A post sort of about digital cinematography

I know people have been talking about this a lot, especially in the last five years. I'm not going to say it's 'hotly debated' because it seems everyone has just lay down, and every now and again, a new camera or codec or system just comes along and rolls over everyone. I know it's probably all been said, but I feel as a cinematographer (instead of dressing for the job I want, I'm  just going to start describing myself with the job that I want) that will be entering into the industry just as film hits rock bottom, I'd like to just give my two cents, or maybe just sort of talk it out to the internet. Yeah, let's call this a 'talking at the internet to deal with my feels'.

I am quite aware that I have a lot to learn (and catch up on) regarding the advent and technology of digital cinematography, so I guess consider this a semi-ignorant, probably over-passionate rant.

Film is great. Film was great. It was a piece of technology that apparently was partly able to come into being because the billiard industry decided they were going to someday run out of elephant ivory to make billiard balls out of and thus - celluloid was born as the first industrial plastic (cool fact I learned strangely here). The mechanical and chemical processes that bring an image to life on film never cease to amaze me. It's a combination of late eighteenth-century inventive marvels long thought to only have a future in roadside parlours as a novelty. A novelty who's surprises would quickly expire.

Here we are, some 120 years later.

Film was the only way to achieve a motion picture for a very long time. And the technology went through it's own radical improvements. Each film stock had reliable statistics, because it's all that anyone had to work with, and it had to be good. They had been tried and tested in a scientific environment at Kodak (or whathaveyou) as well as in the field. Film stocks came a long way, and continued to develop technically until recently, but the information was always reliable - film, used correctly, was reliable. And the machines that were built to run it through the gate had to be uniform. They were heavy machines, loud, but they were, as well, reliable and they were built to last. A camera could be run on any stock, and well-serviced could run for a hundred years. I've got a seventy-year old 16mm Bolex that just runs splendidly.

I love film - for all of its hard lessons. It is a wonderful medium that is a link to the very beginnings of filmmaking and all of the wonderful discoveries that came from the motion picture. It feels strange that it is no longer the standard.

The current tech-race seems to be one of the only things the industry seems to want to fight about. These companies are really clamboring over each other to achieve that highest possible definition. This while we've got to sit through these poorly written blunders being shot for hundreds of millions of dollars, which we pay hundreds of millions of dollars to see. It just frustrates me.

Human eyesight isn't that great, you guys. The future of motion picture resting in 8K really doesn't appeal to me. Not even for ease of fixing whatever problems in post. And more often than not, I don't want to see every pore or foundation-caked cheek in every Hollywood picture. I don't want to see every. Single. Thing.

A painter can achieve easier, greater detail on a massive canvas - but why then aren't all classical paintings the size a rail car? A weird generalization, I realize, but I find a strange amount of value in it.

Red's new Dragon Sensor boasts a dynamic range of 16.5 stops or higher. It just seems too easy. Imagine learning to shoot with 16 stops of latitude, you'd hardly have to light anything at all. I'm not too sure how I feel about the ease of digital cinematography, and how easy it's going to become in the next ten years. So much work can be done in post (in front of a computer, again). A cinematographer's work can almost be completely erased in the CGI and colour grade. Maybe it just makes me nervous? Not super sure.

These days, I enjoy as much analog technology as possible. Being very wired into computers these past ten years has me in a state of over-stimulated melancholy that I'm not ever too sure how to deal with. I bought a string instrument, a record player, I write long hand as much as I possibly can. I miss doing things away from a screen. I would be remissed if I was to spend the rest of my life in a job that has me sitting right infront of a computer all day.

In the end, I guess it seems that in the circle of  gear-heads that are now driving and striving for that 8k camera are outweighing that need for a well written picture. I'm not going to lie, I'm finding it outrageously tough to motivate myself to keep up with new cameras, new updates, and new codecs. It's not a language I natively understand, and with each completely new system released, I find myself sighing and scrolling through endles specs. It's tough, nothing is standardized. Software and hardware seem to completely turn around every two years or so. You've got to drop thousands of dollars to stay on the up-and-up just with gear at home.

I know it's happening, I'm not denying that film isn't dying. I'd love it to stay. I'd love it if I didn't have to haul my film stock down to the States this September because film labs hardly exist anymore (much like independent bookstores). I'll miss it a lot. I'm very glad, hell - I'm honoured I got to work with it at all. And I will shoot my film this August on super 16mm and I will relish the opportunity, as I know it is well within the realm of extreme possibility that I will not ever work on the medium again.

I'm not too sure what I'm mad at specifically, but there's my rant. Maybe it could count as an extended frustration with technology in general. Maybe it's the decline of patience in a world that wants and needs immediate gratification. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned in that the best films are by no means only shot on the best cameras with the newest technology.

Anyways, it's off my chest... for now. A great part of me wishes I was born before the advent of CGI and was able to work in analog/practical visual effects. Well, maybe in a past life. File this under 'Things I will look at in five years and hate my younger self for'.


A tiny bit of further reading (and I'm sure there are infinite volumes spoken on this everywhere):
David Bordwell's End Times

In other news:
Post Star Trek: In To Darkness tiny rant made of questions:
Would Kirk be as respected by the franchise if he didn't sleep with all the ladies? Would you identify this as one of his character traits that he is a womanizer? Would he not be Kirk if he didn't get it on with all of the scantily clad alien babes? Would you respect him less if, while he was growing into the large shoes Pike left for him, he also decided to grow up and NOT sleep with every woman he can get in the sack? Also, this? Sigh.