Brilliant Video! Summs up the most important. 3:41 exatly, there is some heay post work on it, and some don't even do that at the end, which results in a very digital look. Newcomers and low budget production of course have to go digital, but Hollwood should really shoot on film, even Today.

I'm on team film. Digital may 'look better' but film 'feels better'. My 2 cents.

I asked my 2nd Assistant Cameraman how he liked using digital vs film. He said it was the first good nights sleep he had in years. He went to bed knowing they got the shot versus finding out at 7am the next morning that he missed the focus pull. From a Production Managers point of view I'll take digital any day.

A lot of errors in this. The films mentioned are pretty much entirely shot on film, rather than ‘partly shot.’ You can absolutely get a playback on set. You have monitors and video assist (fun fact - Jerry Lewis invented video assist). You can even cut the video assist. When I did the first Harry Potter films (all shot on film), we began working vfx to a video assist before scans arrived. These days, the film is processed overnight and sent back with you the next morning as 4k scans and proxies. You can be cutting literally hours after wrap. On set, a DoP shouldn’t be lighting to a monitor. Jack Cardiff never did. Gordon Willis etc. They had a light meter, and experience. Exposure is easy to manage. Film has great latitude and technically it has no resolution, only what you scan it at. If we need 8K scans of a film in the future, we can go back and rescan it. We cannot accurately upres a film shot at 2K or 4k (without trickery). And let’s not talk about archival and whether some digitally stored films are accessible any more because the technology to store them has become outdated. The monitor is always for performance, not for lighting shots. So film or digital it’s irrelevant. Many older directors never even looked at a monitor. They just watch their actors and trust their DoP. Regarding costs - film medium is more expensive, but actors and crew are on point when they hear money whirring through a camera. Aesthetically a photochemical and photoelectric process are different and do not look the same. It is an artist’s choice in the same way that the Mona Lisa is an oil painting, not a watercolour. Most of your grips and crew will be the same - a crane costs the same for film or digital, as does a focus puller. The clapper loader actually loads film, though and you don’t need a DIT to manage data as it comes out of the camera. One less person to hire if you shoot film. Shooting film may attract talent and crew to your project. It’s happened to me before. Also, hard drives and memory cards fail (happened to me before) and if a digital camera breaks, you’re screwed. Film cameras are easier to open up and fix a problem mechanically. Like older cars vs newer cars. I hope this clears some of this up.

Definitely prefer film in movies and photography. Colors of some of the old film movies look amazing to me in their vibrancy (and I'm color blind). And if you look at some of the old film photos for example, like movie star head shots, they just look more real and natural.

With digital I appreciate the convenience of instantly being able to see the dailies, without endlessly filming take after take to see and not being able to see a mistake until you get it projected on a different day. I rather see the cut on the set, after each shot. Back in the old days, its almost common to see your favorite scene from the dailies, only to realize the boom mic is also in the shot. And be like "wish I noticed that on set that day."

Its sorta like why there are still vinyl releases...rappers love dropping their albums on vinyl. There is a noticeable sound difference

Question : Imagine hypothetically that movies had always been shot on digital (ie film stock had never been invented) and someone came along and said I’ve created this new type of format called film but you need bigger cameras, you can only shoot 4mins rolls before changing into new roll so it slows the performances down and you need to send it away to special place called a lab and it takes 24 hours before you can see the rushes and its more expensive. But the plus side is it gives you better dynamic range and type of look which is difficult to explain (although very few people would notice this) do we think film would be taken up with such enthusiasm?

Even when projected digitally movies shot on film looks way better!!

Some good stuff. But there’s a lot of errors in this video… - You can do video playback on sets shot on film. They have a feed from the camera lens to “video village” so the director can monitor - at the very least - in real time. - The comment about “redos” on film doesn’t make sense. It might be more expensive to do another take since film is more expensive. But in a big budget, film stock is pennies on the dollar - Film doesn’t capture the “intended look” right out of the box. It still needs to be “color timed”. - Film scans do take up large files... but so do digital cinema camera files.

Top Gun: Maverick might be the only digitally shot movie that has "matched" the film look for me. The Venice 2 is a monster of a camera.

Really appreciate the quality of this video: informative, unbiased and well edited. Will subscribe to channel.

Digital is great, but as a viewer,I’ll always love the look and texture of a movie shot on film. There’s just a richness to it that digital lacks. Also after learning that film can have more details locked in it that can be coaxed out later (like in the example of the restoration of say Lawrence of Arabia), what’s not to like from that standpoint.

Well back in the day when it was a choice between either film or analog videotape, film was the obvious choice until microprocessing became advanced enough for shooting the insane digital stuff we do today. Nowadays, it’s basically just like digital music vs vinyl. Both sound great, but film (like vinyl with sound) just has its own unique charm and look to it that digital cannot truly replicate.

*There needs to be a clarification made here. It's not just simply an issue of shooting on film versus digital, it is shooting on 65mm motion picture negative film versus digital, which is the key determining factor in the overall look of the image. All 70mm film is shot on 65mm in the camera, in two main 70mm formats, mainly 5 perferration high frame height , or 15 perf through the camera sideways frame size. IMAX is 15 perf. Super Panavision 70, Ultra Panavision 70, Showscan, and TODD-AO are all 5 perf 65mm formats in the camera. These formats produce image quality results far above any digital cinema format extant in terms of resolution and depth of colour and detail.*

According to what I study in modules like Signals and Systems, comparing Film vs. Video is like comparing continuous signals to discrete signals. Film has no such resolution specified. So we can even rescan and restore old films in 4K. Meanwhile digital video is in pixels. So even though a 1920x1080 emage is enough for a 42"TV or a 15" Monitor to display with no pixelation, you can see the grid of pixels if you view that in a projector that's far enough.

People say they know what they like, but actually, they like what they know. Film vs. Digital is a great example of this proverb.

I'm surprised you didn't refer any Denis Villeneuve films considering they're shot in digital and yet have recieved multiple nominations and wins.

Specifically in Nolan's case, once the final edits are made and locked in digitally, they go back and cut the original negatives (I'm not sure if they're cutting the camera negatives, or an internegative. I assume they don't want to risk damaging the original negatives) and make the final prints for the physical film releases completely photo-chemically. So, if you go to see Oppenheimer on 35mm, 5-perf/70mm, or IMAX 15-perf/70mm, then the picture you're seeing has not been touched by a computer but exposed directly from a negative and developed. (Though if they have any special effects that must be done in computer, I think those effects get a film out. I don't know if it's for a whole scene with special effects, or if they only do the filmout on the effect and transfer it to an internegative.)

I like both film and digital. Film : It has occasional imperfection like oil or acrylic painting to convey the idealised image of our perceived world. Digital : The images look sharp and clear, very immersive, it doesn't avoid unpleasant or sordid aspects of life, it concerned with how things appeared to the eye, rather than containing ideal representations of the world.

I started watching the Series- Supernatural recently and noted that the colours look amazing. The contrast is phenomenal. Blacks look crisp without those pixilated artifacts showing up. And my TV is 7 years old. Astonishing what film captures. Yes I do realise high cost in processing, but the look is amazing.

As a mere viewer of movies, I like film.

Its good to learn the basics of cinematography on digital before going to film

Dynamic range of best film is 14 stops. Modern digital cameras has more than 16. High resolution of film is only “theoretical”. In real world only what you have is a grain. Only reason to shot at film is “aesthetics” and feeling that you shot «canonically». This is absolutely the same when now amateurs takes film stills cameras and think that they produce pieces of art

Shooting on film made sense up until maybe 10 years ago, but modern digital cameras deliver superior resolution and dynamic range, and also provide so many other advantages over film, as discussed in the video. And if a director likes a softer “film” look, that can easily be achieved in post with simple adjustments. If a project is shot on film it is much harder to adjust the look in post. It’s more of a status symbol to shoot on film these days, like the rock star insisting on only green m&m’s in their candy dish. It makes no practical or aesthetic sense, but is rather a way to demonstrate your clout.

What i was thinking is, that you can have a higher resolution by having a greater film or sensor surface, the greater it is, the less the grain or pixels have influence on it, you have more grain in a surface of a 8mm frame, then one has in a 70mm frame, latest tech will have also much smaller/finer sized grain, pixels for sensors getting smaller each time or sensor sizes getting bigger. there will be "an end" to it, at a certain state..

One of the few digital films that looks as good as film would be 1917. Whatever they did on the compositing made it magical. I don't even think it would look that much better on film.

Roger Deakins & Greg Fraser have made digital masterpieces that would rival film. Great video!!!

Film definitely has a cinematic look, films shot digitally to me just look like a Netflix production.

I made a couple of short films and I had to go with digital. It’s not only cheaper but just finding an editor who can edit film on a small budget is nearly impossible. Plus a lot of festivals only accept digital.

@3:45, I argue that film is always harder. Most people like Nolan actually digitize the film, edit in digital then actually cut the film after the digital edit before final print. Digital editing is always easier in all regards.

Thank you my friend.

As a portrait photographer who uses film, there have been many movies that stopped me in my tracks. The first was Girl with a Pearl Earring. Then the skin tones in so many movies like The Pacific. I often wondered how much of those skin tones was makeup til the Sharon tate in bed scene where her leg skin was amazing. Now what do these films have in common? Kodak vision 3 film I'd use it for portraiture but it is a royal pain to remove the remjet black coating that is on the back of the film to prevent static electricity as it flies through a film camera. But the skin tones, even better than Kodak Portra.

Wonder Woman was wonderful to watch at the theater. The grain was perfect. What a shame when I got the 4k release and started to watch it and seen that all the grain was digitally removed.

Film looks sooooooo much better than digital! Sadly, if Nolan and Tarantino retire, we're screwed....................

For me at least, the knowledge alone that a movie was shot on film adds to the experience. Knowing that what I'm watching was produced the same way movies had been produced for nearly a century. Harkening back to its roots. Knowing that I'm watching a film print adds to the movie going experience in a similar way. Watching a movie the way it would have been presented ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred years ago. It may not make any practical sense with the existence of digital, but I love it anyway. And I wonder if the actors or the film crew ever fill the same way when they see that big magazine towering over the camera. I've even bough myself a 16mm projector and started collecting 16mm films and shooting my own home movies on film.

Rian Johnson shot the First Knives Out Digital Film Grain wish more Filmmakers would adopt this technique.

Nice Video. 😊

Higher dynamic range with broader color spectrum when exposed to light

Modern Film stock has a lot finer grain than older Films so they don't have that Film look in the same way that Film from say the 60s does, the only exception I can think of is the Lighthouse, which does look like it was Filmed in the 30s.

Digital is indispensable for a lot of applications, for economical and practical reasons. Film is artistic and if well shot and graded it looks fantastic. I wouldn't take movies shot on film from the 2000s as a reference, since they were scanned at 2K resolution and very often with bad digital color grading since it was new at the time. I'd say the movies looked their very best during the 1990s, when the gorgeous Eastman EXR film stock was used. I'm also a fan of Fuji stocks BTW. When working with film, you earn each shot, since the workflow is more cumbersome. You did it, not software.

Digital is better but Analog is better for advertising "look we shoot this on film"

You need a digital camera with the same information retention as the scanner used to convert film to digital, which is always needed before the edit. The Alexa 35 is a good step in that direction.

My first thought when seeing this video's title is that film (and photography) is mostly a chemical process that processes images similar to how the human eye does. It just feels warmer, more alive, than digital which is an electronic process and less of what the human organism does. I hardly watch professional sports anymore because the images look dead cold to me, at best cold and artificial. Yes, I understand that digital is more economical. Comparable to the difference between organic and processed food.

it's more of a "tool guiding you" then actual benefit. when you are dealing with modern hi-end digital raw video you just naturally get to other place, picture wise. i think you can emulate film and when it gets dialed in the last pervs will switch.

I watched oppenheimer once on imax digital (what most people called imax) and then on imax 70mm *it blew every molecules in my body apart!* And then I understood why Nolan likes film!

Next video: Why do some musicians use instruments to make music instead of using computers? Roll eyes.

This shouldn't even be a question let alone a video of any length.

BECAUSE IT LOOKS FANTASTIC! Digital can also looks good, but they will never be the same, and it's good to have both.

Interesting how many film makers who started using film switched to digital saying they prefer digital over film Roger Deakins really like’s digital

Digital looks to me too clean most of the time. I much prefer a softer image, raw resolution is not everything.

Old is always gold!

You need to have a mature and experienced team to take part in shooting on film. You can't be 6 months out of film school and shoot a 350 million dollar project shot on film (and neither in digital for that matter).

Its the longevity of the movie. A movie that shot with cheap film stocks still have better quality than a movie shot digitally. And film can be remastered overtime whereas digital film can not. Look at the Before Trilogy, the first two film are 4k remastered while Before Sunset was shot on 4k camera and no longer be upgrade to 8k anymore

Because they’ve bought into the romantic idea that shooting on plastic somehow makes their movies better, when in reality all that 99% of filmgoers care about is storytelling.

another THUMBS UP

Funny thing is that a good film is still a good film if shot on film or video. The same is also true in reverse. Probably less than 5% of the public care one way or another. Sadly, I know many people are very happy to watch a film on a telephone with mono sound. The same can be said about sound. Most people simply do not care.

I shoot film nearly exclusively with Canon EOS 1, 1N or 1V. I use digital when I'm goofing around.

Is there something called digital fatigue regarding the sound?

Do they start with print film then convert it to slide for projection?

The best film look is when you color time chemically in a lab not digitally.

From a person who works in the post-production industry and as a vfx on set supervisor, I don't think that what you get shooting on film is worth the price of what you lose. Most of what you get shooting on film can be recreated in post. What you lose shooting on film there's no way to get it back.

can't lie, matrix revolutions looks absolutely incredible on a 4K HDR OLED. but there's something about seeing a movie on film with all the little bits of dust and dirt and jitter that really tickles my fancy.

When it comes to Film vs. Digital debate, I hear all sorts of reasoning, and I agree with them mostly. However, there is one aspect that hardly being talked about, which is the capture of "movement"... When I look at a still image, whether it was taken on film or digital camera, doesn't really matter much, sometimes it certainly matters, I am not gonna lie. When it comes to moving pictures, there is one thing about "the look" only, the colours, the textures, the grains and such. Sometimes with digital editing we get pretty close to film look, movement however is different beast altogether. In a film camera, it's literally 24 frames per second, and then when it's played our brains combine the images into this illusion of movement, optically. In a video however that is not the case. Sure, when you pause a video it looks like a still image, but in totality video is only an approximation. It is already a moving image before reaching your brain, whereas in case of film stock that effect is an optical illusion. So, basically when the source code of the movie is so different, the mechanism I mean, it is bound to feel different too. Our minds can tell the difference without fully understanding why. If I were to use an analogy, I would say, not every shining object is gold. When there is difference in atomic and molecular level, the object itself is gonna feel very different too. Although, it can still trick the untrained eyes sometimes, and we may not notice the difference. In my experience that usually happens when you are so indulged in the movie, the story and the characters that you forget to notice. But, you do notice when the shutter speed changes sometimes.

Even if the movie is shotvon film, it is still required digital coversion for post production.

Even today Kodak reels has better quality then digital

😮😮😮😮😮 24 minutes of raw digitally scanned footage takes up 1TB bloody hell I did not know that sheesh that has to be some big @ss server room that that footage is worked from. Man that’s insane.

Something about digital is just too clean & perfect. The image looses depth and weight to me. Plus, the digital projection in theatres looks awful to me. I saw Oppenheimer in 70 mill. Never seen a movie in digital look as good as that.

Film is simply better.

"Generally speaking, resolution of film is higher than most digital cameras", well if you don't know what you're talking about, maybe do some research before sharing information that was relevant 10 years ago, but not anymore, at all. Also, don't take advice for shooting format from film directors, they're not technicians, their arguments will mostly be related to some mystical feeling such as "film captures the world as it really is" and nostalgia, but nothing concrete or technically verifiable

film is a discipline. it forces you to know exactly what you're doing.

Since when digital technology became part of if film making ?

My guess is it's more nostalgia and having (too much) money, because in digital, in the RAW recording format a lot is do-able in post, color, shadows, a lot of camera settings can even being changed in post, which with analog film can't be done(that much),….. an advantage of film negative is maybe that white is black on the negative and dark/black is white on the negative, which means dark parts have no grain/noise when scanning to digital ? analog film does age, discolors…. Digital colorists are true artists in color correcting/grading, an analog film has most of it's colors "baked-in" ? Filming in 8K or more leaves also room take out a different image part of that large frame to work with in post, one could also wonder if one needs that much optical resolution in the end… Also ….digital is easy to transport .. like streaming, by any connection or media, unlike rolls of films that also wear down in quality by the use of it. one does also not need a soundproof space for the projector. Leaves that using analog film is a matter of taste. and digital electronics are getting more advanced over time, which is user friendly and saving money each time.

I prefer digital for workflow. Film is nice but the difference isnt big enough to justify the process

Film is a more true-to-life representation of how the eye sees. Digital captures more than the human eye, which is why when I am watching a 4K digital film on my 65 inch TV, I see every pore or little hair on someone's face, which is not how I see real life. It is distracting. Film flows like music and is more natural for our human eyes. Digital is technically superior, but film is vastly more beautiful and true-to-life.

One can tell if what they are watching is a film or video. I consider film to be Cinema.

The look of a movie shoot on film is magnificent.

Hellooo nerds! May I add something to your never ending celluloid love affair here? I just watch films whose screenplays are written on a REAL TYPEWRITER, like in the good old days! Think of TRUMBO when he sat in his bathtub, hacking away and smoking and drinking wine! Those screenplays had a totally different feeling, sharper, higher resolution, clearer dialogue, real VISION - compared to those written on a computer or on a poor laptop!!! So, before I watch a movie, I make sure it was written on a typewriter, on PAPER! What do you say... nerds... hmmm?

Soon We will see movies made on Super 8 Single 8 full length features as 35 mm is split down to this gauge film stock has improved enormously and with digital stabilisation it can look as good as any 16 mm print the colour is outstanding in low lighting

Film for me brings a magic that digital does not capture.. Digital if not done properly with lighting, it can end up looking like video instead of film. Perfect example are the yoda scenes in empire strikes back. Film had a quality that made it work.

This didn't mention the fact that reels of film need to be delivered to all the theaters. The cost there is huge. And you can't show the same movie at the same time unless you have multiple copies.

While I love the look and feel of film and have worked with it before everything went digital, there are some downsides to it. 1. It is EXPENSIVE!! It would easily cost northwards of $20 to buy a 3 min reel of 16mm, plus another 20 to process it. 2. No instantaneous results. Digital allowed for seeing and reviewing your footage on set. 3. You can use older film lenses with the newer equipment. Those are my main ones. Don't get me wrong, film looks a lot better, but Digital is more user friendly.

I used to be a 35 mm analog film snob until the digital Arri Alexa cameras came out and now I pretty much think they are almost equal in image quality. Yes film analog’s dynamic range is still better it’s archival and transfer-to-current digital formats abilittly is still king but digital cameras are closer than ever to rivaling analog film. BUT my biggest pet-peeve is preferring to shoot a period piece such as a western or a colonial era story in analog 35 or 70 mm film because it would match what reality looked like back then…. what? Reality back in history or currently today still looked the same, historical reality did not have film grain built in. Or the idea that historical films shot with high end, high dynamic range digital cinema cameras without the film grain would pull you out of their story is absurd…. Iñarritu’s westen film ‘The Revenant’ shot by Chivo Lubezki is a awesome example of how this antiquated idea needs to go away.

Also, movies on film requires the actors to do their job well.

eventually it will all be digital like with still cameras

I still wonder why this isn't the same for video. If video had to adapt or die why arent filmmakers held to such an expensive double standard? No wonder why movies are so expensive

I do wonder if the gap between the formats will continue to narrow with some of the AI tools coming out. I also wonder if they might be able to make 16mm footage look more like 35mm, 35 more like 70, etc.

Not qualified to say. But am guessing that most movie-goers don't actually care visually. Unless the screen resolution is less than 4k and/or the frame rate is worse than 60fps

Pure film has UNlimited color range. Digital only has a small amount of color depth.

I find vinyl vs digital audio harder to notice than film. There is an unmistakeable difference in film. The slower frame rate adds an almost intangible but very important suspension of disbelief to the motion. The super high frame rate of digital looks too real to me sometimes. Not real in an impressive way but real in a way that somehow makes it look like it’s a home video. I think that’s why people like Tom cruise like film better.

I love the look of Technicolor. Why can't they bring it back?

I think a jukebox with tubes have a better sound.

_"the director of Zac Snyders Justice League..."_ Bruh... 😂

I mean yes they are shooting on film with all those huge cameras but with tones of color grading in post what is the reason considering that film stock requires gelatine which is soup from animal bones.

The real title should be "Why aren't movies still shot on film?"

FILM rules

Film is the reference look. So on big budgets, why shoot the imitation if you can have the original?

Why not be full purist and edit on film too like the old days? Why convert to digital to edit?

Because they need to be special to keep their price up. They sell it like we actually see and can appreciate the difference 😉

Film is dope.