The Great Debate: Film vs Digital

It is the main question for filmmakers this past decade, film or digital? We now we have arrived at a point where companies like Alexa, RED, Black Magic Design, Sony and others are making cameras which are so incredible looking, and crisp that the dynamic range of digital cameras, now at the high end, surpasses (at least equals) the 15 stops offered by film. The resolution? Well that’s not even close, with 8 K sensors out on RED and Alexa cameras. That said film is where cinema started and to suggest otherwise is not only disingenuous, but leads us to believe there is not an amazing quality to film (there is). This history and aesthetics of film is are so important that Christopher Nolan, J.J. Abrahms, Quentin Tarantino, and Martin Scorsese essentially forced in 2014, through the power of celebrity, all six major Hollywood studios to buy a specific undisclosed amount of Kodak Film Stock per year, forever, to keep that part of the film industry’s history alive. Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke has said “With the support of the studios, we will continue to provide motion picture film, with its unparalleled richness and unique textures, to enable filmmakers to tell stories and demonstrate their art.” Tarantino sees the advent of Digital as the fall of films as he once knew them. He eloquated his opinion with usual passion when he said “The magic of movies is connected to 35 mm. Everyone thinks, you cant help but think, that when you are filming something on film that you are recording movement, you’re not recording movement you are just taking a series of still pictures. There’s no movement in movies at all. They are still pictures, but when shown at 24 frame a second, through a lightbulb, it creates the illusion of movement. So thus, as opposed to a recording device, when you’re watching a movie, a film print, you are watching an illusion. And to me that illusion is connected to the magic of movies”. From the above quote it seems to me that though the master Director understands his art, he does not understand technology. One still, when shooting a raw format, ends up with 24 individual still pictures per second. This is true whether shooting Alexa, RED, Black Magic Design, or Sony. One still must choose their shutter angle (shutter speed), frame rate, and ISO therefore there is no technical difference between film and digital. None whatsoever, and to argue that simply stems from a lack of knowledge (and that’s okay since he is a master at celluloid and has not really tried Digital, except one time many years with Robert Rodriguez… how Robert convinced him is the stuff of legend).

A better argument for keeping film and shooting movies on film is made by Christopher Nolan. Nolan agrees that digital has indeed “caught up with film” as far as the look of a film is concerned, but for archival purposes it poses a real problem. We can go back to a film such “the Godfather” rescan it to 8 K or 4 K and always have a master to go back to as technology progresses. This is not true for a film shot at 1080p or even 4K, since resolution and technology will inevitably continue to grow. Archival is the main issue with digital, which is why we generally choose to shoot in raw; it’s the digital version of a negative.

Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men and general bad ass) has this to say: “I mean I like doing digital I must say. The media advantages now outweigh the disadvantages. I mean, [the Coen brothers] eventually turn around and say, 'No, we're analog guys.' And I said, 'Yeah, OK. I'll shoot on a cell phone if you want!" But ["Hail, Caesar!" is] also set in Hollywood in 1952, so I mean it feels like if anything should be shot on film it should be this film. The Alexa camera, there's just more resolution, frankly, than you would get on film. It's much easier to separate the backgrounds” he continues when speaking of filming Unbroken “we would have been shipping film across the world and that was just not going to be — you know, it's stressful. It takes two or three days to get a report. That's stressful.”

Cinematographers and DP’s once believed that digital would make their trade less significant. If anything, it has raised the value of these positions as Jeff Cronenweth (“Gone Girl”) points out when he says, “It's interesting that as the digital age has immersed us all, the fear always was that [cinematographers] would be insignificant, and ironically we've become more significant and it's more imperative.” To us here at Lucknow Films, not embracing digital cameras is like not embracing the “talkies”, or even not accepting film as a legitimate art form as opposed to the stage. Charlie Chaplin said “The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage”. Where would we be had he not embraced progress. That is all the digital age is, progress. And to not be a part of it is simply being a luddite. 71 year old veteran filmmaker Mark Leigh has this to say about Tarantino’s views “That’s bollocks, in a word, It’s a ludicrous statement, because apart from anything else, it’s a backward-looking statement that is irresponsible. I remember a time in the late ’70s when people said, ‘Cinema is over.’ There are young filmmakers doing all sorts of fantastic things and part of the reason that’s possible is the democratization of the medium because of a new technology, so [Tarantino’s fight] is twaddle.” Thoughts? Which side are you on? Please comment, we would love to hear your voice!

#photo