Perya (Town Fair) - a Canon 7D Short

[Jean Dantes]

First let me apologise in advance if this has been posted somewhere already or something. If it has or hasn't, I was so impressed with this clip that I just had to start this thread. Amazing stuff, have a look:


http://vimeo.com/6487566


(Absolutely love the shot @ 2:39 !! )

[Rakesh Jacob]

It was posted on the back end of Philip's post, but this is SOOOOOO GOOD it deserves it's own thread!!!!
A-FREAKING-MAZING!

[Luis Caffesse]

Absolutely beautiful.

[Isaac_Brody]

Great piece, I love the intimacy of this. It's awesome how people are totally unaware of the camera.

[Uwe Lansing]

Utterly fantastic - at first glance, i can´t recognize any aliasing or noise...

[Abaddon]

Awesome!

On a side note, how soon before that one kid gets diagnosed with lung cancer?

[Rakesh Jacob]

Awesome!

On a side note, how soon before that one kid gets diagnosed with lung cancer?

I know right, that was sooo sad, but that's life in a developing country, I hate going back to India myself, the abject poverty is ABSOLUTELY HEARTBREAKING AND CRUSHING :(

[aalleexx]

Beautiful, the more and more I see footage from the 7d the more I realize that it has problems with the highlights, it clips really easy, am I crazy? someone shine in

[bwwd]

I know right, that was sooo sad, but that's life in a developing country, I hate going back to India myself, the abject poverty is ABSOLUTELY HEARTBREAKING AND CRUSHING :(
Its not poverty,he has money for cigs,you dont have to feel sorry for them.But anyway lets back on topic, this proves that canon worked with jello problem and its not there anymore from what i see.

[Abaddon]

Its not poverty,he has money for cigs,you dont have to feel sorry for them.But anyway lets back on topic, this proves that canon worked with jello problem and its not there anymore from what i see.

I feel sorry for the kid because his parents allowed this to happen.

But yeah, I noticed the lack of Jello.

[Uwe Lansing]

... the more and more I see footage from the 7d the more I realize that it has problems with the highlights, it clips really easy...

Hmm..., can you explain it in more detail?

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/1973/highlightw.jpg (http://img193.imageshack.us/i/highlightw.jpg/)

[ydgmdlu]

WTF, he claims that the footage wasn't graded. :shocked: OMG...

This is miles ahead of "Reverie" as a pre-production look at what a camera can do. Sorry to say this Philip, but it's even better than yours.

[Rakesh Jacob]

Its not poverty,he has money for cigs,you dont have to feel sorry for them.But anyway lets back on topic, this proves that canon worked with jello problem and its not there anymore from what i see.

Sorry didn't mean to bore u with social commentary, I'll stick to image quality cause THAT'S the most important thing to get out of this clip :huh:

[Luis Caffesse]

Sorry didn't mean to bore u with social commentary, I'll stick to image quality cause THAT'S the most important thing to get out of this clip :huh:

In this context (DVXuser) it IS the most important thing to get out of this clip.
There are many other places online to discuss social commentary.
We're here to discuss the camera.

Thanks.

[J Davis]

Nice camera moves really helped sell those shots. Loved the way the codec treated the strong primary colors like orange, red and yellow near the start. They did not seem to 'float' at all.

[bwwd]

It looks like it was graded ,too contrasty sometimes ,but also 5d looks like that most of the time(too crisp)

[J Davis]

Can anyone guess at what lightweight steady rig he was using on the opening shot?

[jls4]

Beautiful, the more and more I see footage from the 7d the more I realize that it has problems with the highlights, it clips really easy, am I crazy? someone shine in

Also remember you can change your "gamma" curve via the picture profile, so if you want to get more highlights in - you should eb able to. The camera is 14Bit, but the end result is 8-bit, you have to figure out what you need/want in the shot and prepare for that.

[Rakesh Jacob]

In this context (DVXuser) it IS the most important thing to get out of this clip.
There are many other places online to discuss social commentary.
We're here to discuss the camera.

Thanks.

Sorry :beer:

[jenningsp]

agreed 2:39 was the stand out shot. the rest of the footage has that uber clean HD video feel. super nice cinematic HD but not filmlike. i feel like the GH1 and 5D and the 7D all have that same look. i hope it can be graded out...

can this thing do a custom curve in camera? on separate RGB channels?? if it does then we should be sweet.

[roxics]

Sorry didn't mean to bore u with social commentary, I'll stick to image quality cause THAT'S the most important thing to get out of this clip :huh:

Though I think it should be noted that we've traded jello for cigarettes with the 7D.

[aalleexx]

let me bring in some images from the video so I can explain better what I mean by when I say that it clips easy, maybe its just my crazy mind, be right back....
\



Also remember you can change your "gamma" curve via the picture profile, so if you want to get more highlights in - you should eb able to. The camera is 14Bit, but the end result is 8-bit, you have to figure out what you need/want in the shot and prepare for that.

[Kegan]

Simply amazing...wow.

Great work,

Kegan

[Isaac_Brody]

let me bring in some images from the video so I can explain better what I mean by when I say that it clips easy, maybe its just my crazy mind, be right back....
\

This is a compressed vimeo clip, just something to keep in mind. It was compressed to HDV. Just saying that because any serious conclusions and pixelpeeping are kind of useless if you're not looking at the original footage. Not saying highlights aren't clipped, but without native clips and even a look at settings you might be making some incorrect assumptions.

[Eddy Robinson]

Its not poverty,he has money for cigs,you dont have to feel sorry for them.But anyway lets back on topic, this proves that canon worked with jello problem and its not there anymore from what i see.

It's there, but to such a small extent that I don't care about it. You can see a little in the roller coaster shot, and on the yellow fence near the end as the ride whirls past it (like we care). The only place where the CMOS was noticeable in a geek way was around 2:25 with the out-of focus blinking lights, a few of them lose the round shape because their frequency is close to that of the sensor scan. On the other hand I only noticed this by stepping through the individual frames, watching it in motion wasn't disturbing to me.

I'm taking a flying lesson next week, so if Canon wants to send me an early model I'll be happy to photograph the propeller :cheesy:

[Boz]

What a great piece... and no grading or additional lights used! Simply awesome. I'm assuming the 'punch' in the piece was due to dialed-up in-camera settings. Great stuff. Though I would really like to get my hands on some raw footage with 'flat' settings to play around with.

[Eddy Robinson]

...diregard...wrong info...

[aalleexx]

ok here is what I mean when I say that I feel the 7d clips or overexposes quite easy
look at these 3 pictures
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/picture.php?albumid=127&pictureid=1696
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/picture.php?albumid=127&pictureid=1697
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/picture.php?albumid=127&pictureid=1698



to me it feels that the cam did not provide any type of highlight protection, or rolloff, kinda what the knee function does on the panny cams, on my hpx or hmc
I could see these shots clipping gradually, maybe I am wrong, maybe Barry can shine in on the subject and just tell me I am crazy and just put my crazy thoughts to rest, I have two d7's on pre-order by the way

I understand we dont have a full quality original file, but these shots are obviously clipped

[morgan_moore]

Beautiful, the more and more I see footage from the 7d the more I realize that it has problems with the highlights, it clips really easy, am I crazy? someone shine in

I agree - classic small sensor stuff - the most important feature is how it transits to clipped

Seeing white is fine, seeing flouro colours as you transition to white is bad news

but..

-The operator probably over exposed
-Shooting midday is a nightmare on any digital device

Still i think the framerate has it so still a good cam but not a keeper

S

[ryansheffer]

If the standard setting on the 7d is anything like the 5d, we really need to wait until someone calibrates one until we talk about highlight clipping. Picture Style editor is beautiful.

[morgan_moore]

agreed - forgot to make this point too

S

[Boz]

Can anyone guess at what lightweight steady rig he was using on the opening shot?

From Jason on the vimeo page: "no stabilizers. just tripods, a glidetrack and a kessler crane."

[William_Robinette]

This was fantastic!

[Bertholt4]

Really good stuff - the download file looks of course even better.
I liked Philipps Dublin - I love this Perya - it has substance.
Thank you for providing such clips to the community!

I`m sold!

PS: How many stopps of dynmic range has the 5d? Somebody cann tell me?

[J Davis]

From Jason on the vimeo page: "no stabilizers. just tripods, a glidetrack and a kessler crane."

Oh ! (surprise) the dude went with equipment - so much for the discreet angle. Nobody seemed to be staring which is a good thing.

[Uwe Lansing]

...
PS: How many stopps of dynmic range has the 5d? Somebody cann tell me?

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/1156651-post7.html

[Osslund]

ND, ND, ND and a bit underexposed in daylight saves the day... I also noted the ugly clipped highlights but with correct exposure it probably will be ok.

Love this short and can't wait (but I guess I have to wait looong) for me to try out the 7D.

[ProjX v2.0]

You guys know that this clip was put together by wedding filmmakers, right? Just sayin....

[Luis Caffesse]

You guys know that this clip was put together by wedding filmmakers, right? Just sayin....

Just sayin' what exactly?
:)

I've seen some fantastic work done on wedding videos for years now.

[PaPa]

damn, already maxed on on downloads today. Guess ill try tomorrow.

[Lucian]

Low light capability is Ridunkulous.

[ProjX v2.0]

Just sayin' what exactly?
:)

I've seen some fantastic work done on wedding videos for years now.

Me too, Luis.

It's just nice for that segment of the filmmaking industry to be recognized positively for a change. :beer:

[Luis Caffesse]

Me too, Luis.

It's just nice for that segment of the filmmaking industry to be recognized positively for a change. :beer:

Agreed - I may have taken that comment the wrong way, and assumed it was some sort of slight a the filmmakers
(who clearly have some chops - so i guess they don't need me defending them)

:thumbsup:

[Boz]

Slightly off topic in a 7D thread, but speaking of wedding videographers, this is one of the most amazing 'wedding' films I've ever seen:

http://vimeo.com/6320464

[ProjX v2.0]

Slightly off topic in a 7D thread, but speaking of wedding videographers, this is one of the most amazing 'wedding' films I've ever seen:

http://vimeo.com/6320464

Well, I foresee a 7D in Kevin's future so it's not really OT ;)

[Postmaster]

Is it just me or does all those Video-Still-Cameras have the same errr.. "signature"?

When I was younger we played a game with the other editors called "tell that country".

It goes like this: You flick thru the TV programs and look just 5 seconds to each.
Then you have to tell if it is a German, American, French or English production.
Each had it´s own signature (back in those days of Betacam and U-Matic)

Yeah I know that sounds strange but we had a pretty high hit rate.
The same happened to me last week when I saw "Knowing" the first time.
I did not know that it was shot on RED but I could tell it by the cameras signature - a special look that is unique but hard to describe.

And now I find the new still cameras have an even stronger signature. It almost screams in your face "DSLR!!" and it´s not only the typical DOF.

Frank

[seven.b]

Is it just me or does all those Video-Still-Cameras have the same errr.. "signature"?

When I was younger we played a game with the other editors called "tell that country".

It gores like this: You flick thru the TV programs and look just 5 seconds to each.
Then you have to tell if it is a German, American, French or English production.
Each had it´s own signature (back in those days of Betacam and U-Matic)

Yeah I know that sounds strange but we had a pretty high hit rate.
The same happened to me last week when I saw "Knowing" the first time.
I did not know that it was shot on RED but I could tell it by the cameras signature - a special look that is unique but hard to describe.

And now I find the new still cameras have an even stronger signature. It almost screams in your face "DSLR!!" and it´s not only the typical DOF.

Frank

Could that possibly be due to the such beautiful/crisp footage they produce? haha

[Rakesh Jacob]

Yeah Frank I definitely agree, there's a visual aesthetic at play that, while I'm not being judgmental positively or negatively, really asserts itself

[Postmaster]

I´m not sure yet, if I really like it (that string signature).
Probably it´s to clean to be true ;-) Maybe it needs some grain to make it more organic.

I´m gonna rent a D5 next week and see how the codec handles color grading.

Frank

[Isaac_Brody]

Definitely. I think D90 and Nikon in general has a very distinct look. And I can look at GH1 and it's got it's own feel. 5D has that super smooth buttery look and 7D is an extension of that.

[jenningsp]

Is it just me or does all those Video-Still-Cameras have the same errr.. "signature"?

When I was younger we played a game with the other editors called "tell that country".

It gores like this: You flick thru the TV programs and look just 5 seconds to each.
Then you have to tell if it is a German, American, French or English production.
Each had it´s own signature (back in those days of Betacam and U-Matic)

Yeah I know that sounds strange but we had a pretty high hit rate.
The same happened to me last week when I saw "Knowing" the first time.
I did not know that it was shot on RED but I could tell it by the cameras signature - a special look that is unique but hard to describe.

And now I find the new still cameras have an even stronger signature. It almost screams in your face "DSLR!!" and it´s not only the typical DOF.

Frank

i completely get that same thing. all the DSLR's have the same "feeling" to the image. go back a few pages in this thread and i mention it :beer: i wonder what causes it?

they don't look like RED but they do look like a Sony F35.... or at least my memory of what the F35 looks like... kinda weird

[Bernie Hipos]

That was really amazing. I want to get one. Used to go to those "peryahan" (town fairs) when I was a kid. I miss going back to peryahan during christmas and new years. Proud to be Pinoy. Great work Jason and the gang. Cheers!

[Lucian]

Definitely. I think D90 and Nikon in general has a very distinct look. And I can look at GH1 and it's got it's own feel. 5D has that super smooth buttery look and 7D is an extension of that.

Could be wrong, but I swear this is placebo. It's all in your head guys.

[Bernie Hipos]

You guys know that this clip was put together by wedding filmmakers, right? Just sayin....

Yes you're absolutely correct. Jason Magbanua is also the leading wedding videographer in the Philippines, he won numerous awards in the P.I. and abroad. Check out his work here:

http://jasonmagbanua.com/blog/

Amazing stuff.

Although he said that he's not actually into filmmaking like using 24p. I think he uses 30p and 60p for his wedding coverage.

Sorry if it's off topic.

[JimmieMyers]

i completely get that same thing. all the DSLR's have the same "feeling" to the image. go back a few pages in this thread and i mention it :beer: i wonder what causes it?

they don't look like RED but they do look like a Sony F35.... or at least my memory of what the F35 looks like... kinda weird

Funny you say that, I have been feeling like most of the 7D footage I've seen has a very F35 quality too. However, an F35 for $1600... yes please!

Seems to me that it will be fairly tricky to get a fully subconscious "cinematic" feeling with these cameras. Highly controlled lighting will help. Smooth camera movement certainly does. But then, wasn't it always tricky - even with 35mm film? I've seen plenty of films shot on 35mm that break my concentration away from plot, whether it's excess grain, an odd bump while hand held, a bad gate 'creak'... all sorts of thing.

My ultimate goal is to make something that takes every tiny step to stay out of the way of characters and story... and I'm looking forward to figuring out how to be graceful and inconspicuous with the 7D. After, that is my true definition of "cinematic" - graceful, while inconspicuous.

[Ian-T]

Slightly off topic in a 7D thread, but speaking of wedding videographers, this is one of the most amazing 'wedding' films I've ever seen:

http://vimeo.com/6320464

I'm totally speechless...WOW!!!

[Nitsuj]

I am a GH1 user myself so I want to put that aside. As a filmmaker I think this little piece was great. I think it sucks that the focus has been all about the camera instead of the great little story he has told. That is not a world I want to get involved with myself. Aside from all the hype I think this video was great and it wouldn't matter what camera was used. Good job at capturing the moment.

[Kholi]

Is it just me or does all those Video-Still-Cameras have the same errr.. "signature"?

When I was younger we played a game with the other editors called "tell that country".

It goes like this: You flick thru the TV programs and look just 5 seconds to each.
Then you have to tell if it is a German, American, French or English production.
Each had it´s own signature (back in those days of Betacam and U-Matic)

Yeah I know that sounds strange but we had a pretty high hit rate.
The same happened to me last week when I saw "Knowing" the first time.
I did not know that it was shot on RED but I could tell it by the cameras signature - a special look that is unique but hard to describe.

And now I find the new still cameras have an even stronger signature. It almost screams in your face "DSLR!!" and it´s not only the typical DOF.

Frank


Nearly all digital images look the same. That's why everyone says "looks like RED footage!" The better the image gets, the less distinct it is. 35mm Adapters and lens choice actually helped separate visuals a lot, depending on which one you got and which lens set you picked up.

As far as I'm concerned the 7D produced the same image as the GH-1 @ 1080/24 just with better compression.

This may be still a premature statement but it'll never be film: where every single movie LOOKS different when acquired on celluloid. I had this same long discussion on set with camera department (all comprised of Union people who come from film and still shoot film, including the DP-- I'm the only digital guy lol) and they're right.

All RED movies have the same odd "look" to them. Or just about all digital features. Film, though. I mean, go watch any three movies shot on 35mm in the last year and look how DIFFERENT they all look. They were all shot on film, possibly even the same cameras but be damned if they don't look like completely different properties.

I don't think we'll ever get that with Digital, and it's just another reason why Film is nowhere near dead, dying or anything. The cost to shoot S16mm has already dropped drastically, and apparently so has S35mm. It's a matter of time before it's feasible and cost effective to shoot Film and half of us are shooting Organic, the other half Digital.

[Rakesh Jacob]

The cost to shoot S16mm has already dropped drastically, and apparently so has S35mm. It's a matter of time before it's feasible and cost effective to shoot Film and half of us are shooting Organic, the other half Digital.


So are you saying that there's gonna be an actual resurgence of film because it's gonna be that much cheaper in the forseable future? That would be pretty interesting and really cool. At that point do you think the average look of film would suffer since people without experience would be trying it out for kicks or braging rights?

[Richard J. Johnson]

This just proves to me that my $1800 will be very well spent.

[Kholi]

So are you saying that there's gonna be an actual resurgence of film because it's gonna be that much cheaper in the forseable future? That would be pretty interesting and really cool. At that point do you think the average look of film would suffer since people without experience would be trying it out for kicks or braging rights?


People without experience are shooting RED now. We're only more inclined to see the product because the costs to transfer to Digital Format (ProRes for example) will have gone down and so you transfer your film after a telecine to a hard drive and edit in your choice of NLE.

There's "poorly" shot film, just as there is "poorly" shot digital. It's all the same.

The price to shoot film has, however, definitely decreased and a number of us are looking into shooting Super 16mm around here. Especially for Music Videos and Commercials.

Hunter Richards started me on that path a while ago but it's now really coming to eat at me. I can shoot as much RED as I want, but I really am ready to start shooting some 16mm.

http://vimeo.com/2804826

Pretty much, if you want the film look, shoot film. Hunter proves it in 600 Feet.


P.S. Resurgence can only occur if something died out anyway. Film is nowhere near dead. Still to this day most of what you watch is shot on film. Simply because most of us cannot afford it, doesn't mean it's not being used.

[Nitsuj]

Well I would agree with you Kholi because you make very valid statements. However I can't agree with the statement that we will never get that matching film look with video. It's come so far so fast and it is destined to become indistinguishable in the future. There is a reason the Producers Guild of America and the American Society of Cinematographers came together to do a first Camera Assessment Series on HD cameras. They all know where it is going. I went to film school back 2001 and had a gut feeling it was all going video no matter what. So I chose to go video in film school while all the others were paying their money on film. I know where it is going and I welcome it. Looking how far it has come since film school is amazing. At times it seemed slow but it was just a matter of time like it still is.

[Rakesh Jacob]

I ment resurgence in the indie/ultra low budget/I wish I could afford film but can't crowd, not the industry as a whole, sorry
That's why I went back and quoted
"It's a matter of time before it's feasible and cost effective to shoot Film and half of us are shooting Organic, the other half Digital"

[Kholi]

It'll get close, but I don't think it'll ever be enough. I kinda see it as what everyone else explains it to be: Film is Organic, Digital is Data. It's like if you could really grow a human with the right combination of numbers, but no real materials. You can probably get it to look and feel really close, but it isn't a human.

[ChipG]

Does anyone know another place I can download this? Vimeo is over thier limit. I want to apply gamma curves and flim stocks to it in post.

[Nitsuj]

Everything is information. Organic is data in some way. It's just a matter of time my friends.

[dadoboy]

That's odd. Earlier this century around 2001, I was thinking "damn, these film movies look all the same. Same Panavision lenses, same Kodak film stocks, same style of lighting." Lots of latitude, rich blacks, contrasty lenses, lit well by a hollywood production crew. What do I gotta do to make mine look different? Push/pull? Use older lenses, use less back lights,etc. Then I go back fifteen twenty years and I was watching "Stepford Wives" shot by Owen Roizman, and it looks dramatically different, the grain is huge, the lighting is very frontal, etc.

Recently, within the last few years, the 35mm originated movies I've seen DO look very different. But I think the differences in the 35mm originated movies we see in the theatres has more to do with the amount of time and money put in the DI and subsequent work on DaVincis and grading, and the rapid development of those processes. But these are DIGITAL processes. Other than cross processing, pushing/pulling, over and under exposure, flashing/fogging, filtration (not uniquely film) there isn't a whole lot more you can do in film acquisition to differentiate yourself other than those production values which are not unique to the format (lighting, art design, etc.)

I'm optimistic that the future generations of RED and other cameras that can do RAW will enable us to really manipulate the image both in production and post, to a degree that FAR EXCEEDS that of film. The only movie cameras I own right now are film cameras, and I love shooting the stuff, but it's digital acquisition that really seems to have exciting potentials.

As digital makes a complete take-over of high budget and studio productions in the next few years, we may see a resurgence of 16mm/35mm film production by those DP's and directors who seek to differentiate their look. Because like you said, digital only emulates film. It is not the same.

And I hope you do shoot a S16mm production because its uber awesome! If it's in late November/December, I may not be working then and can help out.


Nearly all digital images look the same. That's why everyone says "looks like RED footage!" The better the image gets, the less distinct it is. 35mm Adapters and lens choice actually helped separate visuals a lot, depending on which one you got and which lens set you picked up.

As far as I'm concerned the 7D produced the same image as the GH-1 @ 1080/24 just with better compression.

This may be still a premature statement but it'll never be film: where every single movie LOOKS different when acquired on celluloid. I had this same long discussion on set with camera department (all comprised of Union people who come from film and still shoot film, including the DP-- I'm the only digital guy lol) and they're right.

All RED movies have the same odd "look" to them. Or just about all digital features. Film, though. I mean, go watch any three movies shot on 35mm in the last year and look how DIFFERENT they all look. They were all shot on film, possibly even the same cameras but be damned if they don't look like completely different properties.

I don't think we'll ever get that with Digital, and it's just another reason why Film is nowhere near dead, dying or anything. The cost to shoot S16mm has already dropped drastically, and apparently so has S35mm. It's a matter of time before it's feasible and cost effective to shoot Film and half of us are shooting Organic, the other half Digital.

[ChipG]

One more question.

Is there a thread for organic stories?

[Rakesh Jacob]

Everything is information. Organic is data in some way. It's just a matter of time my friends.

It's gonna take a massive amount of data to match what our visual acuity is. Eventually we'll get there, that's just the nature of the beast, but unlike news papers and audio recordings which were easily replaced with digital counterparts, your visual acuity is too great to alwasy be easily fooled.... OR.... the next gen is just not gonna give a crap and the generation after that and that and that, or who knows, we might be on a verge of a major holographic or neural break through. There might be Motorola Engineers meeting with Greys on an UFO somewhere in a Mexican desert like they did when they got all that cool new cell phone technology... I love that conspiracy theory :)

[sblfilms]

So Episode 3 looks like Public Enemies which looks like Apocalypto? (Just the first three all digital films to fall out of my head) No, they don't. Put a R1 in the hands of a DP like Janusz Kaminski or Robert Richardson (Two of my heroes of cinematography) and they will do something special with it. Look at what Soderbergh has done with the R1, especially with The Informant. I have yet to see anybody shoot anything on the R1 that looks as unique as that.

[Nitsuj]

It's like if you could really grow a human with the right combination of numbers, but no real materials. You can probably get it to look and feel really close, but it isn't a human.

And eventually those cyborgs will get rights and be accepted into society just like everybody else. They will eventually mix into society and the only way to tell the difference is by their ID that they are required to carry around. But like all thing, the governing force that requires them to carry their identity will fall and it will be a blended world forever disguised from it's past. Ehem... or we will all kill ourselves before we get a camera capable of matching film. ;)

[Kholi]

They're already accepted. They got accepted when they were called DVX100's.

You can emulate an organic process with data, sure. I just do not think you will ever get the depth of a good film stock out of the highest grade digital image. It'll always look digital, because it is. Two different looks.

[NoxNoctus]

And eventually those cyborgs will get rights and be accepted into society just like everybody else. They will eventually mix into society and the only way to tell the difference is by their ID that they are required to carry around. But like all thing, the governing force that requires them to carry their identity will fall and it will be a blended world forever disguised from it's past. Ehem... or we will all kill ourselves before we get a camera capable of matching film. ;)


It's as if the ghost of Phillip K Dick had a DVXuser screenname...

[bwwd]

Im almost sure we will never get the look of film stock from 80s/90s but today films look more like videos with all those Color Corrections.I wondering since when it started happening ,late 90s-2000 ? I dont know when i saw first obviously color corrected film.
Ive seen army of darkness 2 days ago and it would be very hard to make video look like that.

[Nitsuj]

I still just can't agree on the fact that they won't be indistinguishable some day. We have to consider the fact that even the very means of capturing light could be completely different. In the future it could actually be some sort organic membrane that mimics the way the human eye sees the world. Or maybe there will be a way to create digital celluloid that works like a squids skin. It then is actually a piece of celluloid but can record the lights reaction as information but is in fact just celluloid with wires. Nothing is impossible as time seems to be the judge of that.

But all that aside I hear so many people talk about the RED as if it was the only one to compare. What about the Viper, Panavision's Genesis, Sony's F23 and F35, Arriflex D21, and even the Panasonic HPX3700. Has anybody in here seen a clip of these and thought... "That is totally video right there." RED is just one of many forms of technology out today and I wouldn't be surprised if the quiet one all along was fooling everybody. ;)

[Nitsuj]

It's as if the ghost of Phillip K Dick had a DVXuser screenname...

Hehe I'm just a deep thinker into the unknown. :)

[bwwd]

new star wars looked weird in some scenes ,like if they were shot at almost 30p with unconvincing movements,especially i dont like ending where vader gets his helmet ,this scene ,lights ,movements,looks so much like regular hd camera.i hate this scene ,looks kinda fake.

[Taylor Rudd]

You're all on crack.

Perya was inspiring...certain shots were breathtaking. Other shots made me sad for the world and some evoked a sense of nostalgia.

You all should get out and shoot more (myself included)...all of this RED vs. film vs. 7D bull is starting to wear on me.

Haven't worked with the viper or 3700, Genesis looks great when shot correctly (not a big fan of Semler's use of 360º shutter, though) but can't utilize anamorphics, F23 looked like shite in Public Enemies, F35 had some internal reflection issues to be resolved, D21's only perk is it uses anamorphics but has NO light sensitivity and RED can hold its highlights as good as an anorexic chick can hold down her everclear. Know strengths, know weaknesses, use what fits you (and the budget) best. Goodnight.

[NoxNoctus]

kind of like when they show HD movies on TV, the movement seems awkward and sped up in places. I watched The Green Mile on an HD channel and it looked...bad. I've always wondered if it's just a framerate conversion gone wrong or what

[Nitsuj]

You're all on crack.

Perya was inspiring...certain shots were breathtaking. Other shots made me sad for the world and some evoked a sense of nostalgia.

You all should get out and shoot more (myself included)...

Know strengths, know weaknesses, use what fits you (and the budget) best. Goodnight.

I couldn't agree more. Nailed it.

[Taylor Rudd]

I couldn't agree more. Nailed it.

You're still on crack :thumbsup:

[el presidente]

Perya is just great.

Yes maybe it could be technically better (not that I think so)...At work I film a lot of stuff snatched from people with only a few minutes to spare..whilst trying to keep them comfortable cos they "dont usually do this sort of thing".
...I recently made a film with "Showmen" in the uk about the importance of going through education...I had a night at the fair..and looking at my results to theirs is a wake up call for me(moment of honesty there).

I think the form of the camera helps soooo much in this field (at least until people get used to seeing a video cam disguised as an SLR)

We should look at the overall picture and not just nitpick cos that film is lovely. :)

[Osslund]

Slightly off topic in a 7D thread, but speaking of wedding videographers, this is one of the most amazing 'wedding' films I've ever seen:

http://vimeo.com/6320464

To bad the acting doesn't feel real. But the aerial shoots are great!

[Postmaster]

Hunter Richards started me on that path a while ago but it's now really coming to eat at me. I can shoot as much RED as I want, but I really am ready to start shooting some 16mm.


Word Kholi! Thou I manage it to come pretty close to 16mm with my combination of HVX200, vintage Zeiss medium format lenses and LEX (at least with enough light) sometimes, we decided to do "Swing da Gals" on 16mm - and I never regretted it..

http://exposureroom.com/members/FrankGlen.aspx/assets/041e58cdfcc349f8a721355fdcd1a224/

In the "Making of" you can see how much magic 16mm adds compared to video.

http://exposureroom.com/members/FrankGlen.aspx/assets/5a58175adbaf4080a0250a64864d4cda/



The cost of celluloid is a "below the line" thing when it comes to multi million $$$ films. Catering is more in most big productions.
It´s just a matter for us (always on a budget) independent folks.

Frank

[Oedipax]

Does anyone know another place I can download this? Vimeo is over thier limit. I want to apply gamma curves and flim stocks to it in post.

Seconded. Has anyone mirrored this? I've tried for two days now to snag this thing, no luck yet. Maybe when the next day's bandwidth rolls over...

[Ian-T]

It's funny because, I saw that when it was first linked to here and watched it again, and I don't like the look as much as a lot of the digital footage I've seen.

This is the same conclusion I came up with… even when I first watched it some months ago. It’s not that I don’t like how film looks but this didn’t make me go WOW. I might be so used to seeing digital projects that anything other than that makes me shrug…but really…I do love how 35mm film comes out when watching Hollywood trailers. They, for the most part, are just as uber clean as most digitally shot movies I’ve seen. We are starting to see less and less of a difference in how they look (at least to me and maybe untrained eyes).

[jls4]

I might be so used to seeing digital projects that anything other than that makes me shrug…but really…I do love how 35mm film comes out when watching Hollywood trailers. They, for the most part, are just as uber clean as most digitally shot movies I’ve seen. We are starting to see less and less of a difference in how they look (at least to me and maybe untrained eyes).

I know my eyes are untrained. LOL These are differences I see

Film: Softer, more organic, grain in blacks, handles light falloff well, less saturated, fewer gradations of color

Digital: Sharper, less organic, less grain if any period (with trained hands), doesn't handle light falloff well, saturated, more gradations of color

I "like" film, but I also "like" digital and really am coming to peace with it. Like someone explained on something I read a while back - Film is like what 100 years old. It took years to get film looking almost "perfect". Digital is less than what 10 years, 12 years old. It'll take a while as well. I still lean towards digital it's biggest flaw to me the light falloff which someone will fix maybe with the first 16 or 20 Bit Sensor. LOL

[Boz]

To bad the acting doesn't feel real. But the aerial shoots are great!

That's because the actors are the wedding couple!

[Rakesh Jacob]

Yeah man it's just a couple getting married, it's not like it's gonna be submited to Sundance :)

[Cranky]

I kinda see it as what everyone else explains it to be: Film is Organic, Digital is Data.
Bah. Do you still listen vinyl music, or use reels or audio cassettes? You cannot even buy this stuff anymore. If audio CD is not good enough then spring for SACD or DVD-audio. Same will happen with film. I watched BTS of Blade Runner, they made how many? 7? 9? 11? shots onto the same film when making FX using scale models. No one bothers anymore exposing the same film for 10 times, and if you screw up in the middle, you have to start over. Just not practical.

Hollywood wants to save money, indies want to save money, and amateurs have no money at all. Film production will die pretty soon, when 12- or 14-bit cameras like RED become ubiquitous. File size? So what? 10 years ago a 500MB HDD was huge, now a 500GB drive costs the same or less. in 5-10 years RAW will be commonplace. You already can have RAW stills in a $400 consumer DSLR, just give it some time for a consumer RAW videocam.

As to DSLR look: I really liked this piece. Clean, colorful and yes, cinematic. As to film grain and other crap, these are defects, people -- defects of the film stock, of processing and handling. I will take clean "DSLR" look anytime, just like I prefer clean CD Audio to a hissy tape.

[morgan_moore]

I think dig can look like film - these snaps are 16bit Hassy Files, motion recording is just not there yet..

http://www.sammorganmoore.com/smmcom/blogger2.asp?blogid=41&pic=9

http://www.sammorganmoore.com/smmcom/blogger2.asp?blogid=41&pic=15

S

[Rakesh Jacob]

Looks awesome.
On the first pic you posted, when you click to the next one, it's a double shot. The shot on the right (face close up), was that with the same system? That one looks amazing too!

[morgan_moore]

http://www.sammorganmoore.com/smmcom/blogger2.asp?blogid=41&pic=10

Yeah that the Blad, its the most horrible cam to use (fixed 25ISO) but looks sweet - its a few years old now, but 16bit native and no moiree filter

most of the shots in my 'lifestyle' and sport books are with it

S

S

[Jim Klatt]

Bah. Do you still listen vinyl music, or use reels or audio cassettes? You cannot even buy this stuff anymore.

Where do you live? Vinyl is everywhere, is still being printed, sounds amazing, and I listen to records all...the...time! I find that people who identify themselves as musicians (or have a voracious appetite for music) usually have huge record collections that are treated holier than anything else.

The band that I am in just got finished recording on an Otari 2" 24-track analog open reel deck at a recording studio. Recording to tape is a luxury and sounds incredible.

Granted, I don't buy audio cassettes anymore, but I still listen to old mixtapes, which is really fun!

[Kholi]

Hollywood wants to save money, indies want to save money, and amateurs have no money at all. Film production will die pretty soon, when 12- or 14-bit cameras like RED become ubiquitous. .


By this statement, I assume that you're currently a working, successful producer at the top of the chain and can quantify this with experience. Adversely to that, while I am not at the top of the chain I do have several friends that are and what you're saying makes sense from a perspective that also thinks Hollywood is "bad".

AkA, it doesn't make sense to me.

DVXuser or the INternet is the only place where a Camera is THE most important part of the process. It's the least, everywhere else. Especially in that so-called system you just said was going to die... over cameras.

[xbourque]

I think celluloid will stick around for a while, if only by sheer inertia.

How ever, let's not forget all the die hard still photogs a few years ago that said that digital could never achieve anything close to real film, especially for commercial work. That film would never "die".

Flash forward to today: get 50 magazines from a newstand, I bet that all 50 covers were shot on digital.

Once you have a sensor that captures enough pixels, decent latitude and color gamut, you can pretty much make it look like any film stock using 3D LUTs. You're also free to add grain in post. You can go so far as to shoot/scan a few seconds of 18% gray on real film stocks and use that to add true "organic" grain.

We're just starting to scratch the surface of this thing... which makes this a very exciting time!

-X

[Cranky]

let's not forget all the die hard still photogs a few years ago that said that digital could never achieve anything close to real film, especially for commercial work. That film would never "die". Flash forward to today: get 50 magazines from a newstand, I bet that all 50 covers were shot on digital.
Exactly. The very fact that hi-end manufacturers like Hasselblad offer digital cameras confirms that digital does not have to be cheap.

Though I prefer old-style mockup FX to modern digital effects, which more often than not look cheesy and unreal.

[morgan_moore]

and some nikon D3 from last week..

http://www.sammorganmoore.com/smmcom/blogger2.asp?blogid=70

S

[Taylor Rudd]

By this statement, I assume that you're currently a working, successful producer at the top of the chain and can quantify this with experience. Adversely to that, while I am not at the top of the chain I do have several friends that are and what you're saying makes sense from a perspective that also thinks Hollywood is "bad".

AkA, it doesn't make sense to me.

DVXuser or the INternet is the only place where a Camera is THE most important part of the process. It's the least, everywhere else. Especially in that so-called system you just said was going to die... over cameras.

LOL and agree.

Now, the issue that we are now have with digital that was never a problem with film is: a digital camera is a one trick pony. While you can tweak settings and have a certain level of "flexibility" with RAW recording, you are limited to a camera's sensor. You cannot change the film stock. The camera does matter more with digital (though not as much as we like to give it credit).

An Arri 535 on a crane will produce the same image as a 235 on a Steadicam with the same glass. A Genesis on a crane will not create the same image as a handheld F900.

Anyone who says film is dead is acting the fool. Anyone who denies digital is becoming a better contender is similarly foolish.

[Cranky]

Now, the issue that we are now have with digital that was never a problem with film is: a digital camera is a one trick pony. While you can tweak settings and have a certain level of "flexibility" with RAW recording, you are limited to a camera's sensor. You cannot change the film stock. The camera does matter more with digital (though not as much as we like to give it credit).
Uh, is not it the whole point of RAW? You get as much information that you can grade it any way you want. With film stock you are practically grading (pre-grading?) when shooting, with RAW you are grading in post, so you can have any look you want. Am I wrong?

[Taylor Rudd]

You are still limited to the sensor's capabilities.

This pre-grading, as you call it, is part the cinematographer's job. Creating the palette, mood, etc is a huge part of pre-production, not something to be determined in post. Ideally, it is a collaboration between the director, cinematographer, set designer, wardrobe, etc.

[morgan_moore]

A sensor has a set of capabilities and characteristics

The RED (and digital medium format) have the sensor/brain/digiback seperable from the rest of the kit

so just like you can shoot a certain film stock on different devices so one should be able to move your sensor around or choose a different one

S

[Taylor Rudd]

Well, they aren't high enough yet.

And I care because - and you must realize I approach this as a cinematographer (though I'm very much an amateur...) - I am hired to create the image. This goes far beyond setting up a camera and holding focus. Certainly things can be replicated in post, but if you know what you want (and most young filmmakers don't), you should begin there, not end there.

[Taylor Rudd]

A sensor has a set of capabilities and characteristics

The RED (and digital medium format) have the sensor/brain/digiback seperable from the rest of the kit

so just like you can shoot a certain film stock on different devices so one should be able to move your sensor around or choose a different one

S

Right, which is why I commend RED's future use of the "brain," which is a great concept so long as they don't change formats and hose their uses again.

I apologize now for thread-crapping...but there's just been a lot of that recently :undecided

[John Caballero]

Film stock for motion pictures will die, that is for sure. That is reality. Whoever denies that fact will be proven wrong in the not too distant future. When everything else is digital; as almost everything is now with the exception of the cinemas that project film, which eventually when they can afford it will switch to digital; there will be absolutely no need to shoot film anymore. There will be a generation in that not too distant future that will only know about film stock when they read about it the history books, thats digital books of course.

[Postmaster]

Ha! Film stock is getting better and better every day.
Non of the existing sensors comes even close.

Almost every stock is scanned today for post/VFX - so from there it´s digital anyway.

Distribution, yeah probably they distribute digital in the future, just because it´s cheaper.

Till some Aliens come to that secret airbase in New Mexico and bring us a different sensor technology (as they did with the Transistor and the cell phone) high end film stock and digital will live side by side. ;-)

Frank

[bwwd]

Yes and its exciting to watch this revolution,film stock will be obsolete,too expensive,its that simple

[Nitsuj]

Just wait til Ultra High Def hits like HD did. That isn't far away. And by that time there will be all kinds of new goodies to replace the old. I predict in 10 years it will be hard to find a movie shot on film. That is if 2012 doesn't kill everybody before.

[f64manray]

Ha! Film stock is getting better and better every day.
Non of the existing sensors comes even close.




I'm really not sure what you're saying here. I just saw "Gamer" which looks like a virtual demo reel for Red One. That movie more than any other probably demonstrates its capabilities as it has so many looks throughout the film. I can't think of any movie shot on 35mm film that could really out shine it look wise. The movie was crap, but it demonstrates pretty thoroughly how good digital sensors are. ...not even close??? really? I'm a film photographer with more than 20 years experience. Let's just admit digital is as good as film and move on. The difference is negligable.

This reminds of of discussions that I've had with audio engineers that would proclaim if it's not 2" 30 ips reel to reel Studer it ain't sh#$%.

It seems inevitable that film will cease someday sooner rather than later. I don't have any experience with it, but all things being close to equal, what director wouldn't want to review takes immediately rather than wait for dailiies. It seems like film making is just to costly to wait until the end of the day, and anything that would give immediate feed back would be embraced.

[hoofandmouf]

Oh man!

really amazing footage.

Nice compositions, great editing, and very interesting subject matter. Its seeing stuff like this that keeps me inspired and motivated. Great work.

The 7D is just a killer camera.... between this camera, Nikon's new one coming out, and RED's Scarlet.... oh man! Us image makers are the real winners.

[Cranky]

what director wouldn't want to review takes immediately rather than wait for dailiies
Funny, they already have videocams running simultaneously with film cams to review the shots. Not exactly the same, but at least can check framing and acting.

[f64manray]

Funny, they already have videocams running simultaneously with film cams to review the shots. Not exactly the same, but at least can check framing and acting.

Yeah, I'm aware of that, but if I were a director and especially a DP, I would want to verify that what we shot is in the can and backed up before moving on. I would be a nervous wreck if I clouldn't do that.

I don't want to hear: "ummm ...Yeah....you know that $100,000 day yesterday with those scenes of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise ....Ummm...didn't work out so well." Sure I'd just blame the lab, but still. :-)

[John Caballero]

Once again, motion picture film stock will die, the same way stills film stock is. Is an evolution. And it can't be stopped no matter how on denial many people are.

[NoxNoctus]

It'll go the way of the Internal Combustion Engine when the Electric Car was invented.

[Justyn]

Film is still the greatest archival method where it's going to last a hundred years if stored properly... and there should be a way to deal with it.. but with other tech it comes and goes so fast so what does it matter?

That being said.. film is a PITA on so many levels and I certainly don't miss it. I don't miss the grain and the dealing with labs and the dailies and of course the expense. I would think anyone as a true purist would want to cut on a flatbed and not even transfer to digital to work on an NLE and man alive that sucks.

I'm just not ready to give up the freedoms and the things I've come accustomed to for a level of nostalgia and an "organic feel". To me, film has been dead for atleast 5 years. Even if someone else is paying for it.. I'm still going to be all pissed about the workarounds and that's just a bummer.

[powervideo]

Can someone post where I can downl;oad the raw clip? Vimeo has zoned out on me.

Cheers,
Peter

[Jean Dantes]

It seems inevitable that film will cease someday sooner rather than later. I don't have any experience with it, but all things being close to equal, what director wouldn't want to review takes immediately rather than wait for dailiies. It seems like film making is just to costly to wait until the end of the day, and anything that would give immediate feed back would be embraced.


Terrence Malick never, ever reviews dailies. And Terrence Malick probably has the greatest cinematography in cinematic history.

Film won't die. It will be around, for a long, long, long time. It has a certain aesthetic that cannot be reproduced digitally. Ever.

[Eddy Robinson]

Of course it can be reproduced digitally. Every film that has had a DI has landed back on film through a digital pipeline. It's the qaulity of the sensor that keeps changing and improving; if you have the time to scan film with a laser it's not like it degrades from being digitized. Digital is not the problem here, only the acquisition technology.

[NoxNoctus]

Terrence Malick never, ever reviews dailies. And Terrence Malick probably has the greatest cinematography in cinematic history.

Film won't die. It will be around, for a long, long, long time. It has a certain aesthetic that cannot be reproduced digitally. Ever.

Yes, but taking a movie and editing it down by half the original runtime...haha. Thin Red Line is my all time favorite movie for what he and John Toll did, but the way it was done was horribly inconsistent. Entire parts and cast members cut out...maybe dailies would have helped in the grand scope of things. I don't know. It could just be the 3AM eating my brain

[xbourque]

Film won't die. It will be around, for a long, long, long time. It has a certain aesthetic that cannot be reproduced digitally. Ever.

LOL. Famous last words.

That's what the stills photographers said 5-7 years ago.

That what the tube guitar amp afficionados said before it started raining amp emulator plug-ins for ProTools.

That's what the typesetters said when PageMaker 1.0 came out on dot matrix printers.

--X

[speculator]

Not to chime in, but...
That's also what scholars said before paper was introduced to replace the more rugged vellum

[Postmaster]

4000+ years old vellum is still there and readable - the cheap paper decomposes after min a few hundred years.

So the in the future we will be able to watch celluloid based films when data on hard disks and tapes is long time dead.

And yeah, I know ....with the dropping prices of disk space and blah...

Frank

[Jean Dantes]

LOL. Famous last words.

That's what the stills photographers said 5-7 years ago.

That what the tube guitar amp afficionados said before it started raining amp emulator plug-ins for ProTools.

That's what the typesetters said when PageMaker 1.0 came out on dot matrix printers.

--X


...ahhh...yeah...go tell that to Christopher Doyle, Rodrigo Pietro, Emmanuel Lubezki, Rob Richardson, and John Toll. All of whom still use chemicals to achieve their looks in post. I don't think you truly understand what "cinematography" is. It's not just picking a camera and a lens. It's picking film stock and processing them chemically too...


Of course it can be reproduced digitally. Every film that has had a DI has landed back on film through a digital pipeline. It's the qaulity of the sensor that keeps changing and improving; if you have the time to scan film with a laser it's not like it degrades from being digitized. Digital is not the problem here, only the acquisition technology.

It cannot be reproduced digitally. To say that "film can be reproduced digitally" is an oxymoron. Film can be scanned into a digital medium, like a PC, and then colour graded and whatnot, but the certain organic look that film produces cannot be re-created digitally precisely because it's not digital. I guarantee that feature-film directors and cinematographers will employ film over digital for a long, long time.

[Jean Dantes]

Yes, but taking a movie and editing it down by half the original runtime...haha. Thin Red Line is my all time favorite movie for what he and John Toll did, but the way it was done was horribly inconsistent. Entire parts and cast members cut out...maybe dailies would have helped in the grand scope of things. I don't know. It could just be the 3AM eating my brain

It was only "horribly inconsistent" if you are thinking in terms of "Hollywood studio filmmaking". Otherwise, it was cinematic perfection.

Check these out:

Emmanuel Lubezki talks about working with Terrence Malick:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfDkI74GAzk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfDkI74GAzk)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4rAXeeEvMg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4rAXeeEvMg)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnwl6MJCjcU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnwl6MJCjcU)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbOX7Ccseow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbOX7Ccseow)

[Ian-T]

I don’t know…I’m sort of in-between with this subject. I think film will be around (in some capacity) for a while (like how vinyl records are for club DJs) but as we see digital getting better and better more and more people will opt to go that route. As far as film being “reproduced digitally” I do think we will eventually get to a happy medium (just like we did with audio) where one would be able to successfully “emulate” the look of different film stocks. I will not say it will never happen. Just look at how, in as little as a year’s time, DSLR’s have changed the industry. Technology moves so fast that in a short period of time anything goes. Film isn’t quite dead as some make it out to be “yet” but it will get there. Even then there will be some who won’t let go of the medium and prefer to keep shooting “retro” style like some of today’s DJ’s who are still using vinyl records. Jm2c

[ydgmdlu]

So the in the future we will be able to watch celluloid based films when data on hard disks and tapes is long time dead.
This is a common tune heard from film proponents. But what they don't seem to understand is that perfect digital back-up copies can be made that are stored on physical media (hard drives, tapes, flash memory) that are MUCH more space efficient than reels of celluloid. Digital copies don't suffer the same image degradation that celluloid does. Now I know that film preservation has been so perfected over the years that film can last indefinitely with little degradation when properly preserved and maintained. But I say that digital media are infinitely more easy to store and maintain than film is.

I'm going to make the wild prediction that in the future, ALL celluloid will be digitized for archiving, including the classics that are already being carefully preserved, like Citizen Kane. And you know what's really crazy? There's a mass market format available now that allows everybody the ability to own cinema-quality, solid-state copies of their favorite movies. It's called Blu-ray. 1080p is a barely noticeable resolution loss from the 2K masters that are industry standard.

[Postmaster]

...if you can find a bluray player in 50 years and a display wit that antiqe HDMI plug ;-)

Frank

[daveswan]

And yet..... This pre-supposes a regular backup-transfer regime.
I remember on the beeb a while back a series called I believe "The Lost World of Mitchel and Kenyon" featuring old film from the early 1900's that had lain forgotten for over 100yr. It's not Holywood, no but it is vital historical material, And I worry, that 100 years from now people will know more about the Victorians or even ancient Egypt than about us and our throw-away culture.
As for old technology, there are still people using wet collodian because it gives them an image nothing else will, just as there are artisan printers hand setting real lead type, and even people who know how to knapp a flint axe. And yes, this is important.
Dave

[ydgmdlu]

...ahhh...yeah...go tell that to Christopher Doyle, Rodrigo Pietro, Emmanuel Lubezki, Rob Richardson, and John Toll. All of whom still use chemicals to achieve their looks in post. I don't think you truly understand what "cinematography" is. It's not just picking a camera and a lens. It's picking film stock and processing them chemically too...
I don't think that you truly understand what "cinematography" is. The chemicals and processing are simply a means to an end. If another method or medium is available to achieve the same results, then cinematographers can and will use it instead. Your statement is exactly like saying that one doesn't "truly understand what 'editing' is" unless one cuts and splices celluloid on flatbed machines, and it's "not just assembling clips on a computer." Sure, one can still do that, and it's a great and valuable experience with its own advantages over digital editing. Just ask Spielberg, one of the last holdouts for analog editing.

Besides, those cinematographers that you mentioned, do they all routinely do the chemical processing in the labs themselves? I think not, which doesn't make your statement very meaningful at all.


It cannot be reproduced digitally. To say that "film can be reproduced digitally" is an oxymoron. Film can be scanned into a digital medium, like a PC, and then colour graded and whatnot, but the certain organic look that film produces cannot be re-created digitally precisely because it's not digital. I guarantee that feature-film directors and cinematographers will employ film over digital for a long, long time.
If you pay attention, then you shouldn't be able to help but marvel at the miracles that genius computer programmers are achieving these days. Consider the RED Ray demo, for instance: 4K at 10 Mbps with no visible compression artifacts. Impossible, right? I have every reason to believe that someday in the not-too-distant future, some programmer will devise an algorithm that will perfectly emulate the "organic look" (the subtle, constantly morphing grain patterns) of film. And besides, film is not organic anyway, except maybe for the backing.

[daveswan]

Oh yes, a few years back I was given some old glass plates to print that even then were over a hundred years old. The good thing about silver halide is you can hold the negative up to the light and see what's there, and I managed to print something worthwhile even from plates so degraded that a digital equivilent would be totally unrecoverable.
Dave

[ydgmdlu]

...if you can find a bluray player in 50 years and a display wit that antiqe HDMI plug ;-)
And all of us have or can easily get projection equipment to play our old collection of 8mm or 16mm films without turning to antique stores or eBay? Just like film projection equipment will always exist somewhere and become re-manufactured by someone, so too will digital playback equipment.


And yet..... This pre-supposes a regular backup-transfer regime.
No. Why do you need a regular back-up and transfer regimen? Do you regularly back-up and transfer your store-bought DVDs? Hard drives, tapes, and solid-state media can be stored in a vault and left untouched just like film can.

[ydgmdlu]

I managed to print something worthwhile even from plates so degraded that a digital equivilent would be totally unrecoverable.
Do you have the engineering background to be able to claim this with any sort of proper authority?

[daveswan]

untill the technology moves on and people forget. Film or plates can always be printed, but a forgotten file format?
Dave

[ydgmdlu]

I'm not saying that film will die, that it will disappear from existence or that nobody will use it. I think that the people who truly believe that are ignorant and naive. Film will always have a strong subculture of users, just like 8mm film and film still photography today. Old technology never goes away completely, and that's a good thing.

[daveswan]

A digital file with 90% missing? The thing was that the impotant (For dating) image was still there and could be printed, even though the plates were very badly dammaged.
Dave

[ydgmdlu]

A digital file with 90% missing? The thing was that the impotant (For dating) image was still there and could be printed, even though the plates were very badly dammaged.
Dave

untill the technology moves on and people forget. Film or plates can always be printed, but a forgotten file format?
You're making a lot of unsupported assertions. What is your claim to authority, again?

[daveswan]

I'm not saying that film will die, that it will disappear from existence or that nobody will use it. I think that the people who truly believe that are ignorant and naive. Film will always have a strong subculture of users, just like 8mm film and film still photography today. Old technology never goes away completely, and that's a good thing.

Which is what I'm saying!
Dave

[daveswan]

Just natural pessimism.

[ydgmdlu]

If the plates (or the image on the plates) were really 90% damaged, then I highly doubt that the 10% would be very discernible or useful anyway. It must not have literally been 90%.

[ydgmdlu]

Just natural pessimism.
Similarly, "natural pessimism" would allow me to claim that in the future, all celluloid projection equipment will be lost or broken beyond repair.

[ydgmdlu]

I managed to print something worthwhile even from plates so degraded that a digital equivilent would be totally unrecoverable.
Dave
Data recovery companies specialize in recovering data from hard drives that have been irreparably damaged in natural disasters like floods, or even from drives that have merely been erased and reformatted.

[PaPa]

can someone please host the raw file on some sort of mirror site? im dying to get my hands on this and play around with it in CS3.

[Taylor Rudd]

I guess it's a good thing nobody posting here has any real authority on the issue.

[Taylor Rudd]

can someone please host the raw file on some sort of mirror site? im dying to get my hands on this and play around with it in CS3.

Philip uploaded a native clip here... http://exposureroom.com/members/philipbloom.aspx/assets/0b8e68acc32349378168a568c69816ef/#5796

Can't wait to see what you can come up with!

[ydgmdlu]

I guess it's a good thing nobody posting here has any real authority on the issue.
Indeed. That's why we should stop talking about it. Bashing digital is just as bad as bashing film.

[Postmaster]

ooops doublepost

[Postmaster]

And all of us have or can easily get projection equipment to play our old collection of 8mm or 16mm films without turning to antique stores or eBay? Just like film projection equipment will always exist somewhere and become re-manufactured by someone, so too will digital playback equipment.
.

Oh yeah, than try to read a Syquest Cartridge.

If you find a player, a cable, a computer with SCSI I plug, a vintage OS an a even more vintage driver for the baby. Even if you got all that together you probably not be able to read the medium or if you can read it you have no program that reads the data format anymore.

Bin there, done that.

The "Digital Revolution" became to fast and furious to allow memorabilia.
We are the forgotten generation.
Lot´s of people don´t even have their digital memories (photos/video) from 5 years ago anymore. It´s all gone - forgotten by the so called Revolution.

End of rant, back to topic :beer:

Frank

[PaPa]

Philip uploaded a native clip here... http://exposureroom.com/members/philipbloom.aspx/assets/0b8e68acc32349378168a568c69816ef/#5796

Can't wait to see what you can come up with!

Ya, i saw and played with this clip, but i was hoping for more :)

[ydgmdlu]

If you find a player, a cable, a computer with SCSI I plug, a vintage OS an a even more vintage driver for the baby. Even if you got all that together you probably not be able to read the medium or if you can read it you have no program that reads the data format anymore.
This presupposes that there will be no vested interest in maintaining the usability of a given digital format.

I suggest that you read about the COBOL programming language, one of the most outdated and difficult-to-use programming languages still in existence. COBOL really should be dead. Yet, many companies still rely upon decades-old COBOL programs, simply because they are too invested in them (and lazy) to have their programs rewritten in a more modern language. And COBOL programmers have unbelievable job security in the software development world.

When the studios and film preservation companies spend many millions of dollars to make digital archive copies of their movies, they have the vested interest in maintaining the usability of those files.

[pveal]

Just natural pessimism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZG-VvlErJY&feature=related

natural pessimism expression me reminds me of magical sympathy

[ydgmdlu]

And what about forgotten FILM formats like 9.5mm film?

Digital files can be migrated to newer hardware, and they can be re-encoded to newer codecs. Any "criticism" that you try to level at digital can be leveled at film, and any defense of film can apply to digital. That's why there's no point in bashing or arguing about it anymore.

[Jean Dantes]

I don't think that you truly understand what "cinematography" is. The chemicals and processing are simply a means to an end. If another method or medium is available to achieve the same results, then cinematographers can and will use it instead. Your statement is exactly like saying that one doesn't "truly understand what 'editing' is" unless one cuts and splices celluloid on flatbed machines, and it's "not just assembling clips on a computer." Sure, one can still do that, and it's a great and valuable experience with its own advantages over digital editing. Just ask Spielberg, one of the last holdouts for analog editing.

Comparing cinematography to editing is pointless. They have nothing to do with each other. Cinematography is a very poetic visual aesthetic. Editing is a system used to give structure to a film. Both are subjective to their respective artists, but are totally different art forms. I'm not down playing the importance of editing, but comparing analogue editing to analogue cinematography is absolutely pointless because their creation have nothing in common with each other what so ever.



Besides, those cinematographers that you mentioned, do they all routinely do the chemical processing in the labs themselves? I think not, which doesn't make your statement very meaningful at all.

If my statement isn't "very meaningful", I think you bluntly saying, without evidence, that these cinematographers aren't responsible for the chemical processing makes your statement even less meaningful then mine...


I can only verify, from interviews I've read and seen, that Chris Doyle and Rodrigo Pietro chemically process their films. And I know Rob Richardson did for the BMW short-film that he shot for Alejandro González Inarritu (which was shot on 16mm negative film, then bleach-bypassed chemically).



If you pay attention, then you shouldn't be able to help but marvel at the miracles that genius computer programmers are achieving these days. Consider the RED Ray demo, for instance: 4K at 10 Mbps with no visible compression artifacts. Impossible, right? I have every reason to believe that someday in the not-too-distant future, some programmer will devise an algorithm that will perfectly emulate the "organic look" (the subtle, constantly morphing grain patterns) of film. And besides, film is not organic anyway, except maybe for the backing.

See. I don't want to see cinematographers, and the art of cinematography, get replaced by some computer programmer and his/her algorithm. You can get all the computer egg-heads on Earth in one room, and I'm telling you, they will not be able to re-create the look of film no matter how hard they tried precisely because what they will be creating is not film. Why is that so hard to understand?

I think that's what you have failed to see in my argument - that there is a difference between cinematography and digital cinematography. In the end, the story of a film is the most important part, most, if not all, know that. However, digital cinematography and traditional film cinematography are two different animals. They share the same ancestry, but are not the same species.

Perhaps you failed to notice, but I actually started this entire thread because I love the evolution of digital filmmaking. I am not "bashing" digital filmmaking. I actually love digital filmmaking cause I'm a broke-ass student that will virtually shoot on anything to tell a story and make cinema, and digital filmmaking is what makes that possible. Anything that gets me close to the cinematic look of 35mm film, like the Canon 7D, I applaud with all my might. However, I refuse to get it twisted - digital will never be film, film will never be digital. And film will be around for a long time coming, I guarantee it.

[ydgmdlu]

Comparing cinematography to editing is pointless. They have nothing to do with each other. Cinematography is a very poetic visual aesthetic. Editing is a system used to give structure to a film. Both are subjective to their respective artists, but are totally different art forms. I'm not down playing the importance of editing, but comparing analogue editing to analogue cinematography is absolutely pointless because their creation have nothing in common with each other what so ever.
You are ignoring the point that I was trying to make. It doesn't have to be editing. It can be anything, like writing. Some screenwriters are die-hards for the typewriter, and they say the same kinds of things about typewriter screenwriting versus computer screenwriting that you do about analog cinematography versus digital cinematography. They will extol and romanticize the virtues of pressing chemical ink on a physical and organic piece of paper with just the touch of a finger. They'll talk about how in a hundred years, you can still pick up the oldest antique typewriter and write the great American novel, or the great American movie. And they'll talk about how they have nothing against the march of technology, but they just think that writing on a computer is not the same, wonderful, rich experience as writing on a typewriter. And they have a point.


If my statement isn't "very meaningful", I think you bluntly saying, without evidence, that these cinematographers aren't responsible for the chemical processing makes your statement even less meaningful then mine...


I can only verify, from interviews I've read and seen, that Chris Doyle and Rodrigo Pietro chemically process their films. And I know Rob Richardson did for the BMW short-film that he shot for Alejandro González Inarritu (which was shot on 16mm negative film, then bleach-bypassed chemically).Are you saying that you know, for a fact and with documentation, that these cinematographers actually go to the labs and chemically process film themselves, with their own hands, instead of having technicians do it for them, according to their specifications? And that these cinematographers consider personally processing film with their own hands to be an essential part of their job description?

The chemicals and the processes are merely tools that DPs learn and know in order to achieve an end, just like digital tools and processes are. The cinematographer's job is to know about such things and know how to employ them, not to be able to use them personally. In the UK filmmaking system, the cinematographer doesn't even operate the camera; there, he or she is called the "lighting cameraman," while the technical operation is left to dedicated operators.


See. I don't want to see cinematographers, and the art of cinematography, get replaced by some computer programmer and his/her algorithm. You can get all the computer egg-heads on Earth in one room, and I'm telling you, they will not be able to re-create the look of film no matter how hard they tried precisely because what they will be creating is not film. Why is that so hard to understand?Who cares about how it's done or who does it as long as it is done to the client's satisfaction? Who should care? What I'm saying is this: Suppose that in the next few decades, programmers create software that will add a "film look" to digitally acquired footage that makes it look indistinguishable from actual film footage. You watch the footage, not knowing how it was created, and you think that it's film. Then somebody tells you that it was done digitally. And maybe you don't believe it, so that person actually shows you how it was done. Anyway, in the end, how would you feel? Would you like the footage all the same, or would you think less of it?

If you think less of that footage after you learn that it was all digital, then it shows that the "look" is not really what you love after all. You're really romanticizing something else. And I don't necessarily have a problem with that. But you have to be honest with yourself and everybody about what you really mean.

How do you know that programmers won't be able to precisely model and emulate the behavior of silver halide emulsion? They can already write artificial intelligence programs that model and emulate the behaviors of various animals (which are organic, living beings with brains). The programmer at WETA Digital wrote software that generates artificially intelligent combat forces; the software, called MASSIVE, was used on The Lord of the Rings. Could you tell the difference between those CG troops and an army of costumed extras?

And who says that cinematographers will be replaced by computer programmers? That's not what I'm saying. Those computer techs will serve the same role as film lab techs serve. Why is that so hard to understand?


I think that's what you have failed to see in my argument - that there is a difference between cinematography and digital cinematography. In the end, the story of a film is the most important part, most, if not all, know that. However, digital cinematography and traditional film cinematography are two different animals. They share the same ancestry, but are not the same species.No, you have failed to see my argument. In the end, real cinematography is not about celluloid or digital acquisition. It's ALL cinematography. The distinctions between the different disciplines are irrelevant. Within the film world, there are numerous disciplines (color, B&W, 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, 70mm, IMAX, sound, silent), and within the non-film world, there are numerous disciplines (analog video, DV, HD, digital cinema a la RED). ALL are cinematography. Notice that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the various international cinematographers' guilds, don't make distinctions between the different disciplines of cinematography. The only distinctions are the tools and whatever special knowledge and experience is needed to make the tools work as one wishes.


Perhaps you failed to notice, but I actually started this entire thread because I love the evolution of digital filmmaking. I am not "bashing" digital filmmaking. I actually love digital filmmaking cause I'm a broke-ass student that will virtually shoot on anything to tell a story and make cinema, and digital filmmaking is what makes that possible. Anything that gets me close to the cinematic look of 35mm film, like the Canon 7D, I applaud with all my might. However, I refuse to get it twisted - digital will never be film, film will never be digital. And film will be around for a long time coming., I guarantee it.You are bashing it because you are making a bunch of unsupported negative assertions about something that you don't seem to fully understand. Your words betray a definite bias. As you can see from an earlier post of mine in this thread, I don't disagree with you at all in your final statement. Where I think that our perspectives profoundly differ is that I'm result-oriented, while you seem to be process-oriented. If the images are the same, or similar enough to be visually indistinguishable, then (to me) what's done to get them is irrelevant. The only people who are stubborn about film are those who either love the process of shooting film or who love the physical celluloid medium. To them, it's not just the final image, the results, that matter.

[PaPa]

hmmm, this thread has gone way off track.

Going to be uploading a video in a few minutes with blooms pulled clip.

[ydgmdlu]

"Most heartfelt, I thank my typewriter. My typewriter is a Hermes 3000, surely one of the noblest instruments of European genius."
That's what Larry McMurtry said in his Golden Globe acceptance speech upon winning for Brokeback Mountain.

[morgan_moore]

I think I heard a story once about two hifi geeks - they had a reference piece of violin music

one blinfolds the other and gets them to evaluate a they latest system

the second describes the sound as a bit toppy or something

then is unmasked and the violinist is in the room

it will happen
---------

A note on processing RAW - I have described it as being dropped into the middle of the ocean in a rowing boat - you can paddle in any direction that you want - but which way do you paddle ?

at some point in that ocean are the characteristics of various film stocks

so you have to consider - how to paddle there, and then do the paddling

I can see the argument for just shooting on that stock in the first place - less paddling

S

[Everts]

hmmm, this thread has gone way off track.

Going to be uploading a video in a few minutes with blooms pulled clip.


cant wait to see what you made of It Papa .

[PaPa]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bsWK22ATsI

Just tried to flatten it up, try to give it more of that red raw look that i've seen around.

I'd try to flatten it in camera first instead of having to bring back some of the blacks in post, but this is definitely a good example of how to flatten the look.

[Everts]

you can paddle in any direction that you want - but which way do you paddle ?


S



I think im gonna use this as a pickup line .

hey which way do u paddle ?

[Everts]

colorchannels Papa ?

[PaPa]

say what?

[Michael Olsen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bsWK22ATsI

Just tried to flatten it up, try to give it more of that red raw look that i've seen around.

I'd try to flatten it in camera first instead of having to bring back some of the blacks in post, but this is definitely a good example of how to flatten the look.

YouTube makes it look like there is a ton of skew in that, at least on my PC. I know there isn't as I re-watched the raw footage just yesterday...but that clip definitely shows it.

[PaPa]

There isn't a ton, but there is definitely a bit, and yeah, youtube for some reason makes it appear worse than it is.

[Everts]

say what?


Did you shift the color channels in CS4 and lowered the saturation ?

[Taylor Rudd]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bsWK22ATsI

Just tried to flatten it up, try to give it more of that red raw look that i've seen around.

I'd try to flatten it in camera first instead of having to bring back some of the blacks in post, but this is definitely a good example of how to flatten the look.

You've probably already done this, but you might want to shoot Philip an email asking/telling that you uploaded one of his clips :)

[PaPa]

here is a screen cap of what i basically did, with a little color saturation decrease:

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/5478/screencape.jpg

CRAP, no i didn't! I completeyl forgot this is from his footage, thought it was stuff from the Perya footage. Will do now.

[PaPa]

what's his email?

[Taylor Rudd]

Just tweet him or something... http://twitter.com/philipbloom

I've always been wary of crushing the highlights. Obviously there are blown highlights from the kicker on his nose and forehead and...well...once its gone its gone with digital! If the information had been retained I think it would look good, but since its lost I wouldn't try to bring it down that much. Otherwise I like your direction with the CC. Once we get to fiddle with presets and have footage that is a bit more controlled*, I can't wait to see what you do with it.

*this is no bash on the footage that Philip provided. In the original clip the blown highlights look fine. It's just bringing them down that calls them out and creates that "muted" look

[Adam J McKay]

Really great.

[Eddy Robinson]

So the in the future we will be able to watch celluloid based films when data on hard disks and tapes is long time dead.

Just in passing, I was reading yesterday about new research at the University of California where they've developed a form of working lab storage (ie it only stores a few bits now, and will need at least 5 years to scale up) by storing an iron particle in a carbon nanotube. This should yield densities of up to 1 terabit/square inch (> hard disk) and thermodynamically stable for a billion years. Yes, billion.

They have built a working cell which can be written to and (non-destructively) read from with simple electric terminals using ordinary voltages (~0.5-3v, nothing unusual from an engineering standpoint). While work is needed to scale it up for high-density arrays for commercial use, there's nothing fundamentally difficult about that, and the methods aren't so far away from those already in use for silicon-based memory. So, you can figure on effectively eternal data storage by the end of the next decade, at worst.

Paper is here, if you like physics - it's quite readable, and a very elegant piece of work: http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361.NanoLet.9-Begtrup.pdf

[PaPa]

Just tweet him or something... http://twitter.com/philipbloom

I've always been wary of crushing the highlights. Obviously there are blown highlights from the kicker on his nose and forehead and...well...once its gone its gone with digital! If the information had been retained I think it would look good, but since its lost I wouldn't try to bring it down that much. Otherwise I like your direction with the CC. Once we get to fiddle with presets and have footage that is a bit more controlled*, I can't wait to see what you do with it.

*this is no bash on the footage that Philip provided. In the original clip the blown highlights look fine. It's just bringing them down that calls them out and creates that "muted" look

oh, i totally agree, i just wanted to get a simulation of what it could look like with a more controlled image, to see the contrast ratio.

[Eddy Robinson]

All of whom still use chemicals to achieve their looks in post. I don't think you truly understand what "cinematography" is. It's not just picking a camera and a lens. It's picking film stock and processing them chemically too...

It cannot be reproduced digitally. To say that "film can be reproduced digitally" is an oxymoron. Film can be scanned into a digital medium, like a PC, and then colour graded and whatnot, but the certain organic look that film produces cannot be re-created digitally precisely because it's not digital.

Respectfully, just as you think we don't get what cinematography is, I don't think you fully understand digital, if you describe a PC as a 'medium'. The storage medium is not the computer, it could be anything; on hard disks it's magnetic fields, on optical disks it's little scorch marks created by a laser, just above I describe a new technology involving lumps of iron in tiny tubes.

What makes something digital is the data structure employed for the storage of information, regardless of medium. As long as there is sufficient bit depth (as in Cineon for example), any analog information can be stored digitally with arbitrary levels of precision. I think we agree that digital systems can record any information you throw at them with arbitrarily high degrees of fidelity: our video cameras are limited in the dynamic range they can handle today, but honestly I think we'll probably be finding 4'4'4'-capable camcorders for free in our breakfast cereal within a decade - oK not quite free, but a sub $100 soundcard you buy today would have been world-class a decade ago.

As others have said, if you want to see the future of digital video, look at the past of digital audio. Now, you're saying that because film is organic - what you actually mean is analog, as there are no organic chemical compounds in film, as far as I'm aware - the behavior of the chemical molecules in the film stock when exposed to light or various washes in a developing bath. Now the behavior of molecules is non-linear, and that can be modeled - just as the behavior of current in an analog electric circuit is nonlinear, and has been modeled.

The only limitation is computer power. Our ears hear at much higher frequencies than our eyes see: the amount of information in 1/24 of an audio second, ie 1 frame of film, is about 4 kilopixels (I'm simplifying a bit here, mind). We use parallel techniques in video processing to handle the vast spatial resolution of images, whereas (mono) audio is one dimensional, but we have long ago solved the problem of accurately generating believable non-linear behavior in audio synthesis - indeed, the competition between manufacturers of creative audio software these days is not in super efficiency but in selecting algorithms and coefficients that sound 'interesting' in the same way that the imperfections of analog circuitry on older synthesizers, compressors etc. sound 'interesting'.

If we want to make video look like film at the prosumer level, eg in After Effects, we currently use what are called transfer functions, and most of the time we employ pixel sampling (again, I'm simplifying here, even AE often does these things in a more advanced way). The crappiest way of giving some video a film look - assuming we are already happy with the color - would be to take a scanned image of a film frame showing a flat gray and add the grain pattern to the video in proportion ot the brightness of a given pixel. You've seen this effect, it looks fake.

Better would be to use samples of a film frame showing a gradient, or a color card so we could do it by channel, or (better again) a sequence of film frames showing a color card under increasing light levels from darkness to blowing out. This is more-or-less what look-up tables (LUTs) do: so you can get close to the look of, say, technicolor film by referencing a big table of pixel values for levels of luma and chroma which are characteristic of a given film stock. This is still a single-step transfer function operating on a frame-by-frame basis.

That will get you most of the way there, to the extent that Joe or Jane Average won't know the difference at all, but an experienced eye like yours or (I hope) mine will notice it's a little too perfect and consistent and the light doesn't 'interact' with the digital medium as it does on film - for example, the grain pattern won't do interesting things around the border between two colors or in different parts of a contrasty image. Ironically enough, film manufacturers are constantly trying to reduce these inconsistencies on very high end stocks so as to offer film that offers super predictable and accurate image acquisition (offering the greatest freedom for manipulation later) while as artists we're fascinated by the inconsistencies that give film its exciting texture just as canvas and brushes offer a more expressive medium for painting than smooth paper and an airbrush.

So currently what happens most of the time is we take our 'boring' video image which is accurate but lacks personality, and add samples of personality collected from scans of film stock. By using LUTs we can add that in proportion to the content of our video image which gives us a much more dynamic emulation of film. This is akin to how a digital audio sampler works - make umpteen recordings of a piano key or guitar string played in different ways, and mix and blend those recording sin response to the playing information from a digital keyboard, like how fast and hard the keys are hit.

But where this is going is towards what's called physical modeling in the audio world: instead of recording a real instrument, you build a model of it (whether that's electronic circuits, or strings and a soundboard, or a metal tube with air blown through it) and synthesize the output by performing simulations of the physical system at very high speed. This was what they tried to do in the early days of synthesizer, but analog electronics weren't up to it and so we unintentionally wound up with an entirely new class of musical instrument which didn't sound very like what it was supposed to be emulating. Then samplers came along and everyone preferred those because they gave much more believable results. Then People bought cheap discarded analog synthesizers and decided they sounded interesting in their own right (which is how we got techno music). Then we started sampling those, but it showed up the limitations of samplers; then we started modeling analog instruments instead of sampling them, which techniques turned out to be equally applicable to acoustics, and round and round it goes.

What's happening now in high-end digital suites, working its way into prosumer software, and may eventually be built into cameras (because it's all software) is that we will synthesize the behavior of film stock by using iterative transfer functions. Future cameras (say by 2020) might externally say they're recording at 24 fps and a 1/48 shutter - interlaced vs progressive will be long gone by then - but in fact they'll sampling the image many times over for each frame, and for each sample they'll store or calculate (depending on whether you want to do it in post or in-camera) how that overly-perfect sampled image would affect a given film stock, then take the results of that and mix it with the next sample, and repeat the calculation.

Bottom line (finally!) is that rather than taking a snapshot of a moment in time and matching that up with a static description of a given film stock on a pixel-for-pixel level, we'll model the behavior of a piece film stock over time as an interconnected dynamic system. That probably sounds like something for which you'd need a computer the size of a house, but there's all kinds of wonderful mathematical shortcuts you can employ. The best analogy I can think of is that it's like simulating the behavior of a spring mattress as a weight falls on it - you have all these interacting springs which is what makes it bouncy compared to foam mattress, but the mathematics of simulating a spring are actually very simple and it's just a matter of doing a lot of calculations in parallel.

Of course, this sounds like a ridiculous amount of effort to go to just to deliver convincing emulations of film grain, why not just buy film instead of laboring away for a decade with computers? But the techniques described here are useful for everything from computer animation to simulating the behavior of fires, weather and so on. It's the same driving force behind the exponential gorth in power of graphics cards and the trend towards multi-core CPUs.

As a good guide, look at the quality of CG simulations of smoke and fire today. You can do stuff in After Effects now that stands up against the effects in The Matrix 10 years ago, which was the cutting edge VFX movie at that time. On today's cutting edge films, I really have difficulty seeing where the compositing is any more, and I have a pretty good eye for this and understand the techniques reasonably well. Simulating the behavior, rather than just overlaying the appearance, of film grain is well within reach right now, it's just computationally expensive to do so. But that expense falls by half about every 18 months, so what needs a big budget now will cost about 0.5% as much by 2020.

[ydgmdlu]

Respectfully, just as you think we don't get what cinematography is, I don't think you fully understand digital, if you describe a PC as a 'medium'. The storage medium is not the computer, it could be anything; on hard disks it's magnetic fields, on optical disks it's little scorch marks created by a laser, just above I describe a new technology involving lumps of iron in tiny tubes.

What makes something digital is the data structure employed for the storage of information, regardless of medium. As long as there is sufficient bit depth (as in Cineon for example), any analog information can be stored digitally with arbitrary levels of precision. I think we agree that digital systems can record any information you throw at them with arbitrarily high degrees of fidelity: our video cameras are limited in the dynamic range they can handle today, but honestly I think we'll probably be finding 4'4'4'-capable camcorders for free in our breakfast cereal within a decade - oK not quite free, but a sub $100 soundcard you buy today would have been world-class a decade ago.

As others have said, if you want to see the future of digital video, look at the past of digital audio. Now, you're saying that because film is organic - what you actually mean is analog, as there are no organic chemical compounds in film, as far as I'm aware - the behavior of the chemical molecules in the film stock when exposed to light or various washes in a developing bath. Now the behavior of molecules is non-linear, and that can be modeled - just as the behavior of current in an analog electric circuit is nonlinear, and has been modeled.

The only limitation is computer power. Our ears hear at much higher frequencies than our eyes see: the amount of information in 1/24 of an audio second, ie 1 frame of film, is about 4 kilopixels (I'm simplifying a bit here, mind). We use parallel techniques in video processing to handle the vast spatial resolution of images, whereas (mono) audio is one dimensional, but we have long ago solved the problem of accurately generating believable non-linear behavior in audio synthesis - indeed, the competition between manufacturers of creative audio software these days is not in super efficiency but in selecting algorithms and coefficients that sound 'interesting' in the same way that the imperfections of analog circuitry on older synthesizers, compressors etc. sound 'interesting'.

If we want to make video look like film at the prosumer level, eg in After Effects, we currently use what are called transfer functions, and most of the time we employ pixel sampling (again, I'm simplifying here, even AE often does these things in a more advanced way). The crappiest way of giving some video a film look - assuming we are already happy with the color - would be to take a scanned image of a film frame showing a flat gray and add the grain pattern to the video in proportion ot the brightness of a given pixel. You've seen this effect, it looks fake.

Better would be to use samples of a film frame showing a gradient, or a color card so we could do it by channel, or (better again) a sequence of film frames showing a color card under increasing light levels from darkness to blowing out. This is more-or-less what look-up tables (LUTs) do: so you can get close to the look of, say, technicolor film by referencing a big table of pixel values for levels of luma and chroma which are characteristic of a given film stock. This is still a single-step transfer function operating on a frame-by-frame basis.

That will get you most of the way there, to the extent that Joe or Jane Average won't know the difference at all, but an experienced eye like yours or (I hope) mine will notice it's a little too perfect and consistent and the light doesn't 'interact' with the digital medium as it does on film - for example, the grain pattern won't do interesting things around the border between two colors or in different parts of a contrasty image. Ironically enough, film manufacturers are constantly trying to reduce these inconsistencies on very high end stocks so as to offer film that offers super predictable and accurate image acquisition (offering the greatest freedom for manipulation later) while as artists we're fascinated by the inconsistencies that give film its exciting texture just as canvas and brushes offer a more expressive medium for painting than smooth paper and an airbrush.

So currently what happens most of the time is we take our 'boring' video image which is accurate but lacks personality, and add samples of personality collected from scans of film stock. By using LUTs we can add that in proportion to the content of our video image which gives us a much more dynamic emulation of film. This is akin to how a digital audio sampler works - make umpteen recordings of a piano key or guitar string played in different ways, and mix and blend those recording sin response to the playing information from a digital keyboard, like how fast and hard the keys are hit.

But where this is going is towards what's called physical modeling in the audio world: instead of recording a real instrument, you build a model of it (whether that's electronic circuits, or strings and a soundboard, or a metal tube with air blown through it) and synthesize the output by performing simulations of the physical system at very high speed. This was what they tried to do in the early days of synthesizer, but analog electronics weren't up to it and so we unintentionally wound up with an entirely new class of musical instrument which didn't sound very like what it was supposed to be emulating. Then samplers came along and everyone preferred those because they gave much more believable results. Then People bought cheap discarded analog synthesizers and decided they sounded interesting in their own right (which is how we got techno music). Then we started sampling those, but it showed up the limitations of samplers; then we started modeling analog instruments instead of sampling them, which techniques turned out to be equally applicable to acoustics, and round and round it goes.

What's happening now in high-end digital suites, working its way into prosumer software, and may eventually be built into cameras (because it's all software) is that we will synthesize the behavior of film stock by using iterative transfer functions. Future cameras (say by 2020) might externally say they're recording at 24 fps and a 1/48 shutter - interlaced vs progressive will be long gone by then - but in fact they'll sampling the image many times over for each frame, and for each sample they'll store or calculate (depending on whether you want to do it in post or in-camera) how that overly-perfect sampled image would affect a given film stock, then take the results of that and mix it with the next sample, and repeat the calculation.

Bottom line (finally!) is that rather than taking a snapshot of a moment in time and matching that up with a static description of a given film stock on a pixel-for-pixel level, we'll model the behavior of a piece film stock over time as an interconnected dynamic system. That probably sounds like something for which you'd need a computer the size of a house, but there's all kinds of wonderful mathematical shortcuts you can employ. The best analogy I can think of is that it's like simulating the behavior of a spring mattress as a weight falls on it - you have all these interacting springs which is what makes it bouncy compared to foam mattress, but the mathematics of simulating a spring are actually very simple and it's just a matter of doing a lot of calculations in parallel.

Of course, this sounds like a ridiculous amount of effort to go to just to deliver convincing emulations of film grain, why not just buy film instead of laboring away for a decade with computers? But the techniques described here are useful for everything from computer animation to simulating the behavior of fires, weather and so on. It's the same driving force behind the exponential gorth in power of graphics cards and the trend towards multi-core CPUs.

As a good guide, look at the quality of CG simulations of smoke and fire today. You can do stuff in After Effects now that stands up against the effects in The Matrix 10 years ago, which was the cutting edge VFX movie at that time. On today's cutting edge films, I really have difficulty seeing where the compositing is any more, and I have a pretty good eye for this and understand the techniques reasonably well. Simulating the behavior, rather than just overlaying the appearance, of film grain is well within reach right now, it's just computationally expensive to do so. But that expense falls by half about every 18 months, so what needs a big budget now will cost about 0.5% as much by 2020.
Thank you for explaining, in obscene technical detail, what my layman mind was trying to articulate to another layman mind. My mind is blown; I am beyond impressed. I hope that you don't take that as sarcasm, BTW. :beer:

[Eddy Robinson]

Comparing cinematography to editing is pointless. They have nothing to do with each other. Cinematography is a very poetic visual aesthetic. Editing is a system used to give structure to a film. Both are subjective to their respective artists, but are totally different art forms.

...and this is how we end up with individually beautiful shots that don't cut together well :beer:

Look, I know you don't want to have to become a programmer in order to keep working as a cinematographer. But you probably don't want to be a chemist either, do you? If it was just about chemicals, budding cinematographers would try to get jobs at the Kodak or Fuji factories and spend a year mixing up emulsion and painting them onto plastic sheets.

In fact, you buy giant rolls of emsulsified ribbon which has characterstic behaviors when exposed to light and then to certain kinds of chemicals, and you know enough about these characteristics to look at a scene and imagine what you'd get if you took a particular stock and did a bleach bypass or pushed it a little or whatever. The only difference between this and digital cinematography is that you have to start thinking in terms of color spaces and articulating the characteristics the define the look you're after. Yes, it's hands-off in one sense, but on the other hand you won't need a fume hood.

[Michael Olsen]

Now, you're saying that because film is organic - what you actually mean is analog, as there are no organic chemical compounds in film, as far as I'm aware - the behavior of the chemical molecules in the film stock when exposed to light or various washes in a developing bath.

Hi Eddy.

This little bit made me wonder - is there anything organic in film stock? I looked it up and learned a lot!

Turns out...yes. The coating of film is commonly made of plastic - either polyester, cellulose acetate, or nitrocellulose. All of these are organic materials, as is gelatin, which bonds the emulsion together. My understanding is that the film grain, however, is created by the rather random arrangement of the silver halide particles - a non-organic compound. So it seems that film contains organic materials, but that these materials do not contribute significantly to the "look" or grain of a film...that's all in the silver compound.

Knowing virtually nothing about film, however, I don't know how much of this is right. If there is an expert around, please point out any errors.

[Eddy Robinson]

no program that reads the data format anymore.


Oh come now, that's just ignorant. A file format is just a description of how the data is organised. Maintaining the ability to read deprecated file formats is trivially easy. Give me a piece of 20 year old software that ran on a 286 and it'll run just fine on the quad beast I use today. As long as the file descriptor has been written down somewhere (and programmers are compulsive backer-uppers) you'll be able to read it. Not only can I open an old GIF89 image in photoshop, I could write a program to do so in an afternoon because the spec is online. In fact I even have a few photos in that very format.

Old software doesn't die, any more than old mathematics does. Particularly not file format specifications that have made any kind of significant impact.

[Cranky]

> Our ears hear at much higher frequencies than our eyes see

Audible sound is roughly 20Hz-20kHz, while visible light is about 400–800 THz.

> analog electronics weren't up to it and so we unintentionally
> wound up with an entirely new class of musical instrument
> which didn't sound very like what it was supposed to be emulating.
> Then samplers came along and everyone preferred those because
> they gave much more believable results.

I actually quite like the sound of the good old Moog.

[Eddy Robinson]

This little bit made me wonder - is there anything organic in film stock? I looked it up and learned a lot!

Turns out...yes. The coating of film is commonly made of plastic - either polyester, cellulose acetate, or nitrocellulose.

Quote true - I should have said 'in the emulsion' - many plastics are made up of organic molecules. As you say, the interesting stuff doesn't take place in the substrate, though.

[Rakesh Jacob]

IS IT ORGANIC??? This is annoying... because as some have stated it's not about organic it's about analog vs digital.

Organic: relating or belonging to the class of chemical compounds having a carbon basis

Your MiniDV cam has carbon atoms all through it, your HD camera, your hardrives, your PCs. Not just film stock. FOR GOD's SAKE WE LIVE ON THE PLANET EARTH!!! Carbon atoms are unavoidable!

[Taylor Rudd]

Semantics are awesome! *high five*

[Eddy Robinson]

> Our ears hear at much higher frequencies than our eyes see

Audible sound is roughly 20Hz-20kHz, while visible light is about 400–800 THz.

What I mean here s the entire optical system rather than just the photosensitivity of a given cell on your retina; when you consider the time it takes for your eyes to react to changes in amplitude, it seems to top out at around 100Hz in the lab, and 24fps (with an appropriate degree of motion blur) is still good enough to seem smooth in the cinema.

So if I showed you alternating frames of contrasting colors, past a certain frame rate it would just start to look gray. Our ears track changes of (about) 2-4000 times greater frequency.


I actually quite like the sound of the good old Moog.

So do I, but my point is that it has its own very interesting sound - you wouldn't use it to fool someone into thinking you were playing a trumpet or a guitar, although emulating the timbrality of real instruments was the original goal of synth manufacturers.

[ydgmdlu]

IS IT ORGANIC??? This is annoying... because as some have stated it's not about organic it's about analog vs digital.

Organic: relating or belonging to the class of chemical compounds having a carbon basis

Your MiniDV cam has carbon atoms all through it, your HD camera, your hardrives, your PCs. Not just film stock. FOR GOD's SAKE WE LIVE ON THE PLANET EARTH!!! Carbon atoms are unavoidable!
Well, I think that there's a deeper implication intended when some people use the word "organic" to describe film. Basically, they're trying to say that film stock is somehow "alive" or has "soul." :huh:

Guys, it's not the film stock, it's the work that you, as the artist, put into the image.

[Rakesh Jacob]

Semantics are awesome! *high five*
:nads::dankk2:
Sorry but it was brought up and ignored, I think it's very valid to the understanding of why and where it's going and how it'll it get there.


Well, I think that there's a deeper implication intended when some people use the word "organic" to describe film. Basically, they're trying to say that film stock is somehow "alive" or has "soul." :huh:

Guys, it's not the film stock, it's the work that you, as the artist, puts into the image.
To further my point "organic" is used like a religious statement or mystic mantra. It's definable! Some people here are trying to tell us what it is. Some people wanna believe it's something it's not, IT AIN't MAGIC!

[Jean Dantes]

All I said, in a nutshell, was that digital cinematography and traditional film cinematography (which I did call "analogue cinematography" in my previous post) are two different animals. They share the same ancestry, but are not the same species.

I don't hate digital. I never said I hated digital. I never said film was better than digital, or that digital was better than film. I started this thread because I love the look of what a current digital camera, the Canon 7D, is producing.

This isn't a question of what this software can do to this and that - it's a very, very simple OBJECTIVE fact - digital will never be film, and film will never be digital – precisely because FILM IS FILM and because DIGITAL IS DIGITAL.

You can grab a digital camera and shoot at 23.976FPS, you can shoot with a 180 degree shutter, you can shoot with 4:4:4 chroma sampling, you can shoot with a 3.2 Gbit/s bitrate like the Dalsa, you can even use the best lens in existence, but it still won't be film precisely because you're not shooting on film.

Again, I wanna make it clear - I never said one format was superior to the other. All I said was that digital cinematography and analogue/traditional cinematography ARE DIFFERENT.

I'm sure that if you tracked down Dion Bebe and asked him if he employed the same photographic techniques when he shot "Chicago" (which he filmed using 35mm Kodak stock) to when he shot "Miami Vice" (which he filmed using the Thomson Viper), he will tell you that he employed different techniques because they are DIFFERENT formats.

Actually, speaking of Dion Bebe, when he shot "Collateral", alongside cinematography Paul Cameron, they employed three different cameras (Thomson Viper, Sony HDW F900 and Panavision 35mm Millennium cameras) to get various looks:

"The difference between film and HD, says Cameron, is that film's sensitivity falls off sharply at the bottom of the curve, transforming subtle shadows into deep rich blacks. But what if, he asks, you went into those shadows? "How do I record what the eye sees at the toe of the curve?" Where everyone is trying to make black, Mann decided he would go into those shadows and pull out information to create intense emotions."

(you can read the whole article here if you like: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HNN/is_8_19/ai_n6171215/?tag=content;col1 (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HNN/is_8_19/ai_n6171215/?tag=content;col1) )

Lighting, framing, camera movement, frame rates, etc is where digital cinematography and traditional analogue cinematography are related. But the mistake you guys are making is that you are downplaying the importance of film stock and the chemical process that follows it - traditional analouge cinematography requires that step, and it's a very important one. Hell, you could have even looked here if you wanted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematography#Film_stock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematography#Film_stock)

I gonna reiterate this one last time – I never said one format was superior to the other, all I said was that digital won’t look like film because digital is not film. I’m sure digital will someday replicate the look of 35mm film (we are already seeing very close results), however, no matter how close it comes, it will never be film because it is not film. How much more objective can I make my point?

And please don’t insult me by calling me "layman". Let’s keep this mature and respectful.

[Kholi]

This isn't a question of what this software can do to this and that - it's a very, very simple OBJECTIVE fact - digital will never be film, and film will never be digital – precisely because FILM IS FILM and because DIGITAL IS DIGITAL.

You can grab a digital camera and shoot at 23.976FPS, you can shoot with a 180 degree shutter, you can shoot with 4:4:4 chroma sampling, you can shoot with a 3.2 Gbit/s bitrate like the Dalsa, you can even use the best lens in existence, but it still won't be film precisely because you're not shooting on film.

Again, I wanna make it clear - I never said one format was superior to the other. All I said was that digital cinematography and analogue/traditional cinematography ARE DIFFERENT.


This shouldn't have to be said so many times, but it's great that it's sticking somewhere. Digital will NEVER... EVER be film. It will always be digital, no matter how you choose to slice it, or shoot it.

[billy fattey]

This shouldn't have to be said so many times, but it's great that it's sticking somewhere. Digital will NEVER... EVER be film. It will always be digital, no matter how you choose to slice it, or shoot it.

I'm surprised to hear this in modern times. It seems more like something people in the 19th century would say. Everything is eventual. There is nothing that will never exist. Atoms are atoms. Quarks are quarks. We have learned to manipulate some of it now and will eventually be able to manipulate all of it. There will be no difference between the protein you get when you eat an artificial man-created chicken and the old fashioned ones that hatch from an egg. Digital will surpass film, replace film, be film. You can debate about where we are now with the technology but to state anything certain or use words like "never" when talking about the future doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[ydgmdlu]

All I said, in a nutshell, was that digital cinematography and traditional film cinematography (which I did call "analogue cinematography" in my previous post) are two different animals. They share the same ancestry, but are not the same species.
The same can be said of the different kinds of film cinematography and the different kinds of video cinematography (which includes analog video). Each "kind" (or "discipline," as I called it) has its own tools, workflow, and quirks to master. Shooting B&W film is not the same as shooting color film; lighting and production design have to be specialized for each. Shooting IMAX is also way more different than shooting 35mm. Same ancestry, different species, just like you said. But they are all cinematography. So why make a special distinction for all of the video formats? "Separate but equal" in your mind, right? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and the various national and international cinematographers' guilds don't make such a distinction. The Academy Awards used have separate categories for B&W and color cinematography, but those went away decades ago.

You made the assertion that one of the other posters didn't understand what cinematography truly is. (Quite presumptuous, wouldn't you say? What gives you the right?) Your assertion is that knowing film stocks and chemicals matters. What I'm saying is that, yes, those things are good to know when your goal is specifically to work with film (celluloid), but they are not necessary to call yourself "cinematographer." Many cinematographers are utterly unfamiliar with digital cinematography. Many digital cinematographers are unfamiliar with film cinematography. Yet they are all cinematographers. Now, I anticipate that you're going to say that what I just said proves your point, that film and digital/video are separate. But no. There are many film cinematographers that are unfamiliar with B&W cinematography and IMAX cinematography. There are conceivably some digital cinematographers who are unfamiliar with shooting with traditional broadcast analog video.

The point is that being a cinematographer only entails knowing how to use tools and processes to create the images that you want. If you want to be more specific and exclusive in your definition as you have been, then that would exclude many competent, professional cinematographers. Now that's what I call insulting.


I don't hate digital. I never said I hated digital. I never said film was better than digital, or that digital was better than film. I started this thread because I love the look of what a current digital camera, the Canon 7D, is producing.Fair enough, but why make a bunch of unsupported, negative assertions about a medium in which you have not demonstrated much expertise?


This isn't a question of what this software can do to this and that - it's a very, very simple OBJECTIVE fact - digital will never be film, and film will never be digital – precisely because FILM IS FILM and because DIGITAL IS DIGITAL.
You can grab a digital camera and shoot at 23.976FPS, you can shoot with a 180 degree shutter, you can shoot with 4:4:4 chroma sampling, you can shoot with a 3.2 Gbit/s bitrate like the Dalsa, you can even use the best lens in existence, but it still won't be film precisely because you're not shooting on film.

No disagreement here. In fact, I used almost those exact same words in another thread. But what you seemed to be saying was that there would always be a clear, qualitative difference in the final image, something that you felt was very important. Me and others here were disputing that assertion.


Again, I wanna make it clear - I never said one format was superior to the other. All I said was that digital cinematography and analogue/traditional cinematography ARE DIFFERENT.Then why did your earlier statements come across like you were saying that film is superior to digital?


I'm sure that if you tracked down Dion Bebe and asked him if he employed the same photographic techniques when he shot "Chicago" (which he filmed using 35mm Kodak stock) to when he shot "Miami Vice" (which he filmed using the Thomson Viper), he will tell you that he employed different techniques because they are DIFFERENT formats.
B&W and IMAX cinematography are different from color 35mm cinematography and require different techniques.


Actually, speaking of Dion Bebe, when he shot "Collateral", alongside cinematography Paul Cameron, they employed three different cameras (Thomson Viper, Sony HDW F900 and Panavision 35mm Millennium cameras) to get various looks:


"The difference between film and HD, says Cameron, is that film's sensitivity falls off sharply at the bottom of the curve, transforming subtle shadows into deep rich blacks. But what if, he asks, you went into those shadows? "How do I record what the eye sees at the toe of the curve?" Where everyone is trying to make black, Mann decided he would go into those shadows and pull out information to create intense emotions."No surprise there. That's because digital cinematography has not advanced to the point where any look imaginable, including any film stock look, can be achieved on a whim.


But the mistake you guys are making is that you are downplaying the importance of film stock and the chemical process that follows itNo, what we are saying is that someday, a digital process can give you ANY LOOK THAT YOU WANT. By that point, film stock and chemical processes won't matter in the goal of achieving a look, except when you have to work with film.


traditional analouge cinematography requires that stepThat's just stating the obvious. But we're not talking about "traditional analog cinematography" in particular, we're talking about cinematography in general, which includes the video/digital options.


And please don’t insult me by calling me "layman". Let’s keep this mature and respectful.That wasn't meant as an insult. I used the term to describe myself. I used the term to describe you specifically because you didn't appear to show any advanced, technical understanding or knowledge like Eddy has done, and you made some statements that seemed to suggest, for lack of a better word, ignorance about digital technology.

[Jean Dantes]

This shouldn't have to be said so many times, but it's great that it's sticking somewhere. Digital will NEVER... EVER be film. It will always be digital, no matter how you choose to slice it, or shoot it.

Amen. :)

[Kholi]

I'm surprised to hear this in modern times. It seems more like something people in the 19th century would say. Everything is eventual. There is nothing that will never exist. Atoms are atoms. Quarks are quarks. We have learned to manipulate some of it now and will eventually be able to manipulate all of it. There will be no difference between the protein you get when you eat an artificial man-created chicken and the old fashioned ones that hatch from an egg. Digital will surpass film, replace film, be film. You can debate about where we are now with the technology but to state anything certain or use words like "never" when talking about the future doesn't make a lot of sense to me.


All of it sounds like people wanting a film look but not wanting to pay the price for it to me. Digital may surpass film "technically" like how a Veggie Burger is "technically" better for you. It sure as hell ain't beef, though, and it will never BE beef. Might vaguely taste like it, might vaguely smell like it. Isn't it.

[Cranky]

There are two different questions here.

1) Can digital represent real life better than film? -- yes, it can, given that sampling rate and quantization range are high enough.
2) Can digital emulate film? -- yes, it can, given that sampling rate and quantization range are high enough, and that appropriate transfer functions are used to emulate film stock.

The only issue is sheer amount of data and processing. Is it economically viable to handle all this data digitally, or it is easier just to use good old chemical process.

[ydgmdlu]

All of it sounds like people wanting a film look but not wanting to pay the price for it to me. Digital may surpass film "technically" like how a Veggie Burger is "technically" better for you. It sure as hell ain't beef, though, and it will never BE beef. Might vaguely taste like it, might vaguely smell like it. Isn't it.
It's all psychological, just like typewriter versus computer word processor and flatbed editing machine versus software NLE.

And besides, if it could taste indistinguishable from beef and have exactly the same texture, then why would not being real beef matter?

[ydgmdlu]

The only issue is sheer amount of data and processing. Is it economically viable to handle all this data digitally, or it is easier just to use good old chemical process.
You actually make a good point here, which nicely counters what Kholi was trying to say. The technology to make digital look indistinguishable from film may actually be very expensive, even more expensive than film itself. (In fact, in studio productions, digital cinematography systems typically don't provide significant cost savings over film.) But I'd live with the expense, simply because I don't want to deal with the massive usability issues of film.

[ydgmdlu]

And just to make this clear: I personally think that the film image is superior to digital in almost every way, but I'm only talking about the way that things are today.

[JimmieMyers]

As someone with a background in music production, I have to agree with most of what Eddy is saying. In audio recording, analog tape is nearly extinct. It is not pointless, but digital just got so good at *emulating* it, that it's become mostly luxurious, if not downright inconvenient. And still, tape does, scientifically, factually, sound better than digital. But people will argue until their lips fall off about that fact (just as they are here about film) and 9 times out of 10 (fabricated figure, bear with me!), the person who swears by 2" tape will not be able to discern a difference in a "blind" test. That same person will not be able to tell the difference between a well emulated 1176 compressor vs. an analog 1176 compressor. Especially not in a mix. Not even guy who do this all day long. They can nitpick, A/B compare and barely tell, but in a mix, they wouldn't bet money if they were smart. It's just gotten that close. It's not perfect... but it's very, very good.

What Eddy described in regard to an emulation of how film reacts, rather than just how it looks one frame at a time, is exactly the sort of approach that brought these digital audio emulators into being. I feel that it's certainly only a matter of time before the equivalent occurs with digital cinema.

However! It does seem to be a bit trickier. Despite the scientific facts Eddy presented about our aural and visual senses, I believe most people have naturally honed their vision for far longer than most people have honed their hearing. Even extremely gifted musicians and engineers struggle to find words to describe the intangible qualities of audio. "Warm, dark, glassy, spongy, raunchy..." and on and on. These are undefinable concepts. Visually, we are a bit better at actually describing what we see, and discerning changes. When a picture is warm, it is yellower. When it is cool, it is blue. When it is grainy... it is grainy. Same with "clean, dark" and so on. We can define what that means. This leads me to believe that it will be a bit harder to emulate film to such a degree that we don't notice. Our eyes, fooled by plenty of illusions (something movies depend on!), are still extraordinarily perceptive. But it will happen. I am convinced of that, and I look forward to it!

And still, I need to reiterate the point that none of this would make a movie any better if it wasn't already good. There's no auto tune for acting yet, ditto for writing - and even in audio, auto tune can't write you a good melody. It's still all soul, and those things are just as analog as ever.

[Rakesh Jacob]

Ahhh this takes me back to the mid 90s, projects studios were everywhere! In my studio I was making the transition from reel-to-reel to ADATs (modular 16bit digital recorders). The first thing I did was re-track the music I had just recorded on tape to Adat. Not a transfer, mind you, but completely re-recording it to Adat. IT SOUNDED LIKE DONKEY A$$$!!!! Horrible! WTF! Problem is I allready had gotten used to the way that song sounded with "lovely" analog characteristcs, the Adat sounded stringent, characterless and almost too detailed and pristine.
I made a decision that day to scrap that song and scrap analog and move forward!
The benefits of going digital and the toys that were on the horizon were too important and I believed that either the technology would catch up to analog OR in a few years the kids (most musicians primary audience) would NOT know the difference and certainly wouldn't care.
By the time I quit music in the middle part of this decade, everything was possible in a completely software environment and I was happy being efficient and empowered!

I feel the same way about filmmaking. I'm only in it because the technology exists for me to create my art effeciently, competently and with a sense of empowerment. For some the actual use of "Film" IS part of their art. And that's a beautiful thing, but it's not my thing. And here's hoping everyone gets to create their art their way... but be aware you cannot stop progress, I'm not the arbiter of what that means but there is a commenly accepted convention that points to digitization of ... everything. Film isn't going away anytime soon, but... it is eventualy.
In the end there's really no need to argue about it and throw around grand sounding descriptions of why film is so much better, I get it, I see it, but... here's looking to the future, we are better off finding ways to make digital processes better emulate analog ones if you really wanna hold on to that look. Saying film will never die is just painting yourself into a corner.

[ydgmdlu]

For some the actual use of "Film" IS part of their art. And that's a beautiful thing, but it's not my thing. And here's hoping everyone gets to create their art their way...
Amen. Just like how I respect Larry McMurtry for being in love with his typewriter and Spielberg for insisting on using flatbeds. If that's what it takes for them to create masterpieces, then more power to them.

[ydgmdlu]

For some the actual use of "Film" IS part of their art. And that's a beautiful thing, but it's not my thing. And here's hoping everyone gets to create their art their way...
And also allow me to admit to something that digital cinematography truly will never be able to do: It would never have allowed Stan Brakhage to create the scratched-on-film, paint-on-film works that made him an icon of the American avant-garde. With Brakhage, part of the point was to appreciate how he worked with his hands on the celluloid itself.

[ydgmdlu]

On the other hand, there's that guy who typed a novel on his smartphone while riding the subway every day (http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/05/10/the-novel-on-the-f-train-an-interview-with-peter-v-brett/). Now there's appreciating somebody's painstaking efforts... in the digital realm.

[Rakesh Jacob]

And also allow me to admit to something that digital cinematography truly will never be able to do: It would never have allowed Stan Brakhage to create the scratched-on-film, paint-on-film works that made him an icon of the American avant-garde. With Brakhage, part of the point was to appreciate how he worked with his hands on the celluloid itself.

Wow that literaly is "For some the actual use of "Film" IS part of their art." :) COOL!

[Jean Dantes]

In the end there's really no need to argue about it and throw around grand sounding descriptions of why film is so much better, I get it, I see it, but... here's looking to the future, we are better off finding ways to make digital processes better emulate analog ones if you really wanna hold on to that look. Saying film will never die is just painting yourself into a corner.

I never said film was better. I said digital will never be film.

That's all.

I never said digital was better. I said film will never be digital.

I just presented the very objective fact that digital will never be film (and vica versa) precisely becuase film is film, and digital is digital.

Like I said many times over, I started this thread cause I'm in love with the images the 7D can produce (especially considering it's price). I am a recently unemployed, full-time University student. I shoot most of my shit on anything I can get my hands on. I've shot on everything, even 16mm. Most of time it's SD miniDV cams from the 90's that I borrow of whoever is willing to lend me one.

Narrative is king, regardless of what you shoot on. I know that.

And I never said film won't die. I said it's gonna be around for a long time coming.

[ydgmdlu]

Wow that literaly is "For some the actual use of "Film" IS part of their art." :) COOL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-rACt6IX5c

[ydgmdlu]

I just presented the very objective fact that digital will never be film (and vica versa) precisely becuase film is film, and digital is digital.
No possible disagreement, because it's just a cold, hard, objective fact. In other words, to disagree would be to deny reality.

But you also said that digital can never possibly look exactly, indistinguishably like film. And that was the problem.

[Jean Dantes]

1) Can digital represent real life better than film? -- yes, it can, given that sampling rate and quantization range are high enough.

I see where you're coming from Cranky, and I don't wanna get to abstract here, but I don't wanna see "real life" when I watch a film. I want escapism. That's why the dreaded home-video-look is so hated - because it looks like "real life". Hell, that's why most of us want the Canon 7D - cause it takes us one step futher away from the dreaded "real life" home-video-look.

Film has a dream like fluid motion and depth to it. That's part of it's visual magic - it doesn't look like "real life" - it's more like a dream.


2) Can digital emulate film? -- yes, it can, given that sampling rate and quantization range are high enough, and that appropriate transfer functions are used to emulate film stock.

Key word here, "emulate". Digital can emulate film (not completely yet, but probably in the next decade or so). However, it will never look like film completely because it's not film, nor ever will be.

[Eddy Robinson]

I gonna reiterate this one last time – I never said one format was superior to the other, all I said was that digital won’t look like film because digital is not film. I’m sure digital will someday replicate the look of 35mm film (we are already seeing very close results), however, no matter how close it comes, it will never be film because it is not film. How much more objective can I make my point?

OK, but this is so basic as to be trite. If you can't subjectively tell the difference - and you agree we are getting close to this - then what does it matter? We're getting into really ontological arguments here - what you say is objectively true, but it's akin to arguing that because two billiard balls are composed of different atoms, they cannot be identical but are in fact completely different.

I mean, what's important here is the information stored in the film, which creates the illusion of a moving image when we move it past a projector light at a certain speed. I have a roll of 35mm movie sitting right here on my desk, but I don't appreciate it as a flat cylinder or even as a perforated ribbon, except in the most abstract sense. It only has meaning because of what I will see if I mount it in a projector.

[Rakesh Jacob]

Hey Jean I wasn't attacking what you said man. I just wanted to weigh in with my experience and share my opinion based on that.
In the end we are just a small group of like minded individuals exchanging ideas :)

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if "Digital" will ever look/emulate/replicate "Film" because ultimately it will completely replace it and people will prefer it for it's strenghts or not give a damn cause they wont remember the last time they saw something on film is all I ment. How long that will take? I have no clue.

You think they had fights over Papyrus and Cuneiform like this? LOL

[f64manray]

Digital will never be film? To that I say, thank god. It's going to be so much better. I've spent 20+ years in the darkroom. There's nothing about it that I'll really miss. The IQ is there now, and the process is now a majical pleasure compared to the drudgery of film. It also has almost zero impact on our enviroment compared to film. I do feel sorry for the coming generation that won't develop the discipline that film requires from exposure through to the print. That part is kinda sad.

If you could ship a hundred 7D/5DII's back in time 70 years, I doubt there would be any director that would choose film over the 7D they would be drooling over.

By the way Kholi, the wife put's morning star crumbles (soy) in the spagetti sauce. I can't tell the difference.

[Rakesh Jacob]

Haha Morning star rocks!! Their breakfast sausge is the BOMB!!! Let's thread jack this thread jacking! :)

[Kholi]

Digital will never be film? To that I say, thank god. It's going to be so much better. I've spent 20+ years in the darkroom. There's nothing about it that I'll really miss. The IQ is there now, and the process is now a majical pleasure compared to the drudgery of film. It also has almost zero impact on our enviroment compared to film. I do feel sorry for the coming generation that won't develop the discipline that film requires from exposure through to the print. That part is kinda sad.

If you could ship a hundred 7D/5DII's back in time 70 years, I doubt there would be any director that would choose film over the 7D they would be drooling over.

By the way Kholi, the wife put's morning star crumbles (soy) in the spagetti sauce. I can't tell the difference.


I can sure as hell tell. Cardboard and animal fat have distinctly different tastes.

Anyway, best bet is to get to a place where this is a full blown career for you and you can shoot whatever you want. My goal is to be a gear whore for the rest of my life and I plan on accomplishing it by using my obsession to sustain a lifestyle that permits me to be involved in the industry, at the forefront of technology and with plenty of personal time to spare creating properties that may have a chance at selling to a mass audience so that I can be self employes.

Nowhere in that goal does itnsat which camera or format I have to do it with thankfully so I'll choose which best fits. Which right now is RED.

Choose your weapon and get a decent script!

Sent from my iPhone

[PaPa]

this thread has gone hellla off topic... snore.. This debate has gone on too long on too many threads.

[f64manray]

Haha Morning star rocks!! Their breakfast sausge is the BOMB!!! Let's thread jack this thread jacking! :)

Morning Star pork riblets? ...Delicious! Once barbecue sauce is introduced to the equation, It doesn't make any difference, it's all candy after that. Set the little piggies free I say!


Back on topic. Film will never be meat! ...or what ever this thread is about. :-)

[Rakesh Jacob]

LOL

Film will NEVER, EVER be meat!
Soy on the other hand just might be the future of "filmlook" You can do ANYTHING with Tofu!

(I'm an omnivore btw, but I'd be vegan as long as it tastes good)

[Rakesh Jacob]

My goal is to be a gear whore for the rest of my life and I plan on accomplishing it by using my obsession to sustain a lifestyle that permits me to be involved in the industry


:cry:...promised my self I wouldn't cry... but... that's just so
BEAUTIFUL! :crybaby:

EDIT: I guess I'm more of a gear slut, but I am an aspiring gear whore... someday :)

[ydgmdlu]

Anyway, best bet is to get to a place where this is a full blown career for you and you can shoot whatever you want.
Exactly. Despite my ardent defense of digital cinematography and its future possibilities, and until digital becomes good enough to completely replace film in terms of image quality, I will gladly use film for a movie that I direct, if image quality is a top priority and if I can employ people to work with the film so that I don't have to mess with it all myself.

[madyogi]

Okay, I realize I'm WAY late in this thread, but I thought this was an interesting twist on the whole "organic/digital" debate.

Check it - Building Circuits Using DNA (http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200908213)

This is a Science Friday (NPR) segment about how some folks are trying to build computer memory out of DNA. Kinda off-topic, but crazy interesting in terms of what the future will bring.

Peace.

[madyogi]

BTW - I thoroughly enjoyed the Perya short. Looked and felt great to me!

[Jean Dantes]

Hey Jean I wasn't attacking what you said man. I just wanted to weigh in with my experience and share my opinion based on that.
In the end we are just a small group of like minded individuals exchanging ideas :)

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if "Digital" will ever look/emulate/replicate "Film" because ultimately it will completely replace it and people will prefer it for it's strenghts or not give a damn cause they wont remember the last time they saw something on film is all I ment. How long that will take? I have no clue.

You think they had fights over Papyrus and Cuneiform like this? LOL

For sure man, totally agree :beer:. Shoot on what you can get your hands on/afford.

Story is king.

And you know what man, I reckon they did debate Papyrus and Cuneiform - it's human nature hehe :)

I'll say one thing though. If I was employed by a big budget studio to make a film tomorrow (even something as graphically intensive as "The Matrix"), I couldn't help but shoot it on 35mm. I had the chance to shoot with 35mm once, in 2005, and holy crap it looked good - there was something so damn glorious about it. It had this very organic, natural, yet dreamlike vibe to it. I reckon most of us would shoot 35mm if we were offered the chance/could comfortably afford it.

Anyways, let's get back to the Canon 7D and how amazing this little bastard is gonna be for us all! :beer:

[Jean Dantes]

Choose your weapon and get a decent script!

Preaching to the choir man, hehe :beer:

P.S. I know this is off topic, but remember that GH1 video you made Kholi? The one you filmed in the Thrifty store (is Thrifity a shop in the US by the way?)?

What was it like using the Zeiss 50mm f1.4 with 2x crop factor?

Did you use the Zeiss 28mm-70mm much?

I wanna put a Canon EF 50mm f1.4 on the Canon 7D, but I'm worried how it's gonna perform when it becomes 80mm due to 1.6x crop factor...

[Luis Caffesse]

Wasn't this thread about Perya at some point?

[Zim]

It could have been!!

[13th Judas]

this thread is like ferris wheel, it goes round and round :)

[Eddy Robinson]

What we bring is joy!

...you know, although we've gone way off-topic, I think part of the reason we have had such a big dustup over film vs video is because the quality has been so encouraging so far.

[Kellar42]

I feel sorry for the kid because his parents allowed this to happen.

But yeah, I noticed the lack of Jello.



Cymbals! Funniest post ever!

[Rakesh Jacob]

Wasn't this thread about Perya at some point?

Dude where have you been? The Carnival left town :grin:

[f64manray]

Dude where have you been? The Carnival left town :grin:


...with nothing but a few corndog wrappers blowing wistfully across the meadow where the ferris wheel once stood. (fade to black) .....and CUT!