The High Cost of Film.

As I am writing this Kodak is going through some hard times. They are currently struggling to avoid bankruptcy. Why is the world of Film in trouble these days? And why is video taking over? lets take a look at the two.

This picture has nothing to do with the article but it came up when I googled Film VS video and thought it was too cool.

Both formats have pros and cons.

The benefit of using film.
“film simply captures light waves its creating lines of depth and color, so it looks smooth and soft when projected, even at large sizes.”1 Film has always had a better resolution then video and still does. Look no further than anything filmed in IMAX. And when I say IMAX I mean REAL IMAX not those stupid Digital IMAX screens at your local theater that arent any different than the other screens. IMAX is by far the best quality around and thanks to movies like The Dark Knight they are starting to be used for more than just documentaries now. One of the major action sequences in Mission Impossible Ghost Protocal will be filmed in IMAX.

As mentioned before film captures light a lot better then Video and the larger your film stock is the better quality you will have. Most movies shoot in some form of 35mm. IMAX shoots on 70mm. If that doesn’t sound big think about this. when ever you see a film each second is 24 individual pictures running at a speed that simulates motion. now imagine each individual strip being the size of a post card. Here is a comparison along with the cameras they use to film it.

The Downside to Film.
Film does have some major disadvantages. The cameras film use cannot be sized down which make it hard to move the camera freely. Special rigs have to be built which is fine if your working on a big budget film but kinda crappy if your an independent filmmaker with a shoe string budget…like me. You also cant tell hoe your finished product will look. Movies do have video assist to give them a good idea of what the film will end up looking like but theres no way to know for sure until its developed and by then it might be too late. Film often has grain too on the screen and scratches which everyone has come to accept and ignore but sometimes it could ruin a movie. The Biggest draw back however is the cost of film. If I had more money donated for my movie I would have shot on film however the donations were pretty low so I had to resort to video. Here is a good example of how costly film is:
“Nowadays it seems like a foreign concept to have to wait to look at your pictures, doesn’t it? A roll of camera film containing 24 or 36 exposures used to cost around $3-5 to buy and another $3-5 to develop.

Using a film camera, 24 frames of film is one second of screen time. One. Second. Multiply $2 by 60, and then by 90. That’s to say, if you roll camera and cut camera at the exact instant you start and end your scene, do only one take of each shot, and film a full-length 90-minute movie, that film alone at $2 a second costs you $10,800. So in a monetary sense, the difference between film and video is huge.”2

The Benefit of Video
Video for years had a lesser quality than film. However video had some benefits that made it become as huge as it did. A major benefit with video is that you can play back your footage and analyze it right there on the spot. The portability is also a lot better.“While some digital cinematography cameras are large and bulky, even compared to full-sized film cameras, others are extremely compact, and offer features such as the ability to detach the camera head from the rest of the camera, allowing high quality images to be captured with an extremely compact package. The tapes, hard drives and flash memory magazines that digital cameras record onto are also far more compact than the film magazines used by film cameras. These factors can result in substantial portability advantages for digital cinematography systems.”3

To give a better example here is the camera they filmed the first Lord of the Rings (ARRICAM ST) with compared to the Camera they are using now for The Hobbit (RED EPIC).

Big difference! But the primary reason most people are moving toward video is cause quality of video is almost s good as film but a hell of a lot cheaper. Most movies out there today are switching to video and you probably didn’t even know it. Video does have its downsides. you cant expand the image like you can with film with out the quality getting distorted. The picture isn’t as clear and hard drives that capture the video could very well crash and ruin everything. But these are hard times and we are in a recession so until they find a way to make film cheaper for indie filmmakers it looks like I’ll have to stick with video.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinematography