Film Vs. Digital

Okay, I know this has NOTHING to do with muscle building, but as I sit here looking at my magazines waiting to load film I'm struck by what a great process shooting motion picture really is. I'm about to go to Leo Carillo and shoot a spec commercial with a model. And, as I'm sure this would be a less intrusive endeavor with a digital camera, I'm electing to take my ARRI 2C with 500' of 35mm film and 100' of 16mm film with a Bolex camera generously lent to me by another old timer.

"Shooting film, eh?...keep it strong" my long time friend Bryan said as he flexed. Bryan has been the proprietor of Wooden Nickel for many many years now. He's part mad scientist, and part mad. He's seen the digital world eclipse film years before it actually did. His shop is peppered with digital camera rental houses around the San Fernando Valley. I always scoffed. Film for life, Big B. He would shrug, probably knowing full well I'm about to get a real lesson in advancement in supply and demand. Yeah, like a cold shower in Siberia.

I think the magic has all been lost on today's society. Use to be you shot a roll of film, dropped it into a slot box at your grocery/drug store and a week later, you would thread up your little projector and throw it on the wall. For me I was SO amazed at the flickering lights. The effort for just a few minutes. In this sense, the journey was definitely part of the product. It was a beautiful process because the wait was building enthusiasm.

I'm not really sure what the exchange is here. Where do you get your thrills if it isn't in anticipation? You instantly see if you got the shot or not. The digital shooters today are really quick to taut the newest technology without the slightest care that it isn't about the gear, it's about who's behind the gear. BUT...

...and a big but here...

...the generation today has now been born with a camera shoved in their faces. The new filmmakers are SO sophisticated, 10 year olds are putting tutorials online to train fogies like me on things like After Effects, Photoshop, and Final Cut compression. It's surreal. I can say with little hyperbole, we are definitely learning at the speed of light. Soon as I have an issue, I "take it to the 'net".

That saddens me. I use to have to wait for that thing called a "library" to open. And I'd have to check out a book and do my research to figure out a problem. Now some middle school'er with an iMac and enough RAM to launch a tomahawk missile posts a tutorial on YouTube, and I've got instant access. Thing is, that information doesn't seem to stick with me. Consider this...how much do you value that is given to you for free? I'm not talking love or whatever. People don't seem to appreciate the process anymore and do not retain long term grasp of the information. We're letting others dictate and dominate the formation of our lives.

And you know what else?...technology changes. Yeah, no big surprise there, BUT...the way things were manufactured years ago took many years to develop. Now, only a retread of found knowledge. Slap a higher end video card with higher pixel representation. Boom. Sell units. Who cares if it was tested. The previous version already went through that. Research & development can take a vacation.

Film has been around for a very long time, digital a fraction of the time. It realized our brains and eyes have a perception of movement that was whittled down to 24 frames per second. Think about that for a second. Our brains STILL calculate this information in that time span. Digital or film. But it took people who took the time to deal with frame advances to come to that conclusion.

Yet, people are quick to leap, since it gives them convenience and immediacy. The argument is that most of the general public could care less. Or know quality if it sat on their faces and took a crap. I tend to believe people REALLY do care. They're just lazy. So, the powers that be latch onto that demographic and spoon feed them the super information highway. All the while making us MORE paranoid of each other and more susceptible to judgement.

I'm not bad mouthing digital. It obviously has its place. I couldn't do digital intermediate coloring if it wasn't a part of our landscape. And it's not like I want film to ever be inaccessible to people. It should've been MORE available to low budget filmmakers. I was screaming this since film school. The people will revolt if you keep it an elitist product.

Now everyone has an opinion of the demise of film. Film is an organic thing. It is malleable. It's chemistry. It's physics. All the things I hated in school but FINALLY found an amazing use for. The film in my magazines, I feel the weight and just feel confident that it was designed not to let me down. The development of film advancement through a camera and the byproducts that support it (i.e. motion control, remote heads, follow focus, matte boxes, film counter, metadata readers, etc..) it is just flat out amazing the mind it took to come up with the solution to a need.

I'm going into this shoot with the same excitement as when I shot my first roll of Super8...it's been a while and I'm not sure how this will go. But, I think the fear is what makes the journey worthwhile. There is a digital camera sitting next to my film camera. Looks like a toy.