EXTENDED RESEARCH ESSAY

DIGITAL VERSUS FILM (and other monsters)

INTRODUCTION

Cinematography and/or directing of photography is the art of using light and camera as the tools to narrate a story in the form of a motion picture. The art form dates back to the 19th century and for more than a hundred years there has been one widely accepted process in which to make movies: shooting on celluloid film. However, with the advent of digital technologies and working practices during the late 20th century, production of motion pictures slowly started to become a hybrid with the use of old techniques and new ones together, such as the recording of images using a digital sensor that captured motion. After 30 years since the birth of digital cinematography, the craft has started becoming widely available and accepted in the mainstream film market, where many feature films in America and Europe are shot partly or wholly in a digital format. We are living in some of the most exciting and ground-breaking times in the field of photography; the unprecedented rate and the cutting-edge ways of distributing movies today, such as using the internet for streaming and downloading, has caused a rapture in the industry, as this brand new process of filmmaking comes in contrast with the rules that have been set and in use over the past century, in terms of cinematography. On one side of the argument, we have the new and emerging cast of artists, that have never come in contact and have no knowledge as to how celluloid film

works and instead make movies on cheap, digital hardware, such as DSLRs, that produce outstanding visual results in comparison to their price. On the other side of the argument, there is the veteran cinematographers, who have been shooting on celluloid film for decades and have produced legendary work, who insist that the old and comparatively expensive technology is the only medium that can deliver the image quality for a true “cinema experience”. A discussion has been opened on online forums, conferences and film sets about which medium is the “best” to shoot a motion picture on. The question that this debate inevitably produces is the following: Does celluloid film produce better motion pictures than digital cameras?

To conduct research and to try and answer this question, we have to define a set of elements which will act as the criteria when trying to judge which medium truly delivers the “best” motion pictures. Our terms consist of:

Best Film -> In regards to primarily photography and image production; motion pictures that have been recognized by critics and audiences alike for their craftsmanship, more specifically ones that have been nominated or have won an Oscar for cinematography. Such motion pictures have the necessary budget to employ the best professionals and resources. By choosing this area of the industry, we can inspect the argument in an environment where there is equal chances for both mediums to be in the hands of skilled cinematographers and thus

deliver their best. The era we will be focusing will the late 20th-early 21st century, where the visual language of motion picture has been long established in the mainstream and where the production of digital movies has started to become a norm in the field of feature films

Photography -> Which medium has delivered results that have the best lighting and camera work? What do the acclaimed of cinematographers use and what is their point of view on the subject?

Image quality -> This section splits into two main sub-sections *) Measureable terms*=Image resolution, latitude (how many stops are there between absolute white and absolute black?) *) Non-measureable=The “film look”; if it comes from celluloid, does that make the movie look like a film? Film grain versus Digital noise; which one is aesthetically better?

Sustainability -> Which of the media is proven and most likely can survive, both in the cinema (which one delivers the best visual quality in a stretch of time?) and in the production facilities, as the master that holds the original film for future generations to have?

Mediums -> When referring to mediums, I have intentionally narrowed down to two very specifics in order to try and achieve a straight-forward answer. When discussing analog film, I am giving as an example the Kodak 5205, a widely used 35mm stock for feature film in the 21st century. When discussing digital, I am referring to movies produced from a RED: Epic camera, one of the most popular digital cameras used for feature films today, set at a

2K resolution. 2K equals 2048x1535 pixels and is the resolution that most motion pictures are recorded on. It records RAW which is a film negative

The research n this field is crucial to todays motion picture industry. Whilst celluloid film purists insist that there is really no other way to produce eye-pleasing movies and project them in the high resolution that is required to enjoy the cinema experience; producers and studios embrace the new technology that is cheaper, more flexible and gives new options to the artist, that they never had before. Understanding how each medium works, what its advantages and shortfalls are and where each one is best used, helps the cinematographer gain a deeper knowledge of how motion pictures are made, which avenues there are available to the production team and what each of the two mediums can offer the audience and the motion picture. Furthermore, continued study in the field can provide the writer and reader of this essay with an insight on how the business is moving forward, which emerging technologies are the most popular and why, giving them an insight on how the motion picture industry may evolve.According to current data, feature length films shot on digital/part digital, are increasing on a skyrocketing rate of a 100% per year, meaning that since 2008 movies shot on digital are doubling every year. In the last five years, 4 motion pictures shot with the new technology have won the Academy Award for Best

Cinematography, those being Slumdog Millionaire (Boyle, 2008), Avatar (Cameron, 2009), Hugo (Scorsesi, 2011) and Life of Pi (Lee, 2012), whilst one movie shot on celluloid film has won the same Oscar, Inception (Nolan, 2010). At the same time however, more than 50% of motion pictures shot by the most active and well known western movie studios are still being shot on celluloid film by the most financially successful and well-known cinematographers. Looking at the statistics, the mediums are still heavily in contention; there is no clear winner, as to which format is trusted with high budgets; digital is expanding at an alarming rate, but celluloid is still winning in shear terms of numbers. A study as to which delivers the best motion pictures, with the measurements being the aforementioned criteria will give us an insight as to which medium is best trusted by the most acclaimed directors of photography and how the motion picture industry may look like in the future.

A particular area which is problematic in this area of research and rarely touched upon academically is how important is the choice of medium in judging the quality of a motion picture overall? Does the use of celluloid film or a digital sensor really matter on how good the final product is, or is it just one part of a bigger picture, that consists of directing, actor performance, art direction, editing and so on? This essay will try and give an answer to this question amongst others. As “quality” is not a strictly measurable concept and depends on

many different factors, we might indeed be dealing with an argument that has no real answer.

To summarize, using as our area of research films made during the late 20th-early 21st century and a number of criteria, mentioned above, such as image quality and sustainability, I will try and answer the question whether it is better to use celluloid film, rather than a digital camera to produce movies.

*Measurable Terms: Color replication and accuracy is deliberately left out of the “Measureable Term” section. Modern film stocks and digital cameras can produce hundreds of thousands of different color variations and therefore fully cover the visible spectrum that humans perceive; every color conceivable can be duplicated on-screen in both formats and as such the debate in this particular section is much more about aesthetics and the different “looks” achievable with a digital camera and film stocks and subsequently, topic of another essay.

CHAPTER 1

THE MECHANICS OF FILM AND DIGITAL

In the first chapter of the essay we will cover the basics of how moving images are created when using celluloid film and digital sensors. By understanding how the media record motion pictures we can start tracing what the differences are between them and what their technical capabilities are. Celluloid film has been in use and constantly evolving for more than a century; it was discovered and refined for photographic use by three different people, John Carbutt, Hannibal Goodwin and George Eastmam, during the late 19th

century. There have been thousands of different variations of film with different attributes and capabilities, so-called film stocks, as such we will focus on how modern, 21st century film stocks work, such as Kodak 5205.

Widely used for film production 35mm film is a thick, flexible plastic base, which is coated with a number of chemicals, the most important ones being the emulsion layers. They are chemical compounds, comprised of silver halides, tiny silver crystals that react to light. In color film, there is usually three layers consisting these crystals, each one sensitive to a different wavelength of light; blue, green and red. On each of these layers, there is tiny droplets of couplers, dyes which are complimentary to the color that the layer is sensitive to; yellow for blue, magenta for green and cyan for red. When the film is exposed to light through the cameras shutter, a chemical reaction between the silver crystals and the color coupler of each layer happens, that re-arranges the crystals in a different position, creating a latent or invisible image. Through the use of appropriate chemicals and exposure technology, we receive at first a negative of the image, which is exactly what the word means; a reproduction of what we see in the opposite colors. Through the use of color printers and white light, the negative in turn produces the final picture, in its accurate colors, in varying sizes. This final picture is then projected on to a white surface. [“Understanding Film… The Basics”. (2003). Retrieved April 17th, 2013 from http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/education/lessonPlans/lessonPlan152.shtml, “What about film scanners?”. (2007). Retrieved April 17th, 2013 from http://www.scantips.com/basics13.html]

Digital cameras on the other hand operate in a profoundly different manner; the two mediums have radically different imaging processes.

Whereas in film, the “look” depends highly on the film stock chosen and all modern film cameras operate mostly in the same fashion, in digital imaging, it is the camera that is responsible for that. The image sensor is a device found in all digital cameras and essentially converts an optical image, captured by the lens into an electronic signal; this is broadly speaking the “alternate” of film stock. In modern equipment, there are two types of those sensors: the charge-coupled device (CCD) and the complementary-metal-oxide semiconductor active pixel sensors (CMOS). In order to refine the trajectory of this essay, we will look at CMOS sensors, which are employed by one of the most widely accepted digital opponent of 35mm film, the RED: Epic digital camera. I focus on this particular sensor because of its proliferation within the field.

During the process of recording images, light reflected from a scene hits the lens of the camera. In the RED: Epic system, that “stimuli” is then passed on to the sensor, which is a circuit with wafers of silicon; a part of it is consisted of tiny light cavities, also known as pixels; these are light sensitive elements which can sense how many photons have arrived at each particular location. There is 13.8 million of these on the CMOS sensor of the camera. Because the sensor is colorblind, a mosaic of colored filters is applied on the device, with twice as many green filters as there are red and blue, due to the human visual system being more sensitive towards green colors. Each of these light cavities can only pick up on of the three primary colors, as such, the values of the other two has to be guessed. After this light energy has been

captured in this particular operation, it is converted into electrical energy, millions of Lilliputian charges, which are transferred further inside the camera and interpreted by the firmware, a software tied to the device’s hardware. Information contained within these signals now includes color, intensity and other qualities of the light captured and is subsequently transformed into digital code, different series of the digits 0 and 1, which can then be recognized by electronic devices; computers, screens etc. The image is then either projected on or transmitted to a screen for viewing. [Holst/Lomheim, G./T., 2001, CMOS/CCD Sensors and Camera Systems, SPIE, London]

It is evident from the explanation of the mechanics of the two mediums that they operate in a very different fashion. Images coming from film and digital are constructed from antithetic materials, coming from silver halide crystals and series of digits respectively. They are also viewed in contrary ways. To compare these, we have set very specific factors with which to judge. The first area we are looking at will be image quality.

CHAPTER 2

IMAGE QUALITYMeasureable Terms

Image quality is the first important factor that springs to mind when trying to answer the question of whether film or digital is better. When referring to image quality, I am strictly analyzing technical aspects of the term and not its perceived aesthetics or beauty. To simply define it, image quality is subjective, perceived measurement of how accurately the depiction of a subject represents it. Note how the words subjective and perceived are used by most definitions; to this date, there is no globally accepted measurement for image quality, the same there is not one for taste. The question of how to quantify the quality of an image, even in technical terms is difficult and depends largely upon circumstances and ever-changing factors. We can however compare the technical possibilities of each media and see which one possesses most advantages.

Image Resolution

When considering image resolution, we are placing this examination in an ideal environment. Because image resolution does not simply depend on what has been recorded on the camera/film, but also how it has been processed, transmitted and viewed, we have to first analyze how image resolution is measured for both mediums and then conduct extensive research on a number of

experiments done by experts, where these results are discussed

It is generally accepted by the wider public that image resolution amounts to the Megapixels of a camera, something evident by a simple search of the term “image resolution” on Google. Because of clever marketing and the relevance of pixels to the overall concept of resolution, the arguments over digital versus film tend to use this as a factor to “prove” which medium records motion picture better; in fact, this practice is inconsistent and inaccurate, as Ken Rockwell, internationally renowned photographer and holder of several photographic patents in the US, notes on his website, (www.kenrockwell.com).

Film is an analog medium. This means that it does not contain pixels, but rather is made out of dye clouds, silver halide crystals that have reacted with chemical dyes to create an image. In order to compare the two mediums, a film print would have to be digitally scanned, to create an electronic “twin”, composed of pixels. Theoretically speaking, a film print, captured, handled and exposed by a skilled professional on a top-end film scanner could yield resolutions of between 3-12 Megapixels. A Red Epic camera, at 2K resolution (2048x1535), which is the resolution where almost all digital films are shot on, can capture and produce images that contain around 2.2 Megapixels. Judged in this manner, celluloid film is of vastly superior quality.

However, imaging experts such as Louis La Volpe of New York’s Institute for Film and Television and Akira Watanabe of Olympus Imaging, say that

those numbers although valid theoretically, have very little to do with real-time situations. Research shows that while a film negative can contain around 3-13 Megapixels of information, that information deteriorates rapidly from generation to generation, meaning that an amount of 25-50% of it disappears in the process of making the film positive, while more of it is lost when projected in the cinema, through the projectors system and lens. Moreover, when the film is projected in the cinema, because of the actual physical strain that the sheet of plastic is put through, passing from the inside of the projector, the more it deteriorates overtime. There are no available statistics as to what actually reaches the cinema screen for most movies. On the contrary, with digital film, because the movie resolution, from production, to processing all the way up to projection in the cinema is much more reliably controlled, easily measured and does not deteriorate no matter how much used, provides stable results as to what resolution we see in the cinema; and that is usually 2.2 million pixels. This is all due to the fact that digital motion pictures are not made out of analogue compounds that can easily be corrupted, ripped, stained and burned but are digital files that are not manually handled.

The question of whether film boasts more detail than digital has indeed a lot of answers and depends on “per case” studies. Testing from a number of different experts and companies such as Kodak and Panavision, or the infamous “Image Resolution of 35mm Film in Theatrical Presentation” essay, written in America, return results which do not accurately place one medium above another; imaging professionals have a hard

time distinguishing between formats, when faced with two pictures shot on film and digital. Because of the guessing nature of how digital sensors record images, it is clear that film can hold incredible amounts of information, usually several hundreds megapixels more than the most advanced digital camera can; however, how much of that information reaches the viewing screen is debatable and for most cases, does not matter. Digital is capable of producing eye pleasing motion picture for the cinema and film certainly is as well. Most cases show audiences and experts to not see the difference between formats.

We come to the conclusion that image resolution can be greater on one or the other format, is largely a result of many different factors and is not sustainably and reliably stable to judge which medium can “do better”. Both can create cinematic, great quality motion pictures.

Dynamic Range

Another aspect of the motion picture that is heavily important in its capturing, is the dynamic range of the recording device, or the different shades between absolute black and absolute white. The more shades a camera or a film stock can capture, the more the human brain is tricked into seeing a three-dimensional scene on a two-dimensional medium such as a movie on a flat, white screen; the finer details recorded add the necessary depth that creates interest in the image. Dynamic range

is measured in stops. As a general rule of thumb, the human eye can see well over 20 stops of different light conditions, however it can not be directly compared to a camera; the human vision is an imaging “super-computer”, that assembles information of an incredibly wide scene, by simply changing the eyes direction, adjusting the iris and other image capturing particles, recording the information, then assembling it into a “painting”. We do not actually see everything around us simultaneously, but rather capture it and put it together into a mental image. As such, if the human eye fixes upon one scene without moving and adjusting, as much as a camera does, its contrast distinguishing capabilities degrade. Although there is no clear evidence of how many stops we can perceive that way, measures estimate between 6-12. Cameras and film stocks on the other hand, have a measureable range, when strictly speaking about their sole recording capabilities, without any post-production or dark-room manipulation. A modern, digital Red: Epic camera can capture around 13 stops of usable dynamic range, without any processing. Contrary, according to experiments conducted by experts such as Dr. Roger Clark (MIT) and David Mullen (American Cinematographer Society) film will produce around 7-10 stops of usable information, without any dark room processing. Again, because of how “analog” the medium is, the results of research on its dynamic range can vary. It is very clear that digital cameras can capture a much more detailed scene by nature; film is much less capable and unstable in that area.

However, another aspect of this comparison that is important to mention is what the two mediums are “made for”. It is widely known in the world of cinematography, that film can capture highlight information un-comparably better than digital cameras can. Because film is an analog medium, not tied by limits such as number of pixels, or color guessing patterns that “cheat” to create a colored image, it has unbound capabilities when it comes to the gradation of grey to white. Essentially, when capturing towards white in the visible spectrum, film will record the gradation in a much smoother, detailed manner. Digital cameras on the other hand, even the most expensive and advanced, reach a certain point of brightness and then “clip”, creating a very abrupt cut in the gradation of color and provide absolute white in the overexposed parts of the image which contains no detail, something considered unpleasant in photography. The reason lies deeply in the mechanics with which those mediums are made; images coming from film are formed through crystals which do not never quite have the same size and therefore respond in varying intensities to light, giving a smooth “wave” of information in highlights. In digital sensors, every single of the light cavities, or “pixels”, have a set number of light intensities they can capture. Therefore, because when the image is constructed digitally, the brightness values are represented by numbers, as soon as these rich the maximum value that can be represented, they stop recording details and present an abrupt, overblown white. However, at the same time, digital cameras are plainly put unmatched when it comes to their abilities in low light conditions. Film stocks have what is called an ISO (International Standardization

Organization), which indicates their sensitivity to light. It ranges from 100, up to 12.500 and the more of it, the more sensitive a film stock is to light. Because larger film crystals are more sensitive to photons, they are also more visible; hence why the more the crystals react to light, the more apparent they are in the image and they produce what we call a “grainy” look. The stock is tied to its ISO; every film roll has a specific one. Digital cameras on the other hand adjust their own ISO internally, meaning that one camera can be as sensitive as 100 – 12.000, giving flexibility to he production to use one recording device for every single light settings of a film, while sustaining the same “look”.

The conclusion from the above is that although digital has a wider dynamic range in its ability to record gradation of lighter and darker tones and has more flexible light sensitivity adjustments, film is much better when recording in conditions where there is too much light that can not be manipulated, usually in landscape and street photography and on sunny conditions. As such, the use of one or the other medium heavily depends on what the cinematographer will be shooting, whether that is studio controlled lighting or an outdoor motion picture.

CHAPTER 3

IMAGE QUALITYNon-Measureable Terms

When discussing the mediums through which motion pictures are made, technical facts are usually brought to the forefront, discussing which format can yield more colors, more resolution, more detail. In most occasions and indeed largely on the internet, the “facts” are hear-say; moreover, the comparisons are almost as a rule biased, judging by choosing contesters from each medium which can not be directly compared; for example, a camcorder and 70mm film. To counter this problem, we have chosen to compare between the most widely used formats in both digital and film; features tend to either be on 35mm or a RED: Epic camera at 2K resolution. Indeed, until now, it is not clear which medium is “better”; they both can be better than the other, based on the situation they are used in and also how well they are handled both during shooting and broadcasting.

The argument becomes even more complicated when non-measureable factors come into play, which can not be quantified, but make up a motion picture as much as the number of Megapixels or the centimeters of a roll of film, such as reliability of the format and the creative control it gives to the creative. By conducting a study in to how

important these factors are in judging which format is “better”, by taking different opinions of imaging professionals and audiences. Many award winning cinematographers and directors have been vocal about their opinions on the subject matter and present different views on it.

Experts opinions

David Lynch, one of the most critically acclaimed directors of the 20th century, has praised digital cameras in his interviews, commenting on how the medium “leaves more space to dream”, as the editing and color correcting process is so much more stable and controlled, giving the artist the space to make their vision manifest as it they have imagined it. It is widely known that film takes much more time before even it can screened for the first time during production, as it needs to be exposed first. The color grading process, if done on the actual film roll, is repetitive and long; the motion picture is seen, notes are taken and then the sequence is processed, frame by frame. In modern times, the film is usually scanned on a high quality scanner, digitized, corrected and then either printed on film again or projected digitally. With tapeless workflows, the footage can be watched back in a matter of hours and corrected much quicker, as all those stages that have to be passed, mentioned before, do not exist. The footage is transferred on to a computer and manipulated immediately. Wally Pfister, an Award winning American cinematographer, who is responsible for some of the most successful films of the 21st century, such as Inception and The Dark Knight has a different opinion on the matter; in fact, he categorically

refuses to use digital formats and cites a number of reasons. Most of all he mentions reliability. According to the cinematographer, he has tried to use digital cameras in the past, when shooting scenes that need a high frame rate for example, and has lost almost 90% of the footage due to technical glitches and “problems of unknown origin”. It is widely known in the digital midst that cameras are in their infancy and therefore, as much with film in its early days, problems that arise on set can very often not be dealt with immediately, simply because technicians of the camera (which needs double, or triple the amount of people to make it work, than a film camera would) have never encountered them before. Although, the stories of unstable footage that crashes between transfers and “hot” pixels, red dots stuck in the same position on a sequence over a long time, usually have no back-up evidence, it is known that digital cameras have for example powering issues; because they work with batteries, these usually last for only 30 minutes, which is the time that it would take for a director and a cinematographer to just frame a shot. Then, there is light adjusting and rehearsals with the actors. For the camera to have enough power, it needs multiple chargers and batteries on set. Another significant drawback of the format reported widely is overheating. Because RED cameras are not actually “cameras” in the strict definition of motion picture industry, but rather computers inside camera bodies, composed of million of tiny electrical circuits and cables, they are prone to developing very high internal temperatures, either producing noisy video in result, or completely shutting down.

The new digital technology is not just changing the way that motion pictures are made today but it also changes the visual language that is used in the cinema. An important part of that is the depiction of texture on the image; on film that is produced with fine grains, million of tiny little color neutral spots, sometimes more visible than others. The higher the ISO of a film stock, or its light sensitivity, the more visible those grains are. This texture is largely responsible for what millions of audiences and hundreds of filmmakers imagine as the “film look”; it is those particles that give those motion pictures a very specific look and feel and distinguish them from camcorders and other lesser recording mediums. It has been apparent, more or less, on all films since a century ago and therefore is a fundamental part of a movie. Those particles are randomly arranged during the exposure of film and are part of creating a cinematic look up until now. On digital however, the counterpart of that is digital noise, specifically the one mostly encountered, which is random noise, an erratic pattern of vividly colored flakes visible in low-light conditions. The higher the digital sensors sensitivity is to light, the more the noise is apparent in the image. Whilst the past decade has seen a leap in digital noise reduction, where cameras keep “seeing” clearer and clearer darker environments, digital noise is still aesthetically frowned upon, as it is considered a product of video, a medium looked down upon as a lesser one, in comparison to film. Film grain creates a “gritty”, grungy look which comes as choice along with its film stock, unlike digital noise, which to this day is considered an unwanted by-product. That is

not to say that in the future digital noise might not be used as an artistic choice, however to todays motion picture industry, film grain is considered better.

The resolution from the arguments detailed above is that film, according to the experts, has specific aesthetics which are associated with cinema by all audiences and is therefore the most acceptable medium today, in creating motion pictures. The unstable nature derived from the infancy of digital cinematography makes a lot of professionals uncomfortable with the medium, but at the same time give others, like David Lynch, more freedom to create and dream, because of the mediums ability to be much more controlled in post-production. Although it is clear that film is trusted by a much bigger part of the filmmaking society, the capabilities of digital are being discovered and refined rapidly, giving many creatives more space to realize their visions.

CHAPTER 4

SUSTAINABILITY

The archiving of motion pictures is as an important feature of them, as much as their direction and cinematography. Film rolls over a century old survive to this day and their preservation is crucial to the history of cinema, because they offer us an understanding of the aesthetics and techniques of each era, they educate emerging filmmakers and are a record of the evolution of human art. They are finely crafted works, through which we learn

and gain an understanding, through which we are inspired and taught to create.The 1980s where the first era in which it was apparent that standards had to be set in order to preserve motion pictures; film rolls, because of their analog nature, lose their colors which fade overtime and are very prone to damaging, either from handling, in the form of finger prints, tears, scratches or over-projecting and duplicating. Eventually, film rolls, especially the ones made by cellulose nitrate, the standard in the first decades of cinema, decompose. According to research by the Silent Era Company, an international film archival organization, 90% of silent films made before the 1950’s are now lost. It is evident that preservation was and continues to be a pressing problemWhen discussing film preservation, the practice is often mistaken to be the “duplication” of the original, the scanning and the printing to a newer stock. Although the practice itself is very reliable, according to the National Film preservation Board of America, the process costs around $40.000 and therefore can only be applied to a fraction of the industry. In recent decades, a practice which is researched, utilized and refined is the archiving of the original film artifact in conditions that as such allow for the authentic piece to survive. Common techniques include the storage of the master in climate-controlled vaults and the creation of a high quality duplicate for all uses, essentially leaving the original mostly untouched. The proper storage buys time and makes the duplication process slower and to also happen less times between years. The technique is simple; the authentic artifact is safeguarded in a cold and dry environment, which allows for a scheduled

maintenance to happen once every few years, lowering the cost greatly. Although the process is still very crude and relatively expensive, it is at the time sustainable and reliable.When it comes to the preservation of digital formats, the technology is in no way ready to ensure archiving for decades. Whilst film originals can last for a century, the estimated time for digital preservation is a mere 10 years. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the society behind the Academy Awards or Oscars, estimated that the cost of digital preservation is twelve times more expensive than the film one is.

There is an inherent problem in the digital world which is fundamental to the way it has been developed, both for good and bad. Because digital is the uncontrolled sharing of information since its early days, the formats in which motion pictures and videos exist are endless; artifacts from 5 years ago can not be played back by modern computers a lot of the time, simply because the file type has been made redundant, as new formats emerge literally every day. As such, because there are no rules and boundaries as to how visual information I made and distributed, there are no techniques of preserving it, because there are countless different versions of each digital piece. Professionals have for years been ringing the alarm that we need to push towards the adoption of open standards for digital formats, to ensure that big corporations works together to develop sustainable techniques to maintain motion picture heritage. Currently, production and distribution companies all have their own, most commonly secret, procedures of preserving movies, which rarely adhere to high

standards, resulting in the loss of important information.The standard procedure of preserving the digital media usually consists the transfer of all that information into electronic hard-drives; the technique is problematic from the beginning, as the cost of storing 3 petabytes (3 million Gigabytes) which is usually the size of the material shot, is immense. Not only that, but hard drives have consistently shown to fail and get corrupted, rendering the data unreadable. The average lifespan of such a storing device is around six to sever years. Couples with the cost of the migration of such an amount of data and the instability of the process, it is very clear that digital preservation has a long way before becoming a reliable medium. It also has to be noted that a lot of digital movies are converted into film rolls to be stored.

It is rather clear that when it comes to the preservation of one of the most important components of human history, culture and heritage, movies, celluloid film is the clear, reliable and trusted medium in which all the information is stored. It has been shown to work for decades and also able to be restored to an extent, unlike digital, which is very short lived and much harder to “resuscitate”. Although the technology is improving fast, as one can easily conclude by comparing VHS video cassettes to modern DVD, the science is still too young and erratic to be trusted with such important artifacts. Standards are being developed and media companies have turned to manufacturers asking for more systems to be put in place. In the words of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, “There is

currently no sustainable practice for the preservation of digital media”.

CHAPTER 5

AESTHETIC OF THE MEDIA IN THE CONTEXT OF STORYTELLING

Motion pictures are storytelling through moving images and sound. It is a join effort of directors, producers, cinematographers, actors, production

designers, art directors and many, many other professionals, who work together to bring a story from paper to the screen. It is the joint effort of theirs that creates the personal, emotional experience we all have in response to a movie.In the previous chapters, we have seen some of the technical advantages and disadvantages that the media have, however rarely touched upon in the debate of celluloid film versus digital is the matter of aesthetics. What does the use of each of the media entail in terms of storytelling?The debate on the aesthetics is much more complicated, as there are no direct measurable data to compare, only the artistic choice of the individual cinematographer and the opinion of professionals.

“Celluloid film is ultimately what we have come to associate with the movies; the look of cinema is forever bound to the texturized, deep image that film creates” -Wally Pfister, Kodak Interview 2012

Wally Pfister, cinematographer of many acclaimed films such as The Dark Knight and Inception, is one of the veteran professionals in the field who insist that digital technologies can not re-create the look and aesthetic of celluloid film and is instead a “lesser” medium. According to his opinion, celluloid creates images that “warm, deep, rich in textures with hundreds of subtle tonalities and fine grain”. It is true, as stated in the chapter Mechanics of Film and Digital, that because of their different imaging methods, the media produce images structured differently, as such it is only reasonable to expect them to have different looks.

Eduardo Sanchez, an American writer and director takes a very different stance on the subject. Being one of the first filmmakers to see the advent of digital technologies as an escape to new ways of storytelling, he used a handheld video camera to shoot a whole feature film, “The Blair Witch Project”, the story of three teenagers that get lost in a mysterious forest. The image is constantly shaky, the color rendering is extremely poor and the imaging follows no applied rules of cinematography, a lot of the shots being over or under exposed. In spite of breaking all cinematic conventions and rules, the film has been praised, because of the lesser video format used, which in conjunction with a clever marketing campaign, sparked the interest of audiences and critics alike as to how “real” the movie was; according to the original website, The Blair Witch Project was composed of footage that three students filmed before getting lost in the forest of Burkittsvile, Maryland. It was claimed that the tapes were later found and used to create this documentary.

In that respect the cinematography was truly successful, because it served the story, making it believable to the point of causing reaction and backlash by mainstream media, which condemned the motion picture as a mere “publicity stunt”. It is a great example of how a format which was deemed unusable by cinematographers, was able to mesmerize millions of viewers around the world and cause such emotional reactions in the hands of skilled filmmakers. It could be argued that “classical” film aesthetics as to what is considered pleasing to the eye, examples being high resolution images, shallow depth of field*, fine film

grain etc. are not universally applicable, but merely there to serve the story and can be ignored or altered to create different experiences.

Lars Von Trier, a renowned director who has been involved in the discussion of formats for many year, was one of the first filmmakers to use digital media to produce motion pictures. As he stated in the documentary “Side by Side”, “There is a sense of hyper-reality in digital cameras, a rebellious nature tied into them, that says “Ignore Film school, do it on your own, create your own visions and images”

*Shallow depth of field: With the use of 35mm film and the newer digital sensors, the focus of the moving image can shift from the background to the subject, thus shifting the attention of the viewer to the desired spot, a quality long considered to be a component of the cinematic image

By pushing video aesthetics into the real of mainstream motion pictures with his early movies, such as the Idiots (1998), Trier came years later to create visually stunning work, such as Melancholia (2011) and The Antichrist (2009), with the help of advanced digital sensors.

Hollywood producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has argued in numerous of his interviews with magazine American Cinematographer, that film aesthetics have been steadily decreasing, not because the digital wave is somehow inferior to film ,but because everyone now has the power to create, everyone can use a camera to produce

stunning visuals and narrate a compelling story, but only a few can, leaving the rest to come up with mediocre material that creates a sea of digital waste that is hard to navigate through, in order to find the truly worthwhile pieces. A particular quote of his from documentary “Side by Side” (Reeves, 2013) has garnered a lot of online scrutiny; “With the digital revolution, there is no tastemakers”. Although evident that at least a small part of the industry is uncomfortable with the changes because it takes away from their power at choosing what will be produced and promoted, it is also true that the filmmaking community grows bigger, thus trends and aesthetic waves depends on a lot more people, of which many do not posses years of experience, many having not even been to film school. As Bonaventura insists, it is even harder for good movies to even be noticed now, when they are piled upon many other mediocre ones.

Another veteran however, David Lynch subtly mentions in his interview with Charlie Rose (January 12th, 2000) that talent and to an extent aesthetics, is not about tools. His infamous quote being “Every other guy and his brother has a pencil and a paper. But how many good stories have been written on paper?”, he insists on many occasions that the democratization of filmmaking does not affect the aesthetics of cinema, but that stories do.

A personal reflection from the above would be that film aesthetics are very much fundamental to the nature of cinema, however they are not the goal, but merely a component of the whole experience. The argument over technical capabilities and

aesthetics of media tends to be narrow-minded as to its focus. In spite of each format’s advantages and downfalls in certain situations, they are merely the tools of a picture much bigger, that encompasses many other art forms, such as acting, music, lighting etc. and are only there to serve the plot and to narrate a story. Examples such as “The Blair Witch Project” (Sanchez, Myrik, 1999) and Avatar (Cameron, 2009) only remind the community that film aesthetics only serve as initial guides to the filmmakers journey, to a world full of possibilities.

CONCLUSION

THE CINEMA

Drawing a conclusion from the previous chapters, the debate of film versus digital stretches very far, starting from a technical point of view as to which can deliver the “best” results in a number of situations, to pure aesthetics and what can be considered to be “cinema worthy”.

Technically, celluloid film can be better or worse depending on the situation; it can have greater resolving power and record finer detail, but none that is visible to the human eye, unless under scrutiny. When projecting in the cinema, digital technologies are very well able to create deep, rich images that have a new, different

aesthetic from celluloid. Digital can be more flexible and better for shooting in low light conditions or handheld; however, today’s technology has not advanced enough to make the preservation of digital files last for more than a few year. As such the practice is not sustainable as of yet.

Celluloid film has indeed shaped the minds of millions of people around the world the past century, imprinting the look in our minds. However, it really is only a medium through which artists tell stories, inspire and communicate, thus not vital to the process. Digital is a new way of thinking and certainly brings many changes along, however it democratizes the system, enabling more directors, writers and cinematographers to make new work and enter the industry, gain knowledge, exchange and share ideas. From my point of view, the technology will only make the market more multi-faceted and representative of the different artists, cultures, languages and practices found in the world today. The artist can paint and create art with oil, watercolor, charcoal and any other instrument in their hand and as such the cinematographer can create compelling imagery with film, digital or even web cameras. We live in some of the most exciting cinematic times, were the new generation of filmmakers, under the guidance of the experienced professionals can create new look of cinema and influence generations to come.

The past has shown us that the audience adapts, from black and white, to Technicolor, to 3D; we can resonate with a piece of work shot on a hand held camcorder, to a completely fabricated environment made on a computer. It is the story that drives the emotional response of humans, that connects us to what we see on the cinema screen and proves to be the catalyst in making a “good” movie, a much more important element than the shooting format.

By researching, experimenting and collaborating the cinematographers can expand upon the new technology and see it as an opportunity to create new framework for films, challenge the status quo and bring engaging, inspiring motion pictures to the cinema.