One thing... Film absolutely crushes the blacks. That's one big difference between digital and film, film deals well with overexposure, you can recover details from the highlights even if they're 5-6 steps overexposed, but underexposed areas, not really. If you try to recover shadows on film, you get this really noisy dark grey area. With digital, it's the other way around, you can easily recover details in the shadows, but if you clip the highlights, it's gone for good. Hence why digital photographers use ETTR (expose to the right, basically expose for the highlights) whereas film photographers know to expose for the shadows. Obviously, talented cinematographers or photographers will usually be able to use the correct settings when shooting and in post to produce similar results with both.
Agreed. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt to presume that he was instinctively talking about the shadow equivalent of Highlight Rolloff, not that unrecoverable Black Crush doesn't happen at all. Film's highlight rolloff curve is rather logrithmic yet I would imagine that there's also a logrithmic curve in the blacks, just one that's much more shallow...and sooner reaches the point of no return than it does in the highlights.
That is the artistic style that Peter Jackson chose for the Hobbit, he could have easily achieved the 35mm look of the film in digital but he chose to experiment and experiments are what one learns from.
It comes down to digital being able to preserve a film (or digital equivalent) in a lossless format. This is from someone who's watched a lot of old films that were slowly disintegrating over time and now you can watch them fully restored with vibrant colours and no scratches/dust
This gets tricky; the ability to scan negatives and present them digitally can misrepresent the intention of the creator. Films shot on film should be preserved...on film. Keep the medium in its medium. Restoration can be done with a scalpel or a hammer.
@@craigrryan86 - No. A copy of a copy of a copy ... of anything analogue, decreases the quality. Multiple copies is what would occur over the decades and centuries. Film is already nearly extinct, and will SURELY be much closer to absolute extinction much sooner than we might believe. Kodak is very nearly history, and Fujifilm, with regard to their film products, is not too far behind. And I don't even know of any other current film products, but maybe Illford? Does Illford still exist? What about Agfa? A digital restoration of film can be done without any major alterations. An example of the worst of what I object to is turning a black and white film into a color film. Can you imagine the first half of the Wizard of Oz also being in COLOR? Not me - How about turning "I Love Lucy" into color? Nope. No way in hell.
To be clear, I'm speaking about the preservation of motion picture film. I think the concepts remain consistent with still photography, but that's a whole other discussion. My point is simply that the preservation of motion picture films should not only preserve the films themselves, but also the intent of the photography. Once a film negative is scanned at a high resolution, there is much more detail and latitude available that would never be seen on a photochemical theatrical release print. This is utilized with modern 4k HDR releases, and while they are technically and visually impressive, it is actually a revisionist form of preservation. For some films, this might be a great thing and reveal detail that improves the experience of the film; but this is not always the case. Filmmakers often relied on the degradation process that occurs with optical printing. Think of shots with stunt doubles, prosthetics, low-budget sets, costumes, makeup, and miniature work. In a lot of cases, the magic of these films is lost with new digital releases because they do not resemble what the print would have looked like, and the illusion of cinema breaks down. All too often I hear complaints of older movies looking terrible on modern TVs, and I agree. Of course films can be preserved digitally while still resembling what the photochemical print looked like, but it seems to me that striking new prints for preservation would be a simpler way to get there. Digital preservation is also much more expensive over the long run; servers and drives need to be replaced and require constant attention. It's simply a lot of data, where as a film print is roughly 6 reels of film for a feature length movie. I think there's an argument for having both, but when limited to one, my vote is for film to be preserved/stored in its original medium.
@@craigrryan86 Sure but just to add a bit more complexity... you mention a film print being 6 reels of film for a feature. That's just... one person's copy. That digital preservation that costs "servers and drives" is dirt cheap these days, and you can immediately send it around the world for more copies digitally on any cloud storage. A 2 TB SSD used to cost $400. Now it costs $100. The cost of digital will continue to decrease as the limits expand. The cost of film will only keep increasing as it becomes more rare.
It’s kind of miraculous that they landed on a format that is technically and emotionally so fantastic, so evocative, so early in the history of all of this
I agree. It couldn’t have been done any other way but it also happened to be the most “natural” format. The medium that many believe is closest to the way our eyes “see” the world.
@@cinefitinc I've actually heard it described as how our minds eye sees the world, the imagination or memory, which I find to be a good way to think about it
I don't think 'landed on' is the right term. It took a lot of work and precision to get the chemical emulsion of film just right to be as crisp as it is.
One thing that's usually glossed over in the debate is that, regardless of whether the movie was shot on digital or film, you're likely watching it digitally, either streaming or even with most cinema projectors. Even the chemical composition of film is eventually digitized at some point in the process.
...and vice versa. It's usually not a debate point because the digital streaming process has little to no impact on how the final product looks in terms of everything that gives film its edge. Yes, compression will cause blocking in the night shots and of course; if smooth motion is enabled on your parent's LED; you're screwed.
Like the person above me stated, yes digital projection is the norm now, but that isn't too relevant to the conversation because the image is all about what is being captured on-set. A camera is the data funneling tool while the lens is the eye in which the information is being funneled into. And what is being captured on film vs digital in real life has huge implications in terms of color information, the highlight/shadow latitude, and the overall texture of the image. Even when a film is scanned digitally, information captured on film will be interpreted differently.
Digital projection doesn't change the way the film captured the light. In my experience high quality film scans definitely look different in both tone and colour.
This is a dumb argument and very inaccurate. Digitizing a piece of analog media doesn’t somehow erase the characteristics of the medium in which it was created. A digital scan of a handwritten letter doesn’t magically turn it into a Microsoft Word document. Same goes for film. A digital scan of a movie shot on film is merely a digital representation of the images that were PHYSICALLY shot on film and it will always retain the characteristics of the original and that’s just inescapable. And what the hell do you mean the chemical composition of the film is digitized? Do you mean color correction? Because color correction and other post production techniques existed before digital you know. Movies you see on the big screen have NEVER been just the raw footage they originally shot. 🙄
The only and unique reason film is digitized has to do with money, not for artistic reasons. It costs much less for distributors to send digital copies and much less pricey for theaters to use digital projectors. If the price of making and projecting films would be competitive, I am sure old-school projections would have not dissepeared.
I think the different with film is that the chemical process adds a certain amount of variance or imperfections that don't happen the same way with digital cameras. I see the same thing happen with traditional vs digital paintings. There's something about the physical painting process that makes the final image uniquely beautiful because of the unexpected ways the paint will behave. It's hard to get digital cameras to do that. Usually, people add in "mistakes" to simulate it, but it's not the same. The other thing is that digital cameras seems to break the illusion of "cinema." Their clarity is awesome. It can make it feel like you're really there, but you sacrfice the hyperreality of film. You can see that it's just a set, just make-up, just people wandering around. That sense of peering through a window into another world is lost to a certain degree. We get this with music as well. Vinyl adds a character to music that isn't present on digital files. I prefer digital music for the clarity, but it's undeniable that there's something about music coming from vinyl that makes it more expressive, engaging, and "real," even though the digital file is a perfect copy of the performance.
I agree regarding film, but disagree about vinyl. The human ear is not able to discern the difference between an analog recording on vinyl and a digital file, as proven in blind testings. But that is not to say that audiophiles do not have a point though; there is often a difference in the music itself. Vinyl records have a limited amount of information that can be stored on them, which means that the producers of these records need to be not only selective, but downright artistic in their mixing. When pushing one element of the music, they have to subtract another. It requires skill, dedication, patience and a true ear for music. Unlike digital mixes, where you push everything to 11 and publish with the click of a button. Sure, it can sound impressive, but there is no delicacy and finesse in the production.
I think it depends on the cinematographer using the particular medium and the situation. Some movies that use digital absolutely look it and can look cheap. But in some situations, as in Deakins and Blade Runner 2049, it looks beautiful because the cinematographer using it has really mastered it AND has access to higher-end equipment (that too is a factor). The same goes with film.
Totally agree that digital can look very different across different DPs. I was recently watching Greig Fraser’s “The Batman” which was shot digitally but was extremely gritty and dark. He used a old set of Cooke Xtal lenses that gave it a very comic-book effect. And, of course, he is very good at lighting. But I’ve also seen other digital movies that just look “cheap” as many have said. I don’t hate digital. It’s just looks different than film. And, as you say, much of its beauty depends upon the DP’s level of care and artistry.
So glad you found it interesting. Please let me know what you found interesting. Maybe some things you didn’t like. Would love your honest feedback. It helps me tremendously as I continue to make content.
@@cinefitinc I’m a big LOTRs fan so the thumbnail that compared Gandalf on film to digital caught my eye, as did the title of your video. It’s definitely made me think about how nostalgia plays a role in whether we look at film or digital as preferable, and you’re right that some scenes are so amazing because they were shot on film and others are amazing because they were shot digitally. I look back at films like Yentl that are so old but still so beautiful. The last scene is truly beautiful with Yentl sailing to America; the camera pans out and the sky is so beautiful. I’m not sure if it would be the same in digital. Would the feeling it arouses be the same? You’ve really got me thinking. Not many things make me really stop and think and ask myself questions about my perception and that of others. I play a lot of video games and whereas I love the nostalgia of pixel art and I always will, I love playing modern games in HDR. Games are stories that are often more amazing than anything Hollywood has to offer. There’s something special about games and even when they’re turned into big budget tv shows and films, there’s still something missing. The heart is often missing. I guess it can be the same with film vs digital. Some things need to be captured in the right format in order for them to be truly appreciated. My comparison to video games is a little off topic but your video really has me thinking about a lot of different things. I like your balanced take of film vs digital and that the conclusion is that perception and nostalgia can be the biggest driving forces in whether we like the way something looks. Years ago a friend watched Sucker Punch on BluRay at my house and she said she didn’t like the way it looked. It was very crisp and to her it made it look fake in a very distracting way. I wonder if she would think that now 10+ years later now that we’ve had more time to adjust to sharp digital images. I’m subscribed now so I’ll be sure to comment on your videos. I don’t have any real feedback for you that could help you improve. I just wanted to say I appreciate your work and the balanced info you presented, including the Tarantino quote.
@@AvoidantNomad , thank you for sharing your feedback. On gaming, I'm a child of the 80s so much of my nostalgia is found in what we had then. Many games had great stories with them then, but it has become even more impactful. I know that gaming has the same nostalgia and love that great films do. There is a real emotional impact in the storytelling aspect of gaming that I have noticed. I think we're at a point that gaming may, in some ways, be more impactful in storytelling than filmmaking. So I definitely hear you. It's not "off topic" at all. I'm glad this made you think. It's one of the reasons I titled the video "the unresolvable comparison". There really is no right or wrong. Or better or worse. It's better to ask the question "what do you think?" instead of telling people what I think. I love film and I love digital, but for very different reasons. If we lived in the days of film, very few of us would have had the opportunity to even tell stories like we do now. That is one reason I absolutely LOVE digital. It gives great storytellers a chance that they may never have had. To Tarantino's credit, he acknowledged that too. Although, I'm certain he will never touch a digital camera in his life. However, he's one of very few filmmakers that is blessed with that option. Thanks again for your comments!
To me, it's not just about the look of film vs digital, it's mostly about the amount of focus and dedication required by the whole crew to shot a movie on film vs digital. When you're dealing with film rolls that are very expensive you can't afford to screw up that much, whilst with digital you have much more room for miatakes as you have potentially infinite storage to shoot scene
“Much more room for mistakes” yeah but to shoot less appealing looking scenes. Just my opinion. I don’t like digital. My eyes feel like I’m not focusing on the screen. As good as the story is, my focus feels off. Film is complete to me.
I feel like there is a gap in your presentation. Which is, a film's method of exhibition. There is a Swiss university study where they shot identical scenes with digital and celluloid. They found that any discernible difference is to be found in projection. There is a slight flicker with mechanical projectors which gives film its quality. On a base technical level, sure, silver halide crystals are different media to digital sensors, but that is immaterial, when there has not been a purely analogue workflow for nearly 20 years now. Productions shot on film still scan negatives for color grading intended for exhibition via DCP. The films you show in this video like 2001 and Raiders of the Lost Ark, were remastered from scans, with pixels stored with a codec and shown on televisions and computer screens. That's digital! Cinephiles (like myself for a while :) often get into pixel-peeping nonsense comparing the media itself, searching for all these fundamental differences, as if one gazes into a microscope for long enough, one can find a film's soul. However, it's false to say a digital video cannot exactly replicate film. Any aspect of film can be replicated with video, if one wants to achieve a film-like look, from the softness, to the colour space, to even the grain. While it was once correct to say video had less dynamic range than celluloid film, this is no longer the case. Kodak 5207 has 13 stops of range, while the Arri 35 has at least 15. The other aspect often missing from evaluating film vs digital isn't the equipment as such, but the workflow. When shooting with celluloid, productions have fewer opportunities to carry out take after take compared with digital. This can affect both acting performance and shot decisions. Shots become more deliberate with film. Funders and studios also generally require Daily Progress Reports to keep track of production footage, and something Tarantino and Nolan aren't saying out loud, is that shooting on film is a way of evading this, since film labs don't deliver dailies like they used to. In 2023, this debate is a dead horse, but is flogged not only by nostalgics, but certain cinematographers creating 'boutique solutions' to set themselves apart from others nipping at their heels. And so, more than anything else celluloid has become a 'prestige' medium for filmmakers to make a statement about their professional standing and artistic independence. Any comparison though, most certainly is not unresolvable. BTW: 24fps came about for economic reasons, as the slowest the film could run past the gate without the image getting choppy.
Wow. Excellent comment! Agree with what you said about projection. I did deliberately leave that out. All of these films which were captured on celluloid were digitally scanned and most assuredly color corrected. I’ll look up the Swiss study to learn more. Still, for me, at home on a 4K TV, on an iPad and on my iMac, which is actually where I spend most of my time looking at these qualities, I can see a difference. But the ARRI Alexa is getting very close. I own one (for rental purposes) and love it! My video is actually shot on the SXT with Cooke lenses. I LOVE the image. And I could never afford to shoot film even if I wanted to. Also, I’ve heard others make the same point about the method of production using celluloid vs digital. Much more precise. Much more care in preparation. More focus from the entire crew and actors when you hear that film rolling. Thanks for your insights. All excellent points.
Very well said! Some fantastic insight. That's more or less my conclusion -- digital is easier to abuse. In the hands of a master whose philosophy is "get it in camera" and plan the scene, I can't see the difference being substantial, stylistic post-production aside.
One of those rare times when I am suprised by the subscriber count. Have taken a week long break from youtube and it is very refreshing to go back and watch a thoughtful, thought proving and calm video instead of the zero-attentionspan hectic garbage that litters youtube these days. My point being: well done sir! Enjoyed the video!
I think the problem is the lack of awareness about what each brings to the table, along with a sort of "making sausage" attitude towards cinematography and editing in digital. Digital is much more affordable and flexible in post. This is why I think colorists have gotten _extremely_ lazy as of late. Either too many garish, oversaturated colors, or they compress it down and flatten it all out so that it's easier to match and they can send it quicker. I also think that cinematographers have leaned too heavily on the role of the colorist to make scenes work, rather than spend the time and energy setting it up so that it looks right in-camera. The technology is great and it can be used well. I just hate that "we'll fix it in post" attitude that has permeated the industry. I do like that movie making is more accessible for studios or independent directors on a budget. That's nice to see. But I also see a lot of bad habits forming. There are a lot of cheap, animorphic lenses hitting the markets these days too. That's also kind of a mess, because they tend to make everything look like Star Trek lens-flare city. But hey, at least they're able to get more experience shooting in animorphic early in their careers. End of the day, I just hope people learn to avoid the caveats of digital. The industry at large is kinda struggling with that.
@@UnifiedaxxS I know. But I told you right up front that the sweet spot is the boring answer and probably right in the middle. But a lot of us don’t like that answer because it is “boring” I suppose. But I don’t find it that way. I think it’s fascinating that it just won’t ever really settle in everyone’s mind.
you just described what I always loved about older movies... the character... the look... digital movies are great! no question!.. but they lack that specific kind of character I grew up with and love so much! ... it just does not look perfect.. and that is exactly what makes it perfect to me.. if that makes any sense :D
Makes perfect sense. I grew up on film. Digital looks different to me. Very sharp. Very clean. Can I still get lost in a digital film. You bet. But I notice the difference.
I would argue, Three Strip Technicolor -- Yes it would make a big difference. Scenes involving fire and bright highlights still do better on film. At the end of the day it's down to the DOP.
As a film maker I think it always comes down to one thing, and that is 'story'. Instead of having the defining answer "one is better than the other" it is more interesting choosing the option that will elivate the story. As you said, film is not as sharp, and have a smoother and warmer shape that gives a magic glow, while digital is sharp, crisp and cool, maybe good at showing reality. :)
Well said! I was very close to concluding this video with that very commentary. None of it matters if you don’t have a great story. Still, I can not at the same time say that the medium you record on is irrelevant because it does, at least to me, convey a ‘feeling’ and the two (film and digital) do not ‘feel’ the same.
Movies aren't just about story. I've always felt it's a really lazy cheap answer when people say words to the effective "script is king". Movies can be amazing without having excellent writing, there's so much else going on it would be ridiculous to write it all off or even just belittle it in favour of a cheap one word answer. I know you're saying that the choice between digital and film should be relevant to what suits the story best, and sure, but it's also important (I would argue more important) to suit the tone and style etc. as opposed to just a story which can fit various styles and frames anyway.
I wonder if there also could be more movies like Everything, Everywhere All at Once, in which there are segments shot on film and segments shot digitally, depending on the feeling they want to evoke for that particular sequence. It is a given that not all movies can do that as easily for not having the multiverse justificative, but still worth trying
When you asked “is this more interesting because it was shot on film?” My answer was yes… When you showed the one with Daniel Craig that was interesting because of the lighting. Great lighting fx can compensate for some of the inherent vibe that film presents. That’s just me though. I like movies shot on film
I think Deakins said it best (I'm paraphrasing here): “I like film. I like digital. I think it's good that both exist. I prefer digital nowadays, though.” That's how I feel about this “war.” And I like his films that he shot digitally. They look gorgeous. I just wish he didn't shoot on spherical lenses all the time. I would love to see a Deakins film shot digitally with anamorphic lenses.
For some reason, I didn't like how new movies feel, and I wasn't sure exactly why until I understood the difference between film and digital. It really makes a difference for me, mostly how I used to see movies when I was younger. I think digital ones are closer to reality and feel like I am watching a documentary rather than a fictional story.
What I recall is that ~24fps was chosen as the slowest framerate that most people perceive as fluid motion. It would have been a compromise between ease of watching and film costs.
Interesting that the first digital example you showed was from Skyfall. I remember seeing that movie in theaters and genuinely not being able to tell that it was shot digitally. I mean, Roger Deakins could shoot a movie with a potato and make it look good but the point is I believe it does matter less nowadays what a movie is shot on. That being said, I grew up with 90's cinema and film just feels right to me for the movie going experience. A Quiet Place was such a breath of fresh air to me after seeing so many sterile looking digital movies. A lot of that is obviously story, acting, locations, lighting, sound design... but being shot on film is just like... "yeah... this is how it should look." I don't know, for me, I just get lost in the experience and that's something truly special about film.
Love that comment George. I think it’s fascinating though that you can pick up on that difference in mediums right away. The truth is that some people just can’t. They couldn’t tell you if it was film or digital. And probably because they don’t really care. Obviously there is much more to the feel of a movie than just the medium it’s shot on. That I think we all understand. But for a few of us, in many ways maybe unexplained, film just feels right.
@@Skrenja I have only seen the movie once in theaters and that was one thought that I had, just assumed it was film because its such an incredible looking movie. What was it that made you realize it was digital right away?
From my eyes, older movies look more real despite the imperfections, though I actually like the grain and pixels here and there. I don't find modern films all that visually pleasing or intimate. They look like video games. And I miss practical effects. I was watching Jean Claude Van Damme's Cyborg a little while ago; you can tell the makers of the film did the best they could with what little they had. It gives a creative and magical vibe.
It's not just about nostalgia. A movie is an illusion and we often adopt practices that best sell that illusion. 24 fps for example is much better for making a fight or chase feel more real and intense because it can make motion feel faster than it actually was in camera. HFR completely wipes the thrill away. We can hide a lot of sleight of hand with motion blur. Cinema is about story and emotion and often the thing that's "superior" on paper in terms of numbers isn't the best way to tell stories that connect with the audience.
I must also add that our records of old film as digital scans are a far cry from the real thing. The average person has the idea that old film was blurry because of the records we have today but it was the degradation over time and digital scans not being too good at the time. 35mm film is actually really sharp and 70mm film really changes the discussion around sharpness. It's every bit as sharp if not sharper than the best digital cameras yet not harsh and has incredible dynamic range. An example of a modern high quality scan of film is The Hateful Eight, and you can see how sharp and detailed that film is. This isn't to say that digital is inferior as it has plenty of advantages but the idea that film or old tech was not sharp is a bit of a misconception.
Completely agree! I’ve never liked anything other than 24fps. That may be the “nostalgia” in me that’s talking but I notice it even when people’s flat-panel tvs are set up with a “smoothing” adjustment. It looks awful. Like the old soap operas of the 80s.
Only one cinema in my city is showing Oppenheimer on film. Luckily they have a [70mm] projector and so that’s how it’s being shown. The image flickers and the imperfections in the film are sometimes visible, but it was glorious, I haven’t had a cinematic experience so natural, believable, and compelling in years. I’m going again and taking some friends this weekend just to share and relive the film experience. The saddest thing to me is that somewhere in my short lifetime we have gone from film is all there is to film as a boutique rarity, all but a handful of cinemas in a handful of places now have the equipment and expertise to even show film. I do love digital but the loss of film as a mainstream medium for presentation feels like a loss for society, and so for that reason I go on as an advocate for film. I think the clamouring to see Oppenheimer on film shows there is a demand in society for an authentic film experience so I hope this movie contributes to preserving the art of making and showing movies using film.
This is really interesting, I'm a young aspiring filmmaker and in love with video editing. I didn't grow up even watching that many movies. I now watch a ton of movies both digital and film. Film always looks so much better to me, I'm not sure what it is but there's just something to it that makes it really satisfying to watch, WAY more than digital.
The hobbit was a nauseating experience compared to the LOTR, and the light and colors were so heavily manipulated it becomes visually exhausting and sterile. The beauty of the fellowship really stands out for sure.
I think film is warmer but at the same time can be a bit grittier, it omits details and smooths it over a bit. Digital (this also depends highly on the type of camera used obviously) is much more matter-of-fact and if your movie is fantasy you're basically shooting yourself in the foot a bit because it totally loses the dreamlike quality that you'd probably want in your movie. For something like blade runner I think both work, because you can both choose to use the dream-like quality or making it a bit more immersive with digital. Indiana Jones is based off old pulp magazine heroes, aka not realistic so you'd probably want to do film in that case. To dumb it down, probably: Film: Gritty or dreamlike Digital: Matter-of-Fact & clean Now that I think about it, Barbie would've 100% benefitted from being shot on film.
24 fps was about cost. It was the fewest frames possible to not notice that it's in fact a sequence of still images, and the rest is history. Film was expensive, and when you're a studio and to it at scale, it adds up.
This is the most poetic and philosophic and artistic video i have seen on RUclips in years. As a content creator, and poet, and as a poetry teacher, i thank you. You have influenced me in my own way to think videos.
Thank you very much for that comment. I am very glad to read that you were positively influenced by my video. I’ve only done a few as you can probably see because I won’t do one unless I feel strongly that what I have to say would be important for others to hear and perhaps be inspired to share their thoughts more. Again, thank you very much for your comment. I really do appreciate that you said that.
Personally, I think I’ve always favored digital because in the back of my mind I know that it’s basically a computer “trying” to approximate what it’s capturing as opposed to the more organic and scientific processing of film. But despite all of that I will never dispute the fact that digital can be beautiful at times. So regarding the point u made about “what if digital existed before science?”, I’d still probably favor film if I knew digital was merely an approximation.
I can’t argue with that point. It’s a good one. While I still see a difference between the first Bladerunner and the BR2049 and attribute a part of it to the medium, I think many could rightfully argue that Deakin’s choice of lens was incredibly more pristine and clean than what Cronenweth used on the original BR. And it was the lens that mostly contributed to the difference in the look between the films. It’s hard to argue that point.
@@cinefitinc "While I still see a difference between the first Bladerunner and the BR2049" lol Those films are literally 35 years apart. One film is WAY older than the other, so of course you can tell the difference. 🤪
I think that clean images, like digital ones with a high frame rate, give you a sense of realism. Gemini Man is an example of this. On the other hand, films with a 'slow' and 'dirty' look give you a sense of fantasy. I also think that shooting digitally in a studio with artificial lighting and even CGI ends up being bad because, in my view, it becomes more evident that it’s a studio. So when I hear Tarantino talking about film being magical, it makes sense to me. I don't think it's just something nostalgic.
Being digital or analog doesn't determine the entire identity of a film; there are other aspects that shape it. Blade Runner is an example of an unrealistic film that was well made with digital filming, but even though it was well done digitally, in my opinion, it would have been better on film.
To me the difference that can never be made up between film and digital is in the faces. When I think of film all the most lasting images are of the faces. I dont know what the technical words for it are but they just look better. They look more dynamic, more real, have better contrast. I think maybe it has to do with the black and white levels you mentioned but I just prefer the look of a good close up on film over digital any day of the week.
Even if you record on film, 95% of the time it will be necessary to undertake a digital conversion before presentation. This in itself can create a multitude of different characteristics depending on how the film is processed during conversion. The only way to appreciate the intrinsic characteristics of a given film is through analogue projection.
@@superstar5123 exactly. I dabble in film photography and the negative conversion process is super subjective in terms of post processing. The end result can be very different depending on who is doing the conversion.
The answer is not as fun as the discussion. Thank you for your research and effort into this. I think you hit a point where it’s difficult to really say. Both mediums have their advantages and disadvantages. I feel it comes down to tone and style. Some stories need a certain medium to fully illustrate them. The search for the next film that uses either is exciting to see what happens. I felt The Batman 2022 used digital in a very unique way and its cinematographer uses it not unlike a painter would use oils vs acrylic or vice versa.
Yes, you’re talking about Greig Fraser. He shot the recent Batman and Dune with Denis Villeneuve. Two professionals that I admire very much. The truth is…I don’t hate digital. I’m just pointing out that it looks different than film to me. Now if you read some of the comments below (and I encourage you to), some argue that the film vs digital argument is over. Digital can look indistinguishable from film, if you decide to process it with that filmic look in mind. There are some strong arguments made that assert such is the case. Look at the Steve Yedlin posts on RUclips about it. But, I’ve got to say, even as I watch this new Indiana Jones film come out, which was shot on an Alexa. It just does NOT look like film. Does it look bad. Not at all! But it doesn’t look like the original three shot on film. Again, I don’t hate digital. It’s just different in my opinion. It looks much cleaner and crisper than something shot on celluloid. Thanks for the comment!!
@@cinefitinc i agree as i notice the difference as easily as i noticed the change from vhs to dvd to blu ray. Film appears to transfer better where digital tends to fall flat if not properly adjusted
I have yet to see The Batman, but it reminds me that beyond this Film vs Digital debacle, this whole thing with the Volume that started with the Mandalorian has a very specific look that you can see on these projects - Not a bad look, necessarily, but I compare an episode of The Mandalorian with a recent Star Wars movie and the pop in the colors really stands out; It is not that "The Volume" feels flat, per se, but, like you said, it has this more painterly look rather than something with actual volume like, say, the metal Iron Man suit in the first film has (to compare with The Mandalorian's own metal armor)
The other thing to look at is presentation mediums. Kodak's 2393 print stock achieves a contrast ratio of 250,000:1. It doesnt matter what 35mm projector thats coming out of, it could be a Simplex assembled from spares or it could be a $300,000 rebuilt DP70, or a Kinoton FP75E (yes there will be image steadiness differences between them, thats a given). Your contrast ratio will be the same, with the right lenses, it will be just as sharp. Not the same for digital. Modern laser projectors (Barco SP4k, Dolby Vision, etc) are only just now approaching that contrast ratio with laser, but that comes with the downside of fringing and speckle. And you need special screens for them. And those projectors cost obscene amounts of money. Don't want to spend that money? Want a "reasonable" $60,000 projector? Yeah enjoy a mind-blowing 2,000:1 contrast ratio. Film is fundamentally the best method of projecting a movie onto a large screen, no matter how you shoot it. The ONLY people who lose when movies are distributed on film are studios, as it costs them more upfront to distribute on film than it does on digital. Who eats that shifted cost? Theater owners. The pandemic didn't kill theaters, digital did.
I definitely like asking more questions to get myself to “dig deeper”. After making this video, I found that there was something even more fundamental of a question than the one I was asking, but I didn’t learn that until after I made the video and read a lot of the comments. The more fundamental question is the difference between analog and digital and which one if any is better? The best part about RUclips really is your comments. What I learn from the community. You know one fascinating fact I learned, at least from all those that commented? It’s that some of us believe that it remains unanswerable. Others do not. They believe the question was resolved a while ago. Isn’t that fascinating. I don’t believe that but many do. Others, which I believe includes you and me, do not believe it’s been resolved and are fascinated by that. There truly is something deeper here about digital technology vs analog. I want to get to the bottom of it. ☝🏻
I agree with you when scenes are shot in film, it gives a warmth to the picture of some sort. Directors could experiment with the medium used to film a movie based on the story the want to tell on a film, for example, futuristic high paced technological toned films like blade runner 2049 or Tron could be shot on digital. Darker more serious mysterious and dramatized toned films like Oppenheimer and Se7en could be shot on film so it could benefit from the warmth that the medium gives to the film Just an opinion of a movies fan
I love movies, and am finally coming into the world of photography and filmmaking. I appreciate this video and your channel so much, thank you for making it.
I say similar things to those who think that phone cameras are replacing DSLR and mirrorless. Even though both are digital, "real" cameras and lenses have genuine optics, with natural focus and characteristics that just cannot be replaced or perfectly replicated by AI or software. "Better" and "Best" is very subjective. In respect to the medium used, we will use what matches our vision. Sometimes film matches my vision, sometimes digital.
I feel Film vs Digital is kind of a non-issue now. Yes the purists are still pushing but it's honestly a bit limiting in some ways. Dehancer can pretty much get filmic right with any digital source so why box yourself in? What do we even mean when we say filmic? Sometimes we mean highlight rolloff. Sometimes we mean lighting. Sometimes we mean sharpness or lack of it. Sometimes we mean gritty and grainy. It's so many things not just nuanced or random RGB in the colors and halation - it's really about the look and feel, which we can manipulate like crazy now.
What a great video! You're so underrated. The 'what if digi was invented before film' reminded me of the early 2000s crappy digital aesthetic that people like. And as you said nostalgia playing a big role. So i agree that's it's not always about what's technically better but more what vibe you like / what serves the story. Cheers!
I see a comparison with the media that painters use, such as oils, watercolours or acrylics. Is one absolutely better than the other? Or is it more the case that different materials serve different aesthetic needs.
I am an experimental filmmaker myself who began on a 3 chip camera in 2005. Now, I shoot on an iPhone 13, and rent a 16mm camera or Super 8 if I want to do a project to achieve the film “look”. I think that people like Tarantino are sort of full of it. He has his opinion, and that is just his subjective opinion, and it does have to do with nostalgia. It really does have to do with people getting stuck in their ways. In the end, digital still takes ones and zeros and creates individual frames out of those ones and zeros. So, if you have the actual tangible film frames that do this, or the camera does the task, for me it does not make any difference. I do prefer to work in digital for many other reasons though like lower cost, not having to store film or worry about it being eroded or damaged, having to worry about getting a shot or lighting right the first time, and lastly, I manipulate my images a lot with effects and overlays in post, and so by the time I am finished, nobody can tell if it was film or digital that I used anyways lol.
To be honest, if I hadn't looked at the 'digital' mark at 8:12, I would've assumed that the Skyfall scene was shot on film and simply scanned to digital. It doesn't feel artifically _clean_ like a lot of digital movies do. Maybe it's the depth and focus? The blur? The lack of visible detail making it more mysterious? I dunno. EDIT: Oh, it's cause Roger Deakins shot it. Guess that explains it.
Film actually has 6 primaries, 3 slow silver halide, 3 fast emulsion, each with a slightly different spectral response. CMOS sensors only have 3, RGB in the bayer, so they physically can't capture the offset hue response. You can get close with emulation, but the information is never fully captured. This is why film texture looks interesting on skin. You're actually looking at 2 different reds at the same time. Also, grain gets imperfectly refracted near color edges and thus bleeds into adjacent borders which is how you can actually get colored grain in the greyscale part of an image. Additionally, the grain blurs the edges so they reduce sharpening. I've written a HSL to CMY conversion for various software which is a pure color model conversion and you get the subtractive process where it burns to color or black(whichever comes first) and I've shot a lot of film and it gets really, really close, but at the microscopic scale it won't be perfect. I've also emulated vinyl audio. As for why film looks warm, it may be due to the older theaters only using D55 bulbs instead of D65 as well, so even how its projected gives the look. Also, how do you feel about bouncing digitally shot to film? its like a hybrid and pretty popular now for saving money.
Fascinating. Where have you learned so much about how film chemistry works? I knew it couldn’t exactly be replicated by digital (although some commenters on this thread insist that it can). But it’s those interesting facts that I’m trying to research about the photochemistry of film.
@@cinefitinc nothing really a secret, just kodak whitepapers and shooting with actual film for many years. love the challenge of emulation. even got a facegroup dedicated to color technology. everything i make is free and public domain.
Wow! Is your CMY conversion available anywhere? If I’ve learned anything as a DIT it’s that so much of the craft lies in the engineering for both film and digital.
I’m a stills photographer and I really started photography again after nearly forty years. My first pick up was a digital manual focus Leica as it was the closest to my memory of that time before that I shot film. Honestly! Digital cameras are amazing, yet they feel and look sterile, and strangely I wanted to edit them with a filmic look or even go bnw. Three years in I’m now using 35mm film and medium format, the look is beautiful and honest. I also use medium format digital that I’ve found to be the closest to film. Digital wins most of the time but film looks like it has heart ❤️ Thank you for posting this and I’m really pleased the RUclips algorithm worked for me on this occasion to see this great content 🤙
Really enjoyed hearing your view on this topic. The biggest gamechanger of digital, I would say, is that it enabled (almost) everyone to shoot something, and therefore make something, be it a movie or a tiktok. That democratization of filmmaking is well worth the price of having less movies shot on film.
THAT is the real benefit of digital and, interestingly, has rarely been brought up among those that have commented on this video. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. Thank goodness for digital or we would all be hoping for a chance to get our hands on an expensive film camera to tell our stories.
From a photographer point of view. There is no replacing film. I’ve tried all the best digital cameras. Don’t care for them. Hasselblad x1dii, Fuji gfx system. Sold them. I landed on an old Nikon d700 for digital and my main film camera is a Pentax 67ii. I don’t care what anyone says you can’t manipulate a digital file to look like film. It’s not the same. I am consistently blown away at the scans I get back from the lab of my film work. I can’t say the same for my digital files. However I do still enjoy shooting digital as well. But the love for film is real!
The main thing I disliked about the Hobbit films is how clean they look. The tone had changed. Film changes the tone, however I'd be very curious what The Revenant would have looked like if it were shot on film. Dune was shot on both Film and Digital and I think that was a really nice sweet spot.
The Hobbit was definitely a different “tone”. It was one of the first large scale digital productions by a director I really love. He had ambitious plans for 3D and higher frame rates and I gave him the benefit of the doubt given the amazing work he had produced on LOTRs. But looking back over 10 years since the Hobbit, it does look very clean and saturated. My wife uses the word “airbrushed”. I like that analogy too. But I did and still do think some shots from those three Hobbit films were done beautifully. And yes, I knew that Dune had a transfer from the Alexa back to film and then rescanned digitally. Very interesting choice by Greig Fraser. As for the Revenant on film, I think it probably would have looked beautiful. And would have been a good fit for the period piece. But I did love the look of that film digitally.
Ok, let's sum up everything - Film is just better for movies. That's it. You can make digital also very good looking, but for a movie film will always be a little bit better. It's just harder and pricier to shoot on film. And by the way - do you want to know why dinosaurs in older Jurassic Park really look so good even till this day ? Why are they so organic ? Cause movie was shot on film. Digital dinosaurs combined with filmic look. That's why it looks so great till this day.
I think it comes down to choice of what camera would be best suited for the type of movie and the type of environment, because digital is the new shiny thing doesn't mean its the right choice for project.
The only thing that's objectively better about film is its ability to be upscaled to greater dimensions without losing shaprness while digital images have a fixed resolution and cannot be reliably upscaled (although the possibilities with AI are really thrilling). But there are also things that make digital images objectively better: they can't get rotten, they can use CGI much more straightforwardly and they can be distributed to the public in home media formats. Also, to create new digital masters of movies shot on film that use little to no CGI, the process typically only requires a good scan at a higher resolution and some little color tweaking, while digital films can be a pain in the ass to remaster, as they usually apply a lot of digital renders, so upscaling can ruin the credibility of the VFX. I think that, if your process is going to use a lot of practical effects or little visual effects at all, it's best to keep it on film and make many well-stored copies of the recordings and the final cut to prevent film rot (but it's always more pricy), otherwise, digital is better if you shoot at 8k or 4k, especially because the film look can be sort of faked via VFX (I know many filmmakers don't like it, but there it is). But, you know, nothing is perfect, and screens always get larger, so even that pixel count could not be enough in the future, so maybe it's better to keep it on film and sacrifice convenience when working with CGI. Like you said, it's an unresolvable dilemma that involves budget and art purposes.
For newer films, I often find it difficult to tell if it's shot on digital or film. In my opinion, that's the best case scenario. Just like the best visual effects are the ones you don't notice, the best cinema technology is the one you don't notice.
here’s the simple answer: we, as human beings, are driven towards is more natural for us. In this case photochemical reactions in the development of film is possible through solutions and elements (which can be found in nature). We must understand that we will always look forward something similar to us (nature) since we belongs to it. Technology can help us with its fantastic tools, but marketing takes us to chase always the last brand new technologies, instead we should focus more on the craft and arts itself sometimes. Great video, this topic is based on an anthropological behavior by ourselves
I like both as well. It’s funny to me though how we all love movies that look like they’re 720p or under. And vhs tape movies were amazing too. This 4K 8k stuff is pretty ridiculous in terms of necessity. It’s just not needed for a good film. Also, 24fps great, but I’m not bothered if it’s up to 30fps. 60 and above, with higher resolution is awful. It feels like you’re looking into a window or watching a play, it’s so real it breaks the fourth wall.
I mean Christopher Nolan loves film like IMAX because it's the highest picture quality out there and he's mostly right. There is some merit to film format but that's because it still outpaces digital on clarity wise at least with IMAX. Film however does not do HDR as well as digital can do.
Many filmographers constantly mourn for film and that look that they don't have on digital cameras... On the other hand, the average viewer first notices - why isn't this sharp? In most cases, the most important thing is the story, not the photo and the beauty of the video, which are just a bonus.
I read somewhere, that the reason that films were 24fps was because after moving away from silent movies in 16fps, 24fps was the best for sound comprehension while using the least possible film. I assume because it was to keep the costs of printing film down. Your video was a great thought-proving watch!
The Hobbit always looked weird. It was like watching TV on the big screen. Now you get films like Top Gun Maverick and I couldn’t tell if it was digital or film.
I have. Fascinating. I don’t know how he did it. In any other context, I can see the difference between film and digital. It’s very apparent. But in his shots, I can’t distinguish the two. He makes a very compelling argument-namely, that people shooting digital aren’t trying to reproduce a film-like image. But it can be done. Digital apparently has the “chops” to mimic film.
I remember an interesting reddit discussion (which unfortunately i doubt i could find again) in which, it was explained that digital looks more like how you see the world with your eyes and film like how you view your dreams and memories, which actually makes film more evocative despite not being as realistic.
The finite nature of digits is akin to the finite nature of chemicals. Both 1s and 0s, and film, serve as mediums through which we interpret the world. Each medium has its own advantages and disadvantages, making aesthetics the deciding factor. After all, it is a visual medium, and everyone is after the ‘film look.’ With some film emulators, this can be achieved while still shooting digitally.
OMG Thank you so much for these words , I was searching exactly for this and I thought this thoughts only in my mind do more videos , this platform needs people like you
I've seen biased videos and discussions on Film vs Digital. This feels like a true observation like looking at the pros and cons of digital vs Film debate. I love it and keep up the great work
Very interesting. I grew up in a village in Alaska. We did not have a movie theatre. So I grew up watching VHS tapes. 30 + years later I’ve collected some of my favorite movies on VHS. It out weighs my desire to see a movie on film in a theatre. Nostalgia is strong.
Super surprised by the subscriber count! One thing I’d recommend, since you already have the “chapters” of the video layer out I would love them to show up on the timeline.
It's a great question 'what if digital came first'. If digital was indeed first I'm not sure the actual advent of cinema or movies would have even happened. The whole reason for film was to showcase the technology of high resolution imaging. This is where our performers and artists come into play. With digital technology those artists of film are obsolete. This is why digital will never replace FILM as a visual narrative. Digital is true to life and it's how we view the world through near unlimited content. Film is inherently a delicate art form requiring great care.
I have been thinking about this a lot. You have filled in a few gaps in my understanding of the conflict. Recently, I watch an old classic, A Christmas Story, with a couple of young people who had never seen it. As soon as the movie began I had a sinking feeling. I could tell that something I cherished about the film was gone. Soon the two young people lost interest and left the room. I realized that the movie had been digitized. I could not finish the movie. My goal is to be a film maker, but this issue, film or digital, is deeply concerning to me. Thanks so much for your post.
7:00 yeah fellowship of the ring looks weird to me too, I think the outdoor scenes had some sort of blur that got rid of the sharpness at some point. Probably an editing decision, nothing to do with the film medium itself at all
Until I see an actual comparison of two identical shots with the same lighting conditions I am not convinced. Feels like arguing "24 fps is objectively better" even though we only think that because we're USED to it, and only reason that trend started was to cut costs.
Things are changing over time. If you have a look at the originals of movies that were shot between 1945 and 1955 they are really different to the ones that were shot in the around 1980. The film stock changed and got sharper, the grain got smaller, the colors got better and better. The invention of sound in movies or Color film. Times are changing. So what? It our nostalgic feeling that makes us think, timeswere better when we were younger and that’s the case for every generation.
I fear you may be correct. Nostalgia is a powerful powerful force. All of this may be a play on our bias that “the way things used to be” are better than the way things are today.
This argument HAS to be the same as the issue audiophiles have with compressed audio. I genuinely can't tell any difference in 'crappy mp3s' and lossless. BUT I had a strong internal reaction to the comparison in this video of the LOTR to Hobbit. I guess I'm a film guy, and for us, there's no comparison.
Im born in the late 90's and have always wondered why these days films just look so different, its only been a few years ago that I understand that the magic to me lies more in film. To me whenever something is shot on film its like you are looking at something from a different realm then what you could do on your own with a camera, especially these days with everybody having a great camera inside their pockets. It feels like something tangable in a world thats become so digitalized.
I honestly like both formats for different reasons. But I still lean towards film 'cause while digital has its advantages, I feel like a ton of filmmakers and producers abuse the latter as a "cheaper" alternative. Marvel is notorious for this because ever since The Avengers, they've gone full digital and it's been for the worse. I watched the Phase One films a while ago and they looked better because they were shot on 35mm (Cap 1 was technically the first digital venture for the MCU, but some scenes were filmed on 35mm). The only times I can remember a digitally shot MCU movie looking great were the first Ant-Man movie, GOTG 2 & 3 Multiverse of Madness and to some extent, the Russo Brothers MCU movies.
I was wondering why movies look better now but actually don’t look better and I think it might have to do with what you’re saying. I would like to see more movies shot on film. For me I see movies now not having that cinematic feel that they used to.
I can't even begin to have a preference because I can't even tell the difference for the most part. My untrained eye has seen plenty of movies, both film and digital, but it's never been something that stands out to me. I can't watch a movie and tell if it was film or digital and, while I wish I could sometimes so I could better appreciate the technical aspect, I'm also glad it's not something that stands out to me or distracts me. Even watching the clips the only time I noticed was when comparing the faces in the LOTR and Hobbit shots.
The sharpness of digital gives me a cleaness experience to a movie. With that said of the best movies ive seen were able to feel real, a grunge experience to them. Almost like you can smell and feel whats happening in the movie have been shot on film. So as the changing of the guard happens it will be interesting how film makes achieve this in the digital era.
I like your analysis. And I think the reason film will always be visually superior to digital is due to the reason you mentioned at the beginning: the nature of how it absorbs light and color. People call digital "clean" because of its sharpness, but in reality film is much cleaner. Film portrays the world exactly as it is; the colors are purer, the roll off between light and shadow is smoother, and the texture is more natural. If we were to shoot a movie on digital then add a grainy texture in post, it would not come close to film simply because the difference is not only in texture and resolution, but also the purity of the colors and light.
One way to look at this is the industry had 70 years to perfect their craft for Film. You saw large leaps even from the 80's to 90's. Digital Filmaking has only really hit its stride in the last 12-13 years or so. And we've come a LONG way already. I HATED digital filmmaking. Then Fincher changed my mind about it. The best I've seen to date is "The Batman". Because now they are finding ways to add character to the image, but they still retained all the benefits of digital. We're going to see more of this.
Love your thoughts on this subject and love your slow considered delivery, such a pleasant change from the crash bang high speed delivery of most RUclips screamers. And you didn’t open with the tiresome “Whats up guys”. Please don’t change.
I had the good fortunate of forming a friendship with one of Terrence Malick's former collaborators, and among the books he recommended I read was "The Virtual Life of Film" by D.N. Rodowick. It can get pretty philosophic, but I think part of what we're dealing with when comparing digital to film is philosophic.
You may very well be right. Differences in philosophy are rarely settled. But I believe there has to be some set of facts on both sides that are indisputable, not just well-versed opinions.
You lost me at 7:01. There were some movies in the last few years that could have been shot with film and were beautiful/looked real (I wasn't sure when watching them) like Paterson, Nomadland and The Banshees of Inisherin but The Hobbit is definitely not the case (it looks more like a Ps2 cinematic than film footage). I don't think that Andrew Lesnie and his crew were to blame, a lot of this is due to the choices of Peter: The color grading, 48fps, gopro footage, lens choices, etc.
Do you mean the Ponniyin Selvan movie? I’ve actually never seen that film. But just watched the trailer. It does look very similar to how the Hobbit looks. Someone had used the term “airbrushed” to describe the Hobbit’s look over LOTRs. I thought that was a good analogy. I personally thought the Hobbit was, in many ways, beautifully shot. But it did not look like film. It looked like something else. Saturated with color. Airbrushed. Other worldly for sure. But I still like it. Others, I know, have a visceral reaction to it. They hate it. I just think the digital look, especially those films that were produced early in the digital capture days embraced the look of the new medium and attempted to push it forward. Another one was Hugo by Scorsese. That was the ARRI Alexa. I need to watch Nomadland and The Banshees. Also, someone else suggested Glass Onion. The cinematographer has been spending much of his career working on coming as close to film as the Alexa can bring you. his name is Yedlin and he’s done a lot of technical research on the topic. His view is that digital can be made to look almost identical to film. It’s just that very few in post-production have tried to do it.
The thing about BR2049 is that Deakins does not grade it alot. He shoots it very much like film. One LUT already made for the look of the film. Most of the color is done in camera with lighting. Interesting approach which I think puta emphasis on creating stunning images on set, not in post, where I think many modern movies fall flat - both figuratively and literally.
Aa a professional artist I LOVE the questions you have brought up. at @8:29 is it the camera? My initial thoughts on the visual would include several components. i.e. the staging of the figure, the back lighting to emphasize the silhouette, the movement of the camera, and of course the quality of the picture as a result of these elements in play. Most high level directors/ of cinematography have a wonderful eye for composition and to me it becomes so closely related to painting or illustrating a picture. I also believe that any creative utilizing a tool to tell a story makes sure that the elements involved enrich and push the narrative forward. With the Revenant example, the clarity of the actions happening through the digital camera make for a viscerally horrific moment; however, my eye is prone to noticing the falsities in the graphics and generated images i.e. the bear. Perhaps, with film the granular quality would lift the realism and ground the bear more comfortably in the shot making it appear more real. This is something I've experienced with LOTR, watching it from Film to Digital. To me the original presentation reads so much better because of the film and when cross referenced with the digital version most of the practical elements look cheesy and even stand out as false: costumes, make-up (especially). In fact, the jump to blue ray and digital had me thinking it was a televised show with its clarity and oddly over rendered visuals on some of the orcs and urukai. I LOVE LOTR by the way.... XD
I feel like modern camera's can emulate film very very well. The Alexa 35 has such soft roll off and amazing dynamic range, with a good grade and some grain added I think you would be hard pressed to truly be able to tell the difference.
Film has that movement, but it also invites the brain and eyes' tendency to fill in the blanks in the visual information we are receiving from the real world. There is a sense of unrealism: surrealism, fantasy, and being in a dream. And like in a dream, there are elements we forget and want to re-experience. The idea of re-living some of our dreams is exciting to say the least. We have this same phenomena happening when we watch film. Unlike a digital image that is perfectly crisp, we have shifting grains that present a small amount of information loss for a fraction of a second. I think it is this phenomenon that triggers the brain's desire to go back and watch again to capture the rest of the information needed to preserve a single frame, except that is impossible because of the inherent film grain. This seems to be part of why we come back. Not only the warmth and texture, but the psychological mechanisms that engage when we view it.
Something that dawned on me a while ago is when you watch a Movie on VHS that was initially shot on Film - the image never Rests or Sits Still, it's constantly moving around in the scene. It's especially visible when looking at Title Screens - you see the Lettering moving around ever so slightly. Every time I see a Classic Film on Netflix, it always seems like something is missing? It's that subtle movement of the Film passing through the Camera.....
I know what you are talking about. It was even like that on DVD. The image had a certain movement to it. I forget what it is called. You could definitely notice it in 35mm theatres. But today, classic movies are stabilized. I think to conserve data. I remember reading an article on the transfers of Ben Hur that addressed this specific topic. It even demonstrated one of the credits with two motion images. One of them shown the image doing the very thing you're talking about, and the other image with virtually no motion. I remember them saying that it had something to do with data. So nowadays, you see a movie of any age through streaming and it is a recent transfer, you're likely going to get the "still" image.
@@mosesjones5376 Exactly! And yes, DVDs kept that Movement of the Film - which is why DVD is my Favorite Format! Plus, you can still see the Film Grain, just a much cleaner Picture vs VHS is all. That Stabilization you're talking about has happened to just about Every Movie on Streaming these days. Took me a while to figure out what I didn't like about HD movies and That was it!!
Does shooting with film force other decisions, like those related to special effects? Deciding film vs digital may have a cascade of other decisions resulting from them that creates a different feel or look of the overall movie.
What complicated things is everything else that the mediums involve. The decision is not just based on how the final image looks or feels. I think though that if film and digital cameras functioned exactly the same, with everything else being equal, most would choose the camera that produced the film look.
In the examples you gave, of whether certain scenes are more/less impactful because they were shot on film, or digital, I genuinely do feel that film does add to it. Raiders of the Lost Ark, that whole sequence undeniably has great framing and blocking, but I do genuinely believe that it would be less impactful with the ultra crisp clarity of digital. Same with The Revenant, it’s almost distracting how sharp the movie is at times because it’s shot digitally. It sometimes doesn’t look like a period piece, but modern actors playing dress up in 2015 running around in the woods. Something about the texture, softness of light and film grain movement, I believe, would have helped immerse me more in the time period of The Revenant if it was shot on film.
I love this comment. And I agree wholeheartedly. There would be something missing if those scenes in Raiders were shot digitally. Have you seen the most recent Jones movie. All shot digitally on an Alexa. I’d be curious to know what you thought of the “look”. They mimicked a lot of the old Doug Slocombe camera movements and lighting, but the ultimate medium is different. Thoughts?
Great discussion. I love almost all of these films and they all have their own spot for all of us, because the film 70mm films do seem to have a different "pace" not sure if that is real or not
I am fully aware that it is an endless debate, but at least for me and my generations, we are brought up on celluloid whether photography or cinematography where we loved the feel of film, its wide dynamic range, its organic natural material, so it will be logic to love films over digital. The factor killing the debate in my opinion, is sharpness and clarity, why should we need surgical sharpness ? If we understand this point so film wins
It all depends on the needs of the story being told, not only with digital vs film but size of stock (if you are shooting film), resolution of camera (if shooting digital) or even if you are shooting analog video. I look at it all as different colors in a palette. Digital just adds more to choose from. None are inherently "better" than another but each may be ideal for a specific use case. There are those who think the higher the resolution and the sharper the image the better a movie is but that might not serve some stories. Lower resolution images with more grain and a lower frame rate might create the particular dream state you are after while something super sharp and "perfect" might take you out of it. It's best to not limit yourself to what you've decided is "best" but let the story you are telling guide you in your choice. As for whether you can replicate the appearance of film with digital, it all depends on how many pixels and ones and zeros you use. It's certainly possible. And the notion that film doesn't have limits is not necessarily accurate. The resolution is limited to the composition of the coating and the tonal range dependent on the chemistry. As long as there are those who like what film gives you right out of the can without extra effort (such as the filters available to alter digital) there will continue to be people who wish to use it. None is good or bad. It's more what is appropriate to the situation and desired end result.
An interesting question would be, would your view change if you didn't know what medium in which a movie was shot. The Creator (digital). Man of Steel (film). Arrival (digital). The Martian (digital). The Batman (digital) And does it make bad movies better?
One thing... Film absolutely crushes the blacks. That's one big difference between digital and film, film deals well with overexposure, you can recover details from the highlights even if they're 5-6 steps overexposed, but underexposed areas, not really. If you try to recover shadows on film, you get this really noisy dark grey area. With digital, it's the other way around, you can easily recover details in the shadows, but if you clip the highlights, it's gone for good. Hence why digital photographers use ETTR (expose to the right, basically expose for the highlights) whereas film photographers know to expose for the shadows.
Obviously, talented cinematographers or photographers will usually be able to use the correct settings when shooting and in post to produce similar results with both.
Agreed. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt to presume that he was instinctively talking about the shadow equivalent of Highlight Rolloff, not that unrecoverable Black Crush doesn't happen at all.
Film's highlight rolloff curve is rather logrithmic yet I would imagine that there's also a logrithmic curve in the blacks, just one that's much more shallow...and sooner reaches the point of no return than it does in the highlights.
I think the reason gandalf looks different is because of age but also there is a weird cloudy effect that plagues the hobbit trilogy
That is the artistic style that Peter Jackson chose for the Hobbit, he could have easily achieved the 35mm look of the film in digital but he chose to experiment and experiments are what one learns from.
It comes down to digital being able to preserve a film (or digital equivalent) in a lossless format. This is from someone who's watched a lot of old films that were slowly disintegrating over time and now you can watch them fully restored with vibrant colours and no scratches/dust
Agreed. That is an invaluable benefit of digital.
This gets tricky; the ability to scan negatives and present them digitally can misrepresent the intention of the creator. Films shot on film should be preserved...on film. Keep the medium in its medium. Restoration can be done with a scalpel or a hammer.
@@craigrryan86 - No. A copy of a copy of a copy ... of anything analogue, decreases the quality. Multiple copies is what would occur over the decades and centuries.
Film is already nearly extinct, and will SURELY be much closer to absolute extinction much sooner than we might believe. Kodak is very nearly history, and Fujifilm, with regard to their film products, is not too far behind. And I don't even know of any other current film products, but maybe Illford? Does Illford still exist? What about Agfa?
A digital restoration of film can be done without any major alterations.
An example of the worst of what I object to is turning a black and white film into a color film. Can you imagine the first half of the Wizard of Oz also being in COLOR? Not me -
How about turning "I Love Lucy" into color? Nope. No way in hell.
To be clear, I'm speaking about the preservation of motion picture film. I think the concepts remain consistent with still photography, but that's a whole other discussion. My point is simply that the preservation of motion picture films should not only preserve the films themselves, but also the intent of the photography. Once a film negative is scanned at a high resolution, there is much more detail and latitude available that would never be seen on a photochemical theatrical release print. This is utilized with modern 4k HDR releases, and while they are technically and visually impressive, it is actually a revisionist form of preservation. For some films, this might be a great thing and reveal detail that improves the experience of the film; but this is not always the case. Filmmakers often relied on the degradation process that occurs with optical printing. Think of shots with stunt doubles, prosthetics, low-budget sets, costumes, makeup, and miniature work. In a lot of cases, the magic of these films is lost with new digital releases because they do not resemble what the print would have looked like, and the illusion of cinema breaks down. All too often I hear complaints of older movies looking terrible on modern TVs, and I agree.
Of course films can be preserved digitally while still resembling what the photochemical print looked like, but it seems to me that striking new prints for preservation would be a simpler way to get there. Digital preservation is also much more expensive over the long run; servers and drives need to be replaced and require constant attention. It's simply a lot of data, where as a film print is roughly 6 reels of film for a feature length movie. I think there's an argument for having both, but when limited to one, my vote is for film to be preserved/stored in its original medium.
@@craigrryan86 Sure but just to add a bit more complexity... you mention a film print being 6 reels of film for a feature. That's just... one person's copy. That digital preservation that costs "servers and drives" is dirt cheap these days, and you can immediately send it around the world for more copies digitally on any cloud storage.
A 2 TB SSD used to cost $400. Now it costs $100. The cost of digital will continue to decrease as the limits expand. The cost of film will only keep increasing as it becomes more rare.
It’s kind of miraculous that they landed on a format that is technically and emotionally so fantastic, so evocative, so early in the history of all of this
I agree. It couldn’t have been done any other way but it also happened to be the most “natural” format. The medium that many believe is closest to the way our eyes “see” the world.
@@cinefitinc I've actually heard it described as how our minds eye sees the world, the imagination or memory, which I find to be a good way to think about it
@@silas1414 I like that. That’s a better description.
It wasn't an accident. People were actually more intelligent back then, we just stand on their shoulders.
I don't think 'landed on' is the right term. It took a lot of work and precision to get the chemical emulsion of film just right to be as crisp as it is.
One thing that's usually glossed over in the debate is that, regardless of whether the movie was shot on digital or film, you're likely watching it digitally, either streaming or even with most cinema projectors. Even the chemical composition of film is eventually digitized at some point in the process.
...and vice versa. It's usually not a debate point because the digital streaming process has little to no impact on how the final product looks in terms of everything that gives film its edge. Yes, compression will cause blocking in the night shots and of course; if smooth motion is enabled on your parent's LED; you're screwed.
Like the person above me stated, yes digital projection is the norm now, but that isn't too relevant to the conversation because the image is all about what is being captured on-set. A camera is the data funneling tool while the lens is the eye in which the information is being funneled into. And what is being captured on film vs digital in real life has huge implications in terms of color information, the highlight/shadow latitude, and the overall texture of the image. Even when a film is scanned digitally, information captured on film will be interpreted differently.
Digital projection doesn't change the way the film captured the light. In my experience high quality film scans definitely look different in both tone and colour.
This is a dumb argument and very inaccurate. Digitizing a piece of analog media doesn’t somehow erase the characteristics of the medium in which it was created. A digital scan of a handwritten letter doesn’t magically turn it into a Microsoft Word document. Same goes for film. A digital scan of a movie shot on film is merely a digital representation of the images that were PHYSICALLY shot on film and it will always retain the characteristics of the original and that’s just inescapable. And what the hell do you mean the chemical composition of the film is digitized? Do you mean color correction? Because color correction and other post production techniques existed before digital you know. Movies you see on the big screen have NEVER been just the raw footage they originally shot. 🙄
The only and unique reason film is digitized has to do with money, not for artistic reasons. It costs much less for distributors to send digital copies and much less pricey for theaters to use digital projectors. If the price of making and projecting films would be competitive, I am sure old-school projections would have not dissepeared.
I think the different with film is that the chemical process adds a certain amount of variance or imperfections that don't happen the same way with digital cameras. I see the same thing happen with traditional vs digital paintings. There's something about the physical painting process that makes the final image uniquely beautiful because of the unexpected ways the paint will behave. It's hard to get digital cameras to do that. Usually, people add in "mistakes" to simulate it, but it's not the same. The other thing is that digital cameras seems to break the illusion of "cinema." Their clarity is awesome. It can make it feel like you're really there, but you sacrfice the hyperreality of film. You can see that it's just a set, just make-up, just people wandering around. That sense of peering through a window into another world is lost to a certain degree.
We get this with music as well. Vinyl adds a character to music that isn't present on digital files. I prefer digital music for the clarity, but it's undeniable that there's something about music coming from vinyl that makes it more expressive, engaging, and "real," even though the digital file is a perfect copy of the performance.
I agree regarding film, but disagree about vinyl. The human ear is not able to discern the difference between an analog recording on vinyl and a digital file, as proven in blind testings. But that is not to say that audiophiles do not have a point though; there is often a difference in the music itself.
Vinyl records have a limited amount of information that can be stored on them, which means that the producers of these records need to be not only selective, but downright artistic in their mixing. When pushing one element of the music, they have to subtract another. It requires skill, dedication, patience and a true ear for music. Unlike digital mixes, where you push everything to 11 and publish with the click of a button. Sure, it can sound impressive, but there is no delicacy and finesse in the production.
I think it depends on the cinematographer using the particular medium and the situation. Some movies that use digital absolutely look it and can look cheap. But in some situations, as in Deakins and Blade Runner 2049, it looks beautiful because the cinematographer using it has really mastered it AND has access to higher-end equipment (that too is a factor). The same goes with film.
Totally agree that digital can look very different across different DPs. I was recently watching Greig Fraser’s “The Batman” which was shot digitally but was extremely gritty and dark. He used a old set of Cooke Xtal lenses that gave it a very comic-book effect. And, of course, he is very good at lighting. But I’ve also seen other digital movies that just look “cheap” as many have said. I don’t hate digital. It’s just looks different than film. And, as you say, much of its beauty depends upon the DP’s level of care and artistry.
This isn’t a topic I was researching; the video was recommended by the algorithm, but surprisingly, I found it really interesting
So glad you found it interesting. Please let me know what you found interesting. Maybe some things you didn’t like. Would love your honest feedback. It helps me tremendously as I continue to make content.
@@cinefitinc I’m a big LOTRs fan so the thumbnail that compared Gandalf on film to digital caught my eye, as did the title of your video. It’s definitely made me think about how nostalgia plays a role in whether we look at film or digital as preferable, and you’re right that some scenes are so amazing because they were shot on film and others are amazing because they were shot digitally. I look back at films like Yentl that are so old but still so beautiful. The last scene is truly beautiful with Yentl sailing to America; the camera pans out and the sky is so beautiful. I’m not sure if it would be the same in digital. Would the feeling it arouses be the same? You’ve really got me thinking. Not many things make me really stop and think and ask myself questions about my perception and that of others. I play a lot of video games and whereas I love the nostalgia of pixel art and I always will, I love playing modern games in HDR. Games are stories that are often more amazing than anything Hollywood has to offer. There’s something special about games and even when they’re turned into big budget tv shows and films, there’s still something missing. The heart is often missing. I guess it can be the same with film vs digital. Some things need to be captured in the right format in order for them to be truly appreciated. My comparison to video games is a little off topic but your video really has me thinking about a lot of different things. I like your balanced take of film vs digital and that the conclusion is that perception and nostalgia can be the biggest driving forces in whether we like the way something looks. Years ago a friend watched Sucker Punch on BluRay at my house and she said she didn’t like the way it looked. It was very crisp and to her it made it look fake in a very distracting way. I wonder if she would think that now 10+ years later now that we’ve had more time to adjust to sharp digital images. I’m subscribed now so I’ll be sure to comment on your videos. I don’t have any real feedback for you that could help you improve. I just wanted to say I appreciate your work and the balanced info you presented, including the Tarantino quote.
@@AvoidantNomad , thank you for sharing your feedback. On gaming, I'm a child of the 80s so much of my nostalgia is found in what we had then. Many games had great stories with them then, but it has become even more impactful. I know that gaming has the same nostalgia and love that great films do. There is a real emotional impact in the storytelling aspect of gaming that I have noticed. I think we're at a point that gaming may, in some ways, be more impactful in storytelling than filmmaking. So I definitely hear you. It's not "off topic" at all. I'm glad this made you think. It's one of the reasons I titled the video "the unresolvable comparison". There really is no right or wrong. Or better or worse. It's better to ask the question "what do you think?" instead of telling people what I think. I love film and I love digital, but for very different reasons. If we lived in the days of film, very few of us would have had the opportunity to even tell stories like we do now. That is one reason I absolutely LOVE digital. It gives great storytellers a chance that they may never have had. To Tarantino's credit, he acknowledged that too. Although, I'm certain he will never touch a digital camera in his life. However, he's one of very few filmmakers that is blessed with that option. Thanks again for your comments!
To me, it's not just about the look of film vs digital, it's mostly about the amount of focus and dedication required by the whole crew to shot a movie on film vs digital. When you're dealing with film rolls that are very expensive you can't afford to screw up that much, whilst with digital you have much more room for miatakes as you have potentially infinite storage to shoot scene
“Much more room for mistakes” yeah but to shoot less appealing looking scenes. Just my opinion. I don’t like digital. My eyes feel like I’m not focusing on the screen. As good as the story is, my focus feels off. Film is complete to me.
The two last films that I worked on were both shot on 35mm Panavision. My friend Sean, just did a feature that was shot on Super 16 and looks amazing!
I feel like there is a gap in your presentation. Which is, a film's method of exhibition. There is a Swiss university study where they shot identical scenes with digital and celluloid. They found that any discernible difference is to be found in projection. There is a slight flicker with mechanical projectors which gives film its quality.
On a base technical level, sure, silver halide crystals are different media to digital sensors, but that is immaterial, when there has not been a purely analogue workflow for nearly 20 years now. Productions shot on film still scan negatives for color grading intended for exhibition via DCP. The films you show in this video like 2001 and Raiders of the Lost Ark, were remastered from scans, with pixels stored with a codec and shown on televisions and computer screens. That's digital!
Cinephiles (like myself for a while :) often get into pixel-peeping nonsense comparing the media itself, searching for all these fundamental differences, as if one gazes into a microscope for long enough, one can find a film's soul. However, it's false to say a digital video cannot exactly replicate film. Any aspect of film can be replicated with video, if one wants to achieve a film-like look, from the softness, to the colour space, to even the grain. While it was once correct to say video had less dynamic range than celluloid film, this is no longer the case. Kodak 5207 has 13 stops of range, while the Arri 35 has at least 15.
The other aspect often missing from evaluating film vs digital isn't the equipment as such, but the workflow. When shooting with celluloid, productions have fewer opportunities to carry out take after take compared with digital. This can affect both acting performance and shot decisions. Shots become more deliberate with film. Funders and studios also generally require Daily Progress Reports to keep track of production footage, and something Tarantino and Nolan aren't saying out loud, is that shooting on film is a way of evading this, since film labs don't deliver dailies like they used to.
In 2023, this debate is a dead horse, but is flogged not only by nostalgics, but certain cinematographers creating 'boutique solutions' to set themselves apart from others nipping at their heels. And so, more than anything else celluloid has become a 'prestige' medium for filmmakers to make a statement about their professional standing and artistic independence. Any comparison though, most certainly is not unresolvable.
BTW: 24fps came about for economic reasons, as the slowest the film could run past the gate without the image getting choppy.
Wow. Excellent comment! Agree with what you said about projection. I did deliberately leave that out. All of these films which were captured on celluloid were digitally scanned and most assuredly color corrected. I’ll look up the Swiss study to learn more. Still, for me, at home on a 4K TV, on an iPad and on my iMac, which is actually where I spend most of my time looking at these qualities, I can see a difference. But the ARRI Alexa is getting very close. I own one (for rental purposes) and love it! My video is actually shot on the SXT with Cooke lenses. I LOVE the image. And I could never afford to shoot film even if I wanted to.
Also, I’ve heard others make the same point about the method of production using celluloid vs digital. Much more precise. Much more care in preparation. More focus from the entire crew and actors when you hear that film rolling.
Thanks for your insights. All excellent points.
Very well said! Some fantastic insight. That's more or less my conclusion -- digital is easier to abuse. In the hands of a master whose philosophy is "get it in camera" and plan the scene, I can't see the difference being substantial, stylistic post-production aside.
One of those rare times when I am suprised by the subscriber count.
Have taken a week long break from youtube and it is very refreshing to go back and watch a thoughtful, thought proving and calm video instead of the zero-attentionspan hectic garbage that litters youtube these days.
My point being: well done sir! Enjoyed the video!
Could not agree more, honestly.
I agree about the calmness, nothing else.
I just think digital cameras, audio etc it’s all so slick and perfect. I feel without a bit of roughness it loses vitality.
Both mediums bring out different feelings. Let's normalise the fact that one medium isn't necessarily better than the other.
Totally agree. I hope that came across in my video. The two mediums are just very “different”. But both, in my opinion, are
beautiful.
I think the problem is the lack of awareness about what each brings to the table, along with a sort of "making sausage" attitude towards cinematography and editing in digital. Digital is much more affordable and flexible in post. This is why I think colorists have gotten _extremely_ lazy as of late. Either too many garish, oversaturated colors, or they compress it down and flatten it all out so that it's easier to match and they can send it quicker. I also think that cinematographers have leaned too heavily on the role of the colorist to make scenes work, rather than spend the time and energy setting it up so that it looks right in-camera.
The technology is great and it can be used well. I just hate that "we'll fix it in post" attitude that has permeated the industry. I do like that movie making is more accessible for studios or independent directors on a budget. That's nice to see. But I also see a lot of bad habits forming. There are a lot of cheap, animorphic lenses hitting the markets these days too. That's also kind of a mess, because they tend to make everything look like Star Trek lens-flare city. But hey, at least they're able to get more experience shooting in animorphic early in their careers.
End of the day, I just hope people learn to avoid the caveats of digital. The industry at large is kinda struggling with that.
Nice perfectly in the middle comment that says nothing of substance
@@UnifiedaxxS I know. But I told you right up front that the sweet spot is the boring answer and probably right in the middle. But a lot of us don’t like that answer because it is “boring” I suppose. But I don’t find it that way. I think it’s fascinating that it just won’t ever really settle in everyone’s mind.
Disagree
you just described what I always loved about older movies... the character... the look... digital movies are great! no question!.. but they lack that specific kind of character I grew up with and love so much! ... it just does not look perfect.. and that is exactly what makes it perfect to me.. if that makes any sense :D
Makes perfect sense. I grew up on film. Digital looks different to me. Very sharp. Very clean. Can I still get lost in a digital film. You bet. But I notice the difference.
I would argue, Three Strip Technicolor -- Yes it would make a big difference. Scenes involving fire and bright highlights still do better on film. At the end of the day it's down to the DOP.
As a film maker I think it always comes down to one thing, and that is 'story'. Instead of having the defining answer "one is better than the other" it is more interesting choosing the option that will elivate the story. As you said, film is not as sharp, and have a smoother and warmer shape that gives a magic glow, while digital is sharp, crisp and cool, maybe good at showing reality. :)
Well said! I was very close to concluding this video with that very commentary. None of it matters if you don’t have a great story. Still, I can not at the same time say that the medium you record on is irrelevant because it does, at least to me, convey a ‘feeling’ and the two (film and digital) do not ‘feel’ the same.
@@cinefitinc Totally agree! :)
Movies aren't just about story. I've always felt it's a really lazy cheap answer when people say words to the effective "script is king". Movies can be amazing without having excellent writing, there's so much else going on it would be ridiculous to write it all off or even just belittle it in favour of a cheap one word answer.
I know you're saying that the choice between digital and film should be relevant to what suits the story best, and sure, but it's also important (I would argue more important) to suit the tone and style etc. as opposed to just a story which can fit various styles and frames anyway.
I wonder if there also could be more movies like Everything, Everywhere All at Once, in which there are segments shot on film and segments shot digitally, depending on the feeling they want to evoke for that particular sequence. It is a given that not all movies can do that as easily for not having the multiverse justificative, but still worth trying
Yeah, but what about before they had a choice? All films were on film, and they didn't look bad for it.
When you asked “is this more interesting because it was shot on film?” My answer was yes…
When you showed the one with Daniel Craig that was interesting because of the lighting.
Great lighting fx can compensate for some of the inherent vibe that film presents. That’s just me though. I like movies shot on film
I think Deakins said it best (I'm paraphrasing here): “I like film. I like digital. I think it's good that both exist. I prefer digital nowadays, though.” That's how I feel about this “war.” And I like his films that he shot digitally. They look gorgeous. I just wish he didn't shoot on spherical lenses all the time. I would love to see a Deakins film shot digitally with anamorphic lenses.
@@ismailbagciartHe shot those with Arri spherical lenses, no anamorphics.
For some reason, I didn't like how new movies feel, and I wasn't sure exactly why until I understood the difference between film and digital. It really makes a difference for me, mostly how I used to see movies when I was younger. I think digital ones are closer to reality and feel like I am watching a documentary rather than a fictional story.
What I recall is that ~24fps was chosen as the slowest framerate that most people perceive as fluid motion. It would have been a compromise between ease of watching and film costs.
Interesting that the first digital example you showed was from Skyfall. I remember seeing that movie in theaters and genuinely not being able to tell that it was shot digitally. I mean, Roger Deakins could shoot a movie with a potato and make it look good but the point is I believe it does matter less nowadays what a movie is shot on. That being said, I grew up with 90's cinema and film just feels right to me for the movie going experience. A Quiet Place was such a breath of fresh air to me after seeing so many sterile looking digital movies. A lot of that is obviously story, acting, locations, lighting, sound design... but being shot on film is just like... "yeah... this is how it should look." I don't know, for me, I just get lost in the experience and that's something truly special about film.
Love that comment George. I think it’s fascinating though that you can pick up on that difference in mediums right away. The truth is that some people just can’t. They couldn’t tell you if it was film or digital. And probably because they don’t really care. Obviously there is much more to the feel of a movie than just the medium it’s shot on. That I think we all understand. But for a few of us, in many ways maybe unexplained, film just feels right.
Skyfall is the first and only bond movie there is shot digital. Spectre is shot on film and no time to die is also on film.
It's funny you say that because I just rewatched Skyfall and I could instantly tell that it was shot digitally.
@@Skrenja I have only seen the movie once in theaters and that was one thought that I had, just assumed it was film because its such an incredible looking movie. What was it that made you realize it was digital right away?
From my eyes, older movies look more real despite the imperfections, though I actually like the grain and pixels here and there. I don't find modern films all that visually pleasing or intimate. They look like video games. And I miss practical effects. I was watching Jean Claude Van Damme's Cyborg a little while ago; you can tell the makers of the film did the best they could with what little they had. It gives a creative and magical vibe.
It's not just about nostalgia. A movie is an illusion and we often adopt practices that best sell that illusion. 24 fps for example is much better for making a fight or chase feel more real and intense because it can make motion feel faster than it actually was in camera. HFR completely wipes the thrill away. We can hide a lot of sleight of hand with motion blur. Cinema is about story and emotion and often the thing that's "superior" on paper in terms of numbers isn't the best way to tell stories that connect with the audience.
I must also add that our records of old film as digital scans are a far cry from the real thing. The average person has the idea that old film was blurry because of the records we have today but it was the degradation over time and digital scans not being too good at the time. 35mm film is actually really sharp and 70mm film really changes the discussion around sharpness. It's every bit as sharp if not sharper than the best digital cameras yet not harsh and has incredible dynamic range. An example of a modern high quality scan of film is The Hateful Eight, and you can see how sharp and detailed that film is. This isn't to say that digital is inferior as it has plenty of advantages but the idea that film or old tech was not sharp is a bit of a misconception.
Completely agree! I’ve never liked anything other than 24fps. That may be the “nostalgia” in me that’s talking but I notice it even when people’s flat-panel tvs are set up with a “smoothing” adjustment. It looks awful. Like the old soap operas of the 80s.
@@lamenamethefirst I’ve got to watch the Hateful Eight. I’ve been meaning to. You’ve convinced me!
Only one cinema in my city is showing Oppenheimer on film. Luckily they have a [70mm] projector and so that’s how it’s being shown. The image flickers and the imperfections in the film are sometimes visible, but it was glorious, I haven’t had a cinematic experience so natural, believable, and compelling in years. I’m going again and taking some friends this weekend just to share and relive the film experience.
The saddest thing to me is that somewhere in my short lifetime we have gone from film is all there is to film as a boutique rarity, all but a handful of cinemas in a handful of places now have the equipment and expertise to even show film.
I do love digital but the loss of film as a mainstream medium for presentation feels like a loss for society, and so for that reason I go on as an advocate for film.
I think the clamouring to see Oppenheimer on film shows there is a demand in society for an authentic film experience so I hope this movie contributes to preserving the art of making and showing movies using film.
This is really interesting, I'm a young aspiring filmmaker and in love with video editing. I didn't grow up even watching that many movies. I now watch a ton of movies both digital and film. Film always looks so much better to me, I'm not sure what it is but there's just something to it that makes it really satisfying to watch, WAY more than digital.
The hobbit was a nauseating experience compared to the LOTR, and the light and colors were so heavily manipulated it becomes visually exhausting and sterile. The beauty of the fellowship really stands out for sure.
I think a large part of that was that they used so much cgi
Thank you! I posted about my preference for LotR over the Hobbit. "Visually exhausting" sums up the Hobbit very nicely.
I think film is warmer but at the same time can be a bit grittier, it omits details and smooths it over a bit.
Digital (this also depends highly on the type of camera used obviously) is much more matter-of-fact and if your movie is fantasy you're basically shooting yourself in the foot a bit because it totally loses the dreamlike quality that you'd probably want in your movie.
For something like blade runner I think both work, because you can both choose to use the dream-like quality or making it a bit more immersive with digital.
Indiana Jones is based off old pulp magazine heroes, aka not realistic so you'd probably want to do film in that case.
To dumb it down, probably:
Film: Gritty or dreamlike
Digital: Matter-of-Fact & clean
Now that I think about it, Barbie would've 100% benefitted from being shot on film.
24 fps was about cost. It was the fewest frames possible to not notice that it's in fact a sequence of still images, and the rest is history.
Film was expensive, and when you're a studio and to it at scale, it adds up.
This is the most poetic and philosophic and artistic video i have seen on RUclips in years. As a content creator, and poet, and as a poetry teacher, i thank you. You have influenced me in my own way to think videos.
Thank you very much for that comment. I am very glad to read that you were positively influenced by my video. I’ve only done a few as you can probably see because I won’t do one unless I feel strongly that what I have to say would be important for others to hear and perhaps be inspired to share their thoughts more. Again, thank you very much for your comment. I really do appreciate that you said that.
Personally, I think I’ve always favored digital because in the back of my mind I know that it’s basically a computer “trying” to approximate what it’s capturing as opposed to the more organic and scientific processing of film. But despite all of that I will never dispute the fact that digital can be beautiful at times. So regarding the point u made about “what if digital existed before science?”, I’d still probably favor film if I knew digital was merely an approximation.
On this argument, one of my professors said: "the format doesn't mean anything. Lens choice is what matters in visual storytelling".
I can’t argue with that point. It’s a good one. While I still see a difference between the first Bladerunner and the BR2049 and attribute a part of it to the medium, I think many could rightfully argue that Deakin’s choice of lens was incredibly more pristine and clean than what Cronenweth used on the original BR. And it was the lens that mostly contributed to the difference in the look between the films. It’s hard to argue that point.
@@cinefitinc "While I still see a difference between the first Bladerunner and the BR2049"
lol Those films are literally 35 years apart. One film is WAY older than the other, so of course you can tell the difference. 🤪
@@cinefitinc or even lighting
I think that clean images, like digital ones with a high frame rate, give you a sense of realism. Gemini Man is an example of this. On the other hand, films with a 'slow' and 'dirty' look give you a sense of fantasy. I also think that shooting digitally in a studio with artificial lighting and even CGI ends up being bad because, in my view, it becomes more evident that it’s a studio. So when I hear Tarantino talking about film being magical, it makes sense to me. I don't think it's just something nostalgic.
Being digital or analog doesn't determine the entire identity of a film; there are other aspects that shape it. Blade Runner is an example of an unrealistic film that was well made with digital filming, but even though it was well done digitally, in my opinion, it would have been better on film.
To me the difference that can never be made up between film and digital is in the faces. When I think of film all the most lasting images are of the faces. I dont know what the technical words for it are but they just look better. They look more dynamic, more real, have better contrast. I think maybe it has to do with the black and white levels you mentioned but I just prefer the look of a good close up on film over digital any day of the week.
Absolutely love this style of commentary and video and your voice suits the style very well. Really nicely done.
Even if you record on film, 95% of the time it will be necessary to undertake a digital conversion before presentation. This in itself can create a multitude of different characteristics depending on how the film is processed during conversion. The only way to appreciate the intrinsic characteristics of a given film is through analogue projection.
First thing I thought too. Negates this whole conversation. You’re still gonna end up looking at pixels, digital
@@superstar5123 exactly. I dabble in film photography and the negative conversion process is super subjective in terms of post processing. The end result can be very different depending on who is doing the conversion.
The answer is not as fun as the discussion. Thank you for your research and effort into this. I think you hit a point where it’s difficult to really say. Both mediums have their advantages and disadvantages. I feel it comes down to tone and style. Some stories need a certain medium to fully illustrate them. The search for the next film that uses either is exciting to see what happens. I felt The Batman 2022 used digital in a very unique way and its cinematographer uses it not unlike a painter would use oils vs acrylic or vice versa.
Yes, you’re talking about Greig Fraser. He shot the recent Batman and Dune with Denis Villeneuve. Two professionals that I admire very much. The truth is…I don’t hate digital. I’m just pointing out that it looks different than film to me. Now if you read some of the comments below (and I encourage you to), some argue that the film vs digital argument is over. Digital can look indistinguishable from film, if you decide to process it with that filmic look in mind. There are some strong arguments made that assert such is the case. Look at the Steve Yedlin posts on RUclips about it. But, I’ve got to say, even as I watch this new Indiana Jones film come out, which was shot on an Alexa. It just does NOT look like film. Does it look bad. Not at all! But it doesn’t look like the original three shot on film. Again, I don’t hate digital. It’s just different in my opinion. It looks much cleaner and crisper than something shot on celluloid. Thanks for the comment!!
@@cinefitinc i agree as i notice the difference as easily as i noticed the change from vhs to dvd to blu ray. Film appears to transfer better where digital tends to fall flat if not properly adjusted
I have yet to see The Batman, but it reminds me that beyond this Film vs Digital debacle, this whole thing with the Volume that started with the Mandalorian has a very specific look that you can see on these projects - Not a bad look, necessarily, but I compare an episode of The Mandalorian with a recent Star Wars movie and the pop in the colors really stands out; It is not that "The Volume" feels flat, per se, but, like you said, it has this more painterly look rather than something with actual volume like, say, the metal Iron Man suit in the first film has (to compare with The Mandalorian's own metal armor)
I agree, the answer is not as fun as the discussion! Thanks!
The other thing to look at is presentation mediums. Kodak's 2393 print stock achieves a contrast ratio of 250,000:1. It doesnt matter what 35mm projector thats coming out of, it could be a Simplex assembled from spares or it could be a $300,000 rebuilt DP70, or a Kinoton FP75E (yes there will be image steadiness differences between them, thats a given). Your contrast ratio will be the same, with the right lenses, it will be just as sharp. Not the same for digital. Modern laser projectors (Barco SP4k, Dolby Vision, etc) are only just now approaching that contrast ratio with laser, but that comes with the downside of fringing and speckle. And you need special screens for them. And those projectors cost obscene amounts of money. Don't want to spend that money? Want a "reasonable" $60,000 projector? Yeah enjoy a mind-blowing 2,000:1 contrast ratio. Film is fundamentally the best method of projecting a movie onto a large screen, no matter how you shoot it. The ONLY people who lose when movies are distributed on film are studios, as it costs them more upfront to distribute on film than it does on digital. Who eats that shifted cost? Theater owners. The pandemic didn't kill theaters, digital did.
I loved the way you speak and the fact that you asked more questions than answers, because this is really one of the most subjective matters ever
I definitely like asking more questions to get myself to “dig deeper”. After making this video, I found that there was something even more fundamental of a question than the one I was asking, but I didn’t learn that until after I made the video and read a lot of the comments. The more fundamental question is the difference between analog and digital and which one if any is better?
The best part about RUclips really is your comments. What I learn from the community. You know one fascinating fact I learned, at least from all those that commented? It’s that some of us believe that it remains unanswerable. Others do not. They believe the question was resolved a while ago. Isn’t that fascinating. I don’t believe that but many do. Others, which I believe includes you and me, do not believe it’s been resolved and are fascinated by that. There truly is something deeper here about digital technology vs analog. I want to get to the bottom of it. ☝🏻
I agree with you when scenes are shot in film, it gives a warmth to the picture of some sort. Directors could experiment with the medium used to film a movie based on the story the want to tell on a film, for example, futuristic high paced technological toned films like blade runner 2049 or Tron could be shot on digital. Darker more serious mysterious and dramatized toned films like Oppenheimer and Se7en could be shot on film so it could benefit from the warmth that the medium gives to the film
Just an opinion of a movies fan
I love movies, and am finally coming into the world of photography and filmmaking. I appreciate this video and your channel so much, thank you for making it.
One looks real, the other is real.
I say similar things to those who think that phone cameras are replacing DSLR and mirrorless. Even though both are digital, "real" cameras and lenses have genuine optics, with natural focus and characteristics that just cannot be replaced or perfectly replicated by AI or software. "Better" and "Best" is very subjective. In respect to the medium used, we will use what matches our vision. Sometimes film matches my vision, sometimes digital.
I feel Film vs Digital is kind of a non-issue now. Yes the purists are still pushing but it's honestly a bit limiting in some ways. Dehancer can pretty much get filmic right with any digital source so why box yourself in? What do we even mean when we say filmic? Sometimes we mean highlight rolloff. Sometimes we mean lighting. Sometimes we mean sharpness or lack of it. Sometimes we mean gritty and grainy. It's so many things not just nuanced or random RGB in the colors and halation - it's really about the look and feel, which we can manipulate like crazy now.
Its not the same. Film is not a digital medium. Why "box" yourself in? I defer to Mr. Welles; "the enemy of art is the absence of limitation".
But thats fake
What a great video! You're so underrated. The 'what if digi was invented before film' reminded me of the early 2000s crappy digital aesthetic that people like. And as you said nostalgia playing a big role. So i agree that's it's not always about what's technically better but more what vibe you like / what serves the story. Cheers!
I see a comparison with the media that painters use, such as oils, watercolours or acrylics. Is one absolutely better than the other? Or is it more the case that different materials serve different aesthetic needs.
@@jamestulk4169 Yeah exactly
I am an experimental filmmaker myself who began on a 3 chip camera in 2005. Now, I shoot on an iPhone 13, and rent a 16mm camera or Super 8 if I want to do a project to achieve the film “look”. I think that people like Tarantino are sort of full of it. He has his opinion, and that is just his subjective opinion, and it does have to do with nostalgia. It really does have to do with people getting stuck in their ways. In the end, digital still takes ones and zeros and creates individual frames out of those ones and zeros. So, if you have the actual tangible film frames that do this, or the camera does the task, for me it does not make any difference. I do prefer to work in digital for many other reasons though like lower cost, not having to store film or worry about it being eroded or damaged, having to worry about getting a shot or lighting right the first time, and lastly, I manipulate my images a lot with effects and overlays in post, and so by the time I am finished, nobody can tell if it was film or digital that I used anyways lol.
To be honest, if I hadn't looked at the 'digital' mark at 8:12, I would've assumed that the Skyfall scene was shot on film and simply scanned to digital. It doesn't feel artifically _clean_ like a lot of digital movies do. Maybe it's the depth and focus? The blur? The lack of visible detail making it more mysterious? I dunno.
EDIT: Oh, it's cause Roger Deakins shot it. Guess that explains it.
Haha, right! It’s Deakins.
Film actually has 6 primaries, 3 slow silver halide, 3 fast emulsion, each with a slightly different spectral response. CMOS sensors only have 3, RGB in the bayer, so they physically can't capture the offset hue response. You can get close with emulation, but the information is never fully captured. This is why film texture looks interesting on skin. You're actually looking at 2 different reds at the same time. Also, grain gets imperfectly refracted near color edges and thus bleeds into adjacent borders which is how you can actually get colored grain in the greyscale part of an image.
Additionally, the grain blurs the edges so they reduce sharpening. I've written a HSL to CMY conversion for various software which is a pure color model conversion and you get the subtractive process where it burns to color or black(whichever comes first) and I've shot a lot of film and it gets really, really close, but at the microscopic scale it won't be perfect. I've also emulated vinyl audio.
As for why film looks warm, it may be due to the older theaters only using D55 bulbs instead of D65 as well, so even how its projected gives the look. Also, how do you feel about bouncing digitally shot to film? its like a hybrid and pretty popular now for saving money.
Fascinating. Where have you learned so much about how film chemistry works? I knew it couldn’t exactly be replicated by digital (although some commenters on this thread insist that it can). But it’s those interesting facts that I’m trying to research about the photochemistry of film.
@@cinefitinc nothing really a secret, just kodak whitepapers and shooting with actual film for many years. love the challenge of emulation. even got a facegroup dedicated to color technology. everything i make is free and public domain.
Wow! Is your CMY conversion available anywhere? If I’ve learned anything as a DIT it’s that so much of the craft lies in the engineering for both film and digital.
@@levijensen5149 youtube blocks link's you'd have to dm
I’m a stills photographer and I really started photography again after nearly forty years. My first pick up was a digital manual focus Leica as it was the closest to my memory of that time before that I shot film. Honestly! Digital cameras are amazing, yet they feel and look sterile, and strangely I wanted to edit them with a filmic look or even go bnw. Three years in I’m now using 35mm film and medium format, the look is beautiful and honest. I also use medium format digital that I’ve found to be the closest to film.
Digital wins most of the time but film looks like it has heart ❤️
Thank you for posting this and I’m really pleased the RUclips algorithm worked for me on this occasion to see this great content 🤙
Really enjoyed hearing your view on this topic.
The biggest gamechanger of digital, I would say, is that it enabled (almost) everyone to shoot something, and therefore make something, be it a movie or a tiktok. That democratization of filmmaking is well worth the price of having less movies shot on film.
THAT is the real benefit of digital and, interestingly, has rarely been brought up among those that have commented on this video. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. Thank goodness for digital or we would all be hoping for a chance to get our hands on an expensive film camera to tell our stories.
From a photographer point of view. There is no replacing film. I’ve tried all the best digital cameras. Don’t care for them. Hasselblad x1dii, Fuji gfx system. Sold them. I landed on an old Nikon d700 for digital and my main film camera is a Pentax 67ii. I don’t care what anyone says you can’t manipulate a digital file to look like film. It’s not the same. I am consistently blown away at the scans I get back from the lab of my film work. I can’t say the same for my digital files. However I do still enjoy shooting digital as well. But the love for film is real!
try changing your lab.
Does it make any difference to working with CGI? Like i would imagine it's easier to use digital for CGI but I have no idea.
The main thing I disliked about the Hobbit films is how clean they look. The tone had changed. Film changes the tone, however I'd be very curious what The Revenant would have looked like if it were shot on film. Dune was shot on both Film and Digital and I think that was a really nice sweet spot.
The Hobbit was definitely a different “tone”. It was one of the first large scale digital productions by a director I really love. He had ambitious plans for 3D and higher frame rates and I gave him the benefit of the doubt given the amazing work he had produced on LOTRs. But looking back over 10 years since the Hobbit, it does look very clean and saturated. My wife uses the word “airbrushed”. I like that analogy too. But I did and still do think some shots from those three Hobbit films were done beautifully.
And yes, I knew that Dune had a transfer from the Alexa back to film and then rescanned digitally. Very interesting choice by Greig Fraser.
As for the Revenant on film, I think it probably would have looked beautiful. And would have been a good fit for the period piece. But I did love the look of that film digitally.
Ok, let's sum up everything - Film is just better for movies. That's it. You can make digital also very good looking, but for a movie film will always be a little bit better. It's just harder and pricier to shoot on film.
And by the way - do you want to know why dinosaurs in older Jurassic Park really look so good even till this day ? Why are they so organic ? Cause movie was shot on film. Digital dinosaurs combined with filmic look. That's why it looks so great till this day.
Wrong on every count.
I think it comes down to choice of what camera would be best suited for the type of movie and the type of environment, because digital is the new shiny thing doesn't mean its the right choice for project.
The only thing that's objectively better about film is its ability to be upscaled to greater dimensions without losing shaprness while digital images have a fixed resolution and cannot be reliably upscaled (although the possibilities with AI are really thrilling). But there are also things that make digital images objectively better: they can't get rotten, they can use CGI much more straightforwardly and they can be distributed to the public in home media formats. Also, to create new digital masters of movies shot on film that use little to no CGI, the process typically only requires a good scan at a higher resolution and some little color tweaking, while digital films can be a pain in the ass to remaster, as they usually apply a lot of digital renders, so upscaling can ruin the credibility of the VFX. I think that, if your process is going to use a lot of practical effects or little visual effects at all, it's best to keep it on film and make many well-stored copies of the recordings and the final cut to prevent film rot (but it's always more pricy), otherwise, digital is better if you shoot at 8k or 4k, especially because the film look can be sort of faked via VFX (I know many filmmakers don't like it, but there it is). But, you know, nothing is perfect, and screens always get larger, so even that pixel count could not be enough in the future, so maybe it's better to keep it on film and sacrifice convenience when working with CGI. Like you said, it's an unresolvable dilemma that involves budget and art purposes.
For newer films, I often find it difficult to tell if it's shot on digital or film. In my opinion, that's the best case scenario. Just like the best visual effects are the ones you don't notice, the best cinema technology is the one you don't notice.
here’s the simple answer: we, as human beings, are driven towards is more natural for us.
In this case photochemical reactions in the development of film is possible through solutions and elements (which can be found in nature). We must understand that we will always look forward something similar to us (nature) since we belongs to it. Technology can help us with its fantastic tools, but marketing takes us to chase always the last brand new technologies, instead we should focus more on the craft and arts itself sometimes. Great video, this topic is based on an anthropological behavior by ourselves
I like both as well. It’s funny to me though how we all love movies that look like they’re 720p or under. And vhs tape movies were amazing too. This 4K 8k stuff is pretty ridiculous in terms of necessity. It’s just not needed for a good film. Also, 24fps great, but I’m not bothered if it’s up to 30fps. 60 and above, with higher resolution is awful. It feels like you’re looking into a window or watching a play, it’s so real it breaks the fourth wall.
I mean Christopher Nolan loves film like IMAX because it's the highest picture quality out there and he's mostly right. There is some merit to film format but that's because it still outpaces digital on clarity wise at least with IMAX. Film however does not do HDR as well as digital can do.
Many filmographers constantly mourn for film and that look that they don't have on digital cameras... On the other hand, the average viewer first notices - why isn't this sharp?
In most cases, the most important thing is the story, not the photo and the beauty of the video, which are just a bonus.
I read somewhere, that the reason that films were 24fps was because after moving away from silent movies in 16fps, 24fps was the best for sound comprehension while using the least possible film. I assume because it was to keep the costs of printing film down.
Your video was a great thought-proving watch!
The Hobbit always looked weird. It was like watching TV on the big screen. Now you get films like Top Gun Maverick and I couldn’t tell if it was digital or film.
Have you seen the comparisions by Steve Yedlin? He shoots digital but makes it look like shot on celluloid.
I have. Fascinating. I don’t know how he did it. In any other context, I can see the difference between film and digital. It’s very apparent. But in his shots, I can’t distinguish the two. He makes a very compelling argument-namely, that people shooting digital aren’t trying to reproduce a film-like image. But it can be done. Digital apparently has the “chops” to mimic film.
I remember an interesting reddit discussion (which unfortunately i doubt i could find again) in which, it was explained that digital looks more like how you see the world with your eyes and film like how you view your dreams and memories, which actually makes film more evocative despite not being as realistic.
The finite nature of digits is akin to the finite nature of chemicals. Both 1s and 0s, and film, serve as mediums through which we interpret the world. Each medium has its own advantages and disadvantages, making aesthetics the deciding factor. After all, it is a visual medium, and everyone is after the ‘film look.’ With some film emulators, this can be achieved while still shooting digitally.
OMG Thank you so much for these words , I was searching exactly for this
and I thought this thoughts only in my mind
do more videos , this platform needs people like you
Thanks so much! I’m glad I’m not alone in my thinking. Stay with me!
I've seen biased videos and discussions on Film vs Digital. This feels like a true observation like looking at the pros and cons of digital vs Film debate. I love it and keep up the great work
Very interesting. I grew up in a village in Alaska. We did not have a movie theatre. So I grew up watching VHS tapes. 30 + years later I’ve collected some of my favorite movies on VHS. It out weighs my desire to see a movie on film in a theatre. Nostalgia is strong.
Super surprised by the subscriber count! One thing I’d recommend, since you already have the “chapters” of the video layer out I would love them to show up on the timeline.
It's a great question 'what if digital came first'. If digital was indeed first I'm not sure the actual advent of cinema or movies would have even happened. The whole reason for film was to showcase the technology of high resolution imaging. This is where our performers and artists come into play. With digital technology those artists of film are obsolete. This is why digital will never replace FILM as a visual narrative. Digital is true to life and it's how we view the world through near unlimited content. Film is inherently a delicate art form requiring great care.
I have been thinking about this a lot. You have filled in a few gaps in my understanding of the conflict. Recently, I watch an old classic, A Christmas Story, with a couple of young people who had never seen it. As soon as the movie began I had a sinking feeling. I could tell that something I cherished about the film was gone. Soon the two young people lost interest and left the room. I realized that the movie had been digitized. I could not finish the movie. My goal is to be a film maker, but this issue, film or digital, is deeply concerning to me. Thanks so much for your post.
7:00 yeah fellowship of the ring looks weird to me too, I think the outdoor scenes had some sort of blur that got rid of the sharpness at some point. Probably an editing decision, nothing to do with the film medium itself at all
Until I see an actual comparison of two identical shots with the same lighting conditions I am not convinced. Feels like arguing "24 fps is objectively better" even though we only think that because we're USED to it, and only reason that trend started was to cut costs.
Things are changing over time. If you have a look at the originals of movies that were shot between 1945 and 1955 they are really different to the ones that were shot in the around 1980. The film stock changed and got sharper, the grain got smaller, the colors got better and better. The invention of sound in movies or Color film. Times are changing. So what? It our nostalgic feeling that makes us think, timeswere better when we were younger and that’s the case for every generation.
I fear you may be correct. Nostalgia is a powerful powerful force. All of this may be a play on our bias that “the way things used to be” are better than the way things are today.
This argument HAS to be the same as the issue audiophiles have with compressed audio.
I genuinely can't tell any difference in 'crappy mp3s' and lossless.
BUT I had a strong internal reaction to the comparison in this video of the LOTR to Hobbit. I guess I'm a film guy, and for us, there's no comparison.
The best "digital vs film" comperation I have ever seen! Totaly what was on my maind.. That the past memories has an effect on our choice!
Im born in the late 90's and have always wondered why these days films just look so different, its only been a few years ago that I understand that the magic to me lies more in film. To me whenever something is shot on film its like you are looking at something from a different realm then what you could do on your own with a camera, especially these days with everybody having a great camera inside their pockets. It feels like something tangable in a world thats become so digitalized.
I honestly like both formats for different reasons. But I still lean towards film 'cause while digital has its advantages, I feel like a ton of filmmakers and producers abuse the latter as a "cheaper" alternative. Marvel is notorious for this because ever since The Avengers, they've gone full digital and it's been for the worse. I watched the Phase One films a while ago and they looked better because they were shot on 35mm (Cap 1 was technically the first digital venture for the MCU, but some scenes were filmed on 35mm). The only times I can remember a digitally shot MCU movie looking great were the first Ant-Man movie, GOTG 2 & 3 Multiverse of Madness and to some extent, the Russo Brothers MCU movies.
I was wondering why movies look better now but actually don’t look better and I think it might have to do with what you’re saying. I would like to see more movies shot on film. For me I see movies now not having that cinematic feel that they used to.
I can't even begin to have a preference because I can't even tell the difference for the most part. My untrained eye has seen plenty of movies, both film and digital, but it's never been something that stands out to me. I can't watch a movie and tell if it was film or digital and, while I wish I could sometimes so I could better appreciate the technical aspect, I'm also glad it's not something that stands out to me or distracts me. Even watching the clips the only time I noticed was when comparing the faces in the LOTR and Hobbit shots.
I think both film and digital are superb and if used correctly and in the right circumstances will produce outstanding results. I admire both formats.
The sharpness of digital gives me a cleaness experience to a movie. With that said of the best movies ive seen were able to feel real, a grunge experience to them. Almost like you can smell and feel whats happening in the movie have been shot on film. So as the changing of the guard happens it will be interesting how film makes achieve this in the digital era.
I like your analysis. And I think the reason film will always be visually superior to digital is due to the reason you mentioned at the beginning: the nature of how it absorbs light and color. People call digital "clean" because of its sharpness, but in reality film is much cleaner. Film portrays the world exactly as it is; the colors are purer, the roll off between light and shadow is smoother, and the texture is more natural. If we were to shoot a movie on digital then add a grainy texture in post, it would not come close to film simply because the difference is not only in texture and resolution, but also the purity of the colors and light.
One way to look at this is the industry had 70 years to perfect their craft for Film. You saw large leaps even from the 80's to 90's. Digital Filmaking has only really hit its stride in the last 12-13 years or so. And we've come a LONG way already. I HATED digital filmmaking. Then Fincher changed my mind about it. The best I've seen to date is "The Batman". Because now they are finding ways to add character to the image, but they still retained all the benefits of digital. We're going to see more of this.
Love your thoughts on this subject and love your slow considered delivery, such a pleasant change from the crash bang high speed delivery of most RUclips screamers. And you didn’t open with the tiresome “Whats up guys”.
Please don’t change.
I had the good fortunate of forming a friendship with one of Terrence Malick's former collaborators, and among the books he recommended I read was "The Virtual Life of Film" by D.N. Rodowick. It can get pretty philosophic, but I think part of what we're dealing with when comparing digital to film is philosophic.
You may very well be right. Differences in philosophy are rarely settled. But I believe there has to be some set of facts on both sides that are indisputable, not just well-versed opinions.
You lost me at 7:01. There were some movies in the last few years that could have been shot with film and were beautiful/looked real (I wasn't sure when watching them) like Paterson, Nomadland and The Banshees of Inisherin but The Hobbit is definitely not the case (it looks more like a Ps2 cinematic than film footage). I don't think that Andrew Lesnie and his crew were to blame, a lot of this is due to the choices of Peter: The color grading, 48fps, gopro footage, lens choices, etc.
Do you mean the Ponniyin Selvan movie? I’ve actually never seen that film. But just watched the trailer. It does look very similar to how the Hobbit looks. Someone had used the term “airbrushed” to describe the Hobbit’s look over LOTRs. I thought that was a good analogy. I personally thought the Hobbit was, in many ways, beautifully shot. But it did not look like film. It looked like something else. Saturated with color. Airbrushed. Other worldly for sure. But I still like it. Others, I know, have a visceral reaction to it. They hate it. I just think the digital look, especially those films that were produced early in the digital capture days embraced the look of the new medium and attempted to push it forward. Another one was Hugo by Scorsese. That was the ARRI Alexa. I need to watch Nomadland and The Banshees. Also, someone else suggested Glass Onion. The cinematographer has been spending much of his career working on coming as close to film as the Alexa can bring you. his name is Yedlin and he’s done a lot of technical research on the topic. His view is that digital can be made to look almost identical to film. It’s just that very few in post-production have tried to do it.
The thing about BR2049 is that Deakins does not grade it alot. He shoots it very much like film. One LUT already made for the look of the film. Most of the color is done in camera with lighting. Interesting approach which I think puta emphasis on creating stunning images on set, not in post, where I think many modern movies fall flat - both figuratively and literally.
Aa a professional artist I LOVE the questions you have brought up. at @8:29 is it the camera? My initial thoughts on the visual would include several components. i.e. the staging of the figure, the back lighting to emphasize the silhouette, the movement of the camera, and of course the quality of the picture as a result of these elements in play. Most high level directors/ of cinematography have a wonderful eye for composition and to me it becomes so closely related to painting or illustrating a picture. I also believe that any creative utilizing a tool to tell a story makes sure that the elements involved enrich and push the narrative forward. With the Revenant example, the clarity of the actions happening through the digital camera make for a viscerally horrific moment; however, my eye is prone to noticing the falsities in the graphics and generated images i.e. the bear. Perhaps, with film the granular quality would lift the realism and ground the bear more comfortably in the shot making it appear more real. This is something I've experienced with LOTR, watching it from Film to Digital. To me the original presentation reads so much better because of the film and when cross referenced with the digital version most of the practical elements look cheesy and even stand out as false: costumes, make-up (especially). In fact, the jump to blue ray and digital had me thinking it was a televised show with its clarity and oddly over rendered visuals on some of the orcs and urukai. I LOVE LOTR by the way.... XD
I feel like modern camera's can emulate film very very well. The Alexa 35 has such soft roll off and amazing dynamic range, with a good grade and some grain added I think you would be hard pressed to truly be able to tell the difference.
Film has that movement, but it also invites the brain and eyes' tendency to fill in the blanks in the visual information we are receiving from the real world. There is a sense of unrealism: surrealism, fantasy, and being in a dream. And like in a dream, there are elements we forget and want to re-experience. The idea of re-living some of our dreams is exciting to say the least. We have this same phenomena happening when we watch film. Unlike a digital image that is perfectly crisp, we have shifting grains that present a small amount of information loss for a fraction of a second. I think it is this phenomenon that triggers the brain's desire to go back and watch again to capture the rest of the information needed to preserve a single frame, except that is impossible because of the inherent film grain. This seems to be part of why we come back. Not only the warmth and texture, but the psychological mechanisms that engage when we view it.
Something that dawned on me a while ago is when you watch a Movie on VHS that was initially shot on Film - the image never Rests or Sits Still, it's constantly moving around in the scene. It's especially visible when looking at Title Screens - you see the Lettering moving around ever so slightly.
Every time I see a Classic Film on Netflix, it always seems like something is missing?
It's that subtle movement of the Film passing through the Camera.....
I know what you are talking about. It was even like that on DVD. The image had a certain movement to it. I forget what it is called. You could definitely notice it in 35mm theatres.
But today, classic movies are stabilized. I think to conserve data. I remember reading an article on the transfers of Ben Hur that addressed this specific topic. It even demonstrated one of the credits with two motion images. One of them shown the image doing the very thing you're talking about, and the other image with virtually no motion. I remember them saying that it had something to do with data.
So nowadays, you see a movie of any age through streaming and it is a recent transfer, you're likely going to get the "still" image.
@@mosesjones5376 Exactly! And yes, DVDs kept that Movement of the Film - which is why DVD is my Favorite Format! Plus, you can still see the Film Grain, just a much cleaner Picture vs VHS is all.
That Stabilization you're talking about has happened to just about Every Movie on Streaming these days. Took me a while to figure out what I didn't like about HD movies and That was it!!
Does shooting with film force other decisions, like those related to special effects? Deciding film vs digital may have a cascade of other decisions resulting from them that creates a different feel or look of the overall movie.
What complicated things is everything else that the mediums involve. The decision is not just based on how the final image looks or feels. I think though that if film and digital cameras functioned exactly the same, with everything else being equal, most would choose the camera that produced the film look.
In the examples you gave, of whether certain scenes are more/less impactful because they were shot on film, or digital, I genuinely do feel that film does add to it. Raiders of the Lost Ark, that whole sequence undeniably has great framing and blocking, but I do genuinely believe that it would be less impactful with the ultra crisp clarity of digital. Same with The Revenant, it’s almost distracting how sharp the movie is at times because it’s shot digitally. It sometimes doesn’t look like a period piece, but modern actors playing dress up in 2015 running around in the woods. Something about the texture, softness of light and film grain movement, I believe, would have helped immerse me more in the time period of The Revenant if it was shot on film.
I love this comment. And I agree wholeheartedly. There would be something missing if those scenes in Raiders were shot digitally. Have you seen the most recent Jones movie. All shot digitally on an Alexa. I’d be curious to know what you thought of the “look”. They mimicked a lot of the old Doug Slocombe camera movements and lighting, but the ultimate medium is different. Thoughts?
Great discussion. I love almost all of these films and they all have their own spot for all of us, because the film 70mm films do seem to have a different "pace" not sure if that is real or not
A great commentary. And your conclusion is spot on. Neither is better than the other. They just both deliver the filmmaker’s vision
I am fully aware that it is an endless debate, but at least for me and my generations, we are brought up on celluloid whether photography or cinematography where we loved the feel of film, its wide dynamic range, its organic natural material, so it will be logic to love films over digital. The factor killing the debate in my opinion, is sharpness and clarity, why should we need surgical sharpness ? If we understand this point so film wins
It all depends on the needs of the story being told, not only with digital vs film but size of stock (if you are shooting film), resolution of camera (if shooting digital) or even if you are shooting analog video. I look at it all as different colors in a palette. Digital just adds more to choose from. None are inherently "better" than another but each may be ideal for a specific use case. There are those who think the higher the resolution and the sharper the image the better a movie is but that might not serve some stories. Lower resolution images with more grain and a lower frame rate might create the particular dream state you are after while something super sharp and "perfect" might take you out of it. It's best to not limit yourself to what you've decided is "best" but let the story you are telling guide you in your choice.
As for whether you can replicate the appearance of film with digital, it all depends on how many pixels and ones and zeros you use. It's certainly possible. And the notion that film doesn't have limits is not necessarily accurate. The resolution is limited to the composition of the coating and the tonal range dependent on the chemistry. As long as there are those who like what film gives you right out of the can without extra effort (such as the filters available to alter digital) there will continue to be people who wish to use it.
None is good or bad. It's more what is appropriate to the situation and desired end result.
Very well said. ☝🏻
Hey man, I just watched this video and I subscribed immediately. I'm wondering why you haven't uploaded for about a year now.
An interesting question would be, would your view change if you didn't know what medium in which a movie was shot. The Creator (digital). Man of Steel (film). Arrival (digital). The Martian (digital). The Batman (digital)
And does it make bad movies better?