quote:

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July 24, 2006
Studios Shift to Digital Movies, but Not Without Resistance
By SCOTT KIRSNER

Every weekend through the summer, big-budget movies compete for dominance at the box office. On movie sets, a quieter sort of contest is taking place as a handful of companies are angling to have their digital movie cameras used to capture the action, supplanting the traditional 35-millimeter film camera.

Many of this summer’s most prominent releases have relied on digital movie cameras, including “Superman Returns” from Warner Brothers, “Click” from Sony Pictures and “Miami Vice,” a Universal Pictures offering that opens Friday.

But while the changeover to digital filmmaking has long been predicted, these companies are encountering an unusual degree of resistance from producers, directors and cinematographers. A majority of feature films are still shot with film cameras and some well-known directors, including Steven Spielberg and M. Night Shyamalan, have been vocal about their intention to continue shooting on film.

“People involved with big-budget features are usually risk-averse,” said Marker Karahadian, the president of Plus8 Digital, a company in Burbank, Calif., that rents digital cameras. “Delays are very costly when you’ve got stars on the set, and that means no trailblazing.” Mr. Karahadian’s company supplied six digital cameras made by Thomson Grass Valley for “Miami Vice.”

Unlike the market for consumer digital photography, the market for professional digital movie cameras is relatively small: the major American studios released only 194 films in 2005, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. And while Panavision and Thomson Grass Valley, both based in California, have an early edge, many new cameras are on the way, from established companies like the ARRI Group of Germany and a start-up, Red Digital Cinema.

Digital cinematography first appeared as a faint spot on Hollywood’s radar in 1999, when George Lucas announced his plan to shoot “Star Wars: Episode II” with a new kind of digital camera adapted from Sony Electronics’ television news cameras. The Lucas experiment, released in 2002, persuaded a few directors to dabble with digital cameras, but it was not until this year that the roster of movies using digital photography began to grow.

“We’ve reached what may be looked at, five years from now, as a tipping point in the use of digital cameras,” said Curtis Clark, a cinematographer who is chairman of the American Society of Cinematographers’ technology committee.

Manufacturers have promoted the potential cost savings of the new technology. Digital cameras eliminate the need to buy and develop film, and the need later to scan that film into a computer, add digital special effects or adjust the color. Robert L. Beitcher, Panavision’s chief executive, estimates that even though renting his company’s Genesis digital camera at a typical rate of about $3,000 a day is nearly twice as expensive as renting a film camera, they can help save about $600,000 on film costs and processing in a big-budget feature.

But producers and cinematographers say that cutting production budgets is not the main motivation for switching to digital moviemaking.

“It saves a little money, but that was not the driving force,” said Dean Devlin, the producer of “Flyboys,” a $60 million World War I picture being released in September, which used the Genesis camera.

Rather, Mr. Devlin said the main advantage was the ability to shoot for nearly an hour during airborne dogfight sequences, with the camera mounted on a replica biplane or a helicopter and linked to a digital tape deck. Tony Bill, the movie’s director, estimated that a film camera would have been limited to shooting takes perhaps five minutes long, before requiring a new load of film.

Others are gravitating toward the digital cameras because of their aesthetic qualities. Dion Beebe, the cinematographer for “Miami Vice,” said that he and the director, Michael Mann, chose a camera from Thomson Grass Valley called the Viper to create a particular look for the movie.

“We made use of the Viper’s amazing depth of field,” Mr. Beebe said. “You’re seeing clearly from two inches to infinity.”

But Mr. Beebe says that film cameras are still superior to their digital brethren for capturing bright sunlight in a more nuanced way, and other cinematographers acknowledge that digital cameras do not have the resolution found in film.

Dean Semler, who shot “Click” and “Apocalypto,” a Mayan historical adventure movie directed by Mel Gibson, said he was impressed by the Panavision camera’s sensitivity in low-light situations when he was in the Mexican jungle. Some cinematographers may hold out for higher-resolution digital cameras, Mr. Semler said, but then added: “I’m looking at my images, and it doesn’t matter. It looks fabulous on the screen to me.”

Still, executives at Panavision and Thomson Grass Valley are not expecting an abrupt fade-out for celluloid. The bulk of Panavision’s $233 million in 2005 revenue came from renting film cameras and accessories to movie and television producers. Panavision does not sell its cameras. (The company is controlled by the investor Ronald O. Perelman, who is in the midst of taking it private, Mr. Beitcher, the chief executive, said.)

“We’ve got 1,000 film cameras in our warehouse, and we expect to be renting them for a long time,” Mr. Beitcher said.

Thomson Grass Valley is a division of Thomson, the French-based media products and services company, and is a corporate sister to Technicolor, which develops film for motion pictures.

“It’s not our job to push the market,” said Mark Chiolis, senior marketing manager for Thomson Grass Valley. “It’s our job to provide tool sets for the market to select from. If you like the look of film, shoot film.” Thomson Grass Valley and Panavision also face a cattle call of new digital movie cameras, some being sold for much lower prices. Red Digital Cinema, founded by Jim Jannard, a billionaire who started the sunglasses company Oakley, is developing a higher-resolution digital camera that will sell for $17,500.

“For the cost of a few days’ rental of their products, you can own ours,” said Ted Schilowitz, a Red Digital executive.

Mr. Karahadian, the camera rental entrepreneur, has five cameras from Red Digital on order. Complicating the market for digital cameras, he said, is their quicker path to obsolescence, and the small size of the feature film and television market in Hollywood, which does not support the cost efficiencies of high-volume manufacturing .

But camera companies like Panavision, which was founded in 1953 and supplied lenses for films like “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Ben-Hur,” may have no choice but to wade into the swift waters of digital competition.

“We don’t envision developing or building a new film camera,” Mr. Beitcher said.

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quote: Leo Enticknap

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Incidentally, I understand that Kodak is currently assessing the commercial viability of continuing to manufacture b/w film stocks.

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 07-25-2006, 06:03 AM:
 
This came from a colleague who was at the conference in Maine I went to last week. He's on the board of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, which is lobbying Kodak in the hope that a way can be found to continue the limited production of b/w stocks as a boutique operation for preservation. He announced this to everyone assembled at the closing plenary session, which I guess means that it's officially public knowledge.
 

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Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 07-26-2006, 06:26 PM:
 
In TV land, portable video tape equipment has been available for decades, but most prime time TV shows and most TV commercials are still shot on film. The producers and directors like the look of film, and know how to light for film, and work with film, so they want to keep using it. I would not think that the feature business would be any different.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-26-2006, 09:10 PM:
 
I look at that NY Times article as yet another in the very long line of flippantly ignorant, dumb-assed, pro "D-Cinema" at all costs including quality puff pieces.

Any cinematographer worth a damn will not lie to himself outrageously by considering HDTV 2K quality cameras superior to that of 35mm film, much less any larger format gauges.

If they want to move to this cheaper, lower quality yet "all-digital" method TELEVISION method en-masse, I as the customer will give a lot less of a shit about the product.

Perhaps the thing which pisses me off the most is this self-righteous asshole all-knowing attitude the pro-video shooting folks position themselves. They act like they are clue-ing the rest of us common folk into something better when they are really only promoting a LIE.

If "digital" and video are really better, why do they still try in vain to make it look like film?

Not all things "digital" are better. Even the most seasoned computer graphics artists will tell you that. Such folks will admit it is still FAR MORE EFFICIENT to actually draw something on paper naturally and then scan it into a computer than to try to draw with a brick and string (a mouse) or some freaking Wacom tablet that only gets in the mere zip code of doing real drawing. I know this for fact from over a decade of experience doing the work. The ANALOG way is still faster.

ANALOG film in many applications still yields a better result as well. Even for analog-shot films drafted to digital cinema. Further, a movie shot on analog 35mm film can be re-scanned at a later date in a higher resolution and look even better in whatever is the newest digital projection format. There is no video format on the planet which can manage that.

To top it off, why would it be any surprise to anyone the first DVD-A and SACD "next gen digital music disc" releases were based on old, yet very high rez analog music masters? Why not "all digital" early 1980s computer-based masters? Huh? Hmm? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Sorry to sound violent about it, but some of these business people vomiting out this biased puff piece bullshit need a punch upside the head.

Again, "digital" does not automatically equal perfect. Not at all.
 

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Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 07-27-2006, 09:35 AM:
 
Bobby: you got it right!

Read the d-cinema article in Boxoffice...those who were there said "the reverse was more true." Article written by NEC rep, uncreditted.

Believe half of what you see and none of what you read. Louis
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 07-27-2006, 10:34 AM:
 

quote: Leo Enticknap

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Incidentally, I understand that Kodak is currently assessing the commercial viability of continuing to manufacture b/w film stocks.

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quote:

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'Vice' and virtues of HD

High-definition video exerts its taxing appeal on a film's makers.

By Susan King
Times Staff Writer

July 27, 2006

"MIAMI VICE" director Michael Mann and his director of photography, Dion Beebe, knew the challenges they'd be facing when they decided to shoot the feature version of the classic 1980s TV series on high-definition video.

Two years ago, Mann and Beebe used high def to shoot "Collateral," which gave the action-thriller set in nighttime Los Angeles a distinctly visceral look. Beebe and co-cinematographer Paul Cameron received an Oscar nomination for their work on that film.

Before the HD cameras rolled in Miami last year, Mann, Beebe and the technical staff spent months in pre-production.

"There's been a lot of debate about high def replacing film and being an easier choice for filmmakers," said the Australian-born cinematographer, who won the Oscar this year for "Memoirs of a Geisha." "But it's definitely not the easy choice."

The high def cameras used in the film weren't made for action-thrillers. "They were designed to be in air-conditioned TV studios mounted on these pedestal tripods run through some sort of control panels," Beebe explained. "The cameras all run off these two recording decks, and you are running cable to recording decks and dealing with heat and moisture. You need a lot of battery power not just to run your cameras, but to run your decks."

Film cameras, he said, are much more robust and can be specifically modified for scenes in speedboats or fast cars. "But these cameras aren't. You have to be determined to see it through. There were often times when we thought it would be easier for us to shoot on film, but we had come down this path and we had done a lot of testing."

So why bother? Several reasons. One is that high-definition cameras allow the image to be manipulated right on the set.

"It's like your television set," Mann said. "You can alter contrast, alter brightness." To be able to adjust those artistic variables while you are shooting "makes it into a much more painterly medium than simply recording on film," he said. "We alter things all the time."

"It's a whole new ballgame for filmmakers to have that ability [to adjust] right in front of you," Beebe agreed.

The high-definition cameras also offer an incredible depth of field, especially at night. One can almost sense the humidity and the highly charged atmosphere of nighttime Miami because the cameras capture the billowy clouds, lightning and the lights of the city.

"You wouldn't be seeing any of those lights beyond [the actors] with a normal focal length lens," Mann said. "It would all be out-of-focus dots."

Lighting with HD can be tricky. "When you light with HD, it's sort of like playing a new instrument for us cinematographers," Beebe said. "You have got to get in tune with it and really work its strengths and weaknesses."

They'd already had experience with the technology on "Collateral," but even so, Mann and Beebe spent 4 1/2 months testing the cameras in Miami in conditions similar to what they expected during production of "Miami Vice."

"We shot tests at night, out at sea with helicopters and big boats and freighters," Beebe said. "They were bigger shoot days than I ever had on a feature in Australia — and it was just a test shoot. But the reason was to put ourselves in these situations and ensure we were going to get the results we wanted — securing cameras, [determining] how we were going to power them and cable them and [experimenting with] the settings we were going to choose for them."

AFTER the test footage was shot, Mann and Beebe took it to digital colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld to help devise a formula "for how we were going to use the high definition — how we are going to light it and shoot it," Mann said.

"Miami Vice" was lighted differently than "Collateral." The latter had a "non-directional light" for a softer look, Beebe said. With "Vice," they wanted more of a chiaroscuro-type lighting. "With the shootout at the end, we used these big, hard lights and set out to create a single hard sidelight for the sequence," the cinematographer said. "The problem is maintaining [the lighting] through the sequence because people are moving around and you are changing directions."

Also daunting to film was a scene in which Miami undercover police detective Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) takes the beautiful, mysterious Isabella (Gong Li) for a high-speed cruise in a motorboat. The vehicle had to be custom-built. "We needed to run cables through the boat to the cameras," Beebe said. And casings for the recording decks were created so that they could be strapped in the hull of the boat and withstand the impact of the waves.

"Once you take the recording deck off the camera, you can break the camera down to a very small camera," Beebe said, "and we were able to fit the camera with an operator, myself and Michael as well as Gong and Colin and head off at 70 mph across the ocean. It was quite a spectacle to see everyone crammed in the boat."

Although he has now made his last two pictures in high definition, Mann says he hasn't abandoned film. "I could very well do a movie I prefer to shoot on film," he said. "Shooting on film is simpler."

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-27-2006, 08:28 PM:
 
HDTV video provides more depth of field than a top-flight Panavision package with really great quality lenses, paired with finely tuned Kodak film emulsions to match?


Give me a Goddamned break. Sorry, but while Collateral looked pretty good for a videotaped movie (at least better than all these shit-looking MiniDV jobs I commonly see on IFC) there was still a whole lot of compressed color gamma and image smear happening due to limits of that video format. Video doesn't exactly work very well in low light settings. With film, you have a little more flexibility to adjust your film speed and lighting while yet yielding something that still looks pretty fucking great.

Ooh, but it's analog. Aw. Analog. Vomit. Gawd. Vomitty shit-assed analog! Whoa be me! Let it all be digital!

Just who are the technology guys thinking they are fooling with floating all this crap about videography yielding a better looking result than 35mm?

It's painfully easy just from looking at the trailer how Miami Vice was shot on video. It still has that pasty, smeary electronic TV look, even with the pretend "film style" pretentious bullcrap applied over the top of it in whatever high dollar method was chosen.

I can understand the motive behind digital projection from the perspective of film print distribution. In that manner the concept may be tolerable.

However, I reserve the full right to be pissed off from being lied to blatantly when those Hollywood guys talk about shooting movies in "digital" and claim they're getting better image quality.

Excuse me while I shit a unicorn out of my ass and produce the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa simultaneously!
 

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Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 07-28-2006, 12:20 AM:
 
Ah, God. Where does a person even begin . . .

You know, Bobby, you’re very loudly, stridently and obscenely bloviating here without having a real understanding of the cameras or in the processes involved. For instance, you say:

quote: Bobby Henderson

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HDTV video provides more depth of field than a top-flight Panavision package with really great quality lenses, paired with finely tuned Kodak film emulsions to match . . . Give me a Goddamned break.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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there was still a whole lot of compressed color gamma and image smear happening due to limits of that video format

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Wrong. It is not a “limit”, it is a choice. Collateral, like Superman Returns, Miami Vice, Click!, Scary Movie 4 and others, were photographed with cameras that output non-gamma corrected 4:4:4 RGB data. That’s DATA, not video. The process is the same as a digital still photographer shooting Camera RAW files. The data must be processed (“developed”, if you will) using a post-production color-correction platform, where the bulk of the imaging decisions are made. If the image looks like the lower gamma area is compressed, it is because the DP said: “Compress the lower gamma area”. If the image looks “smeary” it is because the decision was made to make it look smeary (on the DaVinci platform, for example, this is done by making changes in recursive noise settings). If the flesh tones look “pasty”, it is because the DP asked for what is known as a secondary correction on the flesh tones only (almost all post color platforms can isolate thousands of different hues down to a single pixel width. I do it all the time). The same goes for overall white balance, exposure levels, and the works. Of course, any competent HDTV camera engineer can also make many of these adjustments in camera, in production. All HD camera manufactures make memory-card loadable look-up tables for just about any look you want, but that’s a ballsy way to work, and it requires a 100% commitment on behalf of the director and DP.

BUT . . . and here’s the thing, these cameras can also put out bright, colorful, razor sharp images, with beautiful accurate colors and lovely flesh tones if that’s what the filmmakers want. (look at Click!, for instance. How come no-one is pissing and moaning about how that one looks?). If, on the other hand, they want low saturation and compressed gamma with funky color veils and gauzey effects, they can have that too with the turn of a few knobs. At the end of the day, these digitaly originated films look pretty much exactly the way the people who made them intended them to look. It's not a "video limitation" at all. Really, it's more of a freedom.
 

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Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 07-28-2006, 03:57 AM:
 
True confessions time. As a projectionist I hate handling film. It is heavy, somewhat fragile and difficult to manipulate. If you accidently drop the centre out of a roll of film, you can spend hours getting it right again.

Making films with that chemical based technology is hard as well, video is easier.

But it looks so beautiful on the screen. And there is a certain achievement in presenting this wonderful, difficult, organic thing.

When we present a movie from a hard drive or a dvd it doesn’t feel right but it is certainly easier in some ways. It is just like running a movie at home with our excellent home cinema set-up.

There’s the rub. I can’t explain, in technical terms, why I love my wife or my children. The theatrical experience is like that, and film is a part of that experience.

Perhaps the whole cinema essence will fade out and television (in several forms) will tell our stories in the future.

As businessmen, we can choose to be part of it. As showmen, we can fade away too.
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-28-2006, 07:36 AM:
 
Thanks for the update, John. It's good to hear that quality B&W material will continue to be available.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-28-2006, 01:33 PM:
 

quote: Mark Ogden

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You know, Bobby, you’re very loudly, stridently and obscenely bloviating here without having a real understanding of the cameras or in the processes involved.

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quote:

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Wrong. It is not a “limit”, it is a choice. Collateral, like Superman Returns, Miami Vice, Click!, Scary Movie 4 and others, were photographed with cameras that output non-gamma corrected 4:4:4 RGB data. That’s DATA, not video.

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quote: Mark Ogden

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If the image looks “smeary” it is because the decision was made to make it look smeary (on the DaVinci platform, for example, this is done by making changes in recursive noise settings). If the flesh tones look “pasty”, it is because the DP asked for what is known as a secondary correction on the flesh tones only (almost all post color platforms can isolate thousands of different hues down to a single pixel width. I do it all the time).

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quote:

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BUT . . . and here’s the thing, these cameras can also put out bright, colorful, razor sharp images, with beautiful accurate colors and lovely flesh tones if that’s what the filmmakers want. (look at Click!, for instance. How come no-one is pissing and moaning about how that one looks?).

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quote: Mark Ogden

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Whether or not you want to accept my explanation of how things work in professional HD imaging is beside the point. My explanation of depth of field is accurate. It is a function of imager size, lens focal length and aperture setting. It is not a film vs. CCD issue, but one of photographic physics. The superior depth of field of 2/3-inch imagers vs.35mm film is fact, and anyone working on a professional basis with these cameras and lenses knows about it and deals with it. You want to make up your own photographic laws, be my guest, but you’ll be the only one following them. Good luck.

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quote: Mark Ogden

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I professionally engineer SD and HDTV cameras for a living, and also work in post-production color correction. Did you happen to catch Letterman last night? My HD video engineering. See 60 Minutes at all in the last few weeks? My post color work. If you catch The CBS Evening News tonight, that’s my video engineering as well. My experience, knowledge and achievement with this equipment outweigh yours.

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quote: Mark Ogden

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What happens with consumer level cameras doesn’t come into this (for that matter, Bobby, didn’t you once have a member picture of yourself holding a DV camera? ‘Smatter, Kodak Super 8 not cutting it anymore?).

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quote: Steve Guttag

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why do the video originated images look so "2D" for lack of a better word

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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please deliver a convincing argument on how 2000 line video cameras deliver better image quality than a good 35mm film camera package.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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get back to the point and prove that video is better than film

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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It's painfully easy just from looking at the trailer how Miami Vice was shot on video. It still has that pasty, smeary electronic TV look, even with the pretend "film style" pretentious bullcrap applied over the top of it in whatever high dollar method was chosen.

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quote: Mark Ogden

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I’ll tell you a story about Bryant Gumble and this issue by private email, if you want

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quote: Mike Schindler

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In a prior post, you question why HD movies try to look like film. I agree that that's kind of stupid. But for MIAMI VICE, I see no evidence of this. They did what you said they should, which is embrace the look of HD. The results are stunning.

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quote: Mike Schindler

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My point is, and I'm sure I've said this before, film and video are two different media and one is not necessarily better than the other. No one's saying they can't coexist.

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quote: Mike Schindler

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Bobby, you're always taking little jabs at HD by reminding people that it's videotape, and that the cameras were developed for television. Who cares? It can still create a beautiful image.

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quote: Mark Ogden

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The trend in the industry is do run as shallow a depth focus depth as possible and keep the talent in the foreground sharp

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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The teaser and trailer of Miami Vice shows HD footage similar in quality to Collateral and with what appears to be the same post processing to imitate the appearance of film.

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