by Jim.


For years 16 and 35mm film have held a considerable distance between themselves and even the best video formats - where film was sprinting along like a lithe Flo Jo, video was sweating out progress like a well intentioned Rerun from What's Happening!! All of this, rather suddenly, seems to be changing.

Sony and Panavision have recently made the greatest inroads in closing this gap with the release of their jointly produced 24p HiDef digital camera, which records video at film's native 24 frames per second. In addition to its film like frame rate, the camera also boasts a greater image area which renders details with the most impressive resolution of a video camera yet. George Lucas has used these cameras to shoot the two most recent installments of the Star Wars series and has since proclaimed himself to be such a fan of the digital technology that he will never shoot film again.

What are the implications of such advances and how will they reverberate throughout filmmaking? I figured it best to look and see how Kodak, if not the largest producer of film worldwide, certainly the most prominent name in the field, is responding to what might be seen as a threat to what has long been their domain.

For Starters

"Only film sees the world the way you do. Not in a rigid, binary code, but in the warm palette of genuine human emotion..."

-- Kodak's adds touting film as the only way to go


Looking over Kodak's website which offers readers to look into making an "informed decision" about what format to shoot on, one finds a list of several "facts" which juxtapose the choices facing a filmmaker who may be considering digital video versus film. These choices, as the site reads, inevitably favor film. One needn't possess a Holmesian talent for inference to see where Kodak's motives lie - film is their baby, and having it threatened by digital video must make the company more than a bit uneasy. I wanted to get in touch with someone at Kodak who could "flesh out" these facts, and so after a little searching and a few phone calls, I got in touch with Frederick Franzwa, Kodak's Director of Hybrid Technologies. For the sake of brevity, the facts essentially break down into :

Image quality

"No matter what the formula," Kodak's site insists, "today's digital video image contains far fewer pixels, with a substantially restricted bit depth, translating into significantly lower resolution."

Archivability

"All in the Family" was shot on video, and that has created a lot of headaches in terms of making sure those images stay robust. That's because, over time, the electronic particles on videotape will naturally turn toward the North and South Pole.

Forward Compatibility

"Future proofing," as Kodak's site calls it, is a legitimate concern for all filmmakers - will their work remain viewable well into the future?

Point, Counter-point

For image quality, at present, film offers the richest palette in both its ability to render colors and its flexibility, within each frame, to capture varying degrees of light and shadow - or dynamic range, as it's known. As Mr. Franzwa points out, "with Moore's law, who knows how long this will hold true. But advances need to be made with respect to how large the CCD chip in a particular camera is. Sony's 24p camera has a 2/3rds inch chip, and therefor the cameras need to be fitted with special lenses because the chip itself is smaller than the image area. No one has gone on record as saying anything yet, but there has been hints of a larger chip being produced."

Score one for film, for now.

However, one of my concerns in this contest of image quality is that of sufficient versus necessary results. It seems to me that as the digital technology improves, we are going to see a series of cameras which render sufficiently accurate and attractive images at a price far lower than film. Of course resolution isn't the only factor in the pursuit of "the film look", filmmakers of today often speak of the warmth produced by the peculiarities of a given film stock. On this note, Mr. Franzwa points out that while Kodak has "emulsion guys beating their brains out trying to get rid of grain, in post their clients often say "No, no - we don't want things to look this clear. We want to see more grain."

While there is something to be said about how the audience responds to grain and other factors which comprise "the film look," it isn't yet clear that this is merely evidence of a dependency created by prior, well rehearsed association on the audience's part. It might be that over time, new audiences will become acclimated to an image which favors "the video look," or something that is a reasonable rendering of "the film look" achieved through digital manipulation of the video images. When filmmakers speak of warmth and richness, I'm reminded of the objections audiophiles will so often rally behind if you were to ask them which provides a better sound - vinyl or CD? I'm comfortable with the idea that CD's don't meet the same standard as that which analogue audio is capable of, given ideal circumstances. However, they do a job which is sufficient, and in addition at a far lower cost, so that my shelves are crowded with CD's and there's not a vinyl sleeve in sight. Why wouldn't the same hold true for digital video eventually?

As for archivabilty, I'm inclined to think it's misleading for Kodak to constantly pit film in a can against magnetic strips of video. For analogue video this comparison may have been fair, but I'm quick to point out that for digital video, this argument is becoming less and less relevant. Digital information may be written to any number of media, and often at a pittance when compared to the cost of reproducing a particular strip of film.

At present there are several optical and magneto-optical technologies which rival, if not exceed, film's durability. The limitations of such technology are chiefly issues of density - for instance, where CD's can hold a scant 700 megabytes of information (less than five minutes of uncompressed, full screen digital video with audio), DVDRAM's will eventually hold upwards of 18 gigabytes - a relatively generous 90 minutes of uncompressed visual and audio content. And who can tell what the future will hold for optical storage, except that it will have a greater capacity, cost less and inherit ever faster write speeds. One such technology is Constellation 3d's FMD disk, an optical disc slated for release this year, which boasts a jaw-dropping 140 gigs of storage capacity. When I told Mr. Franzwa about FMD, he said that Kodak isn't plugging their head in the sand - it seems that they too are developing several technologies along this line.

As for future proofing anything, I just don't think it's possible to grant any current technology or standard with a permanence that is guaranteed to exceed say, 100 years into the future. Certainly it seems likely to assume that for the next fifty years, we will be able to spool a reel of film and run it through a projector, but it seems likely, too, that computers will be able to generate the necessary conditions under which current standards of media are delivered to audiences.

For now Kodak seems to be sticking to its guns, eager to show off film's advantages at every turn, but it will be interesting to see if their strategy will change in the not-to-distant, and most certainly digital future. I'm glad to see their efforts in the way of exploring digital storage, and while I'm in no way declaring film to be "dead," I'm eager to meet the arrival of technology which will make it easier for me to present content to an audience.


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