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
