alt Hacker NewsSome directors like the appearance of film... Given that the spectacle is a large part of the reason we go to the cinema, the colour fidelity and (and in the case of IMAX) unique scale and aspect ratio are the point... Not sure why practicality or cost would override that?
As a director who doesn't shoot on film - I still see the appeal, there's a particular quality to skin tones - especially in response to older arc lights and the like - that digital still doesn't quite capture. Ditto motion cadence, halation and grain that are all emulated in digital post to greater or lesser degrees of fidelity.
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disclaimer: I worked in a DI lab
second disclaimer, dbspin knows all this, this is aimed at the casual observer
About 2010 was the time that digital cameras were common enough and had enough dynamic range to make "better" looking 35mm than 35mm. There were caveats, certain hella expensive fujifilm stock still looked great and had decent enough resolution if you were skilled enough. (I'm not a DoP or lighting designer so take this with that in mind)
RED gets lots of credit, but frankly they were not that great, they had optical resolution, but not very good colour or dynamic range.
However, the most important point is this, most films from about 2006 were fed through DI. This means they were scanned in, degrained, conformed (so all shots from the same scene had the sameish histogram). Then the colourist would grade it all, give it a feel ( a bit like foley/music) and it'd be lasered back out to film or sent to be packaged into a DCI.
the "feel" of film is usually added or enhanced. modern film stock isn't grainy, unless you choose it to be. (compare layer cake to harry brown) "film-y ness is a choice, in the same way that "warm" analogue sound is a choice"
I don’t understand how even the preference for shooting on film makes any sense if you’re digitizing, heavily processing, adding entirely digital elements …
I get putting the final edit to film.
If you’re not doing all that additional garbage, then capturing on film, going digital for basic editing, then back to film might make sense.
I know extensive thought goes into filters in front of the camera and the lighting, but one can probably change the bayer filter transmission function to get them to match better (and maybe add one or two channels at the cost of shot noise).
I see this in industrial cameras, do you know if any filmmakers use non standard Bayer filters?