What makes Film Look like Film?

JonathanLB said:
Haha, wow... no way! Film projection is just terrible.

Many studies indicate that the comparative quality of the average 35mm print is actually about equal to 720p at best, so what an HVX200 can shoot. That's what it looks like. That's why when you see a DVD projected on a good projection screen, it actually looks surprisingly passable even though DVD is crap quality for a big screen. When I saw some MiniDV tapes put up on a good screen at the LA Film School, I was really shocked how good they looked. Definitely not the quality of a real HD projection, but I expected it to be terrible and it was actually pretty good. Relatively speaking, considering my expectations.

A 4K digital projection system is far superior to 35mm projection, there's really no comparison at all. Every auditorium at L.A. Live's Regal flagship theater is 4K digital projection, so that's what I'm used to seeing out of digital now. Maybe you guys are watching movies on a Christie 1080p digital projector, and if that's the case I'm sorry because those projectors are truly terrible, way worse than 35mm film. Like if you used to watch The 20, which was the 20 minutes of obnoxious content Regal crammed into the theater before the movie started, they showed all of those on Christie digital projectors and that has forever tainted my opinion of that company. I understand that apparently Christie knows how to make projectors that do not suck, but considering that was my first experience with digital projection and their company, I was disgusted. I could see and count the pixels, that's how bad it was. But modern day digital projection, where they usually use at least a 2K projector, is amazing.

One big reason I stopped going to theaters as much (before the Regal Premiere theater opened up near me last year) is because watching a movie for $12 in 35mm film at a local theater is a much worse experience than just watching it on Blu-ray -- the Blu-ray discs look sharper, richer colors, less grain, and just generally cleaner and crisper. Why should I pay more money for a worse experience AND have to drive to the theater too? That's why I only watched the biggest event films at a theater and just saved the rest for Blu-ray. Now finally there is a theater that matches the quality I would expect for such an expensive ticket.

I remember even back in the day, 10 years ago, when the first 1080p projectors came out, and they were still really good just really expensive, and the vast majority of people raved about how great the image looked. Then you'd get a few film purists who, as usual, insist that there is some unexplainable "magic" thing about film that "cannot be duplicated" by digital, which is of course entirely untrue. It won't be long until film is essentially never used at all except by hobbyists and a few old-timers who just won't adapt. Still photographers never use film anymore for a variety of reasons, mainly because it's a pain in the ass and digital looks better, but filmmakers for some reason are more traditional and slower to adapt.

It just seems silly to me, I mean to each their own, but the idea of shooting on some optical medium in 2010 is laughable. It's so quaint and archaic I just don't understand the type of personality that would want to go back in time and use an outdated format to capture their images, one that's not very reliable. And worse than that, there is no objectivity, the sky is not blue it's pink to film purists, up is down and left is right. The most ridiculous arguments arise and nobody can convince them otherwise, because there's no rationality to it. Everything from "oh film is a good archival medium" (no, it's actually terrible and degrades badly after a few decades, plenty of proof of that) to "oh film just looks more beautiful" (no, it doesn't, it looks grainier and crappier most of the time). But, whatever, artists are free to choose their own tools no matter how misguided that may be.
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Jonathan, let me ask you. Have you ever had to the opportunity to see anything, shot on film, projected digitally, and then projected as a film print for comparison?

I am just not convinced that digital projection can reproduce that almost infinite subtle variation between light and shadow that I find pleasing from a well photographed film, projected as a film print. Yeah, maybe I am a ludite, or an old fogey, or quint, but I need to see digital projection look better than photo-chemical projection before I believe it is better.

As far as digital being better for archiving, well, we'll see about that. So, yes, film can degrade after, ".... A few decades....", however, how often have we seen film, 8mm, 16mm or 35mm stored on a shelf from the '30s, '40s or '50s, found and it still has wonderful images? How many digital images from the '30s, '40s or '50s have lasted? Oh that is right, there were none... so we don't know how digital images are going to last. Grandma's Super 8mm footage from the '70s, stored in a shoe box under her bed, will still be watchable for many years. Can you honestly say that about footage shot with Flip cameras today? My big fear about this is not that copies of "Avatar" or "Public Enemies" or any other Hollywood movie shot digitally will not be available for future generations a hundred years from now, the movie studios will make sure that they are continually archived, just like they do with copies of "Gone With The Wind", "Citizen Kane" or "Metropolis". My fear is that photos, snap shots and home movies being captured with digital cameras by millions and millions of people will become this kind of disposable information and not kept for future generations. MAYBE JPEGs, GIFs, TIFs and RAW images will last forever... maybe. I think that advances in digital technology will necessitate an attention to our images, and the need to continually archive them, to possible future image formats, that is unprecedented in our history. I just don't think that digital images have the equivalent of a shoe box under grandma's bed. I have a very good record of my family's history, in a stack of photo albums almost 3' high. I am scanning them into my computer, but, there is no way I am going to discard the actual photos. We just don't know.

However, I am not a film "Purist", as you say. I do believe that if you are a low budget filmmaker, and you have a great story to tell, then don't limit yourself, budget-wise, with the expense of shooting on film. Use one of the many great modern HD cameras available and go out an make you movie.
 
David G. Smith said:
..My fear is that photos, snap shots and home movies being captured with digital cameras by millions and millions of people will become this kind of disposable information and not kept for future generations. .
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I second that. We will be known as the forgotten generation cause 90% of all the digital pictures/clips we create, are probably lost for ever in 20 years, because of media failure.

Frank
 
What about the internet guys? A good percentage of pictures taken are then put up onto the internet and then are archived through websites like archive.org and the way back machine. I don't really see that going away in the near future, so are a large majority of the photos really to be lost?
 
RyanT said:
What about the internet guys? A good percentage of pictures taken are then put up onto the internet and then are archived through websites like archive.org and the way back machine. I don't really see that going away in the near future, so are a large majority of the photos really to be lost?
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yes they will. companies go down all the time. servers go down all the time. eventually servers, companies etc will go down and most of the info will be lost. I read an article on this and it showed how for the first time in history the human race's entire catalogue of information and collective memory is in peril because it's all being completely stored on unreliable media that will not last. the only way to ensure longevity is through redundancy i.e. save all your info on as much media as possible, spread it to as many places as possible. i.e. have the same photos backed up on DVD's, on drives, on photobucket, on everything so that when 2 or 3 of those media fail as is guaranteed, you'll at least have them left on some of the others
 
Its not the just the media that data is stored on which you must take into consideration. Quite often the devices which are used to read and write the data become obsolete long before the actual media used for those devices is in jeopardy of expiring.

How many of you still use zip drives, or syquest drives or magneto optical drives?

Likely almost nobody. Yet there are lots of people with old collections of media kicking around for which they no longer have the devices for. All that data is lost to them unless they had thought to continue to transfer it to more current media. We are not by nature archivists in our day to day use of data. How many even bother to back anything up at all?
 
RyanT said:
This is only funny because of this.

"Traditional film projection seems to only be getting worse from year to year. Perhaps it is the age of the projectors, the lack of experienced lab. timers or the lack of traditional projectionists but, regardless of which, I am sold on digital projection." - Roger Deakins
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The Wife and I watch films to the final credit rolls off the screen...

While during the film, some of the 'jitter' in the film flow is not really noticeable, on the credites they often are so jumpy that the credits are hard to read... And this often is on the 'first night' showing, so it 'must' be the projection equipment... We also often see a second showing with Open Captions, and at that point the film probably has had a couple of weeks worth of wear...

We recently saw a digital presentation, and the image as well as the credit rolls had nothing of this sort of jumpy artifact... and the Wife is much less forgiving about 'banding', frequently demanding that we 'have to go out and by a new screen'... because of poor digital transfers (could be the screen, or could be the transfer...), but in this recent theater digital presentaiton, she didn't complain once about such artifacts in the main movie...
 
David G. Smith said:
As far as digital being better for archiving, well, we'll see about that. So, yes, film can degrade after, ".... A few decades....", however, how often have we seen film, 8mm, 16mm or 35mm stored on a shelf from the '30s, '40s or '50s, found and it still has wonderful images? How many digital images from the '30s, '40s or '50s have lasted? Oh that is right, there were none... so we don't know how digital images are going to last. Grandma's Super 8mm footage from the '70s, stored in a shoe box under her bed, will still be watchable for many years.
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The only 'truly' archival process for images is to print R, G, B separation stripes on B&W on a paper base, and stored in an archival temperature/humidity controlled environment.

Color negatives, are notoriously 'unarchival', as the dyes fade, only lasting longer via similarly controlled environments.

As for 8mm stored in a shoebox... well I have one such real of the Wife when she was a child and her father took family happy shots with the then novelty of the 8mm camera... I'm really, really reluctant to put it through any machine, other than a 'once through' scanning process... The base is fragile, and on the initial frames that I looked at to identify it, the color is fading...

Digital storage has improved vastly from the 15 or so years of mag tape, and while it may not 'last' as long as say the 40-50 year old 8mm film I have, if one replicates it in a timely fashion, the replicant is 'identical' to the original... unlike what I will have when I finally do scan the 8mm film...
 
I have not read through this entire thread but I think people get hung up on the wrong idea of what their work should look like. It’s the term “look like film” that gets lost in translation. Instead of asking how to get your stuff looking like film one should probably ask ‘how do I get my stuff to look cinematic?” Everyone will have a different interpretation of how to ‘look” like film…but to be ....cinematic…it should not matter what medium it was shot on. Showscan (I believe that’s what it was called) was all film….yet (at 60fps) it looked like something shot on a digital cam. Most films nowadays look extra clean…sort of like how digital cameras are. The only BIG difference I notice today is…..latitude. But if you control that well enough then it's all gravy from there.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
The Wife and I watch films to the final credit rolls off the screen...

While during the film, some of the 'jitter' in the film flow is not really noticeable, on the credites they often are so jumpy that the credits are hard to read... And this often is on the 'first night' showing, so it 'must' be the projection equipment... We also often see a second showing with Open Captions, and at that point the film probably has had a couple of weeks worth of wear...
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Have you brought this up with the theater? Maybe they have a poor projector but are too lazy to change it because no one has said anything. Whenever I see a print that has burns in it or a image happened to jump I let the theater know. If you has the consumer don't say anything why would the provider try and make it better?
 
PhilJackson said:
Have you brought this up with the theater? Maybe they have a poor projector but are too lazy to change it because no one has said anything. Whenever I see a print that has burns in it or a image happened to jump I let the theater know. If you has the consumer don't say anything why would the provider try and make it better?
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Yes, not only about jitter, but also focusing weirdnesses, etc. The other area of major failure is in the Open Caption presentations. Since we drive typically 30-40 miles to get to a theater that has OC presentations, if it isn't 'perfrect', we complain...
 
Instead of a mystical what makes film look like film discussion, maybe the question should be why doesn't my film look like hollywood. Simple answer, lots and lots of money. Have you ever watched the extra features on dvd's and some of the scenes don't look very polished. These are often basic work print transfers and they look like crap. They are still film, but they don't look like the same movie.

If you want to know what your film would look like on film. Rent a camera and buy a roll of film and shoot a test with your lights on your location with your props and actors. Take it in for a supervised transfer and play with the look with a good colorist. You may be pleasantly surprised that it isn't that much different from your digital footage and you can use it as a basis to color match your digital material. You may also me disappointed that it looks nothing like 'Hollywood', and so it goes, but that is how your film would look on film.
 
Film doesnt have to look like "hollywood movie" to look professional and good.Even without lights with daylight only you can make something decent.Its more about movement/shutter speed/framerate than about making mood with lights.
 
bwwd said:
Film doesnt have to look like "hollywood movie" to look professional and good.Even without lights with daylight only you can make something decent.Its more about movement/shutter speed/framerate than about making mood with lights.
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+1
and keeping the most decent DR output from the sensor
 
bwwd said:
Film doesnt have to look like "hollywood movie" to look professional and good.Even without lights with daylight only you can make something decent.Its more about movement/shutter speed/framerate than about making mood with lights.
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Uh... no... lighting is far more important than any of those items you mention, since the differences between 24/25/30 fps are at most 18% of each other... you're telling me that an 18% difference in shutter speed, makes the difference between rank amateur and 'pro'... hardly...

What makes the most significant 'look on the screen difference' is lighting/composition. We could also include performance but since this is the cinematography section...

The fact that one can find good naturally lit situations, and make 'good' looking images, only comes from knowing what to look for... the Wife and I are giving presentations to snap shooters at a local library... and many times they will show us a snap, and our collective response is... why did you shoot the photo in bright sun, giving a half moon effect, when 10 feet back you would have had nice shade and a quality north light...

I'm developing an idea for 'moving pictures' presentations to present to the happy video shooter some similar 'principles' for getting better home movies...
 
yeah right,shoot with fps 30 or shutter 1/30 ,1/1000 and be happy.No difference right...
How do you light 50meters tall building huh ? During daylight i dont think they light them anyway and shots look decent,i dont want to go into this debate especially with DP's for whom lights are like religion.
Youve got to expose decently of course.
PERFORMANCE ??? HAha,so how about filming dead body in a coffin,how about this "performance",it can look very filmic or cinematic and thats hardly pefrormance.Shots of moving cars on streets i would hardly call performance as well.IT can boost your scene,make it moredramatic or whatever you aim for in terms of feelings ,sure ,but wont make it look like a film.Especially if its shot with shutter 1/30 or 30fps.Nothing will help in those cases,besides changing shutter and fps of course.
 
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bwwd said:
yeah right,shoot with fps 30 or shutter 1/30 ,1/1000 and be happy.No difference right...
How do you light 50meters tall building huh ? During daylight i dont think they light them anyway and shots look decent,i dont want to go into this debate especially with DP's for whom lights are like religion.
Youve got to expose decently of course.
PERFORMANCE ??? HAha,so how about filming dead body in a coffin,how about this "performance",it can look very filmic or cinematic and thats hardly pefrormance.Shots of moving cars on streets i would hardly call performance as well.IT can boost your scene,make it moredramatic or whatever you aim for in terms of feelings ,sure ,but wont make it look like a film.Especially if its shot with shutter 1/30 or 30fps.Nothing will help in those cases,besides changing shutter and fps of course.
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I think we can all agree that everything is important, and especially when you start to use the extremes of a visual quality as examples.

You can't really have a successful picture if you don't pay attention to everything... and certainly not a responsible cinematographer.

What is professional? Whatever is best for the story. What is the 'film' look? There isn't one.

This thread is starting to beat a dead horse.

A cameraman can shoot a film and try really hard to make it look like a 'Hollywood film' (whatever that is), or he/she can shoot their film to look like that film; a film that has visuals which support the story.

Yowza.
 
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Whether it is film or digital, big budget projects typically go into post with a lot of image information to work with -- things can get pushed around a lot in compositing or color grading and be none the worse for wear. Most of the systems available to indie producers (including all DSLRs) generate what is basically a thin neg. If you do everything right, you've got what you need to make a good image.....barely. For people who really know their stuff, this is a non-issue, and it is always fun to watch the work of a master. As for films by the rest of us...well....we can only wish.
 
Thin neg or not,i like how it came out here,i thought first one was film when i skipped beginning a bit.Film transfer is quite bad tho,with ghost frames.
I think its waste of time debating about talents,about who has them or not ,there are simple rules that are signature of movies from cinemas,most important is 24 fps or 25 at least.This is very crucial,then shutter and then we can debate till the end of days whats next.No talent will help without 24p/25p ,thats my opinion.
 
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As for the OP, This is why Saving Private Ryan Looked like a "film" and why nothing else seems to be able to capture the magic.

Exhibit A: Thomas Sanders. Art director.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0761742/

Exhibit B: Thomas Brown, Production Designer
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003101/

Exhibit C: the Art Department/Production design team/Set Decorators.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0234044/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0264245/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002829/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0866766/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0212856/

Exhibit D: Johanna Johnston : Costume designer
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0426693/

Exhibit E: Lois Burwell : Makeup Artist.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006627/


The camera/medium had almost nothing to do with it. If no one ever hears anything i ever say ever again, hear this one thing. THE CAMERA IS MEANINGLESS WITHOUT CONTENT TO SHOOT. The Panavision Stripped lenses, Januz Kaminski's expertise, Spielberg's talent at crafting interesting characters, locations, wardrobe, makeup, production design, and lastly actors. Good actors make a movie look good. Good looking good actors make a movie look better.

If you had all of the resources at your disposal that Saving private ryan did, if you took a GH1 w/ a hack, outfitted a PL onto it and shot the film on that... i bet my life that the movie would still have been excellent, and won an academy award. The panavision camera, didn't make that movie good. The people that used the camera made i good.
 
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