The Digital Bits; "Grain is supposed to be there!"

[welwynnick]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Whooooooooooa there pardner!
There are many examples in which the Directors/DP's explicitly wanted grain for stylistic reasons….and have stated that privately as well as publicly.

Such films include………………..
Jarhead (Roger Deakins –DP)
Minority Report (Janusz Kaminski-DP)
Munich (Janusz Kaminski-DP)
Babel (Rodrigo Prieto-DP)

I quite agree, but it doesn't mean I have to like it, just like I don't have to like the script or the editing.

In those fairly esteemed cases, the grain is there because the director wanted it there, and it wouldn't be the same film without it. On no account should grain be removed from the video.

However, I think that many people associate grain with cultural films, and presume it's a good thing by simply being there, and that's my problem.

I'm not saying grain is always bad, I'm only saying that grain is not necessarily good. For all my compulsive film-watching, its often the HD TV video material that really provides the "wow" factor with HD. Put a good film on, and it's often greeted with comments about how great it looks. Play a well-produced natural history documentary (hooray for BBC HD) and conversation stops and jaw drops.

It's a different sort of experience, a perfectly valid one, and quite addictive. I think it can achieve that suspension of disbelief more effectively than film - that absorbing feeling where you forget that you are still sat at home. Any corruption of PQ & SQ will make this more difficult, and I think grain would represent some sort of barrier to this.

I want to get away from the seemingly automatic assumption that grain is good, because some good films have it, and I think people over-state the artistic element of it, and big-up some ordinary movies into something that they're not. Generally this is only Hollywood we're talking about, after all.

You can't add brush marks to a photograph and call it a DaVinci.

best regards, Nick