Digital cinematography: Encyclopedia II - Digital cinematography - Digital video vs. film

Digital cinematography - Digital video vs. film

Some notable directors have stated that they have been "converted" to digital cinematography and will never return to using film, including George Lucas, Robert Rodriguez, David Fincher, David Lynch, Lars von Trier, and James Cameron. Lucas, however, modified his stance somewhat in a recent interview, stating that he "would use whatever is more appropriate to the particular project." Directors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino,Tim Burton, Ridley Scott and Oliver Stone belong to the opposing camp of those who have vowed to continue to shoot on film.

Some of the benefits claimed by digital video are:

• Digital video allows for films to be shot faster, and for less money than film.
• Digital video, unlike film, does not need to be developed and can be played back and edited immediately after shooting. This can help in avoiding continuity errors.
• Digital video can record image and audio on the same media.
• Digital video cameras are smaller and lighter than film cameras.
• Digital video is recorded on cassettes or hard disk drives, which can hold considerably more footage and are cheaper than a ten or twenty minute film stock.
• Digital video is more sensitive than film, and usually requires less supplemental lighting.
• Most films are already edited on a digital system after the developed film stocks are converted to digital video. Film requires a lengthly telecine process to be converted to digital video.

Digital cinematography - Criticisms of video

After an intital flurry of interest, the use of digital video for motion pictures has caused a backlash among many film enthusiasts. The primary argument against digital cinematography is simply that the image quality and 24 fps frame rate has not yet caught up to most 35mm film, and that films shot digitally appear too crisp and "washed over".

Generally, the problem is that despite being re-labeled as "digital cinematography" cameras, the technology still retains many of the limitations of the television cameras that preceded it. TV cameras work satisfactorily in totally enclosed sound stages or studios where lighting may be easily controlled, which is how the vast majority of the Star Wars and Spy Kids films were shot. However, taken outside into "on location" situations where there is far less control over the lighting, video cameras tend to perform poorly. In this case, any potential savings in stock costs tend to be eaten up by the need for extra lighting equipment to "flatten" difficult lighting situations.

Other issues:

• Although it is true the "per minute stock cost" of videotape is much less than an equivalent amount of film, in most cases this is more than offset by the cost of the extra monitoring equipment required. In any event, even if the cost of shooting digitally could be reduced to zero, the overall effect on the cost of producing the average feature would be negligible, since film costs normally make up a tiny part of a film's budget -- currently, even very inexpensive "made for cable" movies are nearly always shot on film.
• The "instant playback" feature, often touted as a major advantage of shooting digitally, has been available through the "video assist" systems that have been in regular use since the early 1980s. Although this is only lower resolution NTSC video, for the vast majority of monitoring and framing "confidence" applications, it has proven more than adequate.
• For anything but low-budget work, there is no particular advantage in having the sound and image recorded on the same medium. Most sound recording is done by specialist operators, usually with their own desk of equipment. Using the image recorder to record the sound as well would involve running extra cables up to the camera/recorder combination.
• Although very compact digital cameras are available, none of these produces anywhere near the quality demanded for large-screen film work, and in any event there are also extremely compact 35mm film cameras that produce the full 35mm film resolution and accept standard 35mm lenses.
• Contrary to what is commonly stated, video cameras are no more low-light sensitive than film. Modern "noise coring" circuitry is very efficient at masking low-level electronic "grain", but this also removes some of the image information, which is one thing that accounts for the perceived "unatural-ness" of video-derived footage. On rapidly-moving footage the noise coring often fails, giving occasional glimpses of the true low-light performance of video cameras. For precision monitoring when shooting outdoors, a collection of black tents is usually needed, often referred to sarcastically as a "video village". All of this equipment has to be operating even when just setting up a shot, whereas with a film camera's optical viewfinder, no power is required between shots, making battery operation far more practical.
• The digital systems used for editing most films today are in fact "off-line" editing systems. The "wild" film segments are transferred rapidly and inexpensively at NTSC resolution onto a hard disk drive, and all the editing decisions are then made on a computer system, to produce an on-screen-edited "NTSC resolution" version of the project. An automated machine then duplicates the project on film by cutting up and splicing the original negatives, using the edit marks produced on the computer system. This is very similar to the way most television programs are post-produced, using almost identical equipment, except that the original camera tapes are edited, instead of film negtives. Most films today are thus edited and duplicated much the same way they have been for the past century, but using computers to streamline the process.
• More recently, some post-production has been done by scanning the film and carrying out all the editing at full resolution on a computer, and then transferring the resultant digital files directly back onto film to produce the master release negative. This is the so-called "digital intermediate" process. However, at present, it is so expensive that it is normally reserved for projects that require a lot of digital manipulation, such as science fiction and fantasy films, or large-budget films where the cost is not an issue. For more cost-conscious projects, it is only used in the scenes that actually require it, which may make up only a very small part of the whole film. Costs are continually falling, though, and there is little doubt that this will eventually become the standard technique.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Digital video vs. film", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki