Of course that it's the content that matters, but why not have a good look as well.

To reply about most tv shows being shot digitally, again I only look at decent to really good shows. True, Sopranos started in 1998, but Breaking Bad and House just ended, both shot on Film.

Currently The Walking dead, Boardwalk Empire and on regular networks the Big bang theory seem to be the most popular and/or critically acclaimed, all use film.

While it may technically be true that most shows are shot digitally, it is also true that most shows are garbage with no regard for content or how they look.

That pretty much leaves only Mad Men and Dexter as shows not using film. I may have missed one or two, but like I said most of it is garbage and that doesn't count no matter what it's shot on.

PS: Just remembered. An example of a great looking show not using film would be Game of Thrones.

Big Bang Theory shoots on Digital, always has. The only multicamera show on film is Two and a Half Men, only reason that was ever shot on film is because Charlie Sheen demanded it and now thery're just going to finish it on film. Like I said, I'm not commenting on quality, just quantity, and facts are facts. When Breaking Bad started the Alexa had not even been introduced (April 2010), that was the camera that changed it all as far as traditional film shows shooting on digital. I agree that Game of Thrones is a great looking show, the other great looking show, Downton Abbey also digital. Walking Dead Super 16.

Serena nailed it in her last post. A lot of people are looking for an easy answer to: “How can I make my no-budget video lit with a Lowel DP kit look like a million-dollar 35mm scene?”

Film is a forgiving medium compared to video. You can salvage many under and overexposed shots in grading because of the exposure latitude, but in order to view film in the TV or computer world, it has to be limited to the same 0-255 or 16-235 levels we’re constrained to in video production. So we’re really not in search of a true film look, we’re searching for the look of film transferred to video.

I was hunting on the web for a demonstration I saw back in the late 80s or early 90s of a 35mm film scene being duplicated in a TV studio. Wasn’t successful in finding it, but it duplicated a complex scene – pooled lighting on a large set with foreground soft focus and a very slow dolly move (so the judder frame issues would be minimized). They precisely duplicated the levels and saturation in each stage of the shot and even given the SD studio cameras of the era, those of us who were watching agreed that the video camera captured the “look” of the transferred film.

The most interesting thing was that it took many more lights and loads more lighting control (flags, scrims, etc.) for the video camera to duplicate the light to shadow transitions in the film. Even for most DPs today, that’s counterintuitive: Video is supposed to be easier, not harder. Too bad that’s not true.

Hasn't digital camera technology progressed a lot in the last decade leaving behind the old days "need more lights" issue? To me, it seems like it has, but I'm not close to these types of productions.

Obviously, EVERYTHING could always use more light, but you specifically mentioned back then, the video REQUIRED more lighting than film to be useful.
Now, I read they use digital for the low light stuff since film doesn't keep up anymore. ??

It wasn't the lumens (intensity) of light needed, but what was necessary to duplicate the ability of film to see detail in transitions to shadows and highlight. A bit more light was put into the areas where shadows began, and scrimmed where highlights began. Although today's high end cameras with log gamma curves get pretty close to film's sensitivity, what was happening in this old demonstration (and what most of us would have to do today with our 8-bit cameras limited to Cine-gamma curves) was basically creating a log-gamma lighting scheme.

At the end of the demonstration, they showed the lighting rigs for each. Film scene was simple. Video had many additional snooted inkies, white cards, lots of hand cut dots and nets to tame the centers of the light beams. It looked like a nightmare.

Though we nearly all agree that digital productions generally cannot look exactly like film, we should not ignore that some cameras do a better job than others in approaching the "film look" (or other looks for that matter) right from the start. Most image acquisition hardware captures far more information than is output to memory/tape, such as capturing images in 10 or 16 bit detail though the written data are just 8 bits. If a camera allows the user to adjust how that image information is processed prior to memory commitment, the potential for achieving a particular desired look is greater.

For example, I have a JVC GY-HM750 that allows me to make detailed adjustments to the gamma curve as well as the color matrix of the CCD image acquisition firmware. As such, I have adjusted the black toe to stretch the dark areas to get fine shadow detail as well as the white knee to do the same for bright regions. I have also adjusted the color matrix and channel gain ratios to get the colors that I desire. The result of these adjustments is footage that looks amazingly similar shooting with Kodachrome (a look that I personally really like). Though you can do some nice things in post production, the closer your original recorded video is to the desired end result, the better the potential outcome, as you can't create such things as shadow detail if the information is not there in the first place.

Peter

+1 Tech Diver. For the budget range most of us have to live with, it's hard to beat a well-tweaked JVC CCD camera IMHO. I still go back to my GY-HD110u occasionally even though it can only muster 720 in progressive format. After spending a lot of time experimenting with gamma and color matrix it's now near disgusting how little needs to be done to the image for a really pleasing picture.

Is the consensus that documentary films benefit (or suffer) from less expectation of having a "film look," compared to (typically bigger budget) narrative films?

A lot of the comments above center on TV shows shot on film or video, but an awful lot of the current, big budget blockbuster actual "films" (AKA movies) are not only digital in the theaters (since there is no film in theaters any more), but started life as digital, with, as said above, the ARRI Alexa being the shooting mechanism....Think "Gravity " or "Skyfall".....since the Alexa does not have the pixel depth of the latest Reds, this is an interesting development. What the Alexa does seem to have, however, is the more subtle exposure range and color range.....something which is shared by some much less expensive cameras with 2.5k or 4k capability.

Anyone who has spent much time in the last six months in a theater (since the demise of distributed film) should appreciate the stability, available color subtlety, as well as range of "looks" of a digital print. All of these looks are much more easily achievable with digital color correction than with traditional film development, which was arcane at best, and a crapshoot at worst.

It seems that the cameras are catching up to the digital intermediary process......or are all the way caught up now, so the real question, as suggested above, is, within the enormous range of looks available, what look do you want? It does not seem that there are many limitations left these days.

wwjd said, "Hasn't digital camera technology progressed a lot in the last decade leaving behind the old days "need more lights" issue? To me, it seems like it has, but I'm not close to these types of productions."

The problem area is actually dynamic range, more than just being bright enough. If your camera can only capture 80 decibels of gain then you have to make sure your shadows are not more than 80 dB from the highlights. If the scene has more than 80 dB separation then something is going to be under exposed or over exposed depending on which side you expose for.

Generally you want to expose for the highlights and then if the shadows are falling below what your camera can capture then you need some light (from reflectors or lamps). If you expose to the shadows and the high lights are to bright, then you need a screen or something to diffuse or reduce the highlight intensity.

Of course the dB issue comes into play with low light as well. If pitch black (or whatever the minimum "lux" your camera can see) in your scene is only 10 dB darker than your highlights, you are not going to get a well saturated and exposed image. Doesn't matter how good the camera is in low light.

The Zacuto Shootout was a modern example of atom12's comments. Lighting a given set to make it look the same for a variety of video cameras: http://www.zacuto.com/shootout-revenge-2012. The cheaper cameras needed more lights and technique.

I think it has to be stated that film does, itself, have a limited dynamic range, and lighting on movie sets has historically been a huge, tedious process for many movies and situations......and choosing how to expose and what ASA range to use and develop for was not a small part of the process.

This does not dilute the fact that many video cameras may have a smaller dynamic range than the better film stocks.

The use of various capture and encode methods these days in digital can give you the ability, however, to, effectively, capture in multiple dynamic ranges or ASA speeds at once......which is a real game changer.

I don't really pretend to understand this fully, but it is very clear that, in the last couple of years, the output of some not-so-expensive cameras (and the Alexa, though at the top of this range, is vastly less expensive than the film and digital cameras it is replacing) can be worked with in post to give you a huge range of acceptable, filmic looks.

....And, once you are there, it is not that hard to "dumb it down" for plain old HD TV and have it look just fabulous, and like film of one sort or another. As I said earlier, this is exactly the process that is putting pictures on the screen of your local movie theater, so, if that is "film", then everything that follows the process should be "film"


I think all the comments above about content and lighting technique are completely relevant. If one really wants to make something look just like the color film in use during the late 60s, or the black and white film in use during the 30s, that may not be ultimately possible with digital, but you should be able to get close.

Moving pictures are going through now what audio went through a while ago, with the adding back in of record scratch to make things sound "better", etc......but moving pictures have the advantage of a widely distributed medium (theaters, and to some extent HD TV) that will remain quality oriented, whereas audio just kept plummeting down through MP3 encoding, etc.

Movies are dumbed down for streaming and handhelds, but I don't see the original product being degraded like the quality of CDs, etc. has become. Thank your lucky stars on this one.

And another part of the picture (sic) that hasn't been covered above is lenses. A lot of cinematic looks depend largely on the way a lens reacts to the light, framing and interacts with the image sensor or film.....including the whole ability to record and project back anamorphically.

With the new cameras' ability to utilize the same lenses traditionally used on Panavision or Super 16 cameras, and with the ability of some of the sensors to have a similar relationship with the lens as film cameras, another obstacle to creating the filmic look has been removed.

Beyond that, the only real thing is whether you want something to simply look "old" or to look "good" in a way that is similar to what you felt looked "good" on film.

I think the central standard of "good" has shifted a bit and will continue to shift a bit, because the capabilities of digital are both broader and a bit different than film. As has happened in the audio world, some of the distortions and downside of the old technology are gone, even though there may be a nostalgic attachment to them. The new medium has its own set of oddities, but the stability, clarity, repeatability and essential technical improvement, in most respects, more than makes up for them.......In any case, we are stuck with it.

..... And content is king. The availability of the traditional film tools- extreme deep focus or extreme shallow focus, ability to manipulate for apparent wide dynamic range, etc., etc.- are all available, along with vastly improved color control and stability, so being able to produce an aesthetically engaging, high quality theatrical release that draws on the historic methods of film making is totally there in digital. Now. Relatively cheaply. It might not be possible to recreate the exact look in B and W of an Orson Welles deep focus shot from Citizen Kane, but you can certainly play around in that ballpark now.......And, if you think about it, Welles was just playing with and pushing the technology at hand, and those following him did the same thing. His "film" look was not the same as theirs, and the rest of the following ages were different as well......This was always more dependent on creativity than technology, and was always in flux, just as the technology was.

http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/tutorials/filmlook.htm