Paramount makes the switch from film to all digital

[TopWargamer]

http://gizmodo.com/report-paramount-pictures-cuts-film-goes-all-digital-1504176714?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

 

The Los Angeles Times reports that Paramount Pictures is the first major Hollywood studio to ditch 35mm film and go all-digital for United States theater releases, with The Wolf of Wall Street being shipped to theaters in digital format only. Sorry film fans, it sounds like that's a wrap.

 

Film, it looks like your days are numbered. More and more studios will start switching over to all digital, and even some of the other large studios already make some of their movies in digital only form. Personally, I don't mind this change. I mean, film has that distinct look, but I really don't mind the look of a digital movie.

 

Thoughts on the transition from film to all digital?

[Jaybird]

bout time. im tired of my movies looking grainy becuase they shot it in 35mm

[kuddlesworth9419]

Well it makes more sense to have film in digital rather then on actual film. The picture quality will be better overall. It is like going from vinyl to CD. Vinyl might not sound as good and it might have problems like dust making the audio crackle but that is the experience. 

[b45op]

Thoughts on the transition from film to all digital?

 

It lost me my damn job! Well sort of... I used to be a projectionist in the UK and got made redundant by the switch to digital never mind that the projectors they replaced me with broke down more often than I would call in a sicky haha.

 

From the projectionist point of view there are ups and downs to both digital and 35mm. I will say that I prefer 35mm but that is just me. I prefer the hands on approach to splicing a few reels together and plating the film onto the platter, lacing it through the projector and the manual care that needs to be taken especially when interlocking the same copy of the film through different projectors at the same time (the most I did was 4 at once with one copy of the film ). Digital is very much a hands off setup in fact the sony 4k projectors that replaced me played everything through a theatre management server that was programmed and administered from the other end of the cinema. it just didn't seem right.

 

When I left the cinema 2 years ago there were big movements in the industry with incentives being put down by the film manufacturers for the cinemas to switch to digital as sending out a HDD with a film is a lot cheaper than printing and storing the 35mm prints.

 

For those that are interested the films are or were normally around 200GB and came on 500GB drives that hotswap into the theatre management server or the projector themselves. these movies cant just be copied and pirated as is (I know you were thinking it!) as they are a proprietary film industry specific format and once copied onto the projector can be unlocked by copying a KDM (sort of a key file) onto the same projector. They go so far as to have security measures in place to wipe all KDM's on the projector if you open the side panels without entering specific stuff first to stop tampering (Bloody annoying feature when no one touches the damn thing and it does it anyway. Luckily this doesn't include the lamp housing) 

 

I do see the improvement in picture quality when watching digital but I do still catch myself looking for the cigarette burns in the top right corner and the shake as a join goes through the gate. As well 3D can suck my testicles!

 

sorry had to add in that digital does have the absolutely brilliant feature of not having these see attached picture.

 

[dalekphalm]

I think this is/was inevitable for the major studios, if only from a cost perspective. No longer will there be the cost of printing and transporting thousands of reels of film for one movie release. Instead they can use HDD's, which are presumably reused once sent back to the studio. Also digital is in general cleaner and easier to manage.

 

A projectionist might like the jitter or cigarette burns, but a viewer for the most part does not.

 

That's not to say that film has no quality. In fact, a movie filmed using 35mm and then scanned into super high resolutions can still produce excellent visual quality in 1080p and likely in 4K as well. The theoretical resolution of 35mm film is somewhere in the range of 6K to 8K, although archivists generally say that scanning film at 4K is adequate for archival purposes.

 

If you're filming digital using a 4K camera like a Red One or some of the high end sony professional film cameras, then digital is great. The problem is when films are filmed in digital, at 1080p (Or even lower in some older films). It looks great on my 1080P TV now, but they suffer when played back at 4K at a cinemas and as we upgrade our TV's, 35mm films will be able to be re-released in 4K, etc, but movies filmed in 1080p will be stuck upscaled.

[Kevinkt]

Well it makes more sense to have film in digital rather then on actual film. The picture quality will be better overall. It is like going from vinyl to CD. Vinyl might not sound as good and it might have problems like dust making the audio crackle but that is the experience. 

 

 

eh that's not really a fair comparison cds sound worse than vinyl due the loudness wars. well cared vinyl is ways better than a cd.

[Jaybird]

I think this is/was inevitable for the major studios, if only from a cost perspective. No longer will there be the cost of printing and transporting thousands of reels of film for one movie release. Instead they can use HDD's, which are presumably reused once sent back to the studio. Also digital is in general cleaner and easier to manage.

 

A projectionist might like the jitter or cigarette burns, but a viewer for the most part does not.

 

That's not to say that film has no quality. In fact, a movie filmed using 35mm and then scanned into super high resolutions can still produce excellent visual quality in 1080p and likely in 4K as well. The theoretical resolution of 35mm film is somewhere in the range of 6K to 8K, although archivists generally say that scanning film at 4K is adequate for archival purposes.

 

If you're filming digital using a 4K camera like a Red One or some of the high end sony professional film cameras, then digital is great. The problem is when films are filmed in digital, at 1080p (Or even lower in some older films). It looks great on my 1080P TV now, but they suffer when played back at 4K at a cinemas and as we upgrade our TV's, 35mm films will be able to be re-released in 4K, etc, but movies filmed in 1080p will be stuck upscaled.

very very very few films are filmed in 1080p. even your news is shot in 4k or 8k. 

[kuddlesworth9419]

eh that's not really a fair comparison cds sound worse than vinyl due the loudness wars. well cared vinyl is ways better than a cd.

But you get the point right. 

[Kevinkt]

But you get the point right. 

 

 

I do, get the point you're trying to make but its not really true!

[HDZx]

This is very good, hopefully this pushes the rest of Hollywood to also make the switch. It's just better for everybody.

[Kevinkt]

I'm wondering how this is going to work with resolution. since film has no set resolution from what i understand, but then again 4k geting pretty mainstream and that might be more than you'll need for the movies. but the whole "eh i could watch this at home" thing comes into play I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK

[Cypher32]

I dont like it

[MzCatieB]

I dont mind iMax but 35mm is ergh-.-

Atleast iMax looks outstanding i mean... look at the Dark Night outstanding

[Blade of Grass]

Moving to digital is nice, as it's easier in general, and looks great. That's not to say film looks bad. Breaking Bad was shot on film, and it looks quite good IMHO.

 

I think that there will allways be directors who want to film on film, but IMHO, that's not a bad thing.

[kuddlesworth9419]

I do, get the point you're trying to make but its not really true!

I couldn't think of anything else sorry.

[Eroda]

so Tarentino is done then.. he said he wont shoot movies in digital.

[dalekphalm]

so Tarentino is done then.. he said he wont shoot movies in digital.

No, he'll just have to have all the film scanned into digital during post... Which is what all modern hollywood movies shot in film have done anyway, as you need to do that for the visual effects, etc.

[The Syndicate]

I would like blu ray movies to still be availible but people really need to transition into the digital era.

[James_AJ]

but dat color quality tho... dat "organic" look...

 

 

 

 

 

**dat sarcasm tho**

[mr moose]

I don't mind, It was always going to happen,  but don't fool yourself into thinking that current digital has a higher resolution than 35mm.  It's not like still photography and even some of the worst 35mm film stock has a digital resolution equivalence of 1080p.  The advantage here of course is that digital footage doesn't degrade with time.

[Ultimate_PIMP]

Well it makes more sense to have film in digital rather then on actual film. The picture quality will be better overall. It is like going from vinyl to CD. Vinyl might not sound as good and it might have problems like dust making the audio crackle but that is the experience. 

 

No, vinyl sounds infinitely better than cd's.

[blaze124]

It lost me my damn job! Well sort of... I used to be a projectionist in the UK and got made redundant by the switch to digital never mind that the projectors they replaced me with broke down more often than I would call in a sicky haha.

 

From the projectionist point of view there are ups and downs to both digital and 35mm. I will say that I prefer 35mm but that is just me. I prefer the hands on approach to splicing a few reels together and plating the film onto the platter, lacing it through the projector and the manual care that needs to be taken especially when interlocking the same copy of the film through different projectors at the same time (the most I did was 4 at once with one copy of the film ). Digital is very much a hands off setup in fact the sony 4k projectors that replaced me played everything through a theatre management server that was programmed and administered from the other end of the cinema. it just didn't seem right.

 

When I left the cinema 2 years ago there were big movements in the industry with incentives being put down by the film manufacturers for the cinemas to switch to digital as sending out a HDD with a film is a lot cheaper than printing and storing the 35mm prints.

 

For those that are interested the films are or were normally around 200GB and came on 500GB drives that hotswap into the theatre management server or the projector themselves. these movies cant just be copied and pirated as is (I know you were thinking it!) as they are a proprietary film industry specific format and once copied onto the projector can be unlocked by copying a KDM (sort of a key file) onto the same projector. They go so far as to have security measures in place to wipe all KDM's on the projector if you open the side panels without entering specific stuff first to stop tampering (Bloody annoying feature when no one touches the damn thing and it does it anyway. Luckily this doesn't include the lamp housing) 

 

I do see the improvement in picture quality when watching digital but I do still catch myself looking for the cigarette burns in the top right corner and the shake as a join goes through the gate. As well 3D can suck my testicles!

 

sorry had to add in that digital does have the absolutely brilliant feature of not having these see attached picture.

being a worker in a theater myself we too switched to digital projectors and those things do break ALOT we had to give everyone free passes to come back another time cuz one burnt up 

[kuddlesworth9419]

No, vinyl sounds infinitely better than cd's.

It was just an example. I also agree with you though.

[mr moose]

No, vinyl sounds infinitely better than cd's.

only sometimes, sometimes they are mastered so flat they may as well be recording on wax.

[b45op]

being a worker in a theater myself we too switched to digital projectors and those things do break ALOT we had to give everyone free passes to come back another time cuz one burnt up 

 

I had one Sony play perfectly for about half of the movie and then change to a loud static blasting through all the speakers in a packed 300 seat screen, that got the customers some comp tickets. The fault turned out to be some board in the actual projector (not the Dolby processor boards as usual) had to cancel all the shows in that screen for the day and most of the following so that a tech could pop over and fix it. give me a good old 35mm with a belt you can change any day.

 

Before the main switch over we had a Christie and Barco digital projector. Those things just worked perfectly! even during power surges they would just carry on playing as usual.