Film vs Digital Look in Movies / Series

[CameraQuest]

Do you prefer movies that have a film look about them?

I certainly do. I am such a film movie snob that I usually stop watching movies that scream badly photographed video.

Granted, sometimes I may be mistaking well done digital for film.

I am no cinematographer. I am told ari digital cine cameras can have more of a film look than other makes.

An Amazon Prime Example (LOL) is Amazon's Julia Robert's Homecoming Season 1.
Fairly good writing and acting, but to me nauseatingly horrible cheap washed out unsaturated video style photography.
In notable contrast look at the wonderful photography in the British TV series Marcella.

Stephen

 

[agentlossing]

You've got good and bad for both. As en example of the good in film, obviously anything by Christopher Nolan is excellent. Dunkirk is so beautiful in ultra high definition.

But you have to appreciate digital capture watching The Revenant. There is so much shot at dusk and in ultra low light with blue hour and contrasting firelight that just could not be done with anything other than the specialized digital cameras they used.

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Both can look amazing, and both can look awful. It mostly comes down to scanning (film) and grading of both mediums. Premier and FCP are so good now with grading and emulation that a beautiful film can be shot on a BMPCC 4K, properly graded and only the production team would know what it was shot on. An Amira or Alexa can do an even better job. Heck, I can do a convincing job using my Panny GX85 in monochrome using in-camera grain, 24p 4K capture, through one of my older C mount lenses. The 25mm f/1.9 Som Berthiot Lytar is great on this camera and so is the Kodak 50mm f/1.6 Cine-Anastigmat (Petzval formulation). We're way beyond the jittery interlaced capture of the early 2000s.
All that said, I love film so much more. I will drive a hundred or so miles to go see a restored print of a classic film in a good theater.
Phil Forrest

 

[nozoom]

I really like the look of TV shows shot on 16mm film, especially when it's outdoors. Not the most detail, certainly won't be the most stunning but it has it's own character. A good example is 'Doc Martin' - the first 5 seasons were shot with 16mm and later on switched to digital. The digital gets more resolution and picture quality of the landscapes in Cornwall, but the 16 mm just made it so much more beautiful in the earlier seasons.

 

[Dogman]

Before HDTV was a thing and only a few people owned them, I used to think it looked artificial, hyper-real and pretty awful. After owing and watching one exclusively for a short time, everything that wasn't HD looked mushy and dead to me.

Taking that into account, I don't have a preference for film or digital. If the story or programming is good enough, I don't even notice the quality of the photography.

 

[joe bosak]

I don't know about the film look, but I really dislike the overuse of teal and orange in some modern films and TV - it looks like they are worshipping some film-making latest fad or pandering to some ridiculous arty whim. Fits with the lack of storyline many exhibit, taking 15 hours to tell a story worthy of 15 minutes, but that's a different topic.

 

[Pál_K]

"Film look" is what I like, I suppose.

I haven't been to a movie theater in 15 years, so I don't know what movies look like today.

My only TV is a 20-inch 1998 Sony (obviously analog), still working. What I see on cable TV, converted through a DVR, is obviously not HD TV but it looks good to me. Those "shopping channels" and "soap operas" have a sharp contrasty appearance I don't like even though I'm obviously not seeing them in HD. I know "Seinfeld" was filmed in 35mm on Panavision equipment (but likely postprocessed in digital) - that looks fine to me.

I heard that some of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was filmed in 16mm.

When I see HD TVs in the store, the image appearance is too unreal for me.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Film for sure. Old Hollywood for color and anything on bw. I like Soviet movies on bw film.
It was best times for soviet cinematography, IMO. Not because of the film, but because in sixties and earlier seventies it was interesting content and super music.

 

[Godfrey]

If you're really interested in this subject, you should take a look at the documentary film Side by Side produced in 2012. You can watch it FOC on IMDB (just click the link to get there).

G