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Digital doesn't necessarily give the illusion of being cheaper, for most film makers it is. I prefer 35mm, but at the end of the day it comes down to story telling and if the Director has a budget that doesn't stretch to film, or a team unused to shooting on it, I'd rather see a well told story shot on a RED than not at all. The cost is significant as is the versatility digital provides. As an amateur it allows much more control. I guess it comes down to what kind of film you want to make and how the workflow of film/digital feeds into that.
I noticed that too, and I love it. Very stylish and retro.
So digital is "easier" and then "cheaper" if you don't fancy lots of work before the shooting, sure, because you think you can control a lot during it and after it. But it means also the really passionated filmmakers in the slow making now are somewhat lost in the crowd of guys with a bit of money and "having a go" at it to try to become an instant success :)
I don't disagree with this. But you're taking a moral high ground, the likes of which Tarantino endorse. It's all well and good for him to want everybody to shoot 35mm, but not everyone is in the privileged position to do so. Every budding film maker wants to shoot film, the harsh fact is their investors will and do inevitably insist on digital. What does a film maker do when faced with such a predicament?
Just to clarify, I'm coming at this from a UK perspective. In France and elsewhere in Europe you have quotas that don't exist in the UK and a genuine love/need to maintain indigenous production. The system here is absolutely f*cked - it's basically an extension of the US model - which is why you'll find most discussion on this forum revolves around the mainstream.
So, I think we agree on the merits of 'film', but I guess what I'm saying is perhaps we should consider that in some countries it is the 'system' that is broken rather than the 'film maker'.
People fight for what they believe in because if you don't, before you know it, it might be gone. There's a romantic tinge to the film argument, but it does run deeper. It's almost a shot across the bows of the good ship Hollywood. They've decided digitial, IMAX, 3D are this generations mediums, when in reality it's solely about profit. All artists will rebuke this. Digitial is fantastic for democratising the process of film making, but it is the opinion of some that your graduation should be towards film. It's all a matter of opinion obviously, but I think there's positives on both sides. As you say, it's a tool - but one that should be respected and used appropriately, not as a means to an end.
It is?
Here here! It has been a while now since we have had something new to get our teeth into? And we are now over halfway through June! Please Eon give us somethin?!!! [-O<
But Bond films always had a lot to do with the latest technology. Starting with Dr. No and his toppling device.
I admit I´m not keen on a period piece. Expecially after I watched some of the old films on those gorgeous blu rays. I hadn´t had such lively childhood memories during the last 30 years, as I had when watching Dr. No on br. Period pieces never bring on a rounded reminiscence of the past, like for instance all that vegetation in DN. Period pieces instead always try to put some chliché elements big in the picture, in order to distract from the fact that they don´t really catch the full vibe. It did work in The Untouchables, but I can´t imagine how it´s supposed to work with Bond.
I agree though that the contemporary devices work better if they are used in a more stylised fashion.
If it was only a pointless debate about tools, then a good rule of thumb would be to use the same tools as those who did masterpieces on a really low budget. And I mean really low. And the Sundane anecdote is quite telling (I think it was : a majority of digital films in competition, only films on film being awarded). Now digital tools seller are making you believe that $50.000 is "cheap" and the key to freedom. So "cheap" that you should forget to try to do as all the previous directors that you admire :)
To sum it up briefly : I can imagine a Black&White 10 minutes short movie be a hit on Youtube. Other broadcasters won't even listen to what the short movie is about. They indeed want something to show on HDTV.
It's a bit like 3D. Although 3D for the masses is not cheap enough for the marketing machine to tell you that you should stop to think about something else.
People interested in the effect of digital should take a look at photojournalism. The tools to make "nicer images" from the raw digital formats are so good (much more data is encoded than in the JPG images you're used to see on the Internet, you can "see" what is in the shadows if you want to...), many of you will think it is close to digital manipulation.
Oh absolutely. It is slightly off topic now, but it is fascinating. I mean, really, it is.
Film is considered an archive format and can be rescanned at different resolutions with more detail extracted as the resolution increases. Currently, the Bond catalog has been digitized at 2K for the restoration that lead to the Blu-Ray releases. Oh, how we exclaimed such surprise when we could see skin pores and texture on fabric in Dr. No!
It was too cost prohibitive to scan to 4K at the time (so say my buddy at Sony who was involved in the deal).
With 4K displays coming to the home in the next couple of years, there will be demand for 4K content. More scanning means the cost will come down and there will be a financial motivation to rescan all the Bond films to 4K (with 8K or 16k coming down the pike next, thanks to our friends in Japan).
The problem is Skyfall. It was shot digitally at 2K. You can't extract any more detail. It's the same as resizing a digital photo to a larger pixel count. It just gets soft. This is what they did for the IMAX release and got away with it.
So, some years in the future when we're all buying Bond in 4K or higher, Skyfall will have the worst quality, from a technical standpoint.
Strange but true.
The IMAX release of Skyfall did have more detail than the non-IMAX version. See: http://www.slashfilm.com/comparison-see-more-of-skyfall-in-imax/
As for 2K, 4K and up, the display resolution won't increase forever. Most people can't tell the difference between 2K and 4K let alone between 4K and 8K. Skyfall looks great now and it will never look worse than it does now.
Can anybody spot the font?
http://www.comingsoon.net/gallery/119560/Licensing_Expo_2014_65.jpg
Source: Comingsoon.net
It had a larger image, but it was not more detailed.
Have you seen 4K ? It popped to my eye who was "used" to less resolution.
Maybe someone who has never seen HD won't be able to say the difference between 2K and 4K. But spend some weeks with 2K, and the 4K will look definitely like something far better. And so on.
Without being mutants, we have all "super acuity" : we may not be able to see little characters, but show us two segments that are on the same line or that are slightly off, and then we're all super good at detecting such things. We perceive details that we cannot really see. So the resolution can increase a lot and we'll still be able to perceive it's different, I'm pretty sure.
And well, there's also the amount of data per pixel (color and light encoding, here I know I'm not using the good English words but I think you understand)
I'll try to find some examples of unprocessed raw photos from digital photographers and the result you see in the magazines after fully exploiting the raw data to make them nice. It is quite telling.
Human perception is influenced by habits.
The Freres Lumiere movie were probably far more like the "real thing" to the crowd of that time than it is for us.
And the 48 HFR Hobbit looked "too much like watching the actors on set" to some, that were used to the old 24/25 FPS of movies and TV.
I also had the opportunity to watch a 60 FPS movie on a large screen. It is so lively if you shoot an actor and project it at life size, you've got a weird holographic effect even though the screen is obviously flat in front of you.
Don't underestimate the future. What is nice now can look dated in the future...
No, it didn't. IMAX have their own upscaling system but Deakins tossed it out when they viewed the regular ARRI resolution simply scaled up in the most simple fashion. The aspect ratio at IMAX is different.
http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/bond_23_sep12_roger_deakins_digital_camera.php3
I didn't say Skyfall would look worse in the future, in the sense it will degrade. It's just that others methods will surpass it whilst it will be stuck in its fixed resolution.
Everything is relative. When folks get used to 4K at home, Blu-Ray will look crappy, just as DVD does now in comparison to Blu-Ray, as did VHS to DVD, etc.
Looks very similar to one the DOCTOR WHO promos use.
I think Skyfall's official title card was pretty 'out there' when compared to the past few films. The whole 'crumbly' look has never been used before, and fit the film specifically. Other than that, I agree with you.
The Brosnan titles haven't aged well, and Craig's seem to have taken a page out of the Microsoft Office Suite Deluxe Royale pack of boring fonts or something.
True.
@JWESTBROOK I liked the crumbling effect in the "Skyfall" title but the actual font was still on the plain side and I feel it resembled the titles of the two films that came before it. They should have used a more gothic style which would have harmonised with Bond's house.
Actually, there was another "official" version of the B24 logo, which by the way, was posted in the official 007.com site, but never used to promote the upcoming film, as you can see in the following link.
http://007.foxfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BOND-007Com-Bond24-650px.jpg
:)
From the friends at http://www.bondblog.nl
That's what I meant. Most IMAX releases don't have more picture information than a regular release but Skyfall was an exception despite the fact that it wasn't shot in IMAX. Skyfall had a 1.9:1 aspect ratio in IMAx which meant more picture at the top and the bottom of the screen. They don't do that in the case of most IMAX releases.