Early days of digital film

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Obviously, Lynch enjoys having small cameras he can even operate by himself, and that's even more of a factor than picture quality. That was also a huge factor for Soderbergh, who even swore at some point he would only work with iPhones (when he made Mosaic and Unsane), because it was so much easier for him (he's his own DoP) to put the device where he wanted without having to keep distance from a wall with a complicated setup. Still, Unsane looked like shit. While Sean Baker's Tangerine, shot before Unsane on iPhones (but with added lenses) already looked much more polished.

The Walking Dead had been shot on 16 mm from the very beginning. Mad Men was 35 mm for four seasons then switched to Arri Alexa (as I've said, it's the kind of camera that made the transition easier for veterans) for 5-7, with few people noticing it (they also used some filters in post).

https://www.arri.com/news-en/christopher-manley-asc-on-mad-men-

And it's quite funny to see people like Tarantino, Nolan or Paul Thomas Anderson to talk about the superiority of film when people like Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese (on Hugo, most of The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon) were not so nostalgic and were able to make the switch without totally selling their souls. (I prefer not to talk about Coppola's Twixt.)
I could however argue that film forces everybody to be disciplined. Unless you're Stanley Kubrick, you can't multiply takes forever, because of the price of the stock and the complexity of changing film rolls. And you can't fix everything in post.

Steve Yedlin, who's shot everything by Rian Johnson, has turned into some expert about replicating film with digital, after studying carefully a lot of the properties of film stock.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/6/21125680/film-vs-digital-debate-movies-cinematography

[Noodle Lizard]

Robert Rodriguez was one of the first I remember starting to mess around with it. I don't think I noticed it too much in Once Upon A Time In Mexico, except for the end of this scene which looks like it was shot on a camcorder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdBLrlv3YqA

Inland Empire will forever be close to the bottom of my Lynch list, and that's partly because of how it looks.

It's pretty rare that I've seen a film and been surprised to discover it was actually shot on digital. I think I could differentiate between ARRI and RED just by looking at it. I don't think anyone's really managed to get the "film look" right.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I it's not just the medium itself now though is it? Even film doesn't look like film once they've put it through the teal-and-orangealizer a colour grading process that creates a range that can't really be captured on film (or indeed the eye in many cases).

[Replies From View]

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.

Europe is one frame better per second than the US

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Quenting Tarantino on the magic of film.

I'm not sure, but I think he might be talking utter cobblers.

[Sebastian Cobb]

When did films get fully edited in nle's?

I know early versions of avid didn't actually let you edit the end result - it basically digitised all the takes in low quality video so there was a rough working copy, then it'd create a cutting list for the film to be stitched together, saving a lot of time in the editing process finding, handling and loading different takes (which may have only been seconds long).

I've seen articles claim O'Brother Where Art Thou to be the first to use a DI end to end bit it's usually tied up with the digital colour grading the film had and I suspect full nle editing (where you scan, edit and print the result to film rather than cutting and stitching the film by hand) may have happened before that.

[greenman]

I mean really the issue with people like Taratino and Nolan is that there working with big budgets so film doesnt really present the same limitations to them.

The arthouse scene of the last 15 years or so though I'm guessing digital has probably played quite a significant role in it becoming a scene onto itself with more variety rather than just being limited mostly to low key dramas. The lower cost of footage and the instant feedback allowing films with a small budget to go for shots they might not have with film or just shoot more footage than they would prevuiously.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Things like mumblecore probably wouldn't exist without cheap digital equipment, aye.

Although it's a shame when you look back at how much investment must've been thrown at even 'budget' us indie films in the 90's. Just the sets and everything.

It's nice the equipment has made things more egalitarian but overall it feels like there's been a step backwards.

I think the things with auters still using film is there's also a bit of a willy waving 'I can do this the hard way'. E.G. PTA using fancy film processing in The Master to achieve something that could've been easily done (and redone) with digital grading (whether you shot film or not). As you say, a lot of the old  boys like lumet just saw it as convenient and got the goods. Although I think we still need the odd traditionalist over all.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

When did films get fully edited in nle's?

The earliest feature films to be edited with NLE were Power by Sidney Lumet (once again, not a surprise, especially as he had cut his teeth on television and wasn't big on mystique) and Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, released in 1986 and 1987. It was a system called Montage. There was a computer but the video feed came in the first version from Betamax tapes.
Avid started to be competitive in the early 90s, and they got their big boost when Walter Murch won the Academy Award for Best Editing for The English Patient, which relied on Avid.

Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman, LOST, Medium and a few other shows) assumes that NLE is one of the biggest things responsible for the so called "Golden Age" of television (or "peak TV" as they call it on FX), because it dropped significantly the budget (and the time) for fancy editing and allowed everybody (from scripts to directors and actors) to experiment instead of sticking with conventional recipes for security. It's the third part of his essay.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/gilding-small-screen-just-tv-get-good-sudden/

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yeah but those systems (and EditDroid) provided low-quality previews, I'm curious when they started to get used to edit the actual workprint so all the editing was done on the computer and at the end they printed the finished product.

[MojoJojo]

I'm probably misunderstanding here because I don't know much about film production - but isn't what you're talking about the transition to digital? With film the final print is always going to be made by cutting and taping the actual film*.


(*ok, I'm assuming a lot here).

[Sebastian Cobb]

Not exactly - for some time before digital projection and filming it was sometimes common to shoot film, scan it all, then optically print the edited result out onto film again. So yeah it's both digital and analogue.

Apparently it can still be cheaper and more reliable to use film as a long-term archival method for entirely digital films!

[MojoJojo]

Ah right - I guess the advantage there is stuff like the colour balance can be adjusted digitally, rather than the time saved with scissors and sticky tape.

[Sebastian Cobb]

It would also make fades/wipes/transitions much easier I imagine.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

When they did Lord of the Rings, they didn't initially have the budget to do everything digitally after shooting on film. The first part didn't get a full digital intermediate. Some shots that didn't require CGI were color-graded chemically.
Of course, when The Fellowship of the Ring was a huge hit, money wasn't a concern anymore, and the two other films got a DI, and post-production occurred entirely in digital.

And there's a huge amount of work done in digital even on Nolan movies and even on the scenes that use practical effects. CGI is required for instance to hide wires. So they take the footage shot on film, they scan it, they apply CGI, then they print the result on film.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I heard somewhere that these days for cgi battle scenes they have the option of repurposing games engines to fill in a lot of the scenes that would've previously required armies of extras, but in some cases they had to fiddle with it because the game engine had the 'winners' set to be not aggressive enough and kept retreating.

[touchingcloth]

What's the stuff about the difference between progressive and interlaced causing issues for VFX teams on one format but being a piece of piss on the other?

[Noodle Lizard]

Yeah but those systems (and EditDroid) provided low-quality previews, I'm curious when they started to get used to edit the actual workprint so all the editing was done on the computer and at the end they printed the finished product.

They still tend to use low-resolution previews (or proxies) for the initial stages of editing due to the sheer amount of footage and huge file sizes they're working with on a major production (even if you only use 5 seconds out of a 5 minute clip, the system needs to have access to the full thing, which requires an immense amount of processing power). If I remember correctly, even a 15 second RED clip at 5K comes in at 1-2GB. So the primary assembly will still be what's known as an "offline" cut, and once that's locked, they relink the proxy files to the raw ones and create a digital EDL (Edit Decision List), which is sent off to the colourists or VFX team or whoever else might need access to a full-resolution cut. These will sometimes include "handles", which basically gives them access to a few seconds extra (usually 60 frames or so) at the start or tail of the clip, in case they need to make minor timing adjustments.

I know this is the way it's still done with multicamera TV productions which get an arseload of footage, but I expect it's becoming less important for films. You could feasibly edit a simple, economically-shot feature using the raw footage from start to finish, although I think you'd still want to use proxies at some point unless you have a very hefty setup. NLEs like Premiere (and possibly newer versions of Avid) get around this by creating low-quality previews to edit with, but you can see full-resolution playback or do some minor colour work without you having to create entirely separate versions of the footage and manually relink them at the end.

Either way, it can be an incredibly frustrating process as it is now, but I can't imagine how nightmarish it must've been even back in the 90s. I got a chance to use one of those old Avid bays once and it was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. I guess that's why editors got paid so much back then, it took some serious skill and dedication to put up with those things.

I do wonder sometimes if the ease of editing and re-editing and trying loads of different things in post and even "updating" films after they've been released might have actually affected the quality of the things in a negative way overall. I think that's certainly been the case with music, where it's become so easy to overproduce and not even be aware that's what's happening. As someone mentioned earlier, the long, complicated and expensive nature of editing pre-2000ish forced a lot more focus and care in the pre-production and filming stages, and it was perhaps less likely that poor direction could be "saved in the edit". The joke used to be that you'd never, ever say "we'll fix it in post" on set, whereas I feel like the focus on modern sets is how we're going to fix it in post.

[Sebastian Cobb]

That's really informative thanks.

Re:the edit stuff we've said similar in amateur digital photography, as you probably spent longer composing and making the shot count when you only had a roll to work with. At one point we toyed with the idea of using a puny cf card (I still have a 32mb one from an old 300d somewhere) and some tape over the lcd.

[Noodle Lizard]

That's really informative thanks.

Re:the edit stuff we've said similar in amateur digital photography, as you probably spent longer composing and making the shot count when you only had a roll to work with. At one point we toyed with the idea of using a puny cf card (I still have a 32mb one from an old 300d somewhere) and some tape over the lcd.

Absolutely. There's also something to be said for how this ease of use affects our cognitive function, creatively or otherwise. Having to circumvent or solve problems forces a lot more focus and attention to detail, a bit like a muscle being exercised. In the creative fields, at least, deadlines and turnaround times have jumped to match the absolute quickest workflows current technology can offer, so you don't get to exercise that muscle nearly as much.

Of course, in CGI-heavy action/fantasy movies, a good deal of the editing is done in "pre-vis" anyway, before a frame of the actual film has been shot. I suppose it's just a hi-tech equivalent of storyboarding at the end of the day, but it's hard not to feel that "something" organic has been lost along the way.

[mjwilson]

I heard somewhere that these days for cgi battle scenes they have the option of repurposing games engines to fill in a lot of the scenes that would've previously required armies of extras, but in some cases they had to fiddle with it because the game engine had the 'winners' set to be not aggressive enough and kept retreating.

https://www.wired.com/2002/12/digital-actors-in-rings-can-think/

"In the first test fight we had 1,000 silver guys and 1,000 golden guys. We set off the simulation, and in the distance you could see several guys running for the hills."

[touchingcloth]

That's really informative thanks.

Re:the edit stuff we've said similar in amateur digital photography, as you probably spent longer composing and making the shot count when you only had a roll to work with. At one point we toyed with the idea of using a puny cf card (I still have a 32mb one from an old 300d somewhere) and some tape over the lcd.

Reversal film is more forgiving than digital sensors, so it's possible to recover details from the highlights and shadows which would have got blown or clipped on digital.

I'm not sure I'd have been bitten by the bug in the analog days, as I wouldn't have had the money to piss away roll after roll of film while trying to work on my technique.

That said, there's definitely something in the idea of forcing limitations on yourself. I don't have an interchangeable lens camera any more but I used to pick a lens for a day's shooting and leave the rest at home. I'm trying to rely on my light meter rather than preview/chimping these days, so maybe I'll have a go with a smaller SD card or, gasp, turning off raw captures.

[greenman]

Reversal film is more forgiving than digital sensors, so it's possible to recover details from the highlights and shadows which would have got blown or clipped on digital.

I'm not sure I'd have been bitten by the bug in the analog days, as I wouldn't have had the money to piss away roll after roll of film while trying to work on my technique.

That said, there's definitely something in the idea of forcing limitations on yourself. I don't have an interchangeable lens camera any more but I used to pick a lens for a day's shooting and leave the rest at home. I'm trying to rely on my light meter rather than preview/chimping these days, so maybe I'll have a go with a smaller SD card or, gasp, turning off raw captures.

Modern digital is actually VERY forgiving of underexposure, moreso even than monochrome negative film but it does still clip out highlights more easily.

With film I could recover this shot of breaking waves....



from this....



For learning photography though I think digital is definately a strong aid, the instant feedback and ability to shoot as much as you want to probably helped me improve much more quickly than I would on film even if these days I shoot far fewer shots than I did.

In terms of the look of film and digital you really are talking something fundamentally quite different as well, with film the detail is actually made of the grain so it gives the appearance of rising out of it were as any noise in digital is layed over the top of the grain. The end result I'd say tends to be digital looks sharper(not the same thing as more detailed although it is with the same sensor/film size now) up to the point were serious artifacts show up were as film is more of a gradual dropoff, tends to give a smoother and less clinical look.

[beanheadmcginty]

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.

What is Field Removed Video? I'm quite interested because I think I know what you mean but Google is literally giving me videos of fields so I can't find a technical explanation.

[MojoJojo]

It used to be a frequent topic on here, since it was used by a lot of 00s sitcoms but yeah it seems to have disappeared off the internet since it went obsolete.

Basically - one of the differences between video and film is that video is interlaced - so each "frame" consists of every other horizontal line, instead of containing a complete picture. When played back at speed you can't see the lines, but it does change the feeling of motion a lot even on a poor quality TV. Each of these half frames is called a field, and field removed video is a digital technique that combines each fields to create frames, which means your video footage now looks more like a film.

More technical description from some comedy nerds: http://sotcaa.org/history/sotcaa2000/sotcaa2000_frame.html?/history/sotcaa2000/comment/fieldremoved.html

I've got a weird memory that there was a video demonstrating it, with, in my memory, Jools Holland - but I'm not sure that can be true.

[Sebastian Cobb]

It's one of those things that due to similar frame rates is easier to do with pal than ntsc which then n needs to be mangled with pull-down.

I bought a dvd of The Corner recently and it's a choppy mess because it was filmed on 16mm, scanned to ntsc video for editing then converted to pal for the dvd, the end result is pal/50i. I don't think much care was taken during this process.

[MojoJojo]

It's one of those things that due to similar frame rates is easier to do with pal than ntsc which then n needs to be mangled with pull-down.

That's interesting - according to that SOTCAA article, it was used about 10 years earlier in the US than the UK. Which to me makes some sense since FRV is sort of converting temporal resolution into spatial resolution, and ntsc has more temporal res and less spatial.

I suspect Friends and other US sitcoms of the time were FRV'd to 30fps instead of trying to create a authentic 24fps film look.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I believe friends was actually shot on 35mm.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0108778/technical

I'm not a fan of the show but I remember catching an episode once while channel surfing and Joey was auditioning for a TV show so they had some 'through the TV camera' scenes that did appear to use actual video as everything went more fluid (as well as looking a bit more washed out).

[buzby]

Yeah but those systems (and EditDroid) provided low-quality previews, I'm curious when they started to get used to edit the actual workprint so all the editing was done on the computer and at the end they printed the finished product.

Montage Picture Processor never touched the camera negative. They would telecine the rushes to multiple Betamax tapes, and the system used 17 Betamax VCRs modified to do accurate frame counting loaded with the same copies of the rushes to provide 'polyphony'. The Montage terminal would then be used to assemble the cut list using the timecode burned into the VCR rushes. The cut list was then used to edit the negatives conventionally.

Lucasfilm's DroidWorks had simultaneously developed EditDroid, which ran on a Sun and used multiple videodiscs as it's storage medium, It debuted at the same NAB show that Montage did, and worked much the same way. It wasn't a commercial success with only 24 units sold by the time Lucasfilm's computer division was disbanded in 1993, and the rights to the system were sold to Avid  (the only thing Lucas actually used it on was the Young Indiana Jones TV series).

The original Avid/1 and EMC2 offline editors still worked this way (EMC2 was PC-based and used MO discs for video storage, Avid/1 was Mac-based and used low res Motion JPEG files). It wasn't until the mid-2000s that the video cards and disk storage had the capacity to do native camera/scanner-res (at that point, 2K) editing and previews., and Avid introduced native 4K editing in 2014.

[MojoJojo]

I believe friends was actually shot on 35mm.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0108778/technical

Yeah, I read more of that SOTCAA piece and it's credibility started to fall apart a bit when they claimed Trainspotting was shot on FRV. Actually they claimed Trainspotting was "filmed directly onto FRV" which leaves me scratching my head a bit. But's it's bollocks anyway, it was shot on film.