Re: [Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
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
Re: [Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
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
Re: [Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
While formerly a strong opponent of seeing films on video (an opposition that arose in the days of VHS tapes and CRT displays; see my 1985 article on this at http://www.fredcamper.com/Film/Video.html , which I think still makes relevant points about film), I now agree with Aaron and others that video is not any one format. The difference between different video formats can be wider than, say, the difference between 35mm and super-8. And some formats come much closer to the effects of film projection than many would have thought possible. Pip's film fundamentalism now reads strangely to me, almost as if he is arguing more from theory than from the actual viewing experience, even though I assume the latter, that he is arguing based on his own perceptions. But here's a thought: perhaps the differences between film and whatever video format you want to consider vary hugely from one viewer to another. I would certainly respect any filmmaker who has viewed and tried various video formats and feels they simply cannot produce the effects she wants, and, of course, vice versa. Peter Kubelka feels that video is not film, but also, that recorded music is not music. He has classical music training and has been a performing musician much of his life. I am not going tell him that he should listen to more CDs. At the same time, a good performance on LP or CD is more musical to me than a bad performance in concert, and I've heard more than my fair share of those -- including more than one attended with Kubelka, who didn't like them either. I have certainly seen films that could have just as easily been videos without losing much, and videos that likewise could just have easily been filmed, and even though my bias is toward art works that you the specifics of their media, surely some works that are less medium-specific are also worthy. Perhaps there is no one answer for all viewers. I would, however, urge everyone to be flexible, and to consider as open-mindedly as possible the possibilities of new formats as they come along. Fred Camper Chicago ___ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
Re: [Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
I've been enjoying the thread. Kudos to Jonathan for knowing how to get a summertime Frameworks thread going. I offer these two links not in response to specific points in the discussion so far, but because the discussion came to mind as I came across these in the past few days. First, via Bad Lit: http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins-movies.html Avoiding for a moment the idea of how the films should look, I thought Jonathan might find this useful in explaining that big box electronics stores have their own aesthetic of the image. Second, via Roger Ebert: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2012/07/the_mega-epic_pissing_contest.html Not so much film vs. digital, but this relates to the idea about the range of digital projection options. James Kreul kre...@gmail.com ___ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
Re: [Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
Hi Jonathan, One technical difference people don't often mention is sensitivity curves. Film has a logarythmic, S-shaped curve, to capture information across 12 f-stops. For example, on film, a sunny scene on a bridge with action in the sun and also in the shadows under the bridge, all will be captured on the negative which has great latitude. Video formats are linear, the curve is straight, and you will have to shoot for the lights or for the darks - I think the spread is about 3 f-stops. Newer high-end video cameras like the Red can shoot in log, like film, but all video projection devices are linear, so either the image is compressed for projection, or the information can be put back out onto film. Even on the best and biggest 4K projection system, one can see burned out whites and muddy blacks because there is no information in those regions. Someday the corporations that push new technology on us every two years in order to stay profitable will force every movie theatre in the world to buy logarythmic projectors and we will all have to remaster our films (for the fifth time) on 12bitlog. Another difference is flicker. Remember that film and video both are only slide shows - each frame on the screen is static, unlike reality which is always in motion. Seeing a film on a film projector with a shutter creates a psychophysical experience called the phi phenomenon which induces the illusion of motion. For a video projection, the illusion of motion is created by a different brain phenomenon called the beta effect. The difference between these two experiences in the brain is so completely fundamental yet is always overlooked when comparing the two technologies (continuous versus discrete stimulation). In film, the apparent motion occurs only during the fraction of a second when the screen is black - the brain fills in the gap, building a bridge from frame to frame, in the darkness, much as our brain creates dreams during the blackness of night between two days. Beta effect happens in the retina, the brain participates less in the process of observation. One could be bold and say film wakes us up while video puts us to sleep. But in the end I think the difference is not about what it looks like, but rather about what it is. We use the word image flippantly. Is a painting an image? Students may think they've scene the Mona Lisa or a Kubrick film because they've seen them online, but a painting has weight and texture, a film has grain and material, and that is what we are seeing - not just the image of it. -Pip Chodorov At 16:42 -0400 13/07/12, Jonathan Walley wrote: SO NOW, THE QUESTION: what would you say are some of the most important, and most fundamental, differences between making and/or seeing films in these two media, in terms that intro-level undergrads can understand and appreciate. ___ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
Re: [Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
Hi Jonathan, one important aspect is that in film, the smallest unit one can modify is the frame, while in digital video the smallest unit is the pixel. cheers Bernd Am 13.07.2012 um 22:42 schrieb Jonathan Walley: Hello everyone, This question isn't about experimental cinema specifically, but it's certainly an important question for our world, and I think experimental filmmakers (and scholars, critics, etc.) are among those best equipped to answer it. So here goes. There is some preamble meant to set the stage, but you can skim it and skip down to the question if you want. Each semester I teach an introductory cinema studies course called Film Aesthetics and Analysis. The main goal of the course is to teach students how to analyze film aesthetics (in case the title of the class didn't make this obvious), and it is aimed at the general campus community, not just Cinema majors. Indeed, the majority of students in the class are non-majors who have never studied film before. Early in the course I talk about filmmaking on a very material level - call it the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, a subject I return to periodically across the semester (e.g. how cameras work, the process of editing, projection, etc.). I have always privileged film - that is, analogue, photochemical, mechanical, celluloid film - but to keep up with the times I have been trying to talk more about digital cinema technology, with a view to contrasting the two media. Though I'm a luddite when it comes to film, I'm not necessarily interested in converting my students to that mindset, nor to favoring one medium over another. I simply want my students to understand the ramifications of shooting, editing, projecting, and viewing films on different media. SO NOW, THE QUESTION: what would you say are some of the most important, and most fundamental, differences between making and/or seeing films in these two media, in terms that intro-level undergrads can understand and appreciate. For example: -true black is not possible in digital projection the same way it is in film projection (something I can actually demonstrate in class). -differences in resolution. -different lifespans of film and digital. And so on and so forth. Though I do talk about things outside the realm of film aesthetics specifically (such as the cost of digital conversion, preservation issues, etc.), my main interest is in showing my students the concrete, appreciable consequences that attend the decision to do something in film or in digital. And to be able to demonstrate them in class with specific examples - using the 16mm and digital projectors I have in the classroom - would be nice, so suggestions of such specific examples would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any ideas. Best, Jonathan Jonathan Walley Dept. of Cinema Denison University ___ 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
[Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
Hello everyone, This question isn't about experimental cinema specifically, but it's certainly an important question for our world, and I think experimental filmmakers (and scholars, critics, etc.) are among those best equipped to answer it. So here goes. There is some preamble meant to set the stage, but you can skim it and skip down to the question if you want. Each semester I teach an introductory cinema studies course called Film Aesthetics and Analysis. The main goal of the course is to teach students how to analyze film aesthetics (in case the title of the class didn't make this obvious), and it is aimed at the general campus community, not just Cinema majors. Indeed, the majority of students in the class are non-majors who have never studied film before. Early in the course I talk about filmmaking on a very material level - call it the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, a subject I return to periodically across the semester (e.g. how cameras work, the process of editing, projection, etc.). I have always privileged film - that is, analogue, photochemical, mechanical, celluloid film - but to keep up with the times I have been trying to talk more about digital cinema technology, with a view to contrasting the two media. Though I'm a luddite when it comes to film, I'm not necessarily interested in converting my students to that mindset, nor to favoring one medium over another. I simply want my students to understand the ramifications of shooting, editing, projecting, and viewing films on different media. SO NOW, THE QUESTION: what would you say are some of the most important, and most fundamental, differences between making and/or seeing films in these two media, in terms that intro-level undergrads can understand and appreciate. For example: -true black is not possible in digital projection the same way it is in film projection (something I can actually demonstrate in class). -differences in resolution. -different lifespans of film and digital. And so on and so forth. Though I do talk about things outside the realm of film aesthetics specifically (such as the cost of digital conversion, preservation issues, etc.), my main interest is in showing my students the concrete, appreciable consequences that attend the decision to do something in film or in digital. And to be able to demonstrate them in class with specific examples - using the 16mm and digital projectors I have in the classroom - would be nice, so suggestions of such specific examples would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any ideas. Best, Jonathan Jonathan Walley Dept. of Cinema Denison University ___ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
Re: [Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
Hi Jonathan, Great question, thanks for teaching cinema! There are, for sure, appreciable differences between the media - and I know that's what you were asking for - but I think it may be valuable to mention to your students the similarities of the media in terms of motivation. Each, in its time and way, is an attempt at capturing light/time and reproducing it. I just bought a manual ceramic burr coffee grinder because my electric one sparked and died. I partly went analog because it cannot 'spark and die' like my previous one. I partly went analog for nostalgic and meditative reasons. But, essentially, each coffee grinder is approaching the same problem - the whole roasted bean - and applying itself to reduce the bean to grounds so that one can make a damn cup of coffee. Instead of contrasting analog against electronic - I see them as tools, appropriate for different times, different moods. I realize this is very subjective and blurry - but so is life as I see it. Also possibly of note - there are very few films shot on film, that stay completely and firmly analog - which to me points even more to the increasingly subjective choice of either format. I've only seen Brakhage's mothlight digitally - and would love to see it on film because of the sound the projector makes. Best of luck to you, Bryan Bryan McManus, Digital Arts Studio Director cityartsdas.wordpress.com On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Jonathan Walley wall...@denison.eduwrote: Hello everyone, This question isn't about experimental cinema specifically, but it's certainly an important question for our world, and I think experimental filmmakers (and scholars, critics, etc.) are among those best equipped to answer it. So here goes. There is some preamble meant to set the stage, but you can skim it and skip down to the question if you want. Each semester I teach an introductory cinema studies course called Film Aesthetics and Analysis. The main goal of the course is to teach students how to analyze film aesthetics (in case the title of the class didn't make this obvious), and it is aimed at the general campus community, not just Cinema majors. Indeed, the majority of students in the class are non-majors who have never studied film before. Early in the course I talk about filmmaking on a very material level - call it the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, a subject I return to periodically across the semester (e.g. how cameras work, the process of editing, projection, etc.). I have always privileged film - that is, analogue, photochemical, mechanical, celluloid film - but to keep up with the times I have been trying to talk more about digital cinema technology, with a view to contrasting the two media. Though I'm a luddite when it comes to film, I'm not necessarily interested in converting my students to that mindset, nor to favoring one medium over another. I simply want my students to understand the ramifications of shooting, editing, projecting, and viewing films on different media. SO NOW, THE QUESTION: what would you say are some of the most important, and most fundamental, differences between making and/or seeing films in these two media, in terms that intro-level undergrads can understand and appreciate. For example: -true black is not possible in digital projection the same way it is in film projection (something I can actually demonstrate in class). -differences in resolution. -different lifespans of film and digital. And so on and so forth. Though I do talk about things outside the realm of film aesthetics specifically (such as the cost of digital conversion, preservation issues, etc.), my main interest is in showing my students the concrete, appreciable consequences that attend the decision to do something in film or in digital. And to be able to demonstrate them in class with specific examples - using the 16mm and digital projectors I have in the classroom - would be nice, so suggestions of such specific examples would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any ideas. Best, Jonathan Jonathan Walley Dept. of Cinema Denison University ___ 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
Re: [Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
Wow, what a dangerous topic. ;) Digital is not a monolith. The difference between consumer equipment and professional equipment is HUGE. For example, richer black is eminently do-able in the digital domain, you just need an expensive projector, and the files must be encoded properly. Anyway, you almost never get *true* black with emulsion on celluloid. You'd have to use Kodalith or something to completely block the light. Release prints always have some bleed-through, don't they? Digital resolution is highly dependent on numerous variables. Just as particular stocks and gauges give different grain qualities, so do particular digital video standards and equipment give different levels of fidelity. A 4K digital projection roughly corresponds to 35mm motion picture film, but that's a messy, inexact comparison. DVD = 0.35 megapixels (8mm quality) 1080p Blu-ray = 2 megapixels (16mm quality) 4K Digital Cinema Package = 9 megapixels (35mm quality) 8K projection / UHDTV = 33 megapixels (IMAX quality) Don't forget that color space is different in digital projection. Instead of subtractive transparent dyes, in digital projection, you're working with additive red-green-blue light. To complicate matters, there are many different color spaces for the digital assets themselves. And the color depth is different for different digital formats, too. Crap formats like DVD use only 8 bits of data per channel. DCP uses 12 bits. That means it has a lot wider dynamic range and also finer gradations of tone. The lifespan issue is somewhat mythologized. The concern of archivists that digital media will self-obsolesce is a very valid one. However, if you are clever, you can future-proof your digital assets by authoring them to the best possible format and transfer them periodically to new storage media. The data may not be readable in a post-apocalyptic scenario, but otherwise the lifespan of digital media is actually theoretically greater than that of analog media. This is because digital media can be endlessly replicated with no generation loss. The sound issue must be addressed as well. I think it would be difficult to argue that digital sound is worse than analog. Traditionally, sound-on-film technologies have sucked, at least until the advent of Dolby Digital. Finally, digital cinema opens the door to higher frame rates and richer colors with new technologies such as laser projectors. Old fogies seem to hate the heightened sense of reality that these new methods bring. Film offers a safe haven of limited temporal resolution that provides a framing effect that some believe enhances the narrative. I disagree, and can't wait for higher frame rates and better approximations of how the human eye-brain system works. A side note... with proper application of digital technology, old media will often end up looking/sounding better than when they were first produced. That has most certainly been my own experience. Aaron At 7/13/2012, you wrote: Hello everyone, This question isn't about experimental cinema specifically, but it's certainly an important question for our world, and I think experimental filmmakers (and scholars, critics, etc.) are among those best equipped to answer it. So here goes. There is some preamble meant to set the stage, but you can skim it and skip down to the question if you want. Each semester I teach an introductory cinema studies course called Film Aesthetics and Analysis. The main goal of the course is to teach students how to analyze film aesthetics (in case the title of the class didn't make this obvious), and it is aimed at the general campus community, not just Cinema majors. Indeed, the majority of students in the class are non-majors who have never studied film before. Early in the course I talk about filmmaking on a very material level - call it the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, a subject I return to periodically across the semester (e.g. how cameras work, the process of editing, projection, etc.). I have always privileged film - that is, analogue, photochemical, mechanical, celluloid film - but to keep up with the times I have been trying to talk more about digital cinema technology, with a view to contrasting the two media. Though I'm a luddite when it comes to film, I'm not necessarily interested in converting my students to that mindset, nor to favoring one medium over another. I simply want my students to understand the ramifications of shooting, editing, projecting, and viewing films on different media. SO NOW, THE QUESTION: what would you say are some of the most important, and most fundamental, differences between making and/or seeing films in these two media, in terms that intro-level undergrads can understand and appreciate. For example: -true black is not possible in digital projection the same way it is in film projection (something I can actually demonstrate in class). -differences in resolution. -different
Re: [Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
Jonathan: Aaron's right. Digital is not one thing. Neither is film. Coincidentally, just this morning I was at the archivist seesion at the Silent Film Festival in SF, and it was all about digital restoration. The guy who restored Dr. Strangelove showed the 4K digital restoration flipping back and forth with the projection of a 35mm release print. The digital had better detail, truer black, and was much less distressed, of course. But when queried about the difference in the actual coloring of the monochrome, he said 'that's not a difference between photochemical and digital, it's just the color balance of the different projection lamps.' In truth, there are no significant FUNDAMENTAL differences that hold generally between photochemical and digital, because each is so broad a category, and digital is not a fixed target. There are not two mediums here, but a multitude. As I have posted here ad infinitum, the difference between two film projections can be much greater than the difference between a specific film projection and a specific digital projection, and of course, vice versa. If the presentation today revealed any fundamental differences it was these: Digital presentations are far more fixed than photochemical ones. The copy every theater shows of a digitally distributed film is identical, only the projection differs (which still introduces a lot of variables...) But no two film prints are exactly the same to begin with, and each print immediately gains different patterns of wear, which show up both in artifacts on the surface of the image, and in the stability of the image -- digital projection is rock steady, while all mechanical projection has registration issues: 'projector weave' or as I like to call it registration bounce.' I think for a general student audience especially, it is far more crucial to talk about differences that cross the digital/photochemical boundary: resolution, contrast ratio and latitude, careful projection vs. sloppy projection, and most importantly those qualities that separate the cinematic experience from that of 'personal media': the size of the screen, the darkness of the room, the presence of others etc. etc. Whether we like it or not, photochemical film media are dying in the culture at large, and in a few years we will be dealing with students who have never seen a photochemical film projection, and will never see one -- outside of anything they may happen to see in school in 16mm. Even if there were fundamental differences between photochemical and digital, they are becoming irrelevant, while these other quality and character issues remain extremely relevant. The typical student today doesn't get that some things just shouldn't be watched on an iPhone, or even a 48 flat-panel because they need a much bigger canvas and the viewer's undivided attention. Beat THAT difference into their head, get them to appreciate CINEMA regardless of how it is projected, and you do the work of the angels. ___ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
Re: [Frameworks] Film and Digital for beginners
From: David Tetzlaff djte...@gmail.com The typical student today doesn't get that some things just shouldn't be watched on an iPhone, or even a 48 flat-panel because they need a much bigger canvas and the viewer's undivided attention. Beat THAT difference into their head, get them to appreciate CINEMA regardless of how it is projected, and you do the work of the angels. My favourite commentary on this very point. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcNLEwf2pOw ___ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
