impressed they were using 35mm when I looked up in the booth and saw 16mm rolling. It looked freakin amazing on the big screen.

I agree. This is an appealing way to work. I am under the impression that 16mm optical sound gets thrashed quickly though. (I haven't tried it myself)....I've been thinking it would be cool to produce a 10 minute 16mm film on a 400 foot piece of 7285 reversal film (with edits in camera) and have it sound striped ..

Is this feaseable?


Steve