Early days of digital film

[peanutbutter]

Was watching Tape recently and it took me a solid 20 minutes to get past how shit it looked. Once I got over it it became kind of oddly entrancing though.

Got me thinking of how erratic that whole era was, for quite a lot of the Dogme95 stuff it seemed to go along perfectly with it, with relatively more straight stuff like Chuck & Buck it has absolutely destroyed the film (which probably wasn't very good to begin with but it's very hard to see past the awful quality now).


Is it the early mainstream ones that have aged the worst? Attack of the Clones and Spy Kids 2 are apparently the first two; I imagine the former is quite hard to see behind the awful CGI.
Are there some films from after it was beginning to become more standard (looks like 2006 was the turning point) that have managed to age horrifically despite looking okay at the time?

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think a lot of it was also that there wasn't quite the techniques to polish it.

Even something a bit more recent but still when digital wasn't the norm like The Edukators looked a bit ropey.

I actually want to try and get my hands on Julia and Julia, it's not actually a digital film, it was recorded with the then cutting edge Sony HDVS analogue video cameras and recorded on wideband tape, it was optically printed to 35mm for showing in cinemas.

[Menu]

Not sure if it's exactly the same thing but those early New Doctor Who's look AWFUL. Like below VHS standard. Just caught a Christopher Eccleston one the other day on Watch - how did that become a standard presentation for a big show on the BBC?

[Blumf]

Attack of the Clones

Remember seeing it on a digital cinema screen (think it would have been 2K?) and noticing the stars were square. Some of then were bright enough to take up a few pixels, some dim enough to grey out the pixel, but many were just exactly one pixel, and you could see that.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

The first film entirely shot in digital and HD was either French period piece Vidocq, starring Guillaume Canet et Gérard Depardieu, or Barbet Schroeder's Our Lady of the Assassins, which were respectively released one and two years before AotC.

Our Lady of the Assassins was shot guerrilla-style, while Vidocq was the work of a VFX guy (whose second feature was Catwoman), and the digital look and the artefacts are the least of its problems (the script is terrible, and some guy I know explains that, due to an ongoing lawsuit with a competing project, it stayed clear out of every element commonly associated with the character). But it has many digital problems, according to Wikipedia.

As the final PAL DVD release shows, the film was shot 25i (interlaced), and only special effects shots were deinterlaced by means of smart field blending (imitating a progressive-type amount of motion blur due to a different shutter speed of progressive modes) during post-production, as the special effects crew obviously was in demand of progressive frames which are easier to process for special effects, before for the final release all normal shots were deinterlaced by means of simple line interpolation instead. The result are video-like appearance of motions in normal shots, and distinctive film-like motions for all effect shots due to the different amount of motion blur resulting from the different deinterlacing methods.

That's actually quite important to take VFX and post into consideration. A lot of the irritating thingss associated with digital, especially in the early days of HD, can be a matter of terrible CGI or color correction that are facilitated with shooting in digital but can also be achieved from a digital intermediate based on film stock. It's not always the sensor that's the source of these issues.

There's also Mike Figgis' Timecode from 2000. It's shot in real time with four DV cameras later assembled in split screen (basically like something you can see on a CCTV monitor), so the definition is less problematic than for the usual Dogma 95 projects.

Around Inland Empire, David Lynch swore he would stick with the look of DV forever. He sure doesn't try to hide the harsh look and the low definition from DV, but that's my least favourite of his films and I haven't returned to it since its theatrical release.

Of course, there's also The Room, which was infamously shot simultaneously on film and HD, even if I believe that Wiseau ultimately stuck with the footage from the HD camera.

Both Robert Altman and Sidney Lumet shot their final film, A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) in HD. In both cases, it looked fine. At this point, mainstream productions would mostly rely on Sony or Panavision digital cameras, which were often scarce, heavy or expensive (but most of the time, these are rentals, so it's not determining).

Then, RED, which was a startup and an outsider in the filmmaking industry, started to make dents with their much cheaper (and lighter) cameras, with Steven Soderbergh switching to their offering for Che and The Informant, and David Fincher or Peter Jackson becoming fans. The main issue with these cameras is that the DoP must make a lot of new choices that he wouldn't have to make with film stock. It makes the switch more difficult to industry veterans. Arri, which had been more of a household name there, came a little later with the Alexa, which had slightly less resolution than the RED One, but has standard settings which are close to the look of film, even if they look dull. It became the standard for digital. Once again, people who tinkered with them, like Roger Deakins, were still able to achieve some outstanding stuff.

[mjwilson]

Around Inland Empire, David Lynch swore he would stick with the look of DV forever.

Huh, I thought it was the convenience of shooting on digital that he liked, rather than the look of it? I always found it odd that Lynch was happy for IE to look like it did.

[Mister Six]

Huh, I thought it was the convenience of shooting on digital that he liked, rather than the look of it? I always found it odd that Lynch was happy for IE to look like it did.

Yeah, everything I read was that he loved the freedom to experiment and shoot on the fly, not the aesthetics. But maybe he loved seeing his mysterious worlds looking like they were taped on your nan's camcorder.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

It can be two things.

High-definition video, which now often closely approximates film, has become an increasingly common format for studio productions (David Fincher's Zodiac being a recent example). But Lynch is not interested in simulating celluloid with a state-of-the-art video camera. He shot Inland Empire with the relatively primitive Sony PD-150, a consumer-grade model that was introduced in 2001 (eons ago in techie years) at a retail price of less than $4,000. Lynch's love of video has much to do with the freedom it grants. Shooting with a camcorder removes the strictures of a traditional film production, allowing for a smaller crew, less setup time, and no accountability to money men. The lightweight camera, along with the low cost and high capacity of videotape, generally means more and longer takes. Video permits Lynch to indulge fully his taste for improvisation—to make things up as he goes along. Inland Empire was written a scene at a time and shot piecemeal over a period of three years.

But Lynch being Lynch, aesthetic concerns presumably outweighed practical ones. Compared with film, video typically looks harsh and almost hyperreal, with a narrower range of colors and weaker contrast, but it's precisely those qualities that Lynch revels in. While a lower-resolution film stock, like Super 8, has a grainy, romantic allure, lower-resolution video, characterized by fewer pixels per inch, merely looks fuzzy. For Lynch, who has likened low-res video to film stock before the emulsion process was perfected, the murkier the image, the more "room to dream," as he puts it. It's no wonder this master of the enigmatic would prize video for its literal lack of information.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/dvdextras/2007/08/david_lynch_goes_digital.html?via=gdpr-consent

And for a few longer quotes...

"For me, there's no way back to film. I'm done with it. I love abstraction. Film is a beautiful medium, but it's very slow and you don't get a chance to try a lot of different things. With DV, you get those chances. And in post-production, if you can think it, you can do it."
So, you were right, he was mostly speaking of digital in general, rather than low-res DV Cam in particular.
But...

"[The quality of the DV image] looks different. Some would say it looks bad. But it reminds me of early 35mm, that didn't have that tight grain. When you have a poor image, there's lots more room to dream."

[SweetPomPom]

At least he acknowledges it's a  poor image.

[Beep Cleep Chimney]

Still amazes me to this day that ITV of all channels used to regularly show 'Inland Empire' after the News At Ten until a few years ago. 

I've still not managed to get all the way through that film.  I hated how crap it looks.

[mjwilson]

When I saw it in the cinema, about half an hour from the end, someone behind me leaned over to the person they were with and whispered, "I don't think I can take much more of this."

[BJBMK2]

Not sure if it's exactly the same thing but those early New Doctor Who's look AWFUL. Like below VHS standard. Just caught a Christopher Eccleston one the other day on Watch - how did that become a standard presentation for a big show on the BBC?

Early 00's telly, drama and comedy in particular,  really suffered from the overuse of Field Removed Video. Maybe they've got the technology to make it look not-as-shit now, but back then, it just made everything feel very clammy and claustrophobic. That first DW season looks like it's being projected directly through a strobe light.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I thought Collateral looked fine - clearly shot on video, but it didn't look like a cheap telly show. My friend found it nearly unwatchable though.

[Sebastian Cobb]

It can be two things.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/dvdextras/2007/08/david_lynch_goes_digital.html?via=gdpr-consent

And for a few longer quotes...

"For me, there's no way back to film. I'm done with it. I love abstraction. Film is a beautiful medium, but it's very slow and you don't get a chance to try a lot of different things. With DV, you get those chances. And in post-production, if you can think it, you can do it."
So, you were right, he was mostly speaking of digital in general, rather than low-res DV Cam in particular.
But...

"[The quality of the DV image] looks different. Some would say it looks bad. But it reminds me of early 35mm, that didn't have that tight grain. When you have a poor image, there's lots more room to dream."

Yes although to bring things up to date there was a lot of speculation that Lynch was going to go back to film for Twin Peaks: The Return. Although in the end they went digital (with lots of post-processing to make it look saturated and filmy in Twin Peaks itself) it seems he was pushing for small handhelds then, according to the cinematographer:

"David went digital before anybody, at least in his mind, and he shot 'Inland Empire' [the one project in which Lynch served as his own DP] with a digital camera. He and I would disagree on the quality of [that camera], but he became very enamored with becoming a small self-contained unit and the sort of do-it-yourself situation," said Deming. "And he was still very much interested in that type of set-up for this."

The problem is that with the amount of special effects required for the new season of "Twin Peaks," smaller, less expensive DSLR cameras have a "rolling shudder" and don't supply a constant frame, which makes it extremely difficult for visual effects artists. In addition, Showtime, like Netflix and Amazon, wants its original shows to not only to deliver in 4K resolution, but shoot in 4K. This made Lynch's preferred, smaller digital cameras an impossibility. The happy medium became the Arri Amira, which is popular in the documentary community and has been used on indie films like "Goat" and "The Fits."

"The Amira is essentially the same sensor as the Arri Alexa, records at 3.2K which is easily up-res'd to 4K and Showtime was nice enough to say, OK, you don't have to originate in 4K," said Deming. "It was the smallest camera that could do that and I had a lot of experience with the Alexa, which I love, so when I tested the Amira it was basically an Alexa in smaller housing to me. So I was please we went out with that camera and I think at the end of the day David was as well."

They rented older 1960 ultra speed lenses from Panavision to "rough up" or soften some of the sharpness of the digital image.

https://www.indiewire.com/2017/09/twin-peaks-return-cinematographer-peter-deming-david-lynch-1201878462/

[Sebastian Cobb]

Apparently when digital didn't look bad, but a bit more sterile than what people were used to it was pretty common for people to optically print the DI out to film and rescan it to give it a cellulose feel (of course this may well have happened anyway at some point in the days before everything being digitally projected).

Other techniques exist from post effects to apparently layering a loop of very lightly exposed film over the top.

I noticed recently that Tarentino was threatening to give up making films, he's one of the few people who still has the clout to use film if they want but he's unhappy about the fact that everything's digital at the projection end too. Personally I think that's where it matters least; the last few places I've lived have had cinemas that still can project 35mm (and in one case 70mm as well), and the results are often disappointing. The stock's usually a bit fucked (even if it's a new release), I guess there's less of it these days and it gets fucked up quicker because the projectors are old, serviced less frequently (compared to running for every screening daily) and projectionist skills are probably somewhat forgotten. I reckon at the cinema end, DCP is largely fine.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

There's a documentary about this subject. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_by_Side_(2012_film)

It's produced and narrated by Keanu Reeves of all people, with lots of other Hollywood big shots, including David Lynch.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Tangenitally related I do wish everyone including hollywood and big tv, would stop using the same fucking VHS effect plugin, it's too over the top.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

If wikipedia's to be believed, Session 9 was one of the earliest feature films to be shot on 24fps digital video, e.g. film framerate instead of 30fps. It still looks pretty decent, the only crappy bits are a few scenes shot with a horrible-looking blue filter which I'm not sure was supposed to be day-for-night or not.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Something related to that is it seems that in the broadcast world, the Americans appear to have done away with pulldown and broadcast "film-like" content (which includes most single-camera drama/comedy over there) into their standards and broadcast them at 24p, unlike Europe which still seems to speed things up to 25p/50i.

[Menu]

Early 00's telly, drama and comedy in particular,  really suffered from the overuse of Field Removed Video. Maybe they've got the technology to make it look not-as-shit now, but back then, it just made everything feel very clammy and claustrophobic. That first DW season looks like it's being projected directly through a strobe light.

I couldn't believe it. I guess we were mostly using lower quality tvs then so didn't notice it so much but on a good tv in 2022 it looks embarrassing.

[Menu]

Yes although to bring things up to date there was a lot of speculation that Lynch was going to go back to film for Twin Peaks: The Return. Although in the end they went digital (with lots of post-processing to make it look saturated and filmy in Twin Peaks itself) it seems he was pushing for small handhelds then, according to the cinematographer:
https://www.indiewire.com/2017/09/twin-peaks-return-cinematographer-peter-deming-david-lynch-1201878462/

I'm no expert but Twin Peaks 3 looked great. If you'd told me it had been shot on film I wouldn't have been surprised.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Something related to that is it seems that in the broadcast world, the Americans appear to have done away with pulldown and broadcast "film-like" content (which includes most single-camera drama/comedy over there) into their standards and broadcast them at 24p, unlike Europe which still seems to speed things up to 25p/50i.

That explains why films on TV over here are still sped-up, whereas on Blu-Ray they're at the correct speed, as the format is standardised to 24fps whatever region you're in (with the exception of archival stuff like the Python sets).

[Menu]

Apparently when digital didn't look bad, but a bit more sterile than what people were used to it was pretty common for people to optically print the DI out to film and rescan it to give it a cellulose feel (of course this may well have happened anyway at some point in the days before everything being digitally projected).

Other techniques exist from post effects to apparently layering a loop of very lightly exposed film over the top.

I noticed recently that Tarentino was threatening to give up making films, he's one of the few people who still has the clout to use film if they want but he's unhappy about the fact that everything's digital at the projection end too. Personally I think that's where it matters least; the last few places I've lived have had cinemas that still can project 35mm (and in one case 70mm as well), and the results are often disappointing. The stock's usually a bit fucked (even if it's a new release), I guess there's less of it these days and it gets fucked up quicker because the projectors are old, serviced less frequently (compared to running for every screening daily) and projectionist skills are probably somewhat forgotten. I reckon at the cinema end, DCP is largely fine.

I was lucky enough to see The Hateful 8 in Leicester Square at one of the special 70mm showings(we even got a nice booklet, ebay fans!). It looked stunning. But not noticeably better than a digital film on bluray by a good director/cinematographer.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Not sure if it's exactly the same thing but those early New Doctor Who's look AWFUL. Like below VHS standard. Just caught a Christopher Eccleston one the other day on Watch - how did that become a standard presentation for a big show on the BBC?

It's got that horrible "vaseline" filter over everything as well which does nothing to help it not look like total shit.

By Tennant's first season it felt like they had a handle on the cinematography and it improved a lot, but Torchwood's first season came along right after the switch to HD and looked absolutely horrendous.

[peanutbutter]

For some reason Succession is shot in 35mm

[Menu]

Wow I wouldn't have guessed that. Not sure why it would be. That show is made for less cinematic cinematography.

[Menu]

It's got that horrible "vaseline" filter over everything as well which does nothing to help it not look like total shit.

By Tennant's first season it felt like they had a handle on the cinematography and it improved a lot, but Torchwood's first season came along right after the switch to HD and looked absolutely horrendous.

Yes! It looks really misty. But cheap misty.

[Sebastian Cobb]

For some reason Succession is shot in 35mm

Not so common now but 16mm got a bit of a revival when HD telly got big, Doc Martin's still used it for its last series seemingly.

https://www.cinelab.co.uk/case-study-itv-doc-martin

[Mister Six]

By Tennant's first season it felt like they had a handle on the cinematography and it improved a lot, but Torchwood's first season came along right after the switch to HD and looked absolutely horrendous.

Consistent with the quality of everything else about Torchwood, then.

Twin Peaks 3 looked stunning. I was watching it on 5Gb-per-ep torrents and it was beyond beautiful. I do wonder what it would have looked like without Showtime insisting on 4K though. And I wonder what the plans for Unrecorded Night/Wisteria were/are. Netflix doesn't seem to give a flying fuck about the quality of their "content" in any regard so maybe they'd be fine with Lynch using whatever.

(I should look up what "What Did Jack Do?" was shot on, I suppose, but I'm busy at the mo.)

[Menu]

Consistent with the quality of everything else about Torchwood, then.

Twin Peaks 3 looked stunning. I was watching it on 5Gb-per-ep torrents and it was beyond beautiful. I do wonder what it would have looked like without Showtime insisting on 4K though.

Would have been very funny and/or heartbreaking if he'd done it on his fucking Inland Empire camcorders.