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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Author
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Topic: The end of film.
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 07-24-2015 12:31 AM
quote: Steve Guttag
I think you just jumping into a discussion in the middle. It is just a discussion that drifted into the reliability of one technology versus another and in particular if you had to guarantee that a show would go on and your choice is a well maintained film projector versus a well maintained digital one...which would you choose? I stand by that even if you are VERY familiar with the digital projector and perhaps not very familiar with the film one...the film one still has a greater likelihood of showing the movie from beginning to end. And more to the point...if a problem did show up, the odds one can overcome it on a film projector is MUCH higher than on a digital one.
Thanks for taking the time to consider what I said, Steve.
Yes. When the the situation is presented as you described, a properly maintained and operated film projector would, most likely, win in the long run. However, failures in 35mm gear weren't unknown. Brenkert had their problems with shutter gears. I know I lost 2 or 3 here before I threw in the towel and replaced them with Simplexes. I've lost the occasional diode in a lamphouse supply... usually when starting the second show of a double feature. It was never fun to get halfway through a perfectly good show, only to start back up and see flicker on the screen from a lost phase. Before I upped the size, most of those bad diodes were in ORC supplies, but I have lost one or two in a Strong. Speaking of Strong... their early (black) switchers were nothing to write home about, and I have a couple of those laying around... nonfunctional.
In most of these cases, the best maintenance in the world wouldn't have prevented the failures. Granted, they may have been easier to fix... for someone with the knowledge to do so. Today, there's less of that talent in the booth, so the fixes will be, most likely, more expensive. If I hadn't known how to change a shutter gear or diode, or swap out an entire head, the cost to bring in a technician to do those kinds of repairs for me would also have been substantial.
Today, a manager can go upstairs to turn on the breakers, then leave and not come back until the end of the day. In most cases, the digital boxes will get from one end of the day to the other without a second thought. In the 45 years I ran movies on film, I developed an obsession for being near the projectors, at least when first starting them. That obsession must have become genetic, because I still do that with my Barcos. The difference is that once I've confirmed that I have good pictures and sound, I walk out of the room and usually don't come back until the night is over. I can keep a general eye on them from my office or smart phone, but I'm no longer locked away in the booth.
I get that this topic will generate differing opinions, because there are several angels from which to approach it. I don't view your position as "wrong", just coming from a somewhat different angle than from where I look at it.
-Jack
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 07-28-2015 03:34 PM
quote: Christopher Lani
What is it specifically about the 35 mm film image do you find to be superior to digital? Color representation? The sense of the flow of motion? Sharpness of image?
Various different film advocates claim all of the above, both individually and in combination.
I think the flow of motion one is potentially the most interesting (and still contentious).
Tarantino, with his characteristic elegance, described watching the digital image for him as "like staring right into a fucking light bulb," by which I'm guessing he means that he misses the flicker. If so, that's deeply ironic, because the industry spent the best part of a century trying to reduce or eliminate perceived flicker with film projection. Hollywood standardized its frame rate at 24 essentially for this reason (so that with a two-blade shutter, there would be no perceptible flicker for most people), despite howls of protest at increased film stock costs. Starting with Todd-AO, higher frame rates were used in an attempt to make motion look smoother.
In that context DLP should have been the holy grail - it nuked both flicker (the bane of film) and interlace artifacts (the bane of video) in one fell swoop ... and now people are complaining that they miss the flicker! If you want to, you can now see The Birth of a Nation at the actual 11-12fps that Billy Bitzer cranked most of it at with completely steady illumination, but in reality, it's not, it would appear, what these people actually wanted.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-28-2015 05:47 PM
I think that properly printed, processed, and projected 35mm film looks better than the current state of D-cinema.
Specifically, I will second the comment about film having more "depth," which probably really translates into film having a greater range of values between dark and light. Actually, a typical DCP looks fine until it is put up against a film print of the same movie in the same theatre, at which point (to me, anyway), the film looks more "real" and has more "depth," while the DCP looks more "flat" and "plasticky." Bad description, I know, but I can see this even in my own films, which I shot myself on 16mm (and which were printed in 35mm and made into DCPs). The difference is even greater for material shot in 35mm by professionals.
I can go either way on flicker. I don't like a really flickery image, and would agree that flicker is a "flaw" in standard film projection (which can be improved upon with three-bladed shutters, etc.), but there is supposedly some research that suggests that flicker affects perception of motion pictures at a subconscious level. I have no idea if this is valid or a load of crap, but it is probably at least worth studying.
Also, film grain is random and does not cause moire patterns like many DLP systems do. This, alone, is a win in many cinemas.
One aspect of DLP systems that I do prefer is that "white" actually is "white" and not the color of the film base. It is more like watching a nitrate print (where the base really is clear) than a modern print.
The other win for D-cinema is sound quality, which is unquestionably better than any current 35mm format.
Finally, there are some operational benefits to D-cinema (for example, the lack of hot spots due to the integrator rod) that would be nice to see brought to film projection equipment, although that will likely never happen. Too bad.
I am not as anti-digital as some people here. I realize that it is the future for mainstream cinemas, and that no whining about it here will change the economic realities for distributors and exhibitors. I also see some advantages for many exhibitors and for producers and exhibitors of "alternative content." I do feel strongly, however, about the importance of retaining film projection capability in (some) cinemas and printing capability in labs for both repertory screenings of films in their original format and for filmmakers who, for whatever reason, prefer to have their work exhibited on film.
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William Steele
Film Handler
Posts: 9
From: Lawrence, KS USA
Registered: May 2014
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posted 07-31-2015 09:29 PM
Sorry for hijacking this thread but anyone who thinks film is dead should visit the National Film Center in Tokyo. While I was in Japan recently I had the privilege of seeing a number of 60s-70s Japanese films (all photochemically restored on Kodak stock) projected through what looked to be Kinoton FP-38s. Notwithstanding the subject matter of the films--one of them was a low-budget Manoru Watanabe "pink eiga" film that I doubt anyone in the U.S. has ever seen--in terms of exhibition quality they were a feast for the eyes. They reminded me of what 35mm is capable of when artists and professional projectionists are involved at every step of the process. Film capture and projection is truly a remarkable thing that we must preserve for future generations because while digital is good and has many benefits, it simply doesn't have the magic (for lack of a better word) of light projected through celluloid at 24fps. Let's be honest. That magic is what drew us all to the movies in the first place (at least those of us of a certain generation). It wasn't just the "content". There are things happening with film projection that we still don't fully understand and can't quite articulate because we lack the vocabulary to describe what we see. Vinyl records are a useful analogy. While much of the recent resurgence in Lps has been driven by hipsters who don't really care all that much about sound quality, the truth is that vinyl records do sound more natural and are more emotionally involving than CD, even when the source is digital. How is that? I don't really know. All I know is that like many, I dumped my vinyl Lps when CD first came out in the 80s. And I loved the CD sound -- at first. But after a few years I pretty much stopped listening to music. It wasn't until a friend invited me over to listen to some of his records that I suddenly realized digital recordings were the reason.
The point of this long-winded diatribe is that it's important to have these reminders, these reality checks -- we've all grown so accustomed to seeing Hollywood movies through 2K digital presentations, or digital intermediates, or whatever, that when we go back to the origin it is a revelation. It's also an opportunity to rethink our assumptions. When digital projection first came out about 10 years ago I was excited about watching flawlessly rendered films with perfect illumination levels. I remember seeing "Bad Santa" at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival (the great James Bond in the booth) and thinking 'Wow, this is the future! This is gonna be awesome!' But now the bloom is off the rose. After a decade of digital filmmaking and presentations, I am increasingly annoyed by its faults and frankly bored by the monotony of the images I see, which as others have pointed out are pretty much the same images we get on TV. I'm not arguing that we try to put the genie back in the bottle--no way that is going to happen--but I think it is vital that film should be preserved, and more importantly, that innovation should continue. There is still much to be mined with the 35mm format, not to mention 70mm. But you guys are pretty much the only ones left with the know-how to do it. Hopefully there are still a few of you out there who care to enough make the effort. For my part, I will continue to attend and support film presentations. We make the future what we want it to be, not what others tell us it is, or should be.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-01-2015 12:19 PM
quote: Steve Guttag
Film has recorded our history for over a 100 years.
Compared to the lifetime of some other recording media as mainstream technologies, 130-150 years (which is probably how long we'll eventually be talking about, from the first still images on celluloid to the complete cessation of new color film manufacture) is very short. The various substrates for writing and printing that existed before modern paper (e.g. slate, canvas, parchment and vellum) were all in widespread use for millennia. True, other audio-visual media invented during the last century had much shorter lifespans, and data storage media in particular involved dozens of formats that came and went in the blink of an eye.
But of all the media that were used on an industrial scale and for a significant length of time worldwide, photographic film faces the dual challenges of having been relatively short-lived, and being relatively fragile and difficult to preserve.
In terms of its continuing use as an exhibition medium, I agree with Louis, but would add that the availability of labs and processing chemistry is another weak point. True, that won't affect the ability to project existing prints, but it will to make new ones.
On the AMIA list last week, someone in Brazil asked about the availability of film lamphouse xenon bulbs, because his usual supplier has just discontinued them. OK, they are still made elsewhere in the world, and if he's prepared to pay the punitive Brazilian import duty he will be able to get hold of some ... for now. But it's another straw in the wind that in the world's fifth largest nation there is now no-one selling these things anymore, and indicates that as far as first-run mainstream movie theaters are concerned, film is now so dead that Planned Parenthood is probably trying to sell reels of it.
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