All right, so digital is scaring me a bit again... I went to the Los Angeles Film Festival to see a few seminars on digital to film transfers, as well as a comparison of 35mm and digital projection. Seems Robert Goodman did some video to 35mm film transfers test about a year ago using the Canon XL1 in both PAL and NTSC. They had all the top transfer companies (Top companies at the time), doing the transfers. There was very little difference in the finished product from one company to the other. They all had their problems and they really all looked like video, as far as I was concerned.
I was feeling good, loving film the way I do... "Ahhh video is still video and no way near film, even with the grain and blur picked up in transfer."
Then, it got a bit scary. All the companies doing transfers now got a chance to show what they have done recently and I was a bit taken back. First off, the stuff they did with the 24P was the best I have seen, very hard to tell it originated on video. For anyone who doesn't know what the 24P is, it's the Panavision/Sony HD camera, or what I like to call the Lucas Cam. Man, the stuff looked great. Short of a little odd video strobe, it was hard to tell it wasn't shot on 35mm. Scary stuff. Then of course, we saw some DigiBeta and that looked good as well. The further down you got in the resolution of the camera (Pixels) and the frame rate, the worse it looked. However, the recent XL1 transfers compared to the ones they did a year ago are a very big improvement. It's still looks like video but not as much and it's a lot more pleasing to the eye. So the video to film transfers are making a big leap, a lot of competition and everyone working hard to be the best at it... That means it will get better and better every 6 months or so, like computers.
Then you have the really scary thing, PROJECTION. That is one area I thought film had locked down. "Ahhh, digital projection? Not in my life time. Ha, ha, ha!" Well that is what I thought till I saw the DigIMAX DPL at work. The picture had it's problems, the whites were odd and strobe, the Blacks tend to run together, however the picture looked really good in spite of all that. My heart was heavy and I saw the end of film coming a bit closer. Video projection is not quite ready yet, film is still king and needed for many things but I could see it coming. Digital on it's way, coming like a wave. All this money behind it, all these advocates of digital projection, George Lucas, and film seeming old, like the 100 year old medium it is. I can see now that there is no stopping it. As I have mentioned before, I really hope the people involved in motion pictures don't turn there back on film just because a hot new strumpet named Digital is in town. I hope film keeps getting better as a format, film (Thank you Kodak), cameras (Thanks Arri), projection (Thank for the effort MaxiVision48) and all the other people and companies striving to make Film better and better.
What does the 24P have problems with? It can't do slow mo for one, that's big. For now, the video folks have no way to handle this, not without it looking sloppy... The 24P sees into the dark very well, maybe a bit too much making it tougher to light. Motion looks a bit funky sometimes. I'm not sure why that is but it does. As for projection, Whites and Blacks are not handled well. What does this mean? Not very much because most people, the movie going public, doesn't care about any of this bull shit... The only people who do are in the business. At this point in time, digital is hear to stay. Film won't be completely gone but it's on it's way to becoming a alternative way of shooting. I can picture a day when I'm showing my grand kids wedding photos and them saying, "It was shot on Film... What is film Grandpa? Why is all the color gone from them? Didn't you have color digital back then?"
Look, it's coming and I have to deal with it. It will be a part of the business, not just the domaine of video geeks. I only hope that when it takes over the share of the market, that the promise of video is seen to it's full extent. We don't want another VHS taking over, when clearly Beta is better.
When I heard about MaxiVision 48, I was sure this is the way to go. I still feel that. I felt that Film was the way of the future and that video would have a tough time taking over. Now, I don't feel as sure. Will the better man win? Doesn't always end that way but I can hope can't I?
