Thanks to everyone who posted in response to my question about film and digital (I hope the responses continue). Lots to think about, and I will respond in greater detail to some of the posts within a few days.
Though I am a digital skeptic and a film luddite, I didn't mean to pose the question in terms of film "vs." digital, though that adversarial view is prevalent, which is interesting in and of itself. The students I teach in the class I was talking about have very little sense - and this is true of most people, I assume - that films (including "films" on digital) are made of anything or come from anywhere. This notion that cinema is magic is what I'm trying to disabuse them of, and dealing with the nuts and bolts of cinematic technologies is part of that. The conversation has also been very productive for my always ongoing thinking about medium-specificity. More on that later, perhaps. Jonathan Jonathan Walley Associate Professor Department of Cinema Denison University wall...@denison.edu On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 10:20 AM, David Tetzlaff <djte...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks, James, for the link to that piece on LCD sets in stores. Great > stuff. When I say 'digital is not one thing' I am not engaging in any kind > of generic 'pro digital' advocacy, because many of the things digital can > be are pretty sucky, and it takes effort to find those that are not. In > general, at least with current technology, by my )obviously not purist) > standards LCD displays -- both flat panel and projection -- are for > computer graphics, not moving pictures. All the ones I've seen do horrible > jobs of rendering monochrome and make anything in color look like a > cartoon, which is why the big box stores usually have animated films > playing on their display sets. So for me its plasma for flat panels and > 3-chip DLP for projectors, or go home. > > In film, a lot of the variability is in the print. A nice print looks > great on a Pageant, and a beat up print looks like crap. On a 3-chip LCD > Panasonic projector, and well-mastered DVD or Blu-Ray looks very nice, but > the same disc looks ugly on a Christie LCD projector designed primarily for > data display. And alas, there are far more of the latter type out there > than the former. > > So to the people on the list have had bad experiences with digital > screenings, know that folks like Aaron Fred and me aren't trying to > invalidate your perceptions or to argue 'but that's OK.' It's not OK. But > to condemn the whole category of technology, or to reduce it to some > essence based on a limited range of examples is like condemning film > because you've seen too many trashed prints. > > Of course, it can hard to come by good prints for film projection, just as > it can be hard to come by good systems for digital projection. People who > care about image quality have always had to work hard at achieving it, and > that has not changed. > _______________________________________________ > FrameWorks mailing list > FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com > https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks >
_______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
