Quote:
Originally Posted by saprano
Heh. The change to digital is all about saving money. Cause there's damn sure nothing superior about it.
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There's plenty superior about digital presentation and a few things not superior. You have to look at not the capability, but the actual practical day-to-day implementation of both and compare film and digital. If you do that, digital wins. Anything else is hype (or being a luddite).
If you went to a superior, well-maintained first-run theatre during the first week of a film, then yes, in many cases, film was superior to today's digital, especially in the days when prints were made directly from negatives and if you lived in NY or LA and sometimes Chicago and San Francisco, which got specially made prints and in at least some theaters, well-maintained booths with highly trained personnel.
But the reality is that most theatres didn't have such prints. They had prints that were handed down, frequently dirty, scratched and missing frames. 70mm prints were frequently damaged by idiots and the high frequencies wiped off of the mag tracks. Many theater chains purposely lowered the voltage to the projection lamps to save money. Others never aligned the lamps and reflectors and had tremendous light fall-off. Projectors had jump and weave. Even though SMPTE issued framing films, theaters did what they wanted and some chains showed all films at 2.0:1 regardless of the actual aspect ratio. Dirt was less of a problem before platters if the projectionist actually cleaned the projectors, but dirt has been a big problem since the days of platters where one piece of dirt can scratch not just a reel, but the entire film. In addition, due to deteriorating chemistry and bad handling of inventory by the studios, half of all films made before 1954 are gone forever. What's especially shocking is that we've come close to losing films that were really big and recognized films like "West Side Story" and "My Fair Lady", not just some low-budget B-movies that no one except the most intense film historians care about.
There are definitely some aspects of digital that are inferior to film, especially the days of 3-strip Technicolor. It's rare to hear a digital sound track (although digital sound preceded digital projection) that sounds as good as the best of the 6-track mag 70mm releases. But you get very consistent light output across the screen, the image is rock steady, there's no dirt or scratches and it's almost always shown at the correct aspect ratio because the DCP comes with a framing image for every film. The image and sound can be as good in Podunk as it is in Hollywood and New York. And as long as the DCP still works (and one has the security keys), it will look and sound as good 30 years from now as it does today.
Summer of 2014 I went to a small theatre in Cape Cod and the digital presentation was good as any theatre in New York City. And the opposite: I went to the Ziegfeld in NYC to see a 70mm print of "The Master" and it looked like complete crap - dirt all over the film, the images did not look like they were shot in 65mm and the DTS soundtrack was no big deal. Now I did see Interstellar in 70mm IMAX and the presentation was perfect, but that's the exception that proves the rule.
Now does it also save money? Sure - it's much cheaper to make a DCP than a film print (and before too long, it will be a download anyway) and it's cheaper to operate a theater because they can get away without a highly trained projectionist being there all the time - they're primarily there to upload DCPs to the server and set up the program for each theater. But it's not the only reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by saprano
Christopher Nolan and a few other directors have been pushing to keep film around. Even putting there own money towards it and working with Kodak. I would not be surprised if the next couple of his movies are shot with 70mm.
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Kodak never really made money from negative stock -- all the profit was in prints. And in the U.S., unless something changes big time, there's never going to be very many prints. "Interstellar" had only 9 70mm prints and 41 70mm IMAX prints. "The Hateful Eight" is going to have a max of 50 70mm prints in the U.S. (I don't think there will be any IMAX 70mm prints.)
Since coming out of bankruptcy, Kodak has been pretty good keeping much of the negative, intermediate and print film in stock (the rest are on special order and you have to order huge amounts). But Kodak has always said that when the orders get low enough that they can no longer manufacture consistent batches, they'll discontinue an emulsion. And that's bound to happen before too long. I believe that Kodak motion picture film and Kodak still film is now coming out of two different companies, but in still film, there's only 10 emulsions left. In color movie negative, there's just Vision 3 at four speeds. For movie prints, for color, there's just Kodak Vision 2383/3383, but 3383 must be special ordered. For B&W, there's Eastman Fine Grain Release Positive 5302/7302 and 2303/3303 print film. There's also still some intermediate films, sound films, title films and archive films. It's inevitable that eventually, Kodak will drop this business, although it's certainly possible that they can sell it to another company who can find a way to be profitable on a small scale.
But having said that, the next generation of filmmakers aren't going to give a damn about film and origination will be digital. Outside of art houses, museums and universities, there are very few theaters that can play film, except for the ones who are reinstalling it for "The Hateful Eight" but I think that equipment is being leased by the theaters, not purchased, which means it could disappear again after the film has completed its run. IMO, the theaters were stupid for not keeping at least one screen equipped for film. It's not like they were able to sell the film projectors for any money.
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