VIDEO VS. FILM By Dennis Coleman
Quick! What’s the last film you saw? In all likelihood it wasn’t a film – most directors are shooting digital video now. A few big filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay still shoot on film. “I’m old school because I like to shoot on film,” says Bay. Thoughs they are the exception as digital video cameras today are impressive enough you can’t tell the difference between film vs video.
George Lucas began it all by making use of a Panavision-modified Sony HDW-900 camera to shoot his second “Star Wars” prequel. Now most other big filmmakers are following suit. Michael Mann shot “Public Enemies” using Sony’s CineAlta F23 and HDC-F950 cameras. The movie “2012″ was shot using Panavision’s Genesis high-definition camera by Roland Emmerich with which he told DGA Quarterly: “I don’t think I will ever go back.” But that’ll cost you. The Genesis isn’t sold; it’s lent at a rate of $3,500 a day to $45,000 a week. Nonetheless, Emmerich is sold: “Compositing is so much better in digital – there’s much more information to work with.”
When he shot “Bedtime Stories”, Director Adam Shankman was apprehensive about changing to digital: “I was worried about the depth of field, and for the first two weeks, I really had my eye on it because I was concerned after I saw the testing of daytime exteriors.” But he says it all resulted being fine.
The Red One is another less expensive but equally popular digital camera. It’s compatible with the majority of film lenses, so you can use all the lenses you’ve been making use of in the past on this camera. David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh have used it on their latest films. For the television series, “Leverage”, Producer Dean Devlin is making use of this camera: “For me, those easy-to-change hard drives are a big deal when it comes to choose film vs video. They store an enormous amount of material, and we can just take them and instantly place them into our system and get right to work. That transcends everything – skipping the transfer of dailies is a game-changer.”
Not all cameramen are persuaded. Michael Hofstein, a cinematographer, has written: “Film images have a depth that few other medium can match at this time… Isolating an image with a long telephoto lens is kind of hard and relatively non-existent when using a digital camera due to physics of the current professional 2/3-inch digital chip versus a 35mm film frame. 35mm film contains a broader latitude.”
On the contrary, Emmerich, Fincher and Devlin all think the technology has advanced enough seeing that digital is the best option.However, Emmerich, Fincher and Devlin are in agreement that technology has progressed adequately to go with digital. Actually, there are a number of things that seem better in digital. Moe Shore, a product manager for the Phantom HD line, says: “A simple, mundane thing like pouring water in to a glass takes on an exceptional beauty whenever you slow it down to 1,000 frames a second. To do this with film would call for a massive camera and price.” Now it seems like it’s goodbye to film stock and howdy to hard drives in terms of film vs video movie-making in this brand new generation.
