Digital cinema vs. celluloid film - which is better

[Pickle Dick]

Personally, I like the charm that celluloid offers to movies, though I think digital cinema has many technical advantages compared to celluloid.

But what do you think is better?

 

[Rei is shit]

Digital can look exactly like film now. You can even fake halation convincingly if you want that cheap 60s film stock look.

 

[peanus weenus]

Digital can look exactly like film now. You can even fake halation convincingly if you want that cheap 60s film stock look.

You can filter the fuck out of video to make it look like "film", but you can't replicate the production and editing process the film stock requires, which gives it the charm.

 

[David Allen Coe]

Eh, people should focus less on faggoty gimmicks like how you film the movie and more on writing on something worth a fuck.

 

[Varg Did Nothing Wrong]

You can filter the fuck out of video to make it look like "film", but you can't replicate the production and editing process the film stock requires, which gives it the charm.

An average person sitting down and watching a movie doesn't fucking know or give a shit about the "production and editing process". Who experiences the charm? The crew filming the production?

 

[MalWart]

When it's done right, film. The resolution of 35mm is actually higher than digital as long as the image is properly focused.

 

[The Shadow]

I've never seen a digital film that looked like a celluloid film. Maybe because I grew up in the 90s and all the films I admire most are on celluloid, but digital feels less "real" to me when I watch it.

I've had the opportunity to work with both in my pathetic attempts at being a filmmaker during my high school years. Film has to be a labor of love, anymore- it's truly a pain in the ass to work with compared to digital not to mention significantly more expensive to shoot and develop. But there's something beautiful about celluloid, something magical about being able to hold up your strip of film stock and see the individual frames when you hold it up to the light.

 

[neverendingmidi]

I've never seen a digital film that looked like a celluloid film. Maybe because I grew up in the 90s and all the films I admire most are on celluloid, but digital feels less "real" to me when I watch it.

But does that have to do with the celluloid or the plot? I mean nowadays you have cheap CGI in everything which could be the reason it feels “less real”. Or possibly the need for actors to be decent at their lines because they were actually wasting real film which could fuck over a production, compared to the “meh, delete and redo” reaction of digital.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

It can get a bit subjective, but in my view, the footage produced by today's high-end digital cameras now surpasses the quality of celluloid. The crucial area where digital used to lag behind film was dynamic range, but with modern digital cameras like the Arri Alexa, that is no longer a problem.

Skyfall, Blade Runner 2049, and John Wick were all shot with an Alexa, and I challenge anyone to point to a film camera which could have given them better picture quality.

 

[Biffo]

Depends on the movie and people behind it really, Marvel movies that are shot digitally look far worse than those that were done on film, however someone like David Fincher does fantastic work with digital.

 

[Idiotron]

Supposedly, a quality film stock can have a resolution as high as 16K but we're going to have that in digital cameras soon.
Also, a healthy human eye can see the equivalent of about 40 megapixels and 16K is 132.7 megapixels so I don't see a reason for shooting in that resolution.

Here's why digital is better:
1. It's way cheaper (you're only wasting disk space and battery life instead of a very expensive film stock which most people can't afford).
2. You can check the quality of what you shot instantly (imagine doing 3 months of shooting on film, only to find out that it looks like garbage afterwards).
3. The post-production is much easier and faster.

At this point, shooting on film is a hipster thing.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

At this point, shooting on film is a hipster thing.

And even then, you can just add a filter to the final footage and pass it off as filmed.

 

[XYZpdq]

if I'm noticing then your movie is probably kinda shit and should be making me more interested in it rather than how they filmed it
as far as I understand it's one of those things like vinyl and stuff that _in theory_ there can be something but in practice I'm not likely to notice unless you massive shit it up accentuating the flaws of the style,
like it's still going to be transferred to digital whether I watch it at home or in a theater, movie theaters are a bunch of goddamn speds at running projectors right anyway, I'm pirating whatever I watch at home so it's probably going to be an encode of questionable skill, playing off an old computer connected to a cheap wal mart generic hd tv over an ancient vga cable