*completely kills movies as an artform*
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Digital cameras
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no counterarguments here
Nah, the problem is LED lighting and OP clearly sucks wieners for a living
People always blame either the lighting or "lazy cinematographers" but how can this be the case on every fricking movie in the last 10-15 years? Every single one? Every cinematographer on the planet just forgot how to shoot a movie as soon as digital cameras came out?
kinda yeah actually. shooting film means you do everything in your power to get it right asap since you have limited film rolls.
shooting digital means there's no pressure to get the shot right in as few takes as possible, and without that pressure there's this problem of infinite freedom leading to laziness.
also there's no limitations with editing in digital, so the temptation to overcomplicate the editing is always there.
>Having more creative freedom is bad because... IT JUST IS OK?!?
There was some extremely shitty Gypsy curse movie 2 years ago, that had a scene that looked great where they burn down the gypsy camp. Thinking about it now it was the choreography not the camera work
It took a fair few decades for film to become good as the tradies learnt the craft, digital + LED has essential become a 'great reset' where they have to start from scratch and no one has git gud yet.
>TDLR: Yes
>It took a fair few decades for film to become good
I've seen movies from the 1910s that look beautiful
lmao, no you haven’t
This looks better than any digital movie
The Ida film posted above has superior cinematography.
No, it has superior suckinawienerery, which is different
zoomers are morons who think placing a small figure in a big vista is the be all end all of cinematography. too many youtube videos about le hecking rule of thirds golden ratio has rotted their brains
There is nothing of cinematographic note in that Griffith still you posted.
>suckinawienerery
ever hear of DW Griffith? yeah his films were stunning
Not really. He peaked with his cluttered Babylon set.
t.13 year old
The mentality that "we can fix it in post" was prevalent when I worked in film 15 years ago. I imagine it's way, way worse today.
Glad to see the 'gud enuf for tv' (i.e. it's shit but who cares) mentality has made it into film.
grim
Pretty much this. They dont shoot to get a certain look on set in camera, they shoot for maximum customizability in post. That means flat lighting.
digital cameras are a godsend for independent films. Now is the best time to break into film making and it's all thanks to digital cameras and digital editing.
I've read interviews from some of the best cinematographers and they all say they can do whatever they want when working with film stock, but working with digital cameras is a nightmare. The best boomer cinematographers who made all the classic films you love say this. So what chance do zoomer cinematogrpahers have?
>interviews
source me up my homie
>digital cameras are a godsend for independent films. Now is the best time to break into film making and it's all thanks to digital cameras and digital editing.
At the same time, nobody wants to watch these youtube quality "movies" and what would have been a cult classic 30 years ago will now end up forgotten in no more than a week no matter how skilled of a director you are
>and what would have been a cult classic 30 years ago will now end up forgotten in no more than a week no matter how skilled of a director you are
>and what would have been a cult classic 30 years ago will now end up forgotten in no more than a week no matter how skilled of a director you are
That's not due to the lighting though. That's due to the completely saturated media market. 30 years ago people spent most of their time consuming media watching something they'd already seen before. Reruns and VHS's. Now everybody spends almost all of their time consuming media watching something they've never seen before. Completely different landscape.
Everyone spends all their time rewatching the Office and Seinfeld
I've literally never read or heard cinematographers say this, either in the BSC or ASC magazines, or in podcasts, what 'interviews' are these?
At most you'll have DPs who just grew up with film so they prefer the look, but nobody really complains, especially since at a big budget level you have the option.
you can emulate film with digital camera
Watch Robert Richardson (three Oscars, a list of Kino a mile long) talk about why he is banned from working with Paramount and why he was fired from World War Z.
Short version
>Designs lighting and lens choices for a very specific look, gives instructions to color graders on what settings to use to match his onset choices
>checks dailies
>complete and utter shit
>Random studio exectuive told color grader to make it look the way he likes - obviously can't because it's shot a specific way
>Tells Richardson to just light and shoot the movie completely flat and the executive will "fix" it in post digitally
>Richardson argues, gets the boot
nah, they're just lazy
Mann's Miami Vice (2006) is one of the best looking modern (post 2000) movies there is, and that was filmed with digital
Human creativity died in 2007 for whatever reason
>for whatever reason
Year of the iphone, twitter, facebook going public and no longer requiring an EDU account, 'nerd' culture became huge with TBBT, etc etc.
07 was an incredibly dark yet for the world.
What a homosexual
this was digital
And it looks like a stage play, it doesn't look like a movie
>And it looks like a stage play
not a bad thing at all
It's a bad thing to people that prefer film. Looking like a stage play or a youtube skit is the problem with digital.
plenty of classic films look like stage plays like dreyer, ozu, greenaway, etc.
still gorgeous, acclaimed, and influential
>greenaway
God you're moronic
greenaway movies literally look like plays
>m-muh painting
they look like stage plays
(You)
They don't look like a stageplay in the way that a movie shot on digital can. Film makes it look more cinematic.
it looks it
It shows!
looks like troony shit
Compositions are great, still images look okay, in motion it looks terrible.
Pawlikowski is an artist and his work has been an exception to the rule
Looks like shit
it looks artificial as frick
It's crazy how much better movies from the late 2000s when they still used film look. They really fricked up by switching.
Yessss!!! 70mm!
the worst part about digital cameras is that everyone uses the same arri alexas
and netflix tells everyone to use red cameras or else they won't finance your movie
the past is dead
cant tell which one is supposed to be bad
am i blind or moronic
you're both probably
you dont know what youre talking about. kys.
frick off
>laziness on set due to digital being so easy and freeing
>produces supbar images
>post-production has to work overtime to try and save the whole thing
No we need to go further. The dream is make the camera as easy and instinctive to use as a pen or paintbrush.
Think of all the shit movies, capeshit and otherwise, from the past 25 years. In how many of those instances was the camera format the reason it sucked?
Considering how many shit movies shot on film that I've seen that were kino, I'd say a lot. Shlock used to be a revered style of movie before digital cameras killed it.
I actually liked Solo except for dark and ugly it looked
does anyone have MPV filters to fix modern lighting and add film grain? thanks
bump
What's the point of this post?
nta but I want someone to answer the question, what settings can we use on a PC media player to "fix" digital movies and make them look filmier
you cant. youre fricking moronic and dont understand the difference between film and digital if you think its something a filter or changing a few settings in VLC can fix
Extract every frame and apply film grain individually
Cool. For a 24fps movie that's 90 minutes long that's only 129,600 frames. I'll get right on it.
There's no 'fixing' things through filters. It needs to be shot and graded to look that way.
By the way, you could, in theory, grade digital to look more like film, it just isn't done. One thing you can look at, for example, is the way film reacts to dark areas - it starts losing detail much faster than digital so the image goes from 'sort of dark' to 'black' quickly. On digital that curve is smoother so you get more layers of 'sort of dark' before you reach black. This is partly why you see so much cinematography these days that people complain about being too dark: cinematographers are having fun with the chance to light things in that very very low area because the camera can actually pick it out. of course THE AUDIENCE can't see shit because they're not watching films in a blacked out grading suite, but that's a different problem.
>the way film reacts to dark areas - it starts losing detail much faster than digital so the image goes from 'sort of dark' to 'black' quickly.
Indeed. Digital's shadow detail is much better. On the other end of the spectrum, though, is the nasty way digital blows out whites when it's overexposed. Film is much more forgiving in that regard.
*blows out highlights
>digital blows out whites
This is why HDR tech basically became a necessity for home screens.
You can essentially make digital look like whatever you want. Problem is that most DPs and director's CHOOSE the super clean, sharp, over-saturated look.
Most of the old-school look is the lenses, actually. Once they started making lenses with computers, with machine polishing, they became too "perfect." Want something to have that vintage warmth? Rent or buy some '60s or '70s lenses ... or even older. All your favorite movies from the '70s-'90s were probably shot with lenses form the '50s and '60s.
Been slowly collecting older/vintage lenses when and where I can. Must save at least some of the mana-from-the-gods that is old human-made lenses.
I
Its a mix of lens, colors, and lighting
Lenses are a big part of it. The modern colors are terrible to hide the shit cgi. The LED lighting would be okay if they bothered to try to do something with it, but since the colors suck there isnt much point. Its a combination of those 3 things interacting just makes everything look terrible.
Based "I actually know the reason" poster
Film looks better but I still think the issue is the people behind the camera. There's no practical reason digital productions should look as bad as many do.
Digital used to look so kino in Miami vice and collateral. The super noisy look was amazing.
>Digital used to look so kino in Miami vice and collateral. The super noisy look was amazing.
What happened?
Resolution.
?
That's (largely) what happened, that aggressive grain/noise look was mostly a function lower resolution sensors. Higher resolution gives overall cleaner, clearer images.
Interesting.
Yes/no. Michael Mann liked that look and used it. Zodiac used the same camera at the same time and had a totally normie look.
Yeah that's what the parenthetical was for.
just get filter lenses homie
The real problem is the colorists who have somehow managed to convince the whole industry that they're needed
But they are needed, even on film, it's just that it's become a profession of morons and morons for some reason.
>But they are needed,
they aren't though
Star Wars was shot on film b t w
wow even the digital effects?
Most films are and then they're transferred to digital so the colorist can frick it all up.
i don't give a shit about digital or film. i just hate the coloring they do. i just want movies to look somewhat normal.
>Blu-ray re-release
>everything turns fricking blue
Surely someone is taking the piss, right?
Fricking this. They litetally RUIN the mission impossible movies with the garbage image softening and color grading. The stunt where he is hanging on the side of a plane has so much colour manipulation it may as well be on a green screen. The two biggest DP's responsible for this ugliness are Roger Deakins for introducing it to Hollywood and Bruno Delbonnel for making it the standard - both Coen brother collaborators too.
Didn't the Coen brothers start this whole mess with the grading on O Brother Where Art Thou?
Sort of. They asked Deakins what he could do to get the look and he suggested digital color grading. It was already common for commercials and music videos but had never been done on a feature.
the bottom one is higher quality and a better remaster, but the coloring is fricked. They gave it a more uniform grading with a green tint, which makes it look cheap and flatter.
That's not to say the top one is perfect, it has that cheap purple:ish hue, it could be improved on for sure.
>the bottom one is higher quality and a better remaster
nope. you can see detail missing from the road because of dnr.
Maverick looked very good.
they darken it all to hide bad effects, but shit I'll take obvious cgi or even better obvious puppetry if I can see it and it's well lit over today's flat dark muddy shit
PTA mogged all digital-loving cinematographers
gorgeous film but he almost certainly could have achieved the same look with digital cameras. He just chose to use film because he knows so much about it already.
>could have achieved the same look with digital cameras
People say this but then film continues to be the better looking format time and time again. Digital cameras keep evolving, they're used way more and even more "artistic" filmmakers are embracing them, but directors and cinematographers that use film still ends up looking way better.
I can think of a couple of films shot on digital that looked good. I can think of no film shot on digital that looked as good as The Master.
There's just a sumptiousness to well shot film. All of the tiny little variables add up to far more pleasing picture. Digital tech will probably get there one day.
Because they're going for a completely different style, that's why they chose to work with film despite it being far more laborious. It isn't the film that makes those movies look good, it's the team using it. Correlation does not equal causation.
for example, if a 16yo student rented a film camera and made a movie it would end up looking like shit. Film isn't magic, it's just a medium. It's who is behind the camera that matters.
>it's the team using it
Well obviously that is a huge factor, yes. But with the prevalence of digital in the industry, you'd really expect to start seeing some truly stunning stuff with it, you know cinematography that at least rivals digital. But where is it?
Digital has a million more options than film does, you can do way more with it and because of that it actually requires professional people working with it, but it seems like the mentality with digital is that anybody can do it, who cares about post, just slap filters on it. Something about the whole process of using digital is fricked, the cameras themselves and the work in post isn't given the respect it demands.
There are no excuses for digital not at least matching film in this day and age, yet it doesn't.
>you know cinematography that at least rivals film. But where is it?
Blade Runner 2049 & Dune
Scroll up the thread. It's become a business issue. Photographers are told to shoot flat and even to give producers or directors "options" in post. Robert Richardson has talked about it. They don't even want multiple looks to pick from. Just flat, get shooting done quickly (cut down on elaborate rigging) and handle it later. Just like squibs or any other practical element that eats time
>There are no excuses
It's not a good excuse, but they do have one. Laziness. We've been trying to make this point the whole thread. Not enough is actually captured on set/location by the camera. This is also why so much digital effects work looks cheap or nearly unfinished these day, because it is. So much is having to be done after shooting that they either spend way too much or cut mass amounts of corners.
Again, it's not a good or even passable excuse, but there is one. A lot of the vetarans who can still do masterful work tend to stick mostly to film because they already know it, or they'll get forced to go digital for a project here or there, and don't take the time they need with newer cameras. Older guys don't want to change if they doesn't have to. The newer guys don't have the experience and are more used to the shoot-first-finish-it-later mentality. The newer guys aren't getting to learn as much from the old guard because they tend to be using different capture mediums.
(Allegedly) digital still doesn't have the dynamic range of film. Looking in to why this seems more prevelant in digital cinematography than in digital still photography, it appears to be because digital motion picture sensors are still designed to be multi-purpose. To have as wide an exposure latitude as possible - as opposed to chips being built for smaller, specific ranges, like celluloid film had come to be. So there is still room for improvement.
Tons of room. If you put in the work (and money) you can absolutely get a more pleasing and attractive image with film. You can get very good results from digital with far less work.
Also, if you're small budget, and having to rent a camera you're likely limited in the lens options, unless you want buy your own, for the camera that you're renting, or have good connections.
To be fair to digital, it wasn't until Zodiac in 07 that we got a "real" looking featute shot digitally. Celluloid peaked in the 90's after a hundred years of refinement. Shame it's nearly impossible to look that good again with so many specialty techniques in processing or stock pretty much lost. When even Tarantino and Richardson are forced to alter the image digitally because producers won't foot the bill for lab work you know it's ogre.
>no link for an uncompressed download
I miss the good old vimeo days.
What I'd like to see from the people who complain is a side by side comparison of two similar shots, one from a digitally shot film and one from a film-film. And then for them to point out what it is that they actually dislike or find different.
Because I have a feeling what people dislike is trends in lighting and shot design rather than the medium itself. You could light and shoot digital in a completely different way and it would, in fact, look different, it just doesn't happen very often especially in big Hollywood movies.
>side by side comparison
Hard to do if you don't very similar frames to compare. So much (can) change from just one shot to another on the same set.
Sure, I realize that. But here you go, i've put together a quick example as an idea, just a day exterior with a similar composition. The top image is from A Quiet Place (digital, shot anamorphic), and the bottom is Day of the Dead (film, spherical lenses).
What is it that people dislike about the top image? Or rather, in what way is it different that makes the top image worse?
Are you incapable of telling the differences between the two? Have you taken a minute or two to look them over?
Oh I have, of course they look different. I'd just like to hear what people have to say about them. The question isn't 'what's the difference?', the question is, 'why is the top one worse in their opinion?'
I'm not trying to make a point either way, I'm just curious.
Personally, I prefer the clean look of digital. dangerous thing to say in this thread, but there it is.
texture
I would like to note that I was playing a bit of a jest here and both films are shot on film actually, the only difference is that one is modern 35mm stock and the other is stock from the 80s, obviously. And contemporary 35mm stock does look very very clean.
Well played! Too bad you get some anons going on about how shit the top pic looked.
Not him, but I would imagine that was the point, to see if someone would fall for the bait.
I didn't mean it in a malicious way, the point rather is that there IS a difference, but it's not between film and digital really. It's more like a difference between the entire filmmaking workflow, pre to post, that has an effect. That and the effect of certain influences from past films on current films that have, maybe, become too prevalent - like how a lot of DPs grew up loving Malick or Michael Mann or The Godfather and, either consciously or subconsciously a lot of contemporary films have that look (more use of wide lenses, magic hour, high contrast, very graphic or 'postcard'-like compositions, lots of dark lighting).
I wouldn't worry too much, trends change and we'll get different looking films once people get bored of this phase.
I wasn't trying to make the case you were doing it maliciously. I caught bait when you posted it, but remained silent to see if anyone would bite.
>Malick
I dearly wish more would take after Malick.
I think we have a lot more pressing problems in filmmaking than 'film vs digital' nonsense. The REAL main problem is that there's no standardized colour space/gamut in consumer electronics. That is to say, every TV manufacturer can just use any of the dozens of options and tweak it as they wish, which basically defeats the purpose of all the work the director, DP and post people put into the film anyway.
There is an attempt to fix this through the ACES system, but uptake just isn't there yet and until we have something like that, a film will look completely different between a post house, a cinema screen, a TV, a laptop and a smartphone. At the moment the best you can do is send out separate grades to cinema, TV and online and hope for the best, but this is precisely why you have stuff like audiences complaining about that super dark episode of GOT. Maybe they did shoot it 'correctly' for certain screens but frick knows because there's no standardised system in place to check and it didn't have a cinema release.
>TV manufacturer can just use any of the dozens of options
Yes, this stuff irks me to no end. I have to avoid the giant bank of TVs in electronics sections otherwise I'll start feeling an urge to calibrate them.
It would be interesting to see that GoT episode in a proper cinema. I've taken care to get the best possible picture out of all the screens in my home, but I remember getting frustrated a bit watching that episode.
I would be very curious to see at least that fight scene in a cinema.
>I've taken care to get the best possible picture out of all the screens in my home
The sad thing is, you can only calibrate consumer-level screens so well because the settings are designed for consumers in the end, or at best pro-sumers if we can even use that term here. If your screen is built in with 8-bit colour depth, or designed for 1.8 gamma, or hard-coded to sRGB colour space, there's nothing to 'adjust'.
The dream would be complete standardization but that's not possible, the best we can do is probably agreeing on using one colour space (maybe BT2020) and going from there. But we're a long way off from that because not enough people care, be they consumers or electronics producers. You can't really sell 'It's exactly the same as all other screens - and that's a good thing!!'
>consumers
Crank the saturation up and slap on some fancy, technical sounding initialisms, and your average consumer will eat it right up. I don't have much hope we'll see much headway in the end-user color space....space.
>It would be interesting to see that GoT episode in a proper cinema
It was awful regardless of how good your setup is. They specifically shot the episode to be super dark and hard to make out what is happening to "help the audience feel like they're there" or whatever insane cope they came up with after the fact.
>They specifically shot the episode
>whatever insane cope they came up with after the fact
What are you getting at here?
The episode aired and in response to the criticism about it being so fricking dark the show runners said it was intentionally shot that way, despite not ever mentioning anything like that before or after for any other episode, so it comes off as a really hollow excuse for why the episode is practically unwatchable.
Yeah, so these typically because digital has such great range, barely any thought is given to proper lighting because "well the camera will pick it up". And then when they get into the editing room, they have perfectly calibrated professional panel that will display the exact color and luminance for the footage. Once they're all done they'll export it to a highly compressed format so that it's easily streamable. then it's uploaded to the server where it will be streamed of spotty/unstable internet traffic. By the time it gets to your TV a whole ton of information has been lost from each frame. When you try to watch it on your TV, which probably has nowhere near the color range capabilities of the panel used during editing, let alone the camera itself.
For most content, this largely won't be an issue. The GoT episode in question, it seems like they filmed the battle intentionally very dark, assuming that the cameras would be able to grab all the available information and rely on editing process to do the bulk of the heavy lifting.
This is why it would be interesting to see either a film print, or a proper DCDC type digital file projected in an actual theater, to see if there is indeed information in the otherwise ink-black sea of nothingness that is a large part of any given frame during the battle. Or if they actually fricked up during filming, and what we got on HBO was the best they could deliver.
It's a simple line of logic.
They wanted it to be dark, so they shot it dark.
They then realized in editing that they fricked up and it was way to dark and no way to really fix it
They then put the episode out, people b***h that it's too dark, the they shrug their shoulders and say "that's how it's supposed to be"
Whether or not you streamed it or watched it live doesn't really make a difference, it was still shit. Hell, I have the DVDs for the whole series, and even there the episode is more or less the same, albeit clearly edited for the DVD release to make it lighter
This sort of argument is precisely why I'd be curious to see it in the cinema. You'd at least be able to judge it on its own terms. But as long as we don't have these standards in place, studios and filmmakers can say whatever the frick they want and you have no way to check whether they're just bullshitting or if they had some idea in their heads.
Given the situation we're in though, people in charge of a multi-million production should be aware of possible viewer experiences and not shoot it that way in the first place because obviously it's idiotic.
yeah modern 16mm looks more like 35mm of the past
Indeed. Carol is a beautiful film and 16mm was a really good choice to capture that time and place.
colors look like reality in the Day of the Dead image.
Bravo, anon
I actually dont like that specific shot for Day, it looks really waxy for some reason. And the coloring on Quiet Place is terrible. Check out for darker scenes, that's where film shines opposite to digital.
Sure, here's a comparison between similar dark interiors in The Exorcist (top) and The Conjuring (bottom). No more tricks this time.
Yeah, check out the details on the back of their heads. I understand that the image is crunched as shit to be able to fit in a 533kb jpg, and the Exorcists set is slightly better lit, but you can see all the details in the shadows as opposite to the Conjuring where everything in shadow has lost its texture
But you see, what you're not looking at is the un-graded version of The Conjuring shot. It's a DELIBERATE choice to underlight certain areas and/or grade it down to black. I can guarantee that there is texture there because digital cameras are excellent at seeing into shadows, much more so than film is. But if the director/DP/producer chooses to throw it away to get a different look, it's not the camera's fault. You could CHOOSE to have the ambient light in that scene set higher so you get the detail in those areas, they just didn't do it.
reminds me of this. they hate seeing things clearly.
Your cap from Day of the dead is poor quality. Not a good comparison tbh.
in top, the street is detailed all the way into the distance
in bottom the street has less detail the further away you get
Please see
It doesn't change the fact his observation was accurate.
top one looks like some uncanny valley shit
Must be the 35mm film it was shot on.
thats a terrible comparison, the day of the dead picture looks fake as frick, the matte painting is super obvious.
It’s people who don’t know what they’re talking about blaming everything on digital when digital does play abort but it’s all about lighting, blocking, composition, editing, and everything that goes into making a film. I watched the sound of freedom and it suffers from all of the above. Still better than anything Hollywood puts out these days though
I think so too. It's a lot more about what the trendy look is nowadays compared to other times in history, and when I say 'look' I mean everything from lighting to choice of lenses and other stuff you mentioned. If you shot exactly the same thing, but on film, it won't suddenly be better just because you changed the tool used to make it. Filmmakers need to make a conscious decision to make the think look and feel different.
Star Wars is shot on film and is the poster child for the usual Hollywood look that people are complaining about here.
>Filmmakers need to make a conscious decision to make the think look and feel different
Right, however the main thrust here is that shooting with actual film, forces you to have choose and make decisions, before you start rolling. Whereas digital you're not as limited, and thus can lead to laziness and kicking the can down the production pipeline.
That's not strictly true if you've ever been on a shoot. It's true that it's going to be a different workflow on set because, for example, you only have 10 minutes of film in a roll so you don't want to waste it, and you have to make a lot more camera notes as you go.
However, on the preproduction side all those decisions about lighting, blocking, etc. still need to be made. For example, if you're shooting on a set and you've built a living room, you need to decide way in advance how you're going to light it so you can tell the production designer how you'd like it built, the riggers where they should put up scaffolding (if doing any overhead lights say), then the gaffer needs to be told what sort of look you want and decide what lights to hire in. It's not like the DP can just show up on the day and say 'right let's figure it out on the spot.' Same goes for camera questions - you want a dolly, you need to hire it in and have the track built, etc, you don't just decide on the day you'd like a dolly shot.
And this is for a simple situation, when you've got an even bigger set, for a sci-fi movie or a period piece, there's even more planning involved. So I disagree, you're always forced to make decisions in advance, but if the moodboards and palettes for every movie look the same and take inspiration from the same stuff, you'll get a lot of films that look kind of similar. But if one took inspiration from Caravaggio and another from Norman Rockwell, they would in fact look quite different. But certain kinds of lighting and blocking are seen as 'not cinematic' at the moment, so they don't happen very often.
Anon, if you don't do all the prepro and on set work before you roll with digital, it is possible to fix and find the look you want in postpro. If you try that for film you will end up with shit footage.
Nothing you said actually refuted the post your quoting.
>not strictly true
Next sentence
>It's true
Yeah, I know it's true, that's why I said it.
>postpro
Trying to sound like you know what you're talking about? No one says that. It's just "post".
Didn't realize this board was full of industry veterans. Imagine my shock.
>if you don't do all the prepro and on set work before you roll with digital, it is possible to fix and find the look you want in postpro
But that's not true, despite what you might believe. You could argue that you can CGI some things in, but certain things you literally cannot do in post. The simplest example I can give you is that you can't change the quality of the light - you can't take a scene shot with hard sunlight and make it look like it was shot with overcast soft light, or the reverse. The way the light hits things, the contrast levels, the light shafts created by hard sunlight, all these things you can't 'fix', they either are there on set or they are not.
There are things you can 'adjust', for example colour, curves, light level, textures, depth of field to some extent (although that's bordering on effects work), but some basic principles are NOT adjustable in the slightest.
This also goes for choosing lenses, for example. Kowa anamorphic lenses simply look completely different to Zeiss Master anamorphics and it would take immense amounts of work to try to match them because the differences come from the physical build of the lenses.
And I don't need to say anything about camera movement which you obviously can't 'fix' but have to plan for in advance. Don't be silly anon...
>But that's not true
>You could argue that can CGI some things
Are we just picking and choosing what we feel like counting as part of post production now? Go ahead, keep shrinking the goalposts until we get to a point where you're claiming only white balancing the footage counts.
I am picking and choosing, because 1. they're different departments and different people doing these things, one is a colourist, one is an animator or effects artist.
And 2. if you want to judge things like that, you can take a film shot on film and CGI whatever you want into it just as easily (again, see Disney Star Wars).
So I don't see how that argument holds when discussing workflow differences between film and digital.
>just as easily
CGI new content in? Yes. Manipulate and alter the pre-existing footage. No, not at all to the same degree. Even getting comparable results would require way more time and effort with film.
Fine, so we agree in that case, I'm glad.
Making you choosing to exclude it from counting as "post" is all the more illuminating.
You do realise that once the film is developed and digested it's put on a computer right?
Damn making a movie is complicated
I should give up or kill myself
>the sound of freedom
2022?
There are plenty of comparisons out there. here's one from Rian Johnson's DP.
Ye, I've seen Yedlin's videos they're quite good. And being a professional DP and a reasonable person, his position is basically 'we have different tools available, and we should use them as needed.' It's not 'frick digital it inherently sucks,' because that's not what a reasonable person would say.
I hate these homies like you wouldn't believe.
Doesn't Deakins shoot on digital and he is the best working cinematographer?
Hard to say what 'best' means in this context, maybe 'best known'. But maybe OP thinks Deakins' movies are all shit
Refn also prefers digital, and like him or not, all his stuff has a great distinct look. This digital vs film war is fricking moronic and it all depends on the cinematographer anyways.
Time, care, and attention. That's it. You don't even have to be the best out there, if you put time, care, and attention into the work, it pays dividends.
And just to be clear, a director/cinematographer may not always be able to put in all 3. If the studio fricks up and doesn't schedule enough time to do the shooting properly. Money can come up short. So many variables can change the formula.
moron
Deacon worries about his lighting technique and lens more than the camera he's using.
So many armchair filmmakers itt. Bet you’ve never even touched a camera.
How much are you wagering?
I'm from a pre-smartphone era, zoomer. Of course I've touched a camera before.
Sad!
Asteroid City?
Phoneposter?
Will never be beat.
I like Film 🙂
Why is nothing happening? It's boring, fr.
This isn't fair. It's probably the greatest scene ever recorded. The movie kicking in with the simultaneous framing against the enormity of the backdrop and the seemingly endless field of orange sand.
It wouldn't matter what you filmed this on.
>Spielberg refuses to do commentary tracks
>Will invite directors to his house to do private commentary tracks for Lawrence
Based. Frick the plebs.
Spielberg is the king of the plebs.
Yes, and?
Yeah but it's made it cheaper and easier, so that's good for profits.
>today all of this would have been CGI
Action is truly dead in cinema
And it would be fricking souless. Cinema is dead.
checked and what moobie?
The Spy Who Loved Me.
thx fren
I'm more impressed that you're able to keep this quality in an action-filled 2 minute webm
I didn't make it. Some anon has been going through the Bond movies and making lots of good quality webms.
Color graded that ancient looking webm for you so it looks modern, now it looks straight bussin
Eww.
I do love how
looks though. Nice and warm.
I've never seen this movie, but how the hell did that woman get off the bus without noticing all the cops. Why did the bus just pull away like nothing was happening? How did JCVD not notice all the cops before the bus pulled up?
Did they all just teleport behind the bus with their guns drawn? Did they not make any noise at all and just appear there in mere seconds?
Looks kino though
she was distracted by the aura of the Universal Soldier™
Damn
We think old movies shot on film look better than modern digital movies because back then they had to do almost everything in-camera. They had to get the lighting perfect, the sets looking good, the practical effects right, etc.
Today all that shit is done in post. Movies are shot flat usually in front of a green screen and everything I mentioned before is added in afterwards by sweat-shops.
That's the reason. It's not the film.
I don't know much about production. What is it about how film rolls capture an image vs how a digital camera captures an image that changes the image? If you were able to have a film camera and a digital camera, tuned to the same settings like aspect ratio, inhabit the same space and film the same sequence, what would look different and why?
My favorite movie is Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coens said it's shot on 35mm but they would probably transition to digital afterwards; Buster Scruggs is digital and I thought it looked good.
How might ILD look different were it digital?
Llewyn Davis is misleading. It's shot on 35mm, but Delbonnel is famous (infamous) for massively altering the image digitally. Llewyn does it less than some of his other work, which is why I don't mind it there. Also it wasn't for the sake of it. Just like the heavy digital work they did on O Brother it was to match very specific non-movie period imagery (like 60's album covers)
see
TLDR - basically no difference if you're TRYING to get them to match and adjust lighting accordingly. Out of the box the main differences are:
- digital sees into shadows more, but loses highlights faster, film does the reverse
- digital can be a bit sharper-looking but this is often mitigated with softening filters (I mean in-camera pieces of glass, not post effects don't start shit)
- the tone curve is a bit different because digital cameras, despite what some people in this very thread are saying, have a larger dynamic range than film. Realistically, film has about 10-11 stops of range (meaning 'steps' between the darkest dark it can see and the brightest bright), digital cinema cameras are at about 16 stops at the moment. So you get a bit more graduation compared to film, especially in high contrast situations. This cuts two ways, because if overlit, digital can look flat, but properly lit it will feel 'smoother' looking at a gradient compared to film. On the flip side, film will be more contrasty out of the box, but it's harder to light correctly in the first place.
- finally, colours are way different, because film is chemicals reacting to light, digital is a computer sensor reacting to light. It's hard to define how that translates to what we humans actually see, but people will tell you they see a difference.
This is the only guy in the thread who understands what he's talking about. If you want to understand the differences between film and digital, read this post, watch the Yedlin video, and disregard everything else in this thread.
I don't understand why independent and medium budget movies go for digital camera with scratch built anamorphic - vintage or just spherical vintage lenses.
You get all the benefits of shooting digital while getting somewhat the of cinematic look.
I mean there are whole communities on YouTube/Facebook/Instagram devoted to this, surely they should overlap the people who work in the business??
Ex
ESL
YWNBAWKYS
There was a time when Storraro's photography was considered way too over the top with his colouring. Wonder what he thinks of modern kino.
This film ruined Al Pacino. IDK what Warren Beatty did to him on the set of this, but it fricked him up forever.
The cocaine took its toll.
>“this kind of war between film and digital doesn’t make sense. Because human beings forever had the feeling that they need to perform visual art, since we did graffiti in the caves.” He adds, “If you’re shooting in panorama, in digital, in 3D, what is the difference? Not the energy. Not the idea. Not the concept. The most important thing is that concept.” It’s not that shooting digitally is without it’s problems for Storaro, the main one being the light sensitivity of digital sensors. He asks, “That kind of available light, is it correct for that sequence? For that story? For that emotion?”
In digital film there's immediate pixel change between colours, but in film there's a very slight gradient, which causes the shapes to slightly merge. With film this causes the objects of the scene (the actors, the props, the scenary itself) to become part of the scene, part of one greater whole. This merging is more natural to the eye, as it has a sort of dream-like aura, as in dreams objects usually aren't fully distinct either. With digital they are seperate elements slapped together, all on the screen at once, but never combining. I bet good money that people who prefer film over digital dream more than those that don't care.
I feel like I have the means, skills, and intelligence to create a filter that would replicate this with digital imagery, but I honestly can't be bothered. Anyone reading this, there's good money in developing that filter and selling it to camera manufactures.
Sadly, I don't think a simple filter is going to ever be able to match the blending of current digital capture to film capture.
Maybe not a simple filter, but I think it could be done. What would be interesting would be to take controlled images using digital and film, and the training an AI on converting the digital image to look more like the film. I think a GAN would be well suited to this, especially since you'd have to digitize the film anyway and it would just be converting the RGB levels. The images would have to be "identical though", same position, same lighting, same lenses etc. Getting all of those pictures would be difficult. Then you can sell the AI to camera companies (or film studios or whatever) to achieve a film look. I'm sure there would be interest in that.
I think the issue with this is that there are already ways of achieving this in a simpler way. I was recently talking to someone at Cinelab in London and something they've been doing that's very popular is that you shoot on digital and give them the finished file, and they print it onto 'blank' stock of your choosing (they were offering 35mm 250D and 200T as well as 16mm 250D last time I checked), and then re-scanning the print and giving you back a file again.
Which is very close to what you're describing, but without the AI. You get that blending effect that takes the digital edge off but don't have to struggle to shoot film. And at the same time it works better than putting on a 'grain' filter on the footage since you are actually going through the physical process of printing the master positive on film.
Heard about this process. Interesting technique, however, I can't see studios going for it very much, especially right now, they're all in cost cutting phases.
It's pretty cheap because you do it once at the very end (besides some testing).
There's no dailies involved you would be doing this as the last step of the process before delivery (besides some audio stuff for the online edit perhaps). But I agree that most people genuinely don't care.
>pretty cheap
What sort of rates are they charging?
At cinelab, £1000/2 min. of footage. So not bad in the grand scheme of things (for a real production not some amateur who wants the 'film look'). And certainly MUCH cheaper than actually shooting film.
Yeahhh, okay that would certainly be affordable for big studios. I would say again, though I think we're moving into a major cost cutting era, for hollywood at least, so I don't if many are going to want to foot that extra bill if they don't feel it necessary, and suits rarely find stuff necessary.
Sure, and nor is it being done for features at the moment because the directors who are in a position to choose to shoot film will just do so. Based on what the Cinelab person was saying, the great majority of projects they do like that are music videos or ads, hence the pricing /2min, average for a music video kind of thing.
For reference for anyone interested, a roll of 35mm film that will last you 5 mins. in regular speed costs about £200, processing and scanning that same footage is about £150. You usually calculate about a 10:1 shooting ratio (what you shoot versus what you actually use in the final cut), so for 2 mins of finished film you want 20 mins worth of cans, so 4 cans. So that's £1400 processing and developing, probably a bit less if you don't send it all to be processed in case of dud takes etc.
The problem with that process is that its costly and it still has the problem of needing to dailies, although I guess you can immediately check the digital footage and reshoot if needed, and keep sending it back to the lab to get the "film look" right.
I think the main problem is that movie producers don't care. Most movies and TV shows get consumed via streaming platforms that have garbage compression to lower their bandwidth and save costs. I've seen YIFY rips that look better than Netflix, so if that's how most people watch it you might as well shoot it cheap, right?
Sorry forgot link, you can read about it and see some examples here: https://www.cinelab.co.uk/digital-film-digital
>I feel like I have the means, skills, and intelligence to create a filter that would replicate this with digital imagery, but I honestly can't be bothered.
*expands your range of creativity, you can always go back to old cameras if you want*
Stop being a pessimistic shitc**t
*stutters while panning*
This ruins a lot of films.
24fps digital flicks stutter just as much when panning THOUGH
Yeah, I just assumed that low frame rate is a holdover from film but I don't actually know. haha
Simulation of film is about to be achieved. If it's the looks that you're after of course
https://videovillage.co/filmbox/
>MRW a boomer says they prefer 24 fps
get a job
Frick off, Nolan, you're drunk
I've been saying for almost 20 years that film is shit. Film grain is shit. Film is an antiquated format that's well past its shelf life. Most 90s films are partially digital. Late 90s and early 00s are all digital even if shot on film. Because they scanned and did their editing and post processing digitally. Having to constantly carry reels around and make dailies out of them... completely bullshit. Dailies were digital by the late 90s too.
Even if you took a film, immediately scanned it to high res digital and did all your work there and laser etched it to release prints that were projected with the best quality projectors and bright bulbs, it would look like garbage. When those 70mm exhibitions from several years back would break and switch to just a 2k digital version it was clear to everybody that film was a dead medium.
Now my problem is despite the lower cost and convenience, why are modern films so shit and take forever to make? Back to the Future was filmed and released in theaters in 9 months. Using the older more complex process and using hand drawn effects. Hollywood is creatively bankrupt and has enormous budgets due to israeli money laundering and israeli laziness. At least the israelites of the 80s knew how to make movies.
The Master was entirely analogue. Can't think of any other modern examples
Not quite the same thing, but just wanted to mention that Nolan did an entirely analog 70mm re-release of 2001 using the contact printing process for a 70mm run a few years ago. It looked bad. Robert Harris said the projected 2008 blu-ray would would have looked way better.
Not really. Democratizing the art is neither good nor inherently bad. Yes, now that everyone and their mothers can produce content the sheer quantity of badly made movies is staggering but at the same time, talented people that could no have produced their movies before can now practice the craft.
Plus, in theory, being able to access the equipment should technically allow for more creative freedom. Cheap cameras, free professional level editing, compositing, music arrangement and CGI creating software, not to mention the sheer quantity of venues for publication and distribution. Truly there is never been a better chance to give big studios the finger and go full author.
Now if people can`t capitalize on these tools and are only able to create mediocre piece of media that`s not the tool`s fault. Or, then again, maybe they can and are even doing it but the sheer volume of productions makes it hard to find the good ones among all the noise.
Why is film so expensive, bros?
Because it's real, not ephemeral
>Tfw a roll of S8 was about 5$ in the 90s
>Now its 40$
It kills me. Yes we could film with a digital camera and slap a filter over the footage, but it'd be fricking shit and I'd feel like a hack.
nah, it's what's in front of the camera that matters, you're just annoyed that a lot of movies are shit
The real bad that digital has introduced is not primarily its picture quality, which can be made to look like any camera from the past, but how it's affected the methods people use. Just a few examples
-Digital is much better with low light, so people tend to not even light at night anymore; it ends up looking worse
--Because cinematography is boring now due to the lack of needing lights, cinematographers spend their time thinking of "artsy" shots which distract from the characters of the story
-Because of how much can be manipulated in post, more carelessness in framing
-Because of how cheap it is to shoot, there is more coverage and more takes, which makes all of the performances feel disjointed. Actors do not even need to act anymore, they are literally just shape data to be manipulated in post, and soon will be voice data to feed into an AI that can redo lines
All of these things contribute to digitally made movies being shittier overall, and all contribute to them looking and feeling soulless, but it's not at all due to the mechanism of light capture, but rather the processes that have built up around them
Can any of you fricks at least skim the thread before posting several paragraphs worth of text that has already been posted several times over?
I love natural lighting but i also miss old studio lighting.
fun fact: Eggers wanted to shoot The Witch on digital but the studio wouldn't let him because it was expensive. He still seethes about it to this day and says its hard watching the movie because he wishes it was shot on film
watched to shoot it on film*
>watched to shoot
Yeah I gotta kill myself or something, this brain has given up.
It's alright fren, it's alright.
i feel like modern studios hate people seeing things clearly.
especially if they have to use digital effects for added backgrounds and people. Heres a solution, film everything in Black and White again.
I post this movie every time there's a digital thread and nobody ever cares.
Am I just wrong about it? First Reformed looked great on digital
>morons ITT
it has nothing to do with the camera and everything to do with the post-production color grading.
You can make any image look like any other image.
Have noticed this with my HDR TV. Brights are definitely bright, eye-searingly in some cases, but blacks never have this very deep roll off that one would theoretically expect from high dynamic range footage.
>boomers will no cap defend the top image
ya'll really think that's a vibe?
Were they cheapening on film in those older movies, or was it the best film tech available at the time?
In hindsight noise ("film grain") is abysmal here.
It doesn't happen in newer movies shot on film, or at least no way near to such degree.
> i hate film grain
leave.
I do.
It's artifact.
Lost detail.
Of course all sensors have noise, but perfectly you should strive to reduce it to minimum.
Grain IS detail. If you can't pick it out compared to digital, then you need to get your eyes checked.
>It doesn't happen in newer movies shot on film
because of dnr
a lot of old music videos on youtube get upscaled, cropped, and dnr and no one thinks it's a problem. in fact they praise it.
People are morons. Look at this shit, man.
Nobody in the comment section says anything about it.
That shit is revolting, wtf.
yeah, im in the camp of, I would just like to be able to fricking see whats happening.
>hurrrr, but if it was actually dark you wouldn't be ab-
ITS A FRICKING MOVIE! IDGAF ABOUT WHATS REAL! BACK & FILL LIGHT YOUR ACTORS MOTHER FRICKERS!
remember when they used to film night forest scenes by going out there with HUGE, TALL Lights and just blowing out the filming area like the moon was a giant lamp in the sky? Loved that shit.
>digitally shot movies can't be kino...
>film grain
Huh?
digital cameras have grain too
it's not grain, it's digital noise.
That much? I was under the impression anon did a funny with a filter. My mistake.
An anon above was 100% correct. It's not digital, it's color grading. We've been played for fools.
Whoever makes an AI that can make digital movies look like film will solve depression. I swear Lucifer himself created this digital crap to suck all happiness from the world