What cinema lost when film went digital

Comments · 267

• TU

  @tueferbenz7492 · 4 months ago

  Desaturation and low contrast are getting really tired at this point. It's going to date movies of the past dozen years or so.

  98

• AL

  @alexyeo6632 · 4 months ago

  The reality is that film imperfections create an unreal quality that took us out of reality and into “the movies”. Digital is so real we end up noticing we’re not in “the movie”. That, and the fact it allows so much to be fixed in post, whereas with film you need to get it right on set. Oh, and also the current trend for not pushing the full dynamic range in the grade (for some reason) so everything just looks too muddy and flat.

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• DA

  @DanCummins · 4 months ago

  The part that baffles me is the &apos;modern colorists bringing down their highlights and bring up the lows&apos; like wtf? &nbsp;We spent decades trying to get crisp dynamic range with pristine highs and deep lows, and now that we have all that capability, you&apos;re going to flatten it out so it looks like an LCD screen with poor settings? &nbsp;Never understood this. &nbsp;I hate when i see some movie or show with the Netflix lighting and I cringe because I&apos;m sure they&apos;re using excellent modern gear that old school DP&apos;s would have loved to have access to, and they&apos;re wasting it on bland soft lighting coverage and boring contrast-less color-grading. &nbsp;<br><br>I wonder if we know who started the de-saturation trend? Maybe Janus Kaminksy?

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• SC

  @scsi1995 · 3 months ago (edited)

  Once AI-generated movies are widely available,<br>we will no longer be debating the issue of film versus digital, but rather genuine human-created art versus the prompting of text on a computer.

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• UR

  @urbanstarship · 3 months ago

  Digital has made some crews lazy. I can’t stand flat looking night scenes shot without decent lighting. Yeah, it looks “real”, but not as good as night shots that used strong key lights.

  18

• TH

  @ThiloAdamitz · 3 months ago

  All those possibilities of digital postproduction; and, yet, modern movies look uniform and uninspired

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• ON

  @onsokumaru4663 · 4 months ago

  Film is the best medium for preserving movies.

  65

• RE

  @reneiIoe · 4 months ago

  for me it all comes down to 1 thing &quot; Choice &quot; Digital and especially post introduced an infinite array of choices after the fact , so directors and studio heads nolonger shoot a movie with set decisions made , this forces DPs to light in a flat way or scripts being written in such a way that anything can happen in the edit or actors can be fired and replaced without affecting the rest of the story<br><br><br> ...we need more intentionality and a singulr vision in our movies where storytelling is key , now its all cooperate slop just to make as much profit as possible

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• МИ

  @Мина-р3ф · 3 months ago

  Actually, when film went digital, not only they lost everything. <br>But even modern film cinema looks more boring and lifeless compared to 30-90s.<br>The reason is simple: the art was destroyed by the industry.

  5

• RO

  @rootieboy · 3 months ago

  Highlights are gone. Every image looks flat. Lighting absolutely makes a difference

  13

• AU

  @aurematic · 4 months ago

  And then we got Christopher Nolan who shot a movie in 70mm film with dull colours.

  5

• GR

  @gruntaxeman3740 · 4 months ago

  I like to add one thing what also happened: Lost knowledge.<br><br>There was plenty of artist doing CGI without working on miniatures, and they didn&apos;t know what they were doing. Film to digital transition seems to caused lost knowledge in colors. Concept of memory color effect was lost and there was horrible color grading instead. Heavy use of green screen caused lost of knowledge how to make shot feel right. It was not the green screen, they forgot to add sweat, close up shots touching in environment..<br><br>Digital cameras are great but there are lot of issues that are not related to that.

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