Cinematography : The Science, Art, and Impact of Digital Cinema by JG Muller

Great share, JG. I had the pleasure of having a meeting with one of the producers of SIDE BY SIDE down at SXSW. We discussed this very topic.

The reason digital was compared to film is that both are in theatres being shown to audiences. The important things is to know enough to be able to choose for a real reason. Film and digital workflows are different. The creative control should rest in the hands of those capable of bringing the intended story to the screen. The plethora of controls available throughout the digital workflow has certainly done one thing, it has multiplied the number of self-described experts who can change what will be seen on the screen. At times those changes have been irreparable. Nobody is stopping anyone from using any tools, but the misconceptions that the internet has spread have resulted in a surfeit of projects with a dearth of quality. The documentary was ok. Too much stress on some areas not enough in others and parts that had me shouting at the screen which I would have preferred had been left off. The errors in the content are glaring. Of course the thoughts and ideas from the main players are interesting, as always. Well worth watching, thanks for posting the link.

At your first sentence Andrew Sobkovich, I could only smile. Thank you very much for looking at the post and for commenting. Which parts made you want to scream loudest or did you find most inaccurate? I find it all interesting because the technical end of things is new to me, and I have never been intimately involved in a film workflow, only digital. The one film project I was even a bit close to was shot on film but converted to digital files for editing. And yes I agree that people should be using their tools with a method to their madness. However, technology moves so fast that it is entirely possible that technical support for film could become obsolete similarly to what has happened to the storage and playback options for music. One person's beautiful is another person's imperfect. One person's perfect is another person's sterile. No one however, complains about cost effective recording and on-demand distribution. I have the feeling though that a lot of the money saved on film ends up going to the editing department weeding through all that footage and adding special effects.

Much of the reaction was to a few of the salesmen that were inexplicably included. "Salesmanship" and reality again have little in common. Truth vrs fiction is perhaps a more apt description and certainly politer that what I yelled at the screen. Without going into the myriad problems just the description of "resolution" which was straight out of the advertising BS from a particular company was enough for me to say, believe nothing other than the interview content that makes sense to you and remember that it is opinion. Up to the advertising launch of a particular camera, resolution was a description of what the camera could actually record under perfect circumstances. Hint, the number of photosites on the camera chip is not resolution but merely the number of photosites. Think, about a scene in focus and the same scene out of focus, which has more resolution? According to the inventive advertising, both shot on the same camera must have the same resolution since they were generated by the same number of photosites. Ahhhh.... "Houston we have a problem". Further nothing was mentioned about the resolution of film transferred to digital and how that resolution is different than the Fibbing F***s who use the same words as a description. Watch the doc and enjoy it. There is much to be learned here. Think about what people are saying and carefully think about why they are saying it. The statements and reasons are not always based upon the same motivation. Sadly, not just from the salesmen. $$$$ motivates speech.