sjw617
Panoramist
According to Kodak's 2008 second quarter report Digital is UP 10% and analog is DOWN 14% (vs 2007). Analog accounts for 34% of Kodak's revenue and 66% from digital.
Steve
Harry Lime
Practitioner
On a big studio picture film is a rather small percentage of the budget, but oddly enough that is where everyone wants to cut cost. I guess it's because a can of film can't argue back with a producer, but the grips will put his Mercedes on cement blocks, if he screws around with them.
Release prints are expensive, especially if you are making thousands of them.
Shooting digital can make a big difference on a low budget or indie film.
But it's no magic bullet either.
Rental costs on something like a RED are rather high and there are few DP's (Director of Photography) out there with a lot of experience shooting digital.
All of these digital cameras clock in around 8-9 stops, compared to the 13 stops you get from motion picture film, so shooting opens up a whole new set of challenges. You need a whole different support structure for dealing with the data. The studios are scared shi%less about not having a physical negative, that they can actually hold in their hands.
Most of these systems are a work in progress and not totally bullet proof.
Many actors hate being shot on digital, because unless you are under 25 and have immaculate skin you may end up looking like hell and will have to wear pounds of make up (which will ruin your skin and also looks like hell).
Sets and props may also need to be built to a much higher standard, or they will look fake.
Most film cameras are rental. You can't even buy a Panavision, if you wanted to. Some DP's own an ARRI, AAton etc. I'm not a DP, but own two cameras of my own. Older models, but they work.
RED has a lot of people worried and certainly was a wake up call to the rest of the industry. Everyone has at least one digital camera in the works. If someone can make a digital cine camera with 12-13 stops of range, an optical viewfinder and solve the motion artifact problems, it may be curtains for film.
For the moment. The studios would love to switch to digital projection. Making prints is sinfully expensive.
Many directors and DoP's are warming to digital projection, because of the consistency from theater to theater. All of these projectors are calibrated to a single standard, so the movie should look as the makers intended it to.
I was very skeptical when digital projection appeared a few years ago. It looked like hell, but I have to admit that the latest generation of projectors is pretty darn good. We've come a very long way.
Everyone and his cousin is buying one, from big time directors to fanboys with too much money in their pockets. It's a good camera and has had quite an impact on the market, but it's far from perfect. It's also not $18,000. That's just the body. By the time you add lenses, follow focus, memory etc etc you are looking at something in the neighborhood of $100,000. Still cheaper than a Arri, but not quite the bargain you expected it to be. You also need to figure out how to store the countless terrabytes of footage you shot... Film simply goes on a shelf somewhere (hopefully after a successful run...), but as we all know, digital is a whole different ballgame.
The digital projection system in your local theater is significant for it's rarity. I'd think the outcome of the experiment would be obvious by now, but then people would say I'm stuck in the past
I predict a tidal wave of digital projection in 5 years or less, unless the collapsing US economy dooms all of us. ;-)
tmfabian
I met a man once...
I just want to mention something based on my dinner.
I can re-heat some pizza 2 ways...microwave or oven. They both get the job done in terms of making it hot, but when it's really good pizza I toss it in the oven instead of the microwave even though it takes a little longer. But if I want something heated up quickly in the morning on my way out the door I toss it in the microwave because it's quicker.
that's about the best way i can explain my feelings on if film will survive. I won't deny that digital is becoming very good very quickly, but there are just some things film does better (better dynamic range to name just one.) I also won't deny that perhaps someday film will die out all together, but for at least a good deal of time to come it will be alive even if it's not the mainstream choice.
I can re-heat some pizza 2 ways...microwave or oven. They both get the job done in terms of making it hot, but when it's really good pizza I toss it in the oven instead of the microwave even though it takes a little longer. But if I want something heated up quickly in the morning on my way out the door I toss it in the microwave because it's quicker.
that's about the best way i can explain my feelings on if film will survive. I won't deny that digital is becoming very good very quickly, but there are just some things film does better (better dynamic range to name just one.) I also won't deny that perhaps someday film will die out all together, but for at least a good deal of time to come it will be alive even if it's not the mainstream choice.
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Bill Pierce
Well-known
Harry - These "Super Digitals" save film, processing and screening costs - and usually slightly reduce the crew size. That upfront savings can be pretty important to a film that will only pick up a distributor later. And that includes a lot of good films. Look at how many good films picked up their distribution at film festivals.
And the digital movie cameras that shoot "raw" really can deliver quality and the ability to control the appearance of the final image.
I think they may be a little expensive and bulky for news, but, still, they're smaller than those big Sonys that news crews carried in the early 70's.
John Rountree
Nothing is what I want
With all due respect, are you wishing for the demise of film?
Bill Pierce
Well-known
What I would like to see is digital being able to capture, in the final print, the brightness range I can capture with black-and-white negative film. At that point I would probably choose to use digital over 35MM film, not for its ease, but for the control it gives me printing the image.
Now my 8x10 view, that's another question.
maddoc
... likes film again.
The demand of the movie industry for film is indeed a huge factor to take into account. If they really make the switch to 100 % digital, a company like Kodak might face a huge drop in sales....
mh2000
Well-known
I agree with GeneW... when film is truly gone (a long time from now), digital will be so freaking good that it won't matter...
tmfabian
I met a man once...
i just hope by then they figure out how to make the battery life last as long as my m7's battery life is. The thing I HATE the most about digital isn't so much quality or any of those other nonsense arguments (different strokes for different folks) it's the fact that I have to worry about recharging batteries all the freaking time and I can't stand that.
infrequent
Well-known
@tmfabian - yeah battery tech is really lagging at the moment. not just an issue with digicams but other electronics such as phones and computers. while chip technology is growing exponentially, battery tech is only showing linear growth.
Harry Lime
Practitioner
I agree. Shooting digital certainly cuts down on the initial outlay to shoot the movie. Kodak Vision3 (35mm) film cost something like 50-60 cents (US) per foot. Now you have to add in lab costs, telecine for dailies, final color timing in the lab or a scan / Spirit transfer for a digital intermediate etc . Not cheap by any means.
Digital removes or reduces a lot of these costs, especially those incurred after the actual shoot. No lab development costs, no costs for dailies transfer in the telecine bay, no scanning or Spirit transfer time etc. You still need to pay for a lot of these services in a different form, but ultimately they are cheaper than analog.
As far as the crew goes, the size does not decrease. That is a myth that has been around for quite some time. You still need the same amount of lights and crew to move things around. If anything your camera crew may grow as the loader is replaced by a data wrangler or two. You also need someone to maintain and secure the digital footage off set. And the amount of support gear you will need to maintain on set will also increase.
The scariest part for me is the longterm storage of digital footage. The current practice is secure servers and the generation a master film negative of the completed film that is stored it in separate salt mines, on either side of the country.
The output quality from something like a RED or Arri D22 is very good, but there are some problems. Yes, it is RAW, but most of these camera can't deliver more than 8-9 stops, while film captures as much as 13 stops. So, it's a little like shooting slide film and suffers from the same problems you and many of us have about DSLR cameras.
There are other problems.
Most of these cameras use something called a 'rolling shutter', which can cause motion artifacts during fast pans / tilts or if objects move through frame at high speed and certain trajectories. This can materialize as serious skewing of the image; sort of like the problems you see with a focal plane shutter Speed Graphic (car tires turning into 'eggs', slanting of the image).
(Analog cameras also suffer from some of these issues. Improper panning speeds can cause strobing etc, but in general they aren't as intrusive as what we are seeing with digital)
The Arri uses a traditional rotating buttefly shutter, like most analog movie cameras, that eliminates some of these issues. But I'm not sure if it's CMOS sensor still causes some of these problems regardless. I believe the issue is partially due to CMOS sensors dumping data in rows, where as a CCD can dump everything at once.
Other problems include difficulties photographing flashing lights, like those on a police car, muzzle flashes, etc.
Over all there is also a temporal difference between film and digital. It's difficult to describe, but you probably know what I'm talking about.
There are workarounds for many of these problems and many are being solved as the cameras mature, but you really, really have to know what you are doing to operate them properly.
My old boss, Price Pethel used to tell me about 'the good old days' when he was shooting with a 'backpack' style tape deck / video camera set up during the early days of electronic news gathering. I can't remember if it was 1 inch or half inch, but it weighed a ton. I think he covered some of the civil rights movement down south with that setup. In the middle of the summer. Sounds like a nightmare to me...
;-)
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Bill Pierce
Well-known
Harry - This is the best reply I have ever had to a message in this forum.
Bill
Bill
pesphoto
Veteran
Al Kaplan
Veteran
One thing I really miss from the days when the TV guys were shooting film is that they took care of the lighting for us. They were using High Speed Ektachrome Type B which had very little lattitude and a speed of ISO 125. They always seemed to light to get f/5.6 at 1/50 (the shutter speed on the movie camera) and if you weren't sure you'd just ask "What f-stop are you using?"
Gabriel M.A.
My Red Dot Glows For You
I think that most people overlook the superiority of analog over digital.
"Digital" storage processes are always going to be limited to resources and implementation. And let's face it, 99% of coders either don't have the time, the full support from their big wig supervisors who couldn't begin to care to understand what they're asking, and a "good enough" mentality that is pervasive in the general population.
Daguerreotypes are far superior than film, yet it's "gone". You could do it yourself (if your health and sanity isn't anywhere near your priorities!), so it's not truly gone. Platinum is far superior than silver halide or C-41 processes in terms of range, quality and stability.
The more complicated things get, the less "beautiful" they tend to be when it comes to photography.
Film will never really die, just like older processes have never really died. Their commercial viability and availability, of course, is a different matter.
Bill Pierce
Well-known
Al - Since the White House had all the networks and more, there was a White House crew that lit everything for everybody everywhere (bounce light in the Oval Office). It was exceptionally convenient and also made for some lazy photographers who rarely shot outside of the pool of light even when there were some interesting stuff in the "shadows."
Al Kaplan
Veteran
Bill, how well I know about those lazy photographers! Some of my best "podium shots" were shot from off to the side or even a bit behind the subject, and the lighting was a lot more interesting that way.
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Bill Pierce
Well-known
Here's something from Reuters (from the NYT website) that doesn't apply to us rangefinder users, but it does show digital moving more quickly into one area than many of us thought.
October 1, 2008
Studios Reach Digital Cinema Upgrade Deal
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:01 p.m. ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Five Hollywood studios have reached a long-sought financing deal, estimated at over $1 billion, with a group of theater exhibitors to digitally upgrade 20,000 U.S. and Canadian cinema screens.
Travis Reid, chief executive officer, of the Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (DCIP) -- formed by Regal Entertainment Group, Cinemark Holdings Inc and AMC Entertainment Inc, told Reuters that Blackstone Group LP and JPMorgan Chase & Co will lead the financing for the conversion.
Studios involved in the deal include Walt Disney Co, Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures, News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox, General Electric Co's Universal Pictures and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.
"Our initial goal is to convert the existing theaters of our owners, AMC and Cinemark, and Regal, which operate a little over 14,000 screens in the U.S. and Canada," Reid said, noting he expected an additional 6,000 screens could also be converted during the upgrade.
Reid said the DCIP estimated it could get the conversion completed within 3 to 3-1/2 years from when it starts early in 2009.
Long delayed by debate over who should pay for the system, digital cinema offers a potential solution to declining movie attendance at a lower ongoing cost.
Hollywood and the exhibitors are hoping the long-sought digital cinema deal will boost attendance, cut costs and enable more 3-D viewing.
Sources told Reuters last week the deal to help co-finance the upgrade for a group of movie chains had been virtually complete and would be announced within days.
DCIP was formed over a year ago and first hoped for a deal by late 2007, but the talks hit snags over terms requiring studios, exhibitors and content providers to pay usage and other fees to help pay off loans provided by institutions such as JPMorgan to buy and install new digital equipment.
The upgrades will enable studios to send movies digitally to theaters, saving them billions of dollars in print and delivery costs.
October 1, 2008
Studios Reach Digital Cinema Upgrade Deal
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:01 p.m. ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Five Hollywood studios have reached a long-sought financing deal, estimated at over $1 billion, with a group of theater exhibitors to digitally upgrade 20,000 U.S. and Canadian cinema screens.
Travis Reid, chief executive officer, of the Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (DCIP) -- formed by Regal Entertainment Group, Cinemark Holdings Inc and AMC Entertainment Inc, told Reuters that Blackstone Group LP and JPMorgan Chase & Co will lead the financing for the conversion.
Studios involved in the deal include Walt Disney Co, Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures, News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox, General Electric Co's Universal Pictures and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.
"Our initial goal is to convert the existing theaters of our owners, AMC and Cinemark, and Regal, which operate a little over 14,000 screens in the U.S. and Canada," Reid said, noting he expected an additional 6,000 screens could also be converted during the upgrade.
Reid said the DCIP estimated it could get the conversion completed within 3 to 3-1/2 years from when it starts early in 2009.
Long delayed by debate over who should pay for the system, digital cinema offers a potential solution to declining movie attendance at a lower ongoing cost.
Hollywood and the exhibitors are hoping the long-sought digital cinema deal will boost attendance, cut costs and enable more 3-D viewing.
Sources told Reuters last week the deal to help co-finance the upgrade for a group of movie chains had been virtually complete and would be announced within days.
DCIP was formed over a year ago and first hoped for a deal by late 2007, but the talks hit snags over terms requiring studios, exhibitors and content providers to pay usage and other fees to help pay off loans provided by institutions such as JPMorgan to buy and install new digital equipment.
The upgrades will enable studios to send movies digitally to theaters, saving them billions of dollars in print and delivery costs.
Al Kaplan
Veteran
Bill, I don't see that as the salvation of movie theaters. Between high deffinition big screen TV's and movie rental shops why sit in a theater with a bunch of strangers and pay seperate admission for each person in your family? There's no money in the movie theatre business anymore. Nobody goes. When we were kids mom would drop a bunch of us off at the movies, the Saturday kids' matinee was 25 cents for a double-feature plus sports, cartoons, and news. Popcorn was a dime. Give the kid 50 cents total and there was money for bus fare and a popsicle on the way home. We were safe and mom could "get her hair done".
Bill Pierce
Well-known
I think that's the reason behind the real interest in digital projection and distribution. It's cheaper than making film release prints and getting them back and forth to a bunch of theatres.
I've seen digital releases from digitally shot features. It's weird. No grain and no scratches. You may think that's a good thing until you realize how many advanced digital printers of still images add grain because it makes the picture "sharper."