A letter in response to the article "Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling" by Gendy Alimurung in the LA Weekly Vol 34 no 21
Dear Gendy Alimurung,
I don't
need to tell you that your article last week on the "death of film"
was quite striking. It sent a fire storm
across the city and across the world amongst movie makers and film enthusiasts
in all corners. First, let me congratulate
you on a great article. This is possibly
the most in depth coverage on the complexity of film across the spectrum and
it's addressing a huge problem by bringing it to a wider audience. Yet, I have many concerns with some of the
topics and conclusions you take on. I
hope you will bear with me for a moment as I try to explain things from a bit
of a different side. I think you might
enjoy my conclusion, but I have a few things I need to go over before I get to
it.
I am a
movie maker and even though I'm no Christopher Nolan I still have quite a lot
of experience with both film and digital video.
I spent 10 years as a cinema projectionist, which included everything
from reel-to-reel projection to DCP 3-D presentation. I studied film and animation at NYU and USC,
respectively. And during my undergrad it
was obvious to me that film was going the way of the dodo bird, which is why I
focused on analog filmmaking, editing and presentation. When I continued on into animation in my grad
studies I decided to focus considerably more on the digital aspect of movie
making. I've worked for three different
film archives - one in New York City and two in Los Angeles and I've worked
with Mark Toscano, archivist at the Academy Film Archives, collaborating on
film and digital moving image projects.
There
are many experts on both sides of the coin with respect to film or digital video, but I am probably one
of the few that has such intricate expertise in both areas. I have worked
with every aspect of movie making from negative cutting to motion capture. I
love film, but I love digital as well.
Just as there is a huge sea of possibilities in film it is the same in
digital movie making.
Digital
movie making is not bad. I know you
never explicitly state this, but there is a strong undertone in this film vs.
digital argument that always ends up with film enthusiasts often not realizing
that they are film ONLY enthusiasts. This
segregates the market and only hurts both worlds. My decision to work in digital is just as
valid as someone else's decision to work with film.
This is
an old argument and for the past 12 years that I have worked in this world all
across the country people have been telling me that film is dead. David James used to hold an annual "Death of
Cinema" conference at USC. Dozens
of filmmakers have announced the "death of film" including Peter
Greenaway who dated it to be 1983 with the invention of the remote
controller. Susan Sontag announced the "death
of cinephilia" and therefore "the death of the movie" in her
article "A Century of Cinema" in 1995 (ironically this is about the
time I was learning to become a cinephile).
I was once laughed at by a salesman of B&H when I called to ask
about 16mm film equipment who replied that "film was a dead medium"
and I should "get up to date with the times".
Any
film enthusiast will go out of their way to tell you how ugly video looks when
compared to film in a similar fashion to Roberta Hill in the documentary
"Cinemania". This argument is
usually a 4 pronged approach:
1.
Digital does not look as good as film
2.
Digital is much easier than film
3.
You can just shoot and shoot an shoot and not
think about digital, but film is very precise and thought out
4.
Digital has poor preservation capabilities
To each
of these arguments I strongly emphasize that whoever is making the statement
really does not have a well rounded knowledge of the entire discipline of movie
making.
1.
Your specific example of DVD is absolutely
correct. Watching a DVD (or a VHS or a
Betacam) looks terrible on a huge screen.
Home video formats were never meant to be shown in a cinema. The same could be said for 8mm film. And if Cinefamily still has the same Christie
Roadster projector that they did a couple years ago when I held an event there
then you are correct in stating that the blacks are not black, there's little
detail, etc. That projectors highest
capabilities are displaying a resolution of 1280x1024 (that's only if they are
connecting via the best capabilities possible).
That's not even full 1080p HD let alone 2K or 4K. If you're looking for a great indie theatre
to watch digital in LA you should go to the Downtown Independent.
However, it is a completely valid
aesthetic decision to choose digital rather than film. There is no way you can convince me that the
original TRON looks better then TRON: Legacy.
I love the original and if you show it to me it better be on 35mm, but
one is not better than the other simply because one was shot on film and the
other on digital. I projected Miranda
July's "Me and You and Everyone We Know" when it premiered at the
grand opening of the IFC Center in New York City. It was shot on HDCam and we projected it on
two formats one was HDCam and the other was 35mm and the HDCam was far more
beautiful!
2.
I've worked in Super 8, 16mm, 35mm, miniDV, HD
digital video files and with entirely computer generated (CG) moving images. To say that one of the mediums is easier or
harder then another is totally and completely related to context. Just the other day I was rendering an image
from a CG animation package where each frame took 1.5 minutes to output. So I am very jealous of filmmakers that can
just drop their films off at FotoKem and return the next day to watch their
dailies. Sometimes it takes weeks for me
to render (aka export) the animation I work with. The last film I made took me over a year to
get just a simple three minute digital movie finished.
3.
When I shoot with my Digital SLR I can only
afford a couple SD cards that are fast enough to shoot video. On them you can only capture 12 minutes of
footage at a time and the SD cards are somewhat equivalent to going out and
shooting with 8 or 10 rolls of film. So,
I am absolutely conscious of what I shoot.
Every frame! I am not the only
filmmaker who works like this. There was
a huge problem with video tape, especially analog and miniDV/DVcam, but it's
changed dramatically. This change is
absolutely for the better. People should
be more conscious of what they shoot.
4.
Archiving is an extremely problematic area and
the biggest problem is that most archivists don't like, understand nor want to
deal with digital. So, it's no wonder no
one was going to Pixar with "Toy Story" and saying - "We need to
learn from the sorted history of early cinema by preserving this footage
properly". Film had the same
problem. "Metropolis" has an
endless history of restoration. F.W. Murnau's
"4 Devils" is completely lost to history. Even the original
print of "Citizen Kane" was lost in a fire. The best avenue to preserve is still, admittedly,
on film. But digital archiving has so
much potential.
Your report that digital file formats have
changed 20 different formats in 10 years is actually an understatement. I can count more than 10 formats that I can
export right now from Final Cut Pro, but if you're thinking about a self
contained movie file (as most are, including the writers of the Digital Dilemma
2) then you are thinking about it all wrong.
Film is a series of still images put
together and the best way to store a digital movie is the same way - with an
"image sequence" or a series of still pictures numbered in order from
the first frame to the last. You can
open up a photoshop image format document now that was made 10 years ago with
no problems as long as there is no corruption.
File corruption is also a big problem - and
"you can't stick it on a shelf and forget about it" holds just as
true with film as it does digital. Film
cannot be stored on reels, it must be stored on plastic cores in a plastic can
and often the core breaks and the film sags and becomes warped all because
someone left it and forgot about it.
Film must be cleaned and prepared if it is ever to be shown. We absolutely need to get better organized
with digital as well and I hope we will find more and more archivists willing
to work with us on that front.
Digital
movie making is extremely important. I
say this as a lover of film. Frankly, I
do not trust a movie maker that has never
worked with film. Especially if that
individual's job relates to Cinematography, Editing or Directing. However, digital is a wonderful new world
that I really love to explore. The
problem is that these two worlds are not as exclusive as some might declare.
I tell
you this because I want to save film!
George Lucas' choice to use digital is just as valid as Nolan's choice
to use film. My friend and filmmaker
Rick Bahto still uses Super 8 (S8) and really only S8 and occasionally Regular
8 (R8). As he should! My other friend, Beth Block, used to work on
film and sometime in the 80's or early 90's she had to turn her back to it
because of the expense and she stopped making movies all together. Now she has graced the world with her amazing
images once again, but she will only use full 1080 HD or higher (if possible)
and she refuses to show on anything but HD projection.
It is time that we completely change this dichotomy.
I will
explain my solution with a story.
Recently George Lucas donated a huge amount of money to the USC cinema
school. I was in the process of
receiving my MFA in animation at the time.
Almost all of that money went into the new Lucas building that was
completed about four years ago. Three
famous individuals who donated a significant amount were leading a lot of the
decision making about how the money was spent - George Lucas, Steven Spielberg
and Robert Zemeckis. Rumor goes that
Lucas and Zemeckis wanted the ONLY digital projection in the entire building,
but Spielberg was emphatic about having at least one 35mm projector in the main
theatre hall, the Ray Stark Family Theatre (aka Lucas 108). Lucas and Zemeckis were eventually convinced
and to all our benefit we are able to view 35mm film at the USC theatre.
Just as
these friends came together to find a great solution we must do the same. We should not be divided by our differences,
but united in our struggle to make and watch movies! I call on all digital movie makers to help
our brothers and sisters in arms who want to work on film.
They
are getting rid of film projectors. At
an old theatre I used to work at in San Jose, CA I recently heard from an old
colleague that they just went all digital (12 screens and no film). This is a crime! But we cannot solve it by trying to convince
people to choose a side. Cinefamily
should not be punished for refusing to install a DCP system!
I admit
that the scale has tipped too strongly toward digital in recent years. We need to rebalance - film and digital video
are equal in my eyes. We must unify
digital movie makers and filmmakers. I
ask filmmakers to respect and understand the benefits of working in digital and
likewise for digital movie makers to respect film. But how can we really help?
The
answer is so simple. We need to join
forces and attack things at the source.
Don't go to cinemas that have only digital and no film. Don't use distribution houses that refuses to
make film prints. If a studio forces a
Director or Director of Photography to go digital then call on the other
directors and DP's to shout it out in the streets.
We can come up with a list of institutions. However, I don't like black lists. Instead let's have a gold list of preferred
theatres and companies to use that are film friendly. You don't have to work in film to go to them,
but in order to make sure our cinema legacy is sustained we need to make sure
certain kinds of institutions are supported.
Just a
couple LA theatres on my Gold List are the Echo Park Film Center, USC's Ray
Stark Family and Norris Theatres, the Egyptian, the Downtown Independent, the
Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder, LACMA's Bing Center, the Academy's Linwood Dunn
theatre, RedCat, the Aero, the New
Beverly, the Kodak and, of course, Cinefamily's Silent Movie Theatre. That's just to name a few and I want to come
up with a whole beautiful list from across the world and across the spectrum of
film making.
As an
extremely low-budget DIY filmmaker I specifically ONLY purchase Kodak or Fuji
SD cards to use in my digital camera because I want them to keep making film
too. This is rather difficult to keep up
with because Kodak keeps changing their direction, but whatever their position
might be I'm still supporting them as long as they support film.
This is
not the only solution. I hope others can
add to this list and come up with great ideas as well. I should not be alone to help my comrades in their
struggle. And really, it's my struggle
as well. I am ashamed to say it, but I
have still never seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" on film - (35 or 70mm). I will one day, but there will always be
another film to replace that one. And
you never completely understand a film meant to be watched on 35mm without
seeing it on 35mm.
Please
feel free to contact me about this topic.
I always enjoy a great conversation about the art of the moving image
medium.
Cordially,
Huckleberry Lain
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