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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: keeping 35mm and running digital
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 05-08-2013 12:35 PM
quote: Jock Blakely
On the other hand though - why have a print if not to present it?
From an archival perspective, to preserve evidence of how a film looked and sounded at a given point in its release history.
If grading information (e.g. printer strips, DoP's notes etc.) does not survive, then effectively that process has to be gone through again when an archive is carrying out preservation/restoration copying, or making new access copies (film or digital). If you don't have any release prints, or if the ones you do have are substantially damaged (e.g. emulsion faded by heat damage), then you have no objective way of knowing what a film looked and sounded like when it was first shown to audiences. Basically, you're down to guesswork.
If you do have those prints, however, and know enough about their provenance to establish their authenticity, then it gives you an evidence base from which to create new access copies. But if you're projecting them, you're putting that evidence at risk.
quote: Louis Bornwasser
"The End Of Film" will come because of many factors; I don't think film itself will be the only one.
Agreed totally that expertise is another risk factor, though I'd speculate that this will become a serious problem later than the end of (colour, at any rate) film manufacture. Film projection was still a mainstream technology until 5-7 years ago, when the first big scale conversion started to take place. There are still lots of people around in their 30s and 40s with relatively advanced film projection and maintenance skills, and some of them will be drawn towards museum-type operations.
It has also been possible to maintain other legacy technologies in museum-type use, many decades after commercial support and spares have disappeared. It's still just about possible to keep a Spitfire airworthy, and there are heritage railways that preserve old steam engines in operational condition, for example. Hopefully there will be a small number of museums and cinematheques worldwide that will be able to do likewise with film, as least for as long as existing prints kept in temperature and humidity-controlled storage remain in good enough physical condition to show. But I still believe that it makes no economic sense for archives and re-release distributors to devote substantial resources to creating new film prints at this stage in the game, when digital surrogates are now capable of communicating as much image and audio information as prints can, at a lower cost and with a better chance of higher (objective) quality presentation in all but a handful of theatres.
quote: Aaron Garman
Seeing an oil painting digitally printed at the highest quality is nice, but there is nothing like seeing it on canvas.
If you go to The Louvre now, you'll see the Mona Lisa lit by LEDs (not to mention behind an anti-terrorist/anti-loony plastic shield!). When it was first painted, you'd have seen it under candlelight. Would you say that its current display conditions are unethical and that you're not getting the real deal?
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Mike Frese
Master Film Handler
Posts: 465
From: Holts Summit, MO
Registered: Jun 2007
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posted 05-08-2013 02:44 PM
quote: Liz Coffey
Hi there,
As some of you may know, film has been produced for over one hundred years! I think it's not unreasonable to think some theatre owners will have the opportunity to show film in the future.
What we are advocating, in part, is that if you have the opportunity, that you keep your equipment in place, working, and run film when you can.
I posted this here because this forum is for theatre owners and staff, right? You are the people making this decision.
Keep the faith, people, and please take our survey.
~Liz
Liz, they might only be 200-400 theaters that really should take your advice to keep film equipment. Non-profit college ran theaters for example. For the 4253 theaters wanting to play the new mainstream movies like Iron Man 3, they need to be digital soon if they are not already there.
There are plenty of stories of being digital without VPFs will get you a movie much earlier in it's run than you ever did with film.
Plus the main studios prefer digital.
I hope anyone who is thinking about starting a movie theater ignores the film will be around for a long time crowd. I hope anyone who operates a theater with film equipment still does not re-negotiate a long term lease anytime soon without a means to pay for digital. Relying on Kickstarter is not that means!
So what is the benefit to try to hold onto film?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 05-08-2013 03:16 PM
What about the internaional market? How fast is the conversion to "digital" happening in Europe, Asia, South America, etc.? I thought I read something somewhere about India still having a huge number of film-based theaters. Wouldn't demand in some of these regions justify keeping print stock production lines running?
It's obvious, however, that the end is near for film-based projection in traditional first run and 2nd run/bargain theaters.
IMHO, the real end of film will happen when no more movies are shot on film. What's the timeline on how long companies like Kodak will still make camera negatives for motion picture cameras, high end still cameras, etc.? I just hope whenever the last movie to be shot on film wraps production more major improvements will have taken place in video camera technology.
Lots of movies are being shot on video. Unfortunately it shows in many cases. The best video cameras designed for motion picture production are getting to where they approximate the image detail of 4-perf 35mm. They have a long way to go to match VistaVision or 5-perf 70mm quality. And I'm only talking about resolution. Color depth is just as challenging. I think one needs 16-bits per color channel from the camera, through post and all the way to the movie projection screen in order to mimic the film look better. Computer hardware and storage technology needs to make some leaps to make that more feasible.
I might not care about movies no longer being shot on film if video cameras had specs like 8K, 10K or 12K resolution, 32-bit per channel high dynamic range capture with non destructive tone mapping that can be re-adjusted in post production. Eventually video cameras will be able to do that kind of thing easily. I think we're perhaps a decade away from that. I just hope commercial movie theaters survive the hair-brained schemes of global media company executives long enough for us to see those changes happen. Because if all we have are movies made for TV we can say goodbye to any efforts improving video cameras and digital movies up to the quality standards we saw with 70mm.
quote: Leo Enticknap
The format fetishism by some archivists also defies rational argument in many ways. Example: when I was in California over Easter, Paul Rayton very kindly ran a reel of The Wages of Fear for me, which happened to be in the Egyptian's booth at the time. It was struck on colour stock, from a 2K DI, and with a cyan soundtrack. Now, one of the arguments sometimes used by archivists to support doing everything possible to continue the production and use of motion picture film is that it is the 'original' medium, and that watching content originated on film through another medium is fundamentally inauthentic.
Ever since the use of Digital Intermediate in post production became popular movies output in that method have effectively ruined any advantages of 35mm film projection. That digital data pipe line is an image quality bottleneck of sorts. Burning a DI out to a 35mm film print does not restore any detail or color fidelity lost in scanning a camera negative, interpositive, etc. into the digital realm. The DI sourced 35mm print is only going to be a step in generation loss below the DI itself.
For me, if a movie's final product in post production is a completed digital intermediate I'll only watch it in d-cinema. There's nothing gained with watching it in 35mm.
If a movie is post produced using an old school film-in film-out analog photochemical process then there might be some advantages of watching it projected on film. This is particularly true if the movie was shot and projected in anamorphic 'scope with no optical enlargement/distorsion steps inbetween (like Super35).
quote: Jock Blakley
We show a print of CITIZEN KANE from the '70s that I'm told is one of the last to have been struck from that film's original elements. Should we hide it away until it vinegars into nothingness against the chance of malfunction destroying it?
If an existing release print has no other value than being shown in a movie theater then I would agree in principal that it should be shown.
Unfortunately release prints of many movies are declining in number. At least a few need to be preserved as a reference for how the movie was supposed to look (in terms of color timing) when presented.
Lots of movies have had their original camera negatives, interpositives and internegatives scanned and telecined numerous times for different releases onto VHS/Beta, SDTV/Cable, Laserdisc, DVD, D-VHS, HD Cable, HD-DVD, Blu-ray and DCP. With TV manufacturers now rolling out 4K resolution TV sets we can expect a lot of existing 2K video masters to be re-done in 4K resolution. It's not going to end there. If the demand grows for it I think we'll see 8K resolution TV sets mass produced. But commercial movie theaters will be driving those trends. If it weren't for 4K projection already being installed in thousands of commercial theaters we never would have seen any 4K TV sets. 1080p HD would have been good enough permanently.
In light of that, it is extremely critical for movie companies to carefully archive any camera negatives, interpositives, internegatives and at least a few release prints so they'll be prepared for the next generation push in cinema projection technology and home theater display technology.
Funny thing: those movies shot on video in 1080p/HD or 2K are stuck in their native resolutions. There's no point in up-converting them to 4K. That's just like trying to make a SD DVD pretend it's HD.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-08-2013 03:22 PM
At the Bradford Widescreen Weekend this year somebody, I can't remember if it was Bill or Duncan, announced that it future it will be the policy to not normally show seriously faded prints, 'MagentaVision' as they called it, other than at 'Cineramacana' on Sunday morning, when all sorts of odd clips and shorts are shown on various formats. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something to the effect that increased use would be made of digital restorations, projected digitally, in future. This is how most of the Cinerama films are now screened during the festival at Bradford, though the regular monthly screenings of 'This is Cinerama' are still on film, and some new sections for the print were made last year. I think it's quite likely that within a couple of years the majority of screenings at the Widescreen Weekend will be digital.
Having said that, isn't being able to show both film and digital better than being able to show only digital? If there is room for both, is there any advantage to remove the film equipment, even if it is only rarely used? The only one that I can think of would be if there was a very short throw with several film projectors, and by removing one of more of them the digital machine can be placed more centrally.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-08-2013 03:35 PM
At the Bradford Widescreen Weekend this year somebody, I can't remember if it was Bill or Duncan, announced that it future it will be the policy to not normally show seriously faded prints, 'MagentaVision' as they called it, other than at 'Cineramacana' on Sunday morning, when all sorts of odd clips and shorts are shown on various formats. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something to the effect that increased use would be made of digital restorations, projected digitally, in future. This is how most of the Cinerama films are now screened during the festival at Bradford, though the regular monthly screenings of 'This is Cinerama' are still on film, and some new sections for the print were made last year. I think it's quite likely that within a couple of years the majority of screenings at the Widescreen Weekend will be digital.
Having said that, isn't being able to show both film and digital better than being able to show only digital? If there is room for both, is there any advantage to remove the film equipment, even if it is only rarely used? The only one that I can think of would be if there was a very short throw with several film projectors, and by removing one of more of them the digital machine can be placed more centrally.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-08-2013 09:06 PM
quote: Robert E. Allen
I sit here and just have to chuckle as we are about to reach the mark I set a couple of years ago when I said film would be around for awhile. Now I'm thinking film will be around longer than even I thought.
I don't think anybody has ever said that the "end of film" would come before the end of this year.
While it may be true that the end-of-film might come later in some countries than others, nobody should take that to mean prints will be available. First of all, studios can't usually even be bothered to move prints between regions of the U.S. There's no WAY they would pay to ship prints in from overseas to service a bunch of low-grossing indies.
quote: Liz Coffey
I posted this here because this forum is for theatre owners and staff, right? You are the people making this decision.
Actually, no. Most of the posters here are projectionists, technicians, dealers and other people who are interested in the moving image. There are a few owners (like myself) here but we are mostly the "small potatoes" type who have zero influence on the direction of the industry. The major decision makers on this have been the studios and the major chains' suits. The rest of us (the ones in the first-run camp, at least) have had to fall in line or make plans to exit the business.
At the end of the day, the ONLY thing I don't like about digital is the debt we had to get into to convert. I remain hopeful that when the time to upgrade comes, sensible innovators in the industry will have come up with ways to lower equipment prices, and/or upgrade existing equipment at reasonable cost.
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Aaron Garman
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1470
From: Toledo, OH USA
Registered: Mar 2003
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posted 05-08-2013 10:40 PM
quote: Leo Enticknap
If you go to The Louvre now, you'll see the Mona Lisa lit by LEDs (not to mention behind an anti-terrorist/anti-loony plastic shield!). When it was first painted, you'd have seen it under candlelight. Would you say that its current display conditions are unethical and that you're not getting the real deal?
No. That's not an entirely fair comparison. The original work is still there, just in a different space. It's not being presented on a different medium all together. I've always felt a given director took into account that they would be showing their work on film. It's the work they signed off on. It was what we all experienced. That was the final product.
Digital technology has made revisionist filmmaking common place. Classics are being color timed totally different when transferred to digital, sound mixes are being updated. In the case of something like Star Wars, whole shots are being changed, deleted, and added. These versions are then being shown on DCP, on Blu-ray/DVD, and this is now the movie people are going to see, and a large majority of them. You now have this question: "what is the correct version and way to see a given movie"? Did David Lean ever want people to see Lawrence of Arabia on an iPad? Has a person who's only seen 2001 on a 27" television on DVD actually "seen" 2001?
That's why I think film and digital need to live together, as they are two different mediums. When I want to see Lawrence, I want to see it on 70mm on a 50 foot or larger screen. When I see Hugo, I want to see it in 3D, digitally. To me, seeing a DCP of Lawrence or Hugo in 2D on film is the same as watching it on DVD/Blu-ray: an approximation of what the true intent was. Approximation is relatively ok at home, but in a cinema? No. There should be no compromise.
AJG
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