Very interesting. It’s worth mentioning that digital is still in its infancy, whereas film is a very mature medium. It will be interesting to see how digital filmmaking develops in the future. It’s very exciting.
sorry, but nowadays digital cameras are more than capable of everything and either better , besides you save tons of money by not paying for film. Problem is there are too much shitty content nowadays and people have less focus on making good stuff like in old days
Hey everyone, thanks for watching! This video was just meant to give you guys a taste and a small sense of what it's like to shoot on film (vs. digital). We don't think either of the formats is superior, they both have their strengths & weaknesses and it's all subjective as well :)
The high cost of film productions requires having a better knowledge of the basics of the trade therefore the results in the finished product may be better too.
You actually managed to get the look of your digital footage to look REALLY close to your film footage for this comparison and I commend you for that. What did you do to achieve that look? Is there something you did in-camera? Or was there some post-production work done here? I'm actually incredibly curious as to how you did this.
A bit of a late reply, but it helps that they have actual film footage of the same scene to color match with. I think they also used calibrated color charts. Nowadays the grain, halation, gate weave effects and more can be simulated by software such as Dehancer, Davinci Resolve.
This question had caused some issues for those that didnt want to change with the times in the industry. The utube video demonstrates film is technically more realistic. My preference is FILM for many reasons. I grew up with film Its what's familiar and second nature. Digital is always being updated with new technology. Is it any easier, or are we disolutioning ourselves. Will film become something that's no longer used due to finances I think not. I have faith that people who want to produce good movies using film will still do so. They always find the money somehow. It's all in the name of being artistic. Surely that is more important, not how cheaply something can be copied or made
I can easily tell if it's digital or film. The dynamic range of digital video is much wider and the colors are more saturated as well while film feels a bit more flat and more "organic" although you can make digital film more "organic" too. The digital capture is just much more powerful and the limitations have been addressed while offering more flexibility and colors in the recent years.
I like how some movies use a combination of digital and film depending on whats in the shot... It gets the film-makers get creative on shot construction...
I like both. Film is indeed more expensive but the images come out magical. We really don’t know the resolution capability of film because the results are limited by the scanners used to digitize film negatives. I’ve read that a 35mm negative is anywhere from 30MP to 160MP. Medium and large format estimates are even much higher. However, it seems as better scanners are developed, these resolution estimates just keep rising. Digital is obviously more convenient and less expensive in the long run. And current results with this technology are excellent, except maybe the highlights and dark shadows were details are lost. However, the dynamic range and the capability to shoot under low light is amazing with this format. I think the real deal is being able to make a good image no matter what format you use. Has anyone seen the images taken 60 to 80 years ago from the masters (Bresson, etc.) with a 35mm rangefinders? Those images still look amazing today. It’s all about composition, content, etc.
Its definitely subjective, unless you have strict deadlines to choose digital. It depends on what you are looking for for your story that best describes the world. Use film when you want film look instead of trying to save money and time which compromises it and it looks cheap because it shows. Unless you are bound by time and money limit, use the medium your idea dictates and dont fake it Unless the faking intentional. My perfonal preference is obviously Film, but it depends what im shooting. If it requires a digital clear realistic look or dreamy
I'll just say this. I recently watched the movie "Kodachrome" and thought to myself, "Too bad they clearly shot this on digital". Then as the credits rolled, the text came up on screen, "Shot on 35mm Kodak film". So yeah, I don't know anything. At this point I just know that if it's Tarantino it'll definitely be film, and if it's James Cameron it'll definitely be digital.
I want to add that in order to achieve the look of film, digital footage has to be "calibrated", so to speak, and they are. Certain digital cinema cameras are engineered with this in mind, such as the Arri Alexa. Others require a more hands-on approach. Such calibration is essential due to the fact that digital is more universal than film and may appear 'incorrect' out of the gate. Think of it as a special computer designed to capture light. And like a computer, it needs to be programmed. Both film and digital cameras can achieve the same picture. But with the latter, you cut out the middleman.
Not even close to true. Color neg film is about 13 stops. Almost every digital cinema camera out now has that much or more. Even the $1,300 BMPCC 4K has 13 stops of DR. BW neg can approach 15 stops but then you lose color.
Problem is people have a habit of sometimes framing this argument as a proper vs improper way to make films. To my mind it's more along the lines of painting in water colour vs oil.
I agree, though I would say an even closer comparison is digital vs traditional (physical/non digital) drawing/painting. The pros and cons and just general traits of each, from cost to aesthetic and versatility, are very similar to those of film vs digital.
Generally, 35 mm offers a nominal effective resolution of 4K. 35 mm is considered the "general standard" when working with film, although more luxurious productions use 70 mm, which has a potential resolution of up to 16K. I also noticed the same thing mentioned in the video with lighting, that on film, there tends to be softer highlights on people, and it gives film a more dreamy quality. Digital feels very utilitarian with its sharp edges, though that's not to say film can't look sharp either.
depends on the job or project but I shoot at least half my jobs on film. And there is also 200T, ektachrome 100, Double X and Tri X stocks to choose from. You can also push and pull the film. Bleach bypass it, Scratch it, flash it, cook it, cross process it and a number of other things that digital jobs always try to copy. I hear this said on a lot of jobs I shoot digital on "that they want it to feel and look like film" but I never hear on film jobs "We want it to feel and look digital."
I grew up with the 70's films. This is the era i compare things to. Why is it that every DP's show reel in 4k looks the same to me and the great 70's DP's work looks entirely unique and entirely distinct to their style. I am sure I am not the only one who notices this. I look at tons of DP's show reels on line today. The photography all looks the same to me. It all has a very similar feel and "Look". If you look at Owen Roizman's work or Conrad Hall or Haskel Wexler's or Vitorio Storaro's or Gordon Wilis's work it all looks entirely unique. I haven't seen any DP's today that can shoot New York style in 4k. That low light high contrast kind of look.
I personally think that everyone should try at least one time Filming, I think that it's also good for learning how to use the equipment that every filmmaker or producer used to use before all the digital world changed the game. I think most people would prefer digital for its capabilities en final results, but, why not, maybe try it for learning or just for fun!
I used to shoot on film and it is helpful...to appreciate how much easier digital is to work with. Many film purists who havent shot on film would change in a heartbeat the first time the pay hundreds of dollars to send footage out and it comes back with registration problems or severe gate weave. Also, most film cameras are noisy and the quiet ones are $$$$$
There is no choice if one doesn't have access to (good, quality) film developing. Digital is FAR superior in not having to depend on that old problem! Perhaps you folks have film developing equipment or those who can do a good enough job, but us mere mortals out here get the usual crap developing (e.g. too much cyan or magenta et al).
Digital is easy/convenient, but film looks and FEELS better. All our attempts to make digital video look like film is sort of funny. Maybe we should treat it as a separate medium? Artists: Life is waves (analog), not steps (digital).
"Life is waves (analog), not steps (digital)" that sounds really pretentious no offense, and film is going to get scanned and quantized into discrete digital values anyways
Nolan uses film and that looks pretty sharp to me..hard to tell I guess if you have top equipment and know what to do...on the other hand, Roger Deakons creates one of the most magnificent looks with digital cameras lol...
I find that for style purposes Film works better for period films and digital for present day and futuristic stories. The thing is that now even movies shot on film look too clean and sometimes they look so digital that almost makes no sense not going digital.
Hey! That's a really interesting point. So would you think that shooting a period piece on digital and using a film emulation would be a good middle ground?
@@artlist_io yes, it could be a good middle ground. If you check the scans and remasters of older films from 2000's, late 90's, I think that's the look that has a certain quality. I thought the Netflix movie Don't Look Up was shot digital, and it's all film (or mostly film) that's what I mean when I say film now looks so digital, lol.
@@artlist_io I liked Snyder's look in his last DC movies that were shot on film, MoS, BvS, JL, and Nolan. Maybe is the film stock they use. Snyder also adds extra grain
I mean, that look Is what I mean when I say is good for period films, but of course digital can replicate the atmosphere, DP's like Lubeski in The Revenant... make magic and it looks so clean and sharp
The money and infrastructure thing is huge. If it was ONLY a taste thing I would be curious what the statistics where. It's not even the case that EVERY thing shot on film is superior to everything shot with ones and zeros, but in the best case the film experience is just untouchable.
Yes can tell the difference Like compared iron on letter vs silk screen silk screen t shirt like how film is better rather paint screen and film 16mm video better
Personally I never had a chance to shoot on film. Would I like to try? Yes please. But do I think that digital is destroying cinema? No, it makes it more accessible for new talented people. So I would go with digital :)
i just got to know about digital and film medium. i was curious because i watched a movie named gangster squad and i noticed anyone running or moving faster in scene it looked so unreal in movies aspect and later i felt that moving effects in lot of movies.i know its not related to film vs digital debate but whatever it is its not good.
@@imprwikiimprwiki6898probably cost, convenience, and just the ability to preview it. You can't see how it actually looks until after developing film. It's also easier to immediately back up and copy, and won't get accidentally ruined as easily, so there is less risk.
Very interesting. I had no trouble spotting the film image from the very beginning but frankly, I thought the film image would look better. Maybe because (did I hear this right?) they were shooting just 16 mm.
Well, watching just the footage is ofc not really fair with the RU-vid compression and everything, but nice job on still being able to spot which one was film!
I'm a noob when it comes to photography and videomaking but I will say that film always produces more natural colors whereas digital has this strange fluorescent lighting vibe going on. That's why I prefer film even to this day.
This confirmation bias here for digital is this: He is showing a camera negative original that has not had a print made of it or if transfered digitally, color graded, etc. Traditionally, camera original negative was just one step in the process as prints were made of it using positive stock. This is where it shines. When the ability to tranfer film digitally replaced the print making process the merrits of flim positive prints were replaced by the same means syntheticially using digital technology. RU-vid is full of amateur Super 8mm film shooters showing flim that is just flat scans of camera original negtive without the correction process needed for negative film stocks run through a camera. Traditionally this was done with the negative/ positive process. The real star of any movie is the photochemical process. Film has a way of "glorifying" its subject matter in a way that digital cannot. Digital is so sterile, clinical and drab.
General audience member here to lay down some reality on yall. You can't tell the difference. I get the process of shooting on film can be interesting but ultimately image quality really doesn't matter these days. We're past the 240 p days and now digital cameras shoot with insane level of quality. What films purists don't get is that people dont go into theaters asking themselves: "WaS tHis FilMed On Digital???? EWWWWWW......I Only Watch Movie In 35 MM that have been photochemically processed and cut BY HAND LIKE THE DAYS OF OLD". Also Its an entirely subjective debate. Everyone has different eyes so what looks like better color, tones, sharpness etc to you on film might not look as great to someone else. Hearing film purist talk about how great film is, is like hearing coffee purist discuss "flavor notes". Again its all subjective. Not trying to trash on people's interests, if you love film by all means keeping using it. Just making sure people dont become snobs.
Best films are shot on film. Even nowadays Tarantino. Nolan. Even 70 mm Are they crazy ? Nooooo. The Filmlook trying to duplicate with software It has a reason. .
We hear you! We actually shot a few of our productions on film. The whole experience was pretty amazing and a good challenge. There's an emotion that film evokes that you just can't replicate on digital.
Oh FFS Digital is FAR superior to film. The horrible stuttering motion resolution of film even compared to video let alone digital film makes it hopeless. Not to mention, damage dirt, fading colours and gate weave. Everytime you look a piece of film its being viewed through a piece of plastic, the film base! All this crap about 'preferring the look' when 99.99999% of the imagery (still and moving) you will see now is digital and its ALL viewed digitally. Why do some people persist? Its crap, like Vinyl and steam locomotion!
Digital can easily replicate film. Watch steve yedlin's video comparing film and digital data which was processed to have film characteristics. He is also the man who worked on Knives Out and people mistake that movie to be shot on film while it was all digital
@@VicerFx What does a camera do exactly? It captures light. With a film camera, light is embedded onto strips of plastic we call "celluloid". With digital cameras, the analog signal is converted into a series of digital files. That's it. Same technology, different delivery. Only with digital, you cut out the middleman. This "organic" nonsense is nothing more than a biased reaction to all the flaws present in celluloid film. If desired, those flaws can easily be replicated onto a digital image. Doesn't matter if it's original or not, the results are identical. Besides, no one who watches movies can tell the difference. NO ONE. Whether a movie was shot on film or shot digitally, it all looks the same to the general public. An anti-digital bias, holding film to the highest pedestal, stems from nostalgia, traditionalism, and elitism. Shoot your movies however you like, because in the end, what matters is what's in front of the camera, not the technology within.
@@valkiron11 Good points tbh, but I should say unless you're Steve Yedlin or a colorist at Company 3 you're not replicanting film colors in Davinci Resolve. The color science behind it is actually really complex
In my opinion, one of the greatest benefits of seeing a film shot on celluloid in a digital medium like a 4K disc or digital projector is that when the film is scanned from the original negative, all the grain one sees is what originated on the negative. When a film is projected on celluloid, additional grain is introduced, even if the print is a second generation away from the negative. So ironically, when a filmmaker like Tarantino champions that his films should be seen on celluloid, digital projection can in some ways represent more accurately what the negative captured. One advantage celluloid has had over digital projection for a long time is in contrast and resolution. But with 4K laser projectors I think that advantage will slowly disappear. Especially considering that 99.99% of all movies shot on celluloid today are finished using a Digital intermediate. Which means that even if celluloid prints are being made, they will be struck from that DI and be limited to the resolution of the DI, which most likely will be lower than the resolution of the film print. If you then add on the extra grain and softness that get introduced from the print I think that a film that was shot on celluloid and then receives a 4K DI will look better on a 4K laser projector than on a film print. But I do believe celluloid has the advantage when it comes to older movies that were finished photochemicly and shoot on large formats like 65mm and VistaVision. Because then the true resolution of film is being taken advantage of (as long as the print doesn't come from a digital restoration of that movie, even 2001 a space odysseys 8K restoration probably don't take full advantage of a 65mm print, but digital restorations has of course other benefits, like damage removal.) After the introduction of the Digital intermediate the full potential celluloid has been lost when it comes to resolution, but has also given the filmmaker more freedom with color grading and special effects. I look forward to the day when 8K,10K,12k DIs are the norm.
@@artlist_io It comes from all the years of me studying these topics. But I could be wrong of course, on some things. I am only 21 and have a lot more to learn about cinema, but I feel confident in what I wrote above.
@@Mario-tx4llI'm not an authority on film, you've typed a really educational post, thank you. I personally believe 12K being the norm is years away, you have people content with 4k right now and the media is trying to rush out crappy 8K TVs that are as small as 65 inches. I am smart enough to know that the higher the resolution, the bigger the screen needs to be. I honestly care more about how good some old movies get proper HDR treatment honestly.
I went back to film because the new digital camera are small and not shoulder type the film camera is shoulder type and bigger camra than the new 4k or 8k they fuck it up dightal because they look like hand held consumer camera and smaller lens sorry for be mad but hand held 4k digital camera are shaky the dightal system was better on stander shoulder type camera like Sony 250 dvcam I will not be shooting o digital in the future due to not making them right any more for get it call it a devorce
I learnt my craft on film, now shoot digital, but with the eye of a film cameraman, and can shoot straight to edit line without the need to do loads of post production, which leave me to focus on the story, which is what really matters. Here's to great stories digital and film.
Not true. Alexa, BMPCC 6K Pro, Ursa mini, Red Dragon all have more DR than color neg film. Color neg is around 13 stops.. I think even the Sony a7siii is near 14 stops.
What makes it inherently "nostalgic"? Film wasnt the look of any particular time period; it is just what you believe because that is how you are viewing it.
As long as it's on a screen, it's digital. The only reason I can see why you can't accurately make a digitally shot video look like it was shot on film is because there wasn't enough effort put into tools emulating the look. Am I missing anything? Is there any loss of quality when converting to digital?
I stopped using film many years ago because I realized that the gelatin emulsion on film is made from animal parts. It’s made from pork skins, pork and cattle bones, or split cattle hide. (Kodak used to maintain special herds of cattle to control the quality of gelatin that went into their film stock.) I could not in good conscience continue to cause the deaths of all those animals, just to satisfy my creative habit. I returned to still photography when digital became available for that medium, and now that digital is available for film, maybe one day I’ll return to filmmaking.
Why do even the backroom staff of a film production staff tend to be very beautiful? Because the industry has always selected for physical beauty and is incapable of not doing it even when it's irrelevant.
The worst thing for me about film is that’s made of pig’s cartilage, and not an insignificant amount of it. There has never been a synthetic form as far as I know.
If you want to see which one stand up against the time, watch music video of Arctic Monkeys - Teddy Picker, directed by Roman Coppola and shot with film in 2007. Then compare it's quality with other music videos that were released on the same year. You will be mindblown on how still good the quality is even it was uploaded in 2007 despite youtube didn't have HD compression at that time
I shoot all my video work on digital but would absolutely love to shoot some stuff on film. It's got the look I'm after but is often not practical in most of my commercial work. Stills on the other hand are all on medium format film! Love the look I can get with medium format film and not terribly expensive bc they're just stills hahaha
@@matthewphillips5483 Same with CG vs practical effects. Movies today lack risk and grind imo. Hollywood has ran out of ideas narratively as well. Everything done today from cameras, effects, to scripts seems to be simple and very clean.
@@Traviee04 I am not picking on you. I shoot film mostly and prefer the look of film. But I also realize it isnt for everyone. It takes a ridiculous person who cannot accept anything less than the look of film for them to put up with it these days. I was cursed to be someone who can never see digital as looking as aesthetic as film so I must deal with the pains of film.
I like both! I like to be flexible, but that feeling when you watch a video which is shot on film is uncredible for me. I only worked with digital cameras so far, but I want to shoot on film in the near future.
@@artlist_io Yes! I‘m already searching for a Super 8 camera. It‘s the cheapiest way to get into shooting film. But it‘s not that easy to find a good super 8 camera in Germany. It‘s even harder to find someone who developes the film