Digital video or 35mm film?

  • Digital video, I like flawless image
  • 35mm film, I like organic image
  • Doesn’t matter, I like both
0 voters

How do you prefer movies to be recorded?

What’s the point of this, then? Just because somethings’s digital doesn’t mean it’s flawless. Just because it’s on 35mm film, doesn’t mean it looks/feels organic…

If you want an organic image you can easily get that even when you film it digitally. No filmmaker releases a film with the out-of-camera look. It’s always a conscious choice how the film should look. Today this can be clinically clean with hyperrealistic sharpness or extremely grainy and faded, regardless of the recording process.

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Some filmmakers apparently still prefer 35mm even though you can manipulate digital footage in post production.

It’s more genuine to them with real film stock I guess.

What are you even saying? ALL filmmakers who shoot on film do post-production digitally. NOBODY sits there with scissors cutting up the negatives, not since the late 80s or early 90s

No of course not, that was a long time ago. But you were saying you can change how the digital footage looks in post production, didn’t you?

film and the old ways of film production in general are better, movies simply looked better, digital production can make them look almost like a video game at times.

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And even if you can achieve the “film look” in digital footage it’s ultimately fake. :expressionless:

Digital cameras are great for amateur home use though since you don’t waste expensive film rolls, and besides 8mm film didn’t look that good anyway. :smile:

yeah you cannot authentically recreate film grain digitally, you can only add a clearly fake filter. Digital video is only good for certain horror/horror-thriller films imo, particularly those set in the modern day as the digital home video look can actually add to the film in that case.

Although I do generally prefer the look of film, I think the frame rate matters more than anything. Shooting at 30 fps makes it feel a little too much like life as we experience it (fine for documentaries or found footage style films), whereas 24 fps adds a veneer that makes it feel less like real life and more fantasy, which helps with suspension of disbelief.

You can chang ehow the analog footage looks in post production, all post production is digital. So I don’t get the point of this thread at all.
And @hammerfist just because some filmmakers/cinematographers suck and their results look like video games, doesn’t mean digital production necessarily has to look like a video game. On the other hand, video games look more and more like movies these days, these art forms will eventually converge.
@Sombrero digital cameras are for amateur home use? These cost several thousand dollars and all of the movie business uses them, 4k, 8k, etc…
Anyways, another of these “I mix up technology with what people are doing with it” threads… pass

I don’t mean cameras for several thousand dollars that the industry uses are for home use of course, you seem to misunderstand on purpose.

Actually, the gold standard Arri Alexa 35 costs close to 100k with some basic equipment, but without any lens which can cost just as much. There’s also an Alexa 65 with a larger sensor which costs a little more.

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I believe there are only one or two companies left that still produce movie type film stock. The main reason is that all professionals except for a few occasional unicorns use digital. In a Utopia world more would probably still use film because it’s the real thing, but in reality it’s more expensive, more cumbersome, more time-consuming for little, if any, benefit. A world class colourist will make Alexa footage look exactly like film stock and I bet my house you wouldn’t see the difference.

Some film directors such as Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino have publicly criticized digital cinema, and advocated the use of film and film prints. Tarantino has suggested he may retire because he will no longer be able to have his films projected in 35mm in most American cinemas. Tarantino considers digital cinema to be simply “television in public.” Christopher Nolan has speculated that the film industry’s adoption of digital formats has been driven purely by economic factors as opposed to digital being a superior medium to film: “I think, truthfully, it boils down to the economic interest of manufacturers and [a production] industry that makes more money through change rather than through maintaining the status quo.”

This aims only at the projection part, not the filming part.

And those directors can make films for 150 million dollars. Most others can’t. If they use film, great. But condemning those who can’t is a bit strange.

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Tarantino shoots only on real film so it’s not just about the screening in theaters

Anyway, you did some music scores for low budget or no budget films, right?

I’m sure they were made using digital cameras, which is perfectly understandable, I’m not condemning anybody.

Well, I didn’t even think of the very humble films I was involved in but basically every independent theatrical film.

And I didn’t want to say you were condemning them but rather the bankable director elites do when they make those statements. :wink:

Sorry if I was not clear.

I think Tarantino and the others were criticizing the big movie companies, not individual filmmakers.

And all films were made before using real film, it’s not like suddenly filmmakers can’t afford to shoot on film. I’m talking about those productions with reasonably high budgets of course.

But for amateurs and low budget filmmakers digital is of course much cheaper and more convenient.

Before digital cameras low budget productions were often shot on 16mm film.

Would be cool to try out today, you can still find second hand 16mm cameras and 16mm film stock is still produced.

We could shoot our own spaghetti western on 16mm. :smile: