Film vs HD vs SD
Of Folks,
This is an attempt to go somewhere that I have never gone before,
i.e. the technical aspects of filmmaking. As an aspiring producer
attended the talk by the Manager of one of the oldest and most
prestigeous labs in SF, Monaco Labs and wanted to share some info
with you’ll. Expexct to be crtiqued on this one so please don’t hold
back. The lecture dealt with Film Vs Digital (again, my motiavation
was non technical, I don’t care how the production quality appears, I
only care if the film is good and in my limited sense a film is good
if it entertains, everything else is gizmo). Frankly the average Joe
or the average Jaani or Janardhan or Jamunabai sees a movie, likes it
or does not like it….camera angles, editing , etc are not thoughts
which come to mind. I liked Dhoom period, I did not like Veer Zarra
period, lighting, editing, who knows, who cares. So here we go:
a) It is almost a given that if a film has to be shown on the big
screen it has to be in 35mmfilm. There just are not enough Digital
screens in the US (a ratio of 4 is to 100). Until that changes, film
is going to prevail. Plus the digital projector costs like $ 128K for
a theater to install. So unless you are Sony Metreon, it is not going
to happen in a hurry.
b) Cost of the mediums are 1) 35 MM $90 per minute, so one hour
=$5400. 2) 16 MM $35 per minute, so one hour is $2100. 3) Cost of HD
Video is $9.43 per minute and for one hour it is %566 and 4) cost of
SD (i.e. your camcoder) is 23 cents (that’s right cents) per minute
and for one hour= $13.80.
Cost of film includes film stock, processing and a video daily. Video
cost includes tape stock and conversios to std def.
Advantages of Film : Higher resolution, much greater color depth,
always progressive,many choices of film speed/exposure rate, image
preserved 100+ years, harder to pirate,universal format and downward
compatible, Film camera is cheaper to rent since the choices are many
and rental houses are trying to push their products.
Disadavantage of Film: Cost , 12-24 hour for dailies (because most
folks don’t get their lines right)
Middle Ground: Shoot in Super 16 and get your first video made. Use
that to impress Mr or Mrs Producer. Only if they smile blow that up
to 35 mm, if they don’t smile at least you have a video and have not
burned a hole in your and others pockets.Also sound is better when
converted to film (yes, yes I do know what I am talking about, I have
a negative of a sound by Dolby Labs)
Advantages of Video: Cost, avaialble immediately for viewing/editing,
plus HD is almost 85% of film in colors and lighting . A good DV job
will also suffice. Finally you get your video right away. Invest the
$20,000 for transfer of HD to film only if you can show your film to
20 independent and unbiased folks and not get tomatoes on your face,
if you do indeed get “pav bahji” on face, then you have a good home
video whihc can be put on the internet and distributed.
Disadvantage of Video: Lower resolution, less latitude, 8 bit color
depth (I have no idea what all these terms mean) most DV is
interlaced and most DV 29.97 frame rate (what does it mean, #####%%
%?) and do I or should I care about these stats? HD has to be down
converted for most editing systems, video formats here in the US are
not compatible in all countries, 15-25 year expected life (when was
that ever an issue with most indies having a life of 15-25
days….only if they are having a good run). Cost to rent HD camera
is pretty high, but expected to fall as more cameras come out.
Recommended camera of gurus 720P Panasonic (if I got the number wrong
apologies, maybe it should be 24P. Another recommmended camera is
Panasonic DV X 100 A.
Well so much for now. Point is despite all this knowledge, 99.99% of
indies will still be flops because a) No thought was given to the
script, b) The filmmaker cast himself or herself as the lead, or put
family and friends in supporting casts (very bad , very bad) or c)
cast the producer as the lead or supporting (even more very bad, very
bad) or d) spent all the money on marketing (ahem please see my film
cause the promos are great, besides the point that the main product
is terrible) or e) the film is made by an engineer so functions like
a well oiled toy, keeps going and going, with no direction and soul.
Anyway hope the above can save you’ll some costs,
Vivek “when was the last time a film got an Oscar because of good
lighting” Kumar
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Not a bad primer on film vs. digital. A few bits of advice though:
Film is on its way out. It is true that you get better contrast and resolution in film. Film is 2K resolution, which is pretty high resolution. However, during the period of processing the film and going through all the motions of sending it to the labs, converting it to digital for editing etc. etc. film resolution comes down to 1K, especially if you’re doing heavy effects work.
You have to compromise by pretty much doing everything digitally until the final product has to come out.
Film still has life, at least in terms of projection use.
There are other costs associated with using film, such as worrying about lighting, having to switch mags constantly, not being able to watch dailies for a week and so on.
HD will soon be going to 4k resolution, in fact it is already here. HD is the future plain and simple. With good color correction, you can make HD look like any film format and give it any look that you can. No need to worry about pesky negatives. The RED camera that is coming out offers 4250×4250 resolution on a camera that is barely the size of a DVX100 camera.
Also, film negatives tend to degrade quickly. Lucasfilm had to spend a lot of time cleaning up a 20 year old negative when they did the special editions in 97.
HD is the future, its cheaper, easier to use, you don’t have to carry around expensive lighting, and you can downrezz and uprezz to any format in the world.
Another tip for the indie filmmakers. Don’t get pulled in by the whole 720p HD cameras on the market. You’re better off shooting SD resolution and sticking a 16×9 converter on the camera than wasting time on the so-called HD prosumer cameras. Either you shoot in very very high resolution, or stick to film (35 or super 16) or stick to SD. These prosumer HD cameras are just snake oil and all they do is take up space on your HDD.
Thanks, Anang. Two questions.
1) Who is making the RED camera? What is the cost? Any web site where I can learn more about it?
2) Do you include the Panasonix DVX200 – supposedly a 1080 resolution HD camera with P2 disks and also supports 24P – in your snake oil category?
Dear Vivek,
HD and 4k are two different things. HD is just plain old video, only with more (1920 x 1080) lines. 4k is better. Twice as much information than HD, “as if” you scanned a film frame, throwing away 6,000 lines of image info!
Film, if properly stored, will last about a century. Try to play video tapes or magnetic discs you made 20 years ago.
Yes, digital is easier to shoot than film, so what? Pencils are easier to use than a printing press, but how many people can use, or have used a pencil to draw a masterpiece?
The ONLY advantage I see to digital cameras is their on-board digital sound recording capability, and most digital filmmakers don’t pay any attention to recording their sound properly anyway, and the sound will all be replaced in post, so “what advantage?”
I’ve juried a lot of film festivals the past few years, and I’m frankly getting tired of sparkly, fuzzy, dithery, jaggy images, on the so-called “films” I have seen.
I’m tired of pretending that digital images are good to watch and easy to comprehend. I’ve just seen too much sparkly screen junk to go on pretending, so I’ll tell you here – The Emperor has no clothes! Digital “films” look crummy, at least by comparison to 35mm film.
Unless you’re George Lucas, and can run your data stream through ILM, to have hundreds of people paint and rework your images a frame at a time, and then write them out to film, HD’s just video.
HD is sharper and clearer, yes. Sharper and clearer than what? Film? God, no. Sharper and clearer than Standard-Definition video. Sharper and clearer than your tv set.
I agree, the Red camera and the Panasonic DVX200 are two excellent digital cameras. They are light and easy to use, the best ever made. My 1927 Mitchell 35mm camera still blows their image quality away.
My Mitchell is a simple mechanical device that can pull millions of meters of film, needing only the occasional drop of oil. It can crank high-speed for slow-motion, or a single frame at a time.
If my camera battery dies, I can still turn a hand-crank, and come back from the shoot with usable footage. (I’ve done it.)
When I’m done shooting with my Mitchell (upon which I can hang any lens ever made), I have 35mm film that can play on any projector, in any cinema in the world.
The only disadvantage to my Mitchell? It takes a few more guys on the crew to do the lifting, that’s it.
Yes, 35mm costs more. However, when you’re done, you have a commercial product that you can sell, so its cost is just part of doing business. If you shoot digital, can you sell it? Maybe. Maybe not.
It’s been at least a decade since people started saying film is going away. They keep saying it, but discerning filmmakers keep shooting film.
Film is definitely going away in the consumer arena, but for we pros who want quality products to sell, nothing else yet comes close to film.
As for your question “When was the last time a film got an Oscar because of good lighting?” that is a particularly easy question to answer, and I’m surprised you ask.
Last March 2006 in Hollywood – perhaps you missed it – Australian cinematographer Dion Beebe won the Best Cinematography Oscar. That is when.
Cinematography is many tasks, one of them, notably, is lighting the sets and subjects.
Perhaps lighting doesn’t seem important to you, because you think story is everything. I know the story is important, but if the story is great and the medium is awful, don’t you think the story suffers?
Don’t you think the story should be given every chance to be successful?
If your movie is in competition for audience attention, with every tv set in the world, shouldn’t it look sharper and clearer than tv?
Best to you,
Sam Longoria
http://samlongoria.blogspot.com
http://secretsofraisingmoneyforyourmovie.com
Sam has a lot of good points.
First of all, the red camera costs upwards of $16,000, which is still a good investement compared to renting an arri or panavision or even buying them.
Red camera will def. close the gap for people looking to create high quality stuff.
And he’s right about that Je ne sais quois indie look that a lot of fim festival entries have. Having access to digital video doesn’t mean you should just throw cinematography in the air.
Panasonic has done a good job with their cameras so far, but like Sam says, if I was to shoot in HD either I would shoot it with a very good camera, or just shoot on film. I’d rather shoot on 16mm and spend the money than waste my time with 1080, 720p whatever. They don’t look good blown up to 35mm rez and i would rather shoot DV and spent the rest of the money on other production costs.
Not all of us can afford to buy a film camera, so the only option is to shoot digital. You just have to make good choices. This whole HD (blu-ray and HDDVD included) market just seems like another laserdisc deal. People with enough money will buy and use them, but no one gives a damn.
Also, I’m pretty sure that HD films aren’t only being backed up on magnetic tapes and such. I think they have better storage capabilities for storing digital data than for film.
I’ve never handled film in my life and I don’t really see a reason to start right now.
Thanks anangbhai,
>I’m pretty sure that HD films aren’t only being
>backed up on magnetic tapes and such.
That’s a very nice thought, and I wish it were true, but data is these days stored on magnetic media, or magneto-optical discs, which have only a fraction of the shelf life of a properly-stored acetate or polyester motion-picture film.
>I think they have better storage capabilities
>for storing digital data than for film.
I’m sorry to tell you, but color film still stores the most information, and lasts the longest in archival form.
The only way currently to keep digital data “alive” is to repeatedly transfer it to new media, before the old medium disintegrates, or loses its magnetic coercivity.
>I’ve never handled film in my life and I don’t
>really see a reason to start right now.
For me, that’s part of the fun, being able to show it sharp and clear on a big screen, any time I like, and chewing little film chips in the dark, as I work. I love the tactility of it, it feels more like art, or sculpture.
Shooting on film doesn’t really mean handling film these days anyway, except for that which must necessarily be done by laboratory technicians.
Once the film has captured the image, it is telecine’d, and handled as data from then on.
The data sequence is manipulated in editing, and the parts of the production that need visual effects are manipulated and used to create new film elements.
When the edit is approved, the data is used to conform the negative to the edit list, and the new film elements are inserted into that.
If the film is only to be shown on television, it stays as data, and is released on digital media, most commonly these days a DVD.
Also, the Red camera is $17k for the body only.
It’s beautiful, I’ll buy one, but I expect the cost with lenses, cables, accessories to at least double or treble that, or more.
Best to you,
Sam Longoria
http://samlongoria.blogspot.com
http://secretsofraisingmoneyforyourmovie.com
There seems to be an argument here is more heavily based on the need to believe that film is superior, rather than a discussion of technology. Sorry Sam, but what I’m hearing isn’t a thought process about pro’s and con’s, only why digital stinks and film is god.
I had professors like that. They were one step away from being Ludites themselves (analog anything = good. Digital anything = bad for one reason or another).
The storage life comparison seemed silly to me. What’s the cost of trying to maintain a piece of film in good condition versus a digital file transfer? As well, digital info can be transfered a limitless amount of times with no degradation. Can the same be said of film to film transfers? No. And film is regularly transfered to digital form for viewing and distribution.
I wonder how painters felt when the film camera came out? I’m sure they felt threatened that this miracle technology could capture an entire scene in a moment, where it took them days or weeks to complete a rendering. But is painting dead? No. Do we now have an entire industry of painters who are called Graphic Designers? Yes.
HD is the little brother to film. It does everything it can to copy what film can do. Every new HD camera that comes out boasts the ability to mimic a particular type of film stock. It’s lenses are branded in film equivalents. The two formats work alongside one another with the audience deciding what they like.
Film is phenomenal to look at, but is HD. You need an experienced hand at both to make them look right because I’ll tell ya, watching Spiderman on the big screen is pretty that one time before it went to HD, but so is CSI every night of the week.
I’m really in need of advice.
I intend to shoot a short film (25 mins) in India.
It will not have theatrical release (It might, if I win an Oscar
). I’m mostly looking at festivals and at the best scenario, a TV release.
What i don’t know is, how are most short films shot (film or HD, if film what type? if HD what type?).
I want simple advices from you guys…considering a balance between quality and cost and considering the fact that it is for festivals…what should I use film (16, super 16, 35) or HD (what type).
I also want to tell you that the look and feel will not be either like Lawrence or Arabia or Brokeback mountain. it would rather be like Bourne series or Thirteen or A mighty heart.
Please advice.
It’s not surprising that film is cheaper than digital especially in this day and age. Do you think film is better to use for shooting or modern digital? HD aside because that’s not an even match at all.