https://ymcinema.com/2021/12/03/dune-was-shot-on-alexa-lf-tr...
NEARLY is not EQUALs. The dynamic range that you are touting being nearly the same is the specific feature of film that I was refering to on how it handles highlights. It's taken 25 years to get to where we are nearly there, but I understand why some purists still prefer the acquisition on film. However, the nearly is good enough for most but the purists.
So film has a huge resolution advantage especially when you use 70MM. Theoretically capable of 16K. Yet by the time you've developed the negs, created interpositives, edited, created masters, created internets, and finally created prints for the theaters, that resolution, that dynamic range, those "highlights" (could you be more vague) get lower and lower. Then you send it to a theater with a crappy projector that's out of calibration, or has a bulb out of spec. Then you get crap. Same with when you have this pristine film scanned for DVD/BluRay/4k whatever.
Your reply comes off as if I don't know what I'm talking about which just isn't the case. I've already stipulated in a previous comment that modern digital is good enough for most everyone one but purists. So your audiophile comment implies to me you missed some salient details.
For example, I've seen footage shot on a Red (don't remember specific body/chip) of table top food products with fun issues. Specifically, it was a chocolate shake with whipped cream on top. The sensor had issues with the white so that when the exposure was pushed, the white became magenta. The green data was not hitting at the same levels as the red and blue. To get white, the green channel needed to be pushed independantly, but it was already clipped digitally even though the R/B channels were not.
Scanning that same image from film would not have exhibited this behavior.
Wellll, you might have got a magenta cast from Fuji colour transparency stock... ;-)
Yes, and no. GP is referring to a specific fundamental difference between digital capture and film negative capture that is not vague or woo or wine tasting.
Highlights record differently on film negatives, because they do not clip; they roll off progressively as the negative image gets denser and denser. This is why wedding photographers kept shooting black and white film alongside digital colour for a long time, for instance.
You retain that benefit when you then scan the negative back into a digital form (because the scanner's dynamic range significantly outdoes the range of the developed negative). You can significantly "redevelop" that negative digitally.
I don't know if that specific fundamental difference was what the Dune production was aiming at -- I am guessing that if it was, they exposed their digital files very carefully to maximise the chance of being able to use it the way they wanted to.
1. https://petapixel.com/2015/05/26/film-vs-digital-a-compariso...
2. https://www.panavision.com/products/arri-alexa
This is just like LP lovers talking about the warmth of vinyl...
I'm very far from a purist. I do shoot film occasionally (stills, not motion film), but 99.5% digital, and I'm absolutely not coming at this from the LP-lover's perspective.
Not least because the "warmth" thing is purely subjective, when there are fundamental characteristic differences between film and digital regarding the way that highlights are captured by the sensitive medium, and those differences have actual creative impacts that can be exploited.
That was the point about wedding photographers. (Incidentally it's not just that the technological gap has mostly closed where black and white is concerned; it's also that the cost and supply models have changed. People don't shoot film for jobs like that now, because the professional infrastructure does not exist anymore.)
Where the cinema-oriented, digital-printing-to-colour-negative-motion-stock situation is concerned, I am not convinced that the digital source yet has enough extra headroom to really take advantage qualitatively without very careful capture exposing for the highlights; it's certainly not going to be an automatic, magical conversion.
> But it gave us the feeling we had been picturing a certain texture that’s painterly but feels timeless…The film has softened the edges of the digital. It gave us something that film acquisition couldn’t give us, and it gave us something that digital acquisition couldn’t give us
Cinematography still has clearly a long way to go. It's currently in the "we don't know what perspective is" phase of painting.
¹ anamorphic lenses are, generally speaking, horrible. It's extremely obvious when they're used, which is probably the main reason why there has been a huge anamorphic filmmaking craze going on for a few years.
DAD cataracts?
And not just time in general. The CGI could take more time to produce than the practical effects, but it's in post. The practical effects have to be ready for the shot.
Absolutely. There are a lot of reasons this is happening.
Prior to the pandemic (which will be seen as a kinetic accelerant to a thermodynamic inevitability), screen space was limited, meaning the biggest tentpoles would eat up a somewhat predictable lion's share of box office revenue and thus command a large percentage of screen real estate. If you churn out big things fast, you can fill the calendar year with your films, monopolizing on total screen space/time. You can bargain with theaters for placement and advantageous timing, maximizing your own ROI and preventing other studios from outcompeting you. This is more a function of pipeline maturity and scale than development time, but efficiency absolutely helps.
It's also true that viewers only have so much time (and therefore money). You want them to spend more time watching your content than they do on alternatives (other streamers, video games, social media). Quick delivery of successful series is essential. Netflix is trying to fill its slate to compensate for media losses, but also to run quick experiments to find things that maximize for view time. Content doesn't necessarily have to look good to fit the need.
The dust may look like it's settling, but it's not. Increasing efficiency will lead to lots of new competition in the space.
Practical effects are probably getting easier, thanks to various 3D printing techniques, the expansion of low-cost microcontrollers, the low costs of servos, and the proliferation of small cameras and lens adaptations for rostrum/running shots.
But saving money isn't the main reason we don't have practical effects. Saving time is the main reason we don't have practical effects.