Okay, start with the headline.
“Filmmakers adapt to digital formatting while some keep classic film rolling”
That’s a completely incorrect use of the word “formatting.” And beyond that, 35mm film, or FILM in a broader sense is not a format, it’s a medium. You don’t do “digital formatting” when you shoot digitally, you simply shoot using digital equipment.
Digital filmmaking uses different formats to record data...but digital in of itself is not a format.
This paragraph:
“Although the new technology makes it easier for movie makers to do their jobs, concerns over how these digital files will be stored in the future remain, knowing technology never stops advancing and people could be stuck with those old Betamax cassettes with no way of playing them.”
That seems to ignore that films were once DISTRIBUTED on Betamax but never stored that way archivally. And pretty much everything on VHS and Betamax that’s worth preserving (for the most part this is television stuff, not motion pictures) is these days being digitized — played back on still surviving videotape machines and captured onto multiple hard disks and drives and in multiple codecs and digital formats.
So, there are no filmmakers out there sadly holding Betamax copies of their movie that won’t play. Trust me: none.
Onward.
It’s not a “cellulose” clip, it’s “celluloid.” Film is emulsion on celluloid.
Cellulose is the underlying plant structure of wood or paper.
Film’s “tactile appeal” relates to the experience that you have of holding it in your hand. (Film editors frequently talk about this...because they hold the film in their hands and thread it into and through editing systems.)
People viewing a movie never experience that, and it’s not something that digital filmmakers attempt to recreate.
Digital filmmakers have pretty much nailed the various grain structures of film and can recreate them at will.
“As a projectionist, I think film looks better textually,” reads one of your quotes.
(Excuse me one moment while I spit coffee out.)
Textually!? As in “converted to words”? (Because that’s what textually means.) Are you sure she wasn’t saying “texturally”?
And then these two paragraphs:
"It’s very hard to get ahold of print (film) circulating, especially for the recent theatrical releases,” Chang said. “For the classic movies there will sometimes be print, but it’s tricky because those prints are very precious, so we still need to do some work.”
“To get to that next step, Chang said, they need maintenance work on the film projectors, which can be difficult and it is becoming harder to find people with the knowhow to make it happen.”
Well, I have no idea the point either the projectionist OR the writer was trying for here.
In 1999, George Lucas mixed film footage with HD digital footage in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and even had to install digital projectors in four theaters nationwide for the first screenings.
This “film fact” implies that the digital projectors had to be installed to somehow deal with HD/film mix. Star Wars I was released on film (all of the content printed to a film negative) as well as on an early form of digital projection...and that’s why the projectors were installed, for the latter form.
This whole article makes me fear for the quality of journalism (not to mention copy editing and fact-checking) emerging from Athens, Ohio. I’m cheering for you all, but could you maybe please try harder?
This letter was submitted by J.C. Burns.
