am i insane? do any of you get this aswell?

jenningsp

jenningsp

Well-known member
yes 24p looks much better than interlaced.
yes 35mm adapters look much better than the 1/3" chip native DOF
even when you colour grade it all, add filters and all the post junk. it still doesn't have the feel of film.

it comes so close but something about the footage just makes me think this isn't a proper film.

i have no idea what it is but something, something isn't right. what the hell is it???

8mm has it. 16mm has it. 35mm has it. but none of the videos have it.
does any body know what i mean?

i ask my parents and my friends what they think. they know the differences when i explain it but other than that, they have no idea... they just don't notice it.

they could watch 60i inter cut with 35mm film and be none the wiser..

i've always been able to tell the difference... probably since i was 15 or so. i didn't know about any of the differences... dof, frame rates, shutter speeds, interlaced... i wasn't into making films. just watching them, but i could always tell when it wasn't quite right. something about the picture was wrong.

i'm not trying to tell the difference, but it's more of a gut instinctual feeling. no body else i know has this though. is it like with DLP projectors? - about 0.3% of the population can see a rainbow when watching a DLP...

do any of you get this?
does anybody know what this "difference" is?
 
In my opinion??

Film is film. It's organic. It's not perfect. You can't fake the grain. You can't fake the scratches, you just can't fake it. Film also seems to run at near 24fps.. not 24.00000 fps.

Frankly, I think we need to stop worrying about whether our work looks like film. Just make sure it looks good, and go on from there. Too much looking backward, and not enough going forward.

What do you think Cecil B. Demille would have done with RED?
 
I agree with Perrone. If you want the film look, use film. If you want to be able to afford to make a movie, use digital. Overall, what people will remember is if it was done well, not that it mimicked film.
 
i agree with you that video is video and film is film. each has its' own look and feel.
i'm not saying that video is bad and film is good.

but for me video doesn't feel right. even though we try to emulate it sooooooooo much. it still doesn't feel right.

i've been following the RED and basicaly in an over simplified way of saying it...
the dvx is 8mm
the hvx is 16mm
the RED is 35mm
that's resolution wize...

but with respects to the look/feel of the footage.. the red's footage will look exactly the same as the DVX with a 35mm adater but 4 times the resolution and the HVX with a 35mm adapter but with 2 times the resolution.
it's still video. it won't have that feel.

my question is... what do you think "it" is? and do you get "it"?
 
I hear what you're saying. And no, I don't know what "it" is. But I think a LOT of it comes from other things you can't fake. Good lighting costs money. Talent, dollys, cranes, etc. I'm talking about major features here.

I honestly wonder if someone did a major feature with an HVX (35mm, quality lenses, etc) and shot it side by side with 35mm, would we immediately peg it for video? Would we peg RED for video? I think this is getting into what you're saying.

What makes video look like video, and can we ever lose it?

There was a comment in the current ASC from the director of Casino Royale. He indicated that if you want a real Black and White look, you have to shoot black and white. You can't just decolorize film. He's right. It just exposes differently. I saw this in still photography. I think video/film is the same.

If you transfer film to video does it look like video? If you transfer video to film, does it look like film?
 
i'm not sure about the "If you transfer film to video does it look like video? If you transfer video to film, does it look like film?"
but i have seen a full length feature made for $3000 on a tvr900 shot in 50i then Studio Professionaly converted into 35mm... so almost identical to what the dvx could do... it still didn't have that "feel". everything was perfect though
the films called "the magican" and it was made localy here in Melbourne, Australia. Scott Ryan only did one year of a basic production course and made his first film and got world wide 35mm distribution... i'm doing the same course next year!!!!
 
The biggest difference to me is the latitude. Film has 13+ stops and the DVX has half that. Aside from exposure latitude, film can see more colors. Also, film is organic. The image is captured by silver hallide crystals. It's just different. Film is film, video is video.
 
Yeah better exposure, but anyway sometimes we can convince our selfs mentally that we see something.
 
- organic (grain, imperfections, colour)
- dynamic range, exposure
- mental

just some of the reasons.
This reminds me of "The Fly" when he puts the steak through the transporter and it comes out tasting synthetic.
 
"It" is something inherent to film, video will never attain "it" plain and simple. Technical advances in video are all about precision, everything can be measured quanitively and recreated almost perfectly to a pixel. Film has those happy accidents that injects that special something (read "it") into it. It's just like CG humans versus filmed humans, there will always be something that doesn't feel right.
 
For me it's the cleanliness of the image. Convincing grain goes a long way toward 'filmicizing' a progressive video image. But there's no way around the difference in exposure latitude...
 
Film and video are simply physically very different things. You can do your best to minimize the differences, but you'll never get all the way there.

I figure, though, if 80% of people can't or don't see a difference, the work is done.
 
does anybody know what this "difference" is?
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The main thing that sticks out for me is the motion cadence and then motion smear and latitude

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Someone put it best a while back on the site; it is another medium alltogether. Even if it does not look and feel exactly like film (even though this is the end goal) it is still in a class by itself. It is not a hindrance, merely another format

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I think the DVX100 is well beyond Super 8 as you illustrated it and am positve you could be shown footy of both and be tricked.
 
john, could you elaborate on what you mean by motion cadence and then motion smear?

do you know anyway to emulate this further with more post work?

one thing i've found is that shooting 25p then slowing 4% gives a slightly slower picture but also slightly more cinematic... maybe this sort of slowing down is what you mean by motion cadence?
and also adding frame blending when you slow could add to the smear (although it should be an up to down smear coz of the way film is captured, right?)...?
i haven't really experimented that much.
 
i think 8mm is underrated. it's the same resolution as the DVX and the same DOF. if you had a good 8mm camera with some nice lenses, i think it could out perform the DVX in all categories... and you get that special film goodness.

just think, you could shoot all your own stuff on 8mm, process it yourself
http://www.geocities.com/cinetank/index.htm (home processing website)
and then use your own telecine thingy from ebay to transfer all that 8mm latitude to miniDV.

by the way, can you still get 8mm film stock? i haven't seen it anywhere?
 
jenningsp said:
but with respects to the look/feel of the footage.. the red's footage will look exactly the same as the DVX with a 35mm adater but 4 times the resolution and the HVX with a 35mm adapter but with 2 times the resolution.
it's still video. it won't have that feel.
Click to expand...

You apparently haven't seen the milkgirls footage, have you?

Its like looking at something off a panavision.
 
jenningsp said:
i think 8mm is underrated. it's the same resolution as the DVX
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Not anywhere close, when grain is factored in.
and the same DOF.
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A tad shallower, actually.

if you had a good 8mm camera with some nice lenses, i think it could out perform the DVX in all categories...
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Not a prayer. I've had most of the very best Super 8 cameras made, shot on modern Kodak negative stocks, and the results don't hold a candle to what a DVX can do as far as clarity of image. Get ahold of the Pro8mm demo reel, you won't see anything on there that a DVX couldn't thoroughly outshine.

Super8 doesn't make a "good" image. It makes a unique image, nothing else looks like it, but anybody anywhere would look at the same subject on 8mm, and the same subject on DVX, shot competently on both, and they'd say the DVX stuff was in a total class above the Super8 stuff.

to transfer all that 8mm latitude to miniDV.
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8mm has comparatively narrow latitude. The smaller the film gauge the less latitude you get. I would be surprised if the best Super8 film stocks delivered any additional latitude over the 7 stops you get from a DVX. Michael Phillips' ASC test of the DVX against film showed 35mm delivering about 13 stops, with 16mm delivering about 11 stops from the same stock. I would expect Super 8 to be around 7. Unless we're talking Kodachrome, where it's more like 3 stops total.

Not to rag on Super 8, because I love that format, but hey, let's keep it a bit real. The DVX is more of a match for 16mm transferred to video; Super8 isn't in the same class. It's just different all around.
 
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