This documentary tells the transition from the film era to the digital era from multiple perspectives, and provides a rich presentation of the changes in all parties in the film production industry process, as well as the impact of these changes on the film itself.
Director: For a director, shooting on film means that no matter what is shot today, the dailies have to be seen the next day. So digital shooting offers a new way of directing to see the "final picture" at all times. A roll of film can only take less than ten minutes of content (by David Lynch), so it is very unfavorable for the continuity of ideas. Film Party, Christopher Nolan argues that after a period of time, such as 45 minutes of acting and filming, everyone should take a break during the film change time. It is an important thing to control the rhythm of the filming on the set. Film can force you to do this.
Actors: Most actors feel film and digital mainly from their impact on the rhythm of filming on set. John Malkovich, for example, has expressed dissatisfaction with the frequent interruptions of performances on set since the days of film. John, who grew up in theaters, believes that constant acting helps maintain emotional continuity for actors. On the other hand, actors including Keanu Reeves, the host of the film, and Robert Downey Jr. were very tired of the constant performance of digital shooting and no "CUT". There are no breaks for digital filming, so it is often faced with standing for 14 hours. David Fincher said that Downey also put the glass bottle of urine on the scene as a kind of protest without breaks //cute^_^
Photography: Film shooting means more right to speak to the photographer, because if the director has doubts about the possible rendering effect of a certain picture, the photographer has a great power to use his professional self-confidence to make suggestions or guarantees to the director. However, in the case of digital shooting, as mentioned above, the director can see the effect of the picture in real time, so in a sense, a part of the power of photography is thinned. But on the other hand, it also makes the whole process of filmmaking a kind of teamwork.
Editing: Film editing, as we will see in some old movies, cuts and joins the physical film, which requires a lot of physical operations. And this process requires a lot of care because the original film has only one roll of tape, and some shots will never come out if they are cut off. However, the storage material and storage method of digital photography determine that it does not have these shortcomings. But from a longer-term perspective, it is precisely because of the bottom line of this unlimited editing method that many films unconsciously lower their requirements when shooting. This is a step backward from the point of view of film aesthetics.
Dimming: As the last person before the film is completed, the task of the dimmer has become heavier in the digital age. On the one hand, the storage material used in the past, that is, film, can only be dimmed by photochemical methods. , especially after the related image processing/video processing technology advances, many dimming technologies become possible. In "Three Kings" (2000), the dimmer was able to keep the blue sky in the digital intermediate, while the green vegetation turned golden. The same effect on film is impossible to achieve with photochemical methods.
Production: Production also went through the transition from making film copies to distributing digital copies, in fact this was one of the earliest changes. Then came the digitization of sound and editing. Film projection has proven to have various drawbacks over the years. The lighting of different cinema projectors may be different, and sometimes the picture will be cut off, the actor's head may be invisible, the sound may be loud or small, the light source is not good, the image will have a color shift, and the projection copy may not be done well Decreased clarity, misaligned screens, dirty screens, wobbly projectors... James Cameron himself said that "Titanic" has been re-screened so many times over the years that the screening copy is really falling apart. ——George Lucas said that digital projection can greatly improve the situation, because the digital copy has no scratches and will not be torn; and the digital copy does not have the problem of poor production, they are a complete copy of the original film.
Camera: Compared to other links such as digital projection, the source of film images, the evolution of the camera may be the slowest one.
Digital Camera Chronicles:
History of digital cameras: 1969, Bell Labs, CCD was proposed and subsequently invented----In the early 1970s, SONY began to apply CCD technology----In the mid-1980s, SONY produced the first consumer CCD portable Camera - 1995, in the "Dogma 95" campaign, small SD cameras began to be used for digital shooting
The official history of digital cameras: 2000, SONY, f900, the first digital camera----2004, Thomson Viper, enhanced photosensitive ability, night scene comprehensively surpassed film----2005, Panavision, Genesis, 35mm sensor, depth of field comparable to Comparable to the film, the image quality is enhanced----the 2006 has better color gamut and resolution, but the dynamic range is not enough----2007, RED 1, 4K (2010, David Fincher "Social Network" carbon fiber Ultra Light Special Edition)----2007, Silicon Image SI-2K, machine size, "Slumdog Millionaire"--2009, SONY, f23, f950--Alexa (Alexa) resolution and color are getting closer Film, and the dynamic range is wider (the original 4,5 stops are now 10 stops), EPIC (Tucao: RED company specializes in increasing the resolution, right) 5K (5120, only 1 more than 4K, but in fact the whole picture is in 4K 60% more pixels from the base)
//Dynamic range: The range of brightness contrast, the larger the dynamic range, the more details of the dark and bright parts that can be expressed, and the richer the layers. The difference is that the former (color gamut) is the difference and the latter is the ratio.
Outside History of Film Cameras: In 2011, film camera manufacturing companies around the world stopped making film cameras. //Existing machines will last for 50 years, but after that there will be no new films made on film.
Film: The impact of digital photography on film itself is even more profound. Thanks to the invention of portable equipment, shooting with hand-held cameras has broadened the channels for providing image sources for film. And hand-held photography changed the way the camera moves, which is most evident in films such as "Family Dinner" and "28 Days Later", which were the first to use hand-held photography. After the Thomson Viper and "Murder with a Knife" filmed with it were released, the movie finally fully presented what the night scene should look like. Despite being criticized by Nolan, a film originalist, "there is still a sense of video", he still has to admit that the presentation of night scenes by digital shooting is indeed an innovation in film aesthetics. Slumdog Millionaire, shot with the Silicon Image SI-2K, won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, the first digital film to receive this honor. The maneuverability of this camera has been raised to an unprecedented level, and the content of the lens will no longer be limited by the position and size of the camera, which is an important breakthrough in the development of the language of film lenses. RED continues to increase the number of pixels that its digital cameras can render, from 2K to 4K to 5K, and the advancements in picture accuracy have a huge impact on the representation of detailed landscapes. Alyssa is very close to the film camera in terms of resolution, color and even the most criticized dynamic range of other cameras, which is an optional compromise for film originalists. Inexpensive portable digital cameras such as the Canon 5D can provide ordinary people with the opportunity to make movies. The hidden danger of this is that there may be no truly outstanding works ever again.
Audience: For the average audience, there may be only a slight difference in quality between film projections and digital projections in theaters. But thanks to the spread of digital copies and the popularity of video sites like Netflix, there are more and more opportunities to use portable projection sources. At the same time, the degradation of the public space of the cinema has also become inevitable. Of course, new public spaces will also develop in the virtual world, which can even better meet people's emotional needs, not to mention that "dialogs" always exist in the virtual world. At the same time, with the development of online public space and the popularity of portable cameras, discussions on film techniques will gradually increase, and film will become a popular art that everyone can create.
Archiving: A final discussion of film and digital in the last segment of the film, about the archiving of films and their future. On the one hand, although film takes up a lot of space, it uses optical physical media to store images. This advantage is that as long as it is stored properly, it can be displayed as it is. Digital archives, on the other hand, may be unreadable in the future due to formatting issues, or may be corrupted, or at least may require format conversion. Therefore, celluloid, also known as film, is currently the only film storage material that can be well preserved for more than 50 years. On the other hand, everything in the world is already digitally stored, and George Lucas said that there will never be a more comprehensive storage solution, and we need to have confidence in that. The Wachowskis (who were siblings at the time) believed that if something was really that important to humanity, we would always find a way to preserve it.
Finally, a conversation with Keanu Reeves interviewing James Cameron ends:
KR: Do you feel, technologically, with where you are, do you feel free?
JC: I'm not sure that I ever want to feel that we arrived, technologically. I always want to feel there's something we can do better.
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