Waving Goodbye to Film

Technologies first seem novel and unproven, then one day they seem taken for granted, then in moments of reflection you wonder just how it all happened so quickly. Film versus digital remains a hot topic in the industry. But while the jury is certainly not yet out, one thing is for sure – the film to digital migration is an ongoing journey. Peter Parnham has been involved with camera equipment for 25 years and reflects on the issue.

It is hard to believe now but when the first computer based Avid non-linear editors came out in the early 1990s, some editors described the new technology as a backwards step. It was something about the feel of splicers and sticky tape and the laborious process of building films on flat-bed editing machines.

As it turned out it was probably the Avid that marked the beginning of digital post-production. By the early 2000s film began to be digitally scanned into the post-production chain, only to be transferred back out to film for cinema exhibition. With post-production already digital, the debate in the production community shifted to digital cameras and the challenge they pose to film.

To put the debate in perspective, 35mm film has been widely regarded as the gold standard for shooting and projection for over 100 years. In defence of this romantic view, it was the best on offer, except for the brief but glorious appearance of Lawrence of Arabia and a few other 70mm classics about 50 years ago.

But apart from history there is no reason to be satisfied with the soft shots, juddering pans and excessive grain parts of say, the Bourne Legacy (without even counting the ‘creative’ motorcycle chase). Or the shaky projection and splotches of dirt that Val Morgan cinema advertising inflicts on us prior to features.

But the film versus digital debate all seemed to become a bit pointless when, over the last couple of years, film cameras stopped production and the last laboratory in Auckland closed. Film has not exactly been pronounced dead but if you want to shoot with it these days you are almost a maverick that has to argue the case. Still, film cameras last for decades and unlike digital cameras that get superseded on a regular basis, even old film cameras always shoot with state of the art film stocks. As long as film stock is made and a lab somewhere will process it you will be able to shoot if you want to. The question is ‘will anybody want to?’

Most cinematographers usually declare a love for film and are pretty cautious about comparing cameras, usually falling back on the classic ‘horses for courses’ response. But if you are at the very top like Roger Deakins, who holds a string of nominations and awards stretching back to The Shawshank Redemption, you can afford to come out and say the previously unthinkable.

“This moment has been coming for a long time,” he told the prestigious American Cinematographer magazine last November. “But with the Alexa [digital cinematography camera] I believe digital has finally surpassed film in terms of quality. Sometimes I get annoyed with the garbage I hear about film versus digital. Most of it is simply nostalgia and silly thinking. I love film, sure, but this camera has brought us to a point where digital is simply better.”

But just because digital technology may have reached or exceeded film is no reason to stop development. With The Hobbit Sir Peter Jackson wants to take us to 48 frames per second, or twice as many frames per second, as standard cinema projection speeds – impractical in film cinemas but easily achieved in many digital cinemas. A similar increase in frame speed for television has been mooted.

Movies are made up of a series of still images or frames. If you shoot twice as many frames per second, the little increments in movement between each frame reduces, making images appear sharper and eliminating the majority of judder, especially important in 3D where it can be more noticeable.

That hasn’t stopped traditionalists who are wedded to the gold standard 35mm film going into print to decry the idea precisely because it doesn’t look like film.

Another way to boost digital quality is already implemented in many post-production houses and could soon become an end-to-end reality from shoot to cinema, if cinemas take the bait and install 4K projectors. Today, around 2000 pixels make up a horizontal line in a typical 2K digital cinema projector or high definition TV (HDTV) image. A boost to around 4000 pixels (4K) or its television equivalent called 4KTV would provide a leap in resolution.

Deakins believes that a 2K Alexa camera is better than film. Alexas are firm favourites of many cinematographers but Red cameras (a line of cameras introduced with great fanfare in 2007) have claimed to produce 4K pictures since they came out and Sony’s latest effort is designed to contest the leadership in the 4K camera race.

New Zealand cinematographer Aaron Morton used the new Sony F65 digital cameras for the Evil Dead shoot in Auckland recently and came away from the experience enthusiastic. “The level of detail is amazing in a way that is not sterile or clinical and you can really exploit the subtle things that the colour is doing,” he says.

Still, 4K, 48 frames (even film itself) are all grand options if you have the budget. But one thing digital technology has not done is alter the fundamental economics of traditional feature film making. What it has done is allow much cheaper feature films to be made by allowing a new approach to film making to emerge.

Paul Swadel is one of the executive producers for ‘Blue Harvest Shorts’ – a New Zealand Film Commission funded short film programme. He is a prolific film maker and says the big turning point was when the Canon 5D Mark II, a type of professional 35mm digital stills camera known as a DSLR, first appeared in 2009. The camera came with high definition (HD) video functions, opening the possibly of shooting in a cinematic style to people who had no prospect of affording 35mm film to shoot movies.

At a cost of only a few thousand dollars, the new Canon opened up a world of low-budget or even self-funded features that actually looked like real cinematic features, even if using a camera optimised for stills requires a good deal of compromise. It wasn’t long before camera makers like Panasonic and Sony rushed to produce their own low cost, 35mm-sized sensor video cameras.

A 35mm sensor is much bigger than typical video cameras and thanks to the laws of optics, offers a shallow depth of field, allowing you to separate the subject from its background or literally focus on a single element in a frame. This gives a cinematic 35mm film look even when you watch it on YouTube.

But a low-cost large-sensor camera is only half the story. A crucial ingredient for a film maker like Swadel is digital cinema projection. Now, instead of shelling out for impossibly expensive 35mm release prints, a digital cinema package (DCP) of files on a portable hard drive can be distributed to digital cinemas, making it financially possible to enter film festivals or negotiate limited cinema releases in a way impossible a few years ago.

Swadel used this distribution model when executive producing When a City Falls, a recently released documentary directed by Canterbury film-maker Gerard Smyth. “It did about $450k at the box office, and we sold about 20,000 DVDs,” he says.

His next venture is to produce and co-direct a feature called Davey Darling with his brother Marc as DP and co-director. He says shooting in Christchurch with a studio-style digital camera would require too many crew, cost too much and slow them down.

“It’s a different style altogether and I want to move quickly,” he says. “We’re aiming to shoot with natural light, and use a few extra little LED lights whenever we need it. There will be a few situations we need to light, but we need to move quickly we don’t want anything heinous and big or with a whole lot of people.”

The Swadel brothers started in film and have a lot of experience but for newcomers this style of filmmaking means that by the time they get near any serious money they are likely be more practiced and have a higher level of skill.

“I’m working with James Cunningham at the Media Design School and we have Canons 7Ds and 5Ds and it is very different from say learning on a video camera, like the old days,” Swadel says. “You’ve got depth of field, ISO [sensitivity], aperture and different focal length lenses to think about, so students are gaining better fundamental, formative based knowledge that film makers need.”

To see how this knowledge is being applied you need look no further the V48 Hours Furious Film Making competition entries, which Swadel says have become more cinematic since the Canons arrived.

You might think transforming the way low-budget films are made is the most important contribution that digital technology has made, or for you, it might be more important that digital technology is used improve image quality on high-end productions. For others, its biggest contribution is helping new filmmakers to learn their craft.

But in a world where millions of videos and other digital entertainment compete for your attention, the fundamentals become even more important, says Swadel. Basically, it comes down to whether or not the story is any good.