"Stop shooting digital instead of celluloid"

>"Stop shooting digital instead of celluloid"

What did he mean by this?

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he meant that he wants people to use celluloid instead of digital.

Ah, ok. Thanks!

He operates under the pretension, like Nolan, that movies should only be shot on film. There is definitely merit to shooting on film. You get better variation in darks, unparalleled textures, film grain, and general picture clarity(depending).

HOWEVER, that does not excuse filmmakers like him and Nolan insisting that just shooting on film will make the movie aesthetically better. That's a complete lie. What's important isn't shooting on some extra-expensive, no-longer-made film stock, but the composition. Color, lighting, framing. Those aspects are what make movies look good, what gives them an aesthetic.

Hacks like Tarantino and Nolan vary from somewhat stylish moments (though Tarantino's are ripped from a myriad of different movies) to outright stageplay staging, lighting and framing. A movie like Hateful 8 was a complete waste of shooting on Panavision. There were only a few interesting shots in the whole movie, with the rest of it looking like a high-definition recording of a well-dressed stage performance.

Nolan meanwhile is an inept Kubrick, aesthetically cold and distant without any of the geometry, color, framing or atmosphere.

It's a tool like CGI, in the hands of a real filmmaker, digital can look better than film-shot peers. The best looking movie of this decade was shot on digital.

Translation: I'm a pretentious hack.

Once it goes in the avid it's all digital anyways, not that he even edits his own shit.

>What's important isn't shooting on some extra-expensive, no-longer-made film stock, but the composition. Color, lighting, framing. Those aspects are what make movies look good, what gives them an aesthetic.
Yes and *all things being equal* if there was a film version and a digital version of the same thing the film version would still look better as you say.

He doesn't want everything to look like cheap porn

IF every single aspect was the exact same, yes. For now

But that's quite a reach you're making.

up until like 2011 you could make a case that film was superior to any commercially available digital camera, film could simply record more information, but that definitely changed when ARRIRAW became available for the Alexa and people realized how powerful the ALEV III sensor was. film became an aesthetic choice after that -- which is not nothing, because this is all in service of art after all -- but those aesthetic properties are not some mysterious alchemical process, they're definable and they're replicable with digital. in the past few years knowledgeable people with sharp eyes have seen head-to-head tests of film vs. digital (with the digital image graded to resemble film) and their ability to discern which is which has consistently not been any better than if they were to guess at random.

all that's left for people like nolan and tarantino is "muh history" and a useful marketing gimmick you can charge extra for

Yh so why not make a movie on film then apart from cost

Show me these discernible film vs digital comparisons you're talking about desu

In an ideal world everyone would be shooting on film.

But to blame digital for movies looking bad in general is to dodge the real issue: Literal television directors, who've only ever done television cop shows or dramas, getting handed blockbuster projects, perpetuating a pathetic and lackluster aesthetic. They never learned how to tell a story visually, or to heighten emotion through aesthetics. They learned how to shoot closeups of talking heads, wide shots of empty rooms, and convoluted indecipherable action. There are still filmmakers out there with aesthetic prowess, but they're not the ones getting handed the reins of mainstream film. And it's entirely Star Wars' fault.

he doesn't know shit about cinema

They basically run before they can walk because they haven't had to learn to shoot something which looks good with a harder tool(film) they were relying on the abilities of digital which hindered their creative developement

I don't think it would help actual hacks like them.

yedlin.net/DisplayPrepDemo/

David Bordwell has written like a thousand posts about this particular issue. Steven Soderbergh summarized it in one sentence: "If I see another over-the-shoulder shot, I'm gonna blow my brains out".

yedlin.net/OnColorScience/

Who is David Bordwell

He went to films.

He said he preferred film, not that everyone else should follow suit.

>He operates under the pretension, like Nolan, that movies should only be shot on film.
No, that's his personal preference, he never claimed everyone else should do it. And it doesn't necessarily make the movie look better, but it does give it a very specific look and feel.

This is baffling, regardless of your personal opinion on the directors you mentioned. The cost of shooting on film is negligible compared to the revenue Tarantino and Nolan generate and it boils down to personal preference. I wonder if you're joking.
It also takes some severely stupid shit to compare Nolan to Stanley Kubrick, nice work.

He outright says in interviews again and again that shooting on video makes it "TV-Film"

davidbordwell.net/blog/

davidbordwell.net/blog/2015/12/13/modest-virtuosity-a-plea-to-filmmakers-old-and-young/

I think Reygadas and Apichatpong Weerasethakul only shoot on film, I know Joe does, Reygadas I'm not really sure, but they both have beautiful movies, even though you might dislike them.

what the fuck are those names

Then let's see it, I've only seen him singing praises for film and not condemning anyone who shoots digital. Sounds like you're looking for excuses to shit on him.

In this interview
youtube.com/watch?v=SQ7qKKQrSBY
In thissun
youtube.com/watch?v=BON9Ksn1PqI
In that docu Side by Side with Keanu Reeves

Reygadas:

youtube.com/watch?v=etIzLiJfhqA

youtube.com/watch?v=zYeXnNzJ89Y

Joe:

youtube.com/watch?v=Jk-EoUb0nvg

youtube.com/watch?v=KnIXg6-8lic

>Stop being poor

He meant "I am a dumb fuck luddite curmudgeon who holds back cinema until I die"

wtf do they have to do with anything?

>luddite
Film is higher resolution.

>You get better variation in darks, unparalleled textures, film grain, and general picture clarity(depending).

Not true other than the film grain part. And grain can be accurately simulated these days.

Think about what you are asking right now, user. Think about it good and long.

HDR is objectively better on film (for now)

Because film isn't actually better now. The very best image quality will come from digital cameras from here on out.

No, it isn't. The best digital cameras far exceed the capability of 70mm film (the largest film stock used for non-experimental filmmaking). You can stack digital cameras in arrays and stitch their images together in software to make arbitrarily large resolutions, you cannot do this with film.

He has said that shooting on digital makes it more TV than watching a movie. He even went as far as saying it was part of the reason he didn't want to make movies anymore or something like that. He could worry about Hateful Eight not looking boring as fuck before whining about other films.

It isn't. There are cameras with ridiculous ISO capabilities and electronics to capture far more stops of dynamic range than film could ever achieve.

>He has said that shooting on digital makes it more TV than watching a movie.
Ridiculous bullshit of a nothing statement. "muh gateweave"

Another film purist is Colin Trevorrow. Is the visually repulsive Jurassic World, shot on film, a better looking movie than Sicario, shot on digital? Does Jurassic World's film stock automatically imbue it with some special quality Sicario lacks?

No because Trevorrow can't compose worth a shit

films have been getting worse in every single way as digital has gained ground.

now, you can all pretend that this is pure coincidence, but the truth is that digital killed kino

Joe also advocated for shooting on film

For now. We're just now getting out of the era where digital was still pretending to be film. Now the next generation of moviemakers (not filmmakers kek) will innovate. I think the first step will be getting past the orange and teal look.

How is that a reach?
It's literally the topic of discussion. If a director with certain skills and talents were to make a movie, would the end result look better if he used film instead of digital. Of course there's tons of others things that matter too but changing the cameras doesn't make a difference to the director picking his framing or shots.

>It's a tool like CGI, in the hands of a real filmmaker, digital can look better than film-shot peers. The best looking movie of this decade was shot on digital.

what cgi and digital do is allow the filmmakers to create content closer to what they've got in mind. trouble is, they all suck, and the real magic of film comes from the tension between succeeding at getting exactly what you want and failing completely.

>but those aesthetic properties are not some mysterious alchemical process, they're definable and they're replicable with digital.
Yeah just like we know how VCR looks, but every movie with cgi vcr effects looks fake.

yeah, i heard that before....5 years ago.
it will never happen. orange and teal will never go away. in fact, it will invade the past as well - we're going to see a wave of "recolorization" in a couple of years, where every single good movie from the past 100 years will be color graded again to look like a transformers movie.

RED's new 8k camera supposedly surpasses 35mm in every regard now.

Film, just like any tape as a physical media has imperfections, brand differences from manufacturin process, degragation etc.
Digital camera can never surpass film in every regard. In pure accuracy yes, but I doubt it from an 8k camera. That's only 4000 vertical pixels no matter how good the sensor.

in every regard (except the ones that matter)

digital is too good, it strengthens the power of the so-called auteurs of cinema to mold the image to exactly what they want. and they all want the same exact thing:

* orange and teal
* sharp sharp sharp
* no accidents, happy or not

That kind of analog noise on VHS is probably impossible to totally replicate in the digital domain, humans are very good at discerning that "feel" inherent in all the chaos caused by composite video.

Yeah and it's basically the same analog vs digital difference that makes film feel different.

I meant more on a dynamic range level than anything else. AFAIK that's what was holding digital back the last decade- film would always win out under certain lighting conditions.

I think another negative byproduct of digital though is the ability to just shoot hours and hours of footage, especially in comedies. Instead of sticking to a tight script, actors just improve endlessly into the void and the "joke" are found in editing.

That being said, look at what Fincher is able to do with digital. It really suits his style and he's been shooting on it since... Panic Room? Maybe? I know Zodiac definitely was.

I watched Zodiac for the first time yesterday and I didn't like it.
It looked good though.

the specsheet Nolan himself is promoting says 35mm is around the equivalent of 6K, which is already below the 8K digital standard for modern REDs.

and that's not taking into account detail lost to grain, which digital already surpasses film at.

meant to reply to you user with we'd still have digital color grading (color timing?) despite digital cameras. I think that's a bigger issue when it's used poorly. It works when used well though, see: O Brother Where Art Thou?

More pixels won't save movies.

Oh okay, thanks for clearing things up.

>we'd still have digital color grading (color timing?)

yeah, this is part of why there's no "going back", even when shooting film.

Both of the things you say here are true. My point was more that there's a degree of randomness to film as to all things in nature that can't be reproduced digitally and people can tell the difference so it's not better
> in every regard
Digital sensors can only be better in accuracy, and from what I've read so far 6k or 8k sensor even on a theoretical perfect performance would not come close to 70mm.

>mfw only "IMAX" theater near me is shit tier digital projection and not true 70mm film

>implying mr turner was the best looking film of this decade

you still get laser projection, presumably? that's still better than regular DCP, which has a much worse color depth in comparison.

Yea 70mm is still king, I agree. Too bad studios are pushing 3D now instead of 70mm. Though those cameras are still fucking huge and probably a pain in the ass to shoot with.

You're right about the "feel" of film though. Grain is a good thing.

I thought 3D was dead. My local multiplex has more 2D showings for blockbusters than 3D.

>all things being equal
As long as those equal things were within the limits of film.
You want to make a 20 min continuous shot?
Fuck you.
You want to shoot in low light?
Fuck you.
You want to shoot in near silence?
Fuck you.
You want to shoot in extremely small spaces?
Fuck you.
You want to shoot something that the camera will not survive?
Fuck you.

But other than that, go for it.

I like the look of film. I shoot stills on film and develop it myself, but digital is objectively better in most practical ways, and closing the gap in all the others.

I'm not sure. I asked a staff member at the theater today when I saw Dunkirk and they had no clue what I was talking about. They offered to fetch the manager but I just said fuck it and took my seat.

I live near a place with 4DX. whenever I go it's almost empty.

Even Dunkirk is fucking orange and teal even though it's shot on muh 70mm IMAX motion picture film that was #blessed by David Lean's ghost

GotG 2 was shot on their 8K camera. Looked alright. And it wasn't even the new Helium sensor that's even better.

It's funny how filmmakers of the past really hated the low dynamic range of film and the grain, especially during low-light scenes. Kodak worked tirelessly to improve their film stocks and finally in the 2000's they achieved film stock that is clean as fuck, almost like digital. Now filmmakers who are shooting digital are adding noise, grain and other imperfections to their pristine, sharp images to make it look more like film.

>You want to make a 20 min continuous shot?
get a longer film
>You want to shoot in low light?
learn to adjust lighting
You want to shoot in near silence?
learn basic sound editing
You want to shoot in extremely small spaces?
learn forced perspective and movie making 101
You want to shoot something that the camera will not survive?
it's a pretty unlikely scenario you wanna toss a fancy camera regardless if you get the footage or not.
however it is true it could be transfered live digitally. this is one actual advantage for digital.

rest of your post is shit. go back to starting your youtube channel.

>#blessed by David Lean's ghost

if you've never felt the magic of 35mm, here's a nice little experiment...

1. get a 35mm still camera - just about anything will do, even a disposable single-use one
2. shoot a roll of negative color film in good light. overexpose everything by a couple of stops.
3. develop the roll and get a proper contact sheet made. not a scan-and-print contact sheet, it will look horrible, but a proper chemically printed contact sheet done in a darkroom

unless you've messed up in a big way, you'll be surprised at how good the photos look. despite never having been through digital "enhancement", you'll get beautiful colors and tones and lots of shadow detail. it will feel like magic.

>You want to shoot in low light?
>Fuck you.
Kubrick found a way, but it required Zeiss lenses designed for the space program.

The "orange and teal" is just a complimentary colorway in color grading that's been used from the start of the use of color, but autist on the Internet caught up to that only a year or two ago and now just screech ORAMGE AN TEEL just because they heard of the term somewhere and thinking that that some kind of argument.
And it has zero to do with film or digital, color grading is applied to both formats.

Yes but they don't HAVE TO make every film look like teal and orange but they still do.

i'd object to "objectively better", but if you'd get more into the details (like "objectively capable of resolving more detail") i probably wouldn't.

the best aspect of digital is also the worst one - it kills limitations.
it's like having a huge budget - sure, you can do whatever it is you want, but the artistry will suffer.

limitation drives creativity, and while self-imposed limitations might, to a certain extent, work for artists who work more or less alone, they won't do anything for a huge hollywood production

deliberately limiting color palettes definitely became fashion after The Godfather though, as people started associating sepia with prestige drama.

Now it's used to drain the life out of every fucking thing.

>color grading is applied to both formats.
Yes, but it's much easier to crank up the contrast in sony vegas than it is to get lenses, filters and film to shoot high contrast with both yellow and blue, opposite colours (and it's analogue so these things matter), to both pop up in the same shot.

It is the oldest trick in the book to use opposite colors to create shots, but orange and blue is not just a meme. Hollywood definitely milked it especially in the 2000s. Pic related, how would you get the blue tone for the sky while making his skin look burnt dark orange on film? And then do the same thing for 60 minutes of every action movie that comes out.

>learn to adjust lighting
But that's the point, once you adjust it on the set there's no turning back.

>learn basic sound editing
You can't just "delete" a certain sound without affecting the rest you turboautist. Sure, you can denoise and EQ-out the frequencies of the operating noise that is using up the frequency spectrum, but you are affecting the sound of evereything else too. That's why with film dubbing and foley of every single action is a must

>learn forced perspective and movie making 101
But not all shots call for a forced perspective it gives a certain kind of feel to the shot and it has it's limitations. If you don't have a big budget you can't afford filming in a studio without a roof etc

Every point you mentioned is just a unnecessary limitation that the digital format doesn't have.

Resolution is one thing, but getting that organic quality that comes from a chemical emulsion responding in unpredictable ways is hard. You are not going to simulate behavior at the molecular level that can vary due to things like slight variations in batches, and other weird shit that makes film less sterile than digital.

>muh cinematography
fags like you are what ruined this board

I think that 2000s look was more a byproduct of "look what we can do with our cool new toys" than anything. Now we're stuck in this desaturation hell, like alluded to.

At least people like Del Taco and James Gunn still inject color into their bigger blockbusters.

That's the problem of desaturation first and foremost. Today it's popular to desature all the shots hoping for a "dark dramatic" effect so they need a high contrast complimentary color to stick out of that bland mess.

>But that's the point, once you adjust it on the set there's no turning back.
That's how digital works too. Just because you shoot raw files and can fiddle with the exposure afterwards doesn't mean you're not stuck with the lighting you had at the time of the shot.
>You can't just "delete" a certain sound without affecting the rest you turboautist.
Yeah? So fucking mute it and do ADR. Making movie is work.
>But not all shots call for a forced perspective it gives a certain kind of feel to the shot and it has it's limitations.
So do it differently. You can make anything look like what you want it to look like on film.

You're just whining because you're comfortable throwing your gopro around and getting "good footage". If you're not controlling the lighting and editing the sound regardless if you're shooting digital your end product is shit.

that's an aesthetic disaster

i wish blockbusters still looked like jaws

how you want your desaturation, fám?

oh? you won't be happy till you're staring at blobs of concrete? you want it to look like we forgot to color grade RAW camera ouput? say no more my man...

I fell asleep during both of these movies.

I'm not the original user you replied too, I just replied to show you how limited the film format is.
Ofcourse you have to set up good lighting regardless and ofcourse you have to to sound mixing and sound editing no matter what, but it is a fact that it's all much much easier to do with digital.
Dismissing any of two formats completely would be absurd, but you can't deny that the digital format is constantly advancing with every passing year while film stays pretty much the same.

>not loving pacifc rim
bruh

I think Arrival's colors worked for the tone of the film, our protagonist's mindset, etc. Desaturation makes sense.

Yeah, he used f0.9 50mm lenses with an adaptor to give it a 35mm view IIRC, and a shitload of candles, and he had a very narrow focal depth.
That's cool if it's actually what you want, but if you want a lot more depth of field (close things and far away things being in focus at the same time) with even less light (maybe a shot with a single candle) then film will just not do it.

>learn forced perspective and movie making 101
I mean putting a camera in a place that a film camera will not physically fit into. Sure, you fake it, maybe, and still get what you were after, kinda, or you could actually do it with digital.

Same goes for your other points.

The interior shots in Arrival certainly looked bland and heavily underexposed. Doubt it was a mistake from Bradford Young, but I can't think of a valid reason to make it intentionally like that.

Fucking saved

Kinda rustled that you think stageplay lighting is somehow inferior. Have you ever even seen live theatre? And no, your school play doesn't count.

>Sure, you fake it, maybe, and still get what you were after, kinda, or you could actually do it with digital.
Yes, you fake it. That's what making movies is.

If you're shooting some motorcycle prank videos or some shit I don't really care. GoPros are small, that's true. Ever seen a movie use gopro footage? It's a mess.

pacific rim is ok, i guess, for what it is, but it doesn't look particularly good. it just looks expensive, which isn't the same thing.

I didn't fall asleep during this movie, I liked it.