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We are one step closer to the death of film


Jay

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Anchorman 2 is the final movie Paramount will release on actual film

Paramount becomes the first major studio to stop releasing movies on film

Obviously things can still be shot on film, and there will always be specialty screenings of films on film stock, but going forward the major mass market releases of films are going to be all digital, perhaps as early as next year.

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Oh yea, ALL music is recorded digitally these days, unless some hipster artist requires an album to be recorded onto tape for some reason.

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There's really no benefit to using film. It costs more to shoot on, it costs more to distribute, it costs more in terms of prep work for a projectionist and theater chain, and it's easily damaged. Plus there's no 'aesthetic look' about film that can't be replicated digitally. No one lamented the death of 35mm handhelds. Why is this a big issue?

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Good.

No.

You think studios should continue to snail-mail physical reels of film to movie theaters, who have to assemble them, attach trailers and light cues, and run them through a projector that worsens the quality of the film with every viewing, rather than having the movie studios beam a perfect digital copy of the film to the theaters?

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There's really no benefit to using film. It costs more to shoot on, it costs more to distribute, it costs more in terms of prep work for a projectionist and theater chain, and it's easily damaged. Plus there's no 'aesthetic look' about film that can't be replicated digitally. No one lamented the death of 35mm handhelds. Why is this a big issue?

There's an indirect benefit: Slower production and post production mean the film makers have to plan their films more carefully (instead of doing everything completely at the last minute, ala Peter Jackson) and there's more time for other post production disciplines like film music.

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Well, the thrust of the article and therefore thread is that film is dying as a DISTRIBUTION method, the article was not discussing the filming techniques used to make the finished product.

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Spielberg still shoots on film and will continue to do so until its really impossible. Many other directors will do the same.

Star Wars is being shot on film again!

I know all that, and that is all still off topic.

The article is saying that films are no longer going to be screened on film, not that films are no longer going to be shot on film (I mean, most aren't anyway, but that's not what the article is about)

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Skyfall proved that digital film can look as gorgeous as film.

Gorgeous perhaps, but in a different way. There are a number of scenes that looked very digital. I don't mean ugly like PUBLIC ENEMIES, just mushy shadows.

Plus there's no 'aesthetic look' about film that can't be replicated digitally.

Bullshit.

It's all in the cinematographer.

I've yet to see a digitally shot film with the same light qualities as JFK, CATCH-22, DAYS OF HEAVEN, TESS, or EMPIRE OF THE SUN, to choose a few disparate examples.

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Oh yea, ALL music is recorded digitally these days, unless some hipster artist requires an album to be recorded onto tape for some reason.

Foo Fighter's are the only ones of the top of my head. I'm sure there are others but they recorded Wasting Light on tape and the upcoming one is on tape also. I don't really see the point when 99% of your audience will be listening to CDs or MP3s anyway.

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Oh yea, ALL music is recorded digitally these days, unless some hipster artist requires an album to be recorded onto tape for some reason.

Foo Fighter's are the only ones of the top of my head. I'm sure there are others but they recorded Wasting Light on tape and the upcoming one is on tape also. I don't really see the point when 99% of your audience will be listening to CDs or MP3s anyway.

CD or MP3 is perfectly capable of capturing all the virtues (like analog compression and saturation) that come with analog recordings.

We watch 'film' on DVD or Blu-ray too, don't we?

Cheers!

Alex

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Oh yea, ALL music is recorded digitally these days, unless some hipster artist requires an album to be recorded onto tape for some reason.

Nothing hipster about wanting to record on tape. There is a genuine difference.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb10/articles/analoguewarmth.htm

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I've yet to see a digitally shot film with the same light qualities as JFK, CATCH-22, DAYS OF HEAVEN, TESS, or EMPIRE OF THE SUN, to choose a few disparate examples.

I'm sure oneday you will. Digital film is still a very new innovation. Very much in development.

Also, was the beauty of those movies a direct result of being shot on film? There are plenty of movies shot on film that simply look like shit.

The artist (the director or DP) is far more important then the medium.

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Of what? There are countless films that havent been shot well.

Shooting on film doesnt automatically mean quality!

the examples of brilliantly shot films you mention are highlights of cinema, the zenith of a craft that has been around for a while. It is NOT the default.

Give digital a chance to evolve. Eventually there will be brilliant looking film shot in that medium.

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Throw me some examples man!

Shawshank Redemption looks fairly poor. It has massive amounts of grain, which one of the BD releases tried to eliminate by softening the image (which made it even worse IMO).

Given that this is about distribution, and not about the filming, I'm all for it.

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Throw me some examples man!

Shawshank Redemption looks fairly poor. It has massive amounts of grain,

Looks fine to me. Not amazing, but nothing to complain about. I love grain - one of the things I hate about modern film stocks is the lack of grain and contrast.

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one of the reasons that I don't watch recent films is that they aren't shot on film and i don't like the digital look...

I just don't see the magic in digital films that i see in films shot in 35mm (even in bad films).

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When film is done right, it looks spectacular. When film is done badly, it looks meh. When digital is done right (ala Prometheus and Skyfall) it looks very good. When digital is done badly, it looks awful.

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well at least it seems 'films' will be easier to store and more difficult to destroy by time...

is film music stored digitally also, right? No more 'master tapes' disaster in the future...

Digital archival is at least equally (perhaps considerably more) fragile than any analogue medium as has already been proven by a number of expansions of 'recent' digitally-recorded scores.

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Digital projection, in terms of presentation, is far superior to the 35mm projectors. Digital ensures a clean, crisp image for multiple showings (and no having to prepare the reel for the next show) -- however digital projectors have their own sets of problems. Replacing the projector bulb in a DLP projector is tricky, since it's more liable to shatter for one. And then come the trickier computer aspects -- sometimes the dowser goes down when the cues are slightly off. Sometimes the movie file stops playing in the middle of the show for no reason at all (which requires rebooting the projector and touchscreen monitor).

On the other hand, if the movies doesn't play on time (or running late) -- it only takes like a minute or less to play the movie without previews. In that respect, I'm not sad to see 35mm projectors being phased out. I do feel sad for the 8% who are trying to upgrade in order to stay in business -- because it is a matter of time before Paramount's other rivals phase out 35mm prints too.

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Spielberg still shoots on film and will continue to do so until its really impossible. Many other directors will do the same.

Star Wars is being shot on film again!

I know all that, and that is all still off topic.

The article is saying that films are no longer going to be screened on film, not that films are no longer going to be shot on film (I mean, most aren't anyway, but that's not what the article is about)

Sure, but while the title of the article is very clear, the topic title is misleading; it says "death of film", period.

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But surely reading the first post of the thread and it's attached article clears things up immediately, no?

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When film is done right, it looks spectacular. When film is done badly, it looks meh. When digital is done right (ala Prometheus and Skyfall) it looks very good. When digital is done badly, it looks awful.

This, though honestly I wasn't all that impressed by the cinematography of PROMETHEUS.

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But surely reading the first post of the thread and it's attached article clears things up immediately, no?

Yes, but that only happens once. When people come back to the thread what they see is the title, not the article, which they may have forgotten, and keep discussing whatever they read.

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Well, the end of film as a distribution method is one step closer to film being completely phased out anyway.

It will never completely go away, but like vinyl records it will be a specialty item when it was once the norm.

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