Ryan McNeil
You might not have noticed, but there is a seismic shift happening in the way that the movies we watch are made and presented. Film – emulsion based material that is run through a camera to capture a moving image, turned into a positive image, and then run through a reel projector – is slowly dying. In its place, digital – films captured on electronic sensors, rendered on computers, saved to a hard drive, and presented on a data projector – is on the rise. This shift was very slow in coming, and didn’t arrive without a lot of naysaying…however, the tipping point might have arrived.
The question we as moviegoers should be asking ourselves is whether this is a good thing, and it’s the question a new documentary named SIDE BY SIDE attempts to answer.
Directed by Christopher Kenneally and hosted by Keanu Reeves, features interviews with dozens of directors, editors, effects wizards, and directors of photography from all sorts of films past and present. Some are staunch believers in the standard set by film. Some are enchanted by the possibilities opened by digital. Some have been converted, some are staunch believers. Discussion details all steps of the filmmaking process and shows us a before and after at every step.
So where does the film come down on the question of film versus digital?
Fittingly, it doesn’t definitively answer the question. Instead, it fosters the discussion, as is the case with many great documentaries. With that said, by the time the film is over, there aren’t that many left in the pews of The Church of Film. Most notably is Christopher Nolan and his DP Wally Pfister. Considering two of Nolan’s last three films have employed IMAX cameras, this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. For both Nolan and Pfister, the allure is in the quality that film allows – something digital has come really close to, but hasn’t achieved quite yet. Nolan wonders aloud whether we as consumers have been suckered into false advertising in the digital revolution. Nolan compares digital filmmaking to Chips Ahoy’s Soft & Chewy cookies, that included a chemical to give them the texture of being fresh-baked. Do we as audiences clamour for digital because it’s fresh out of the oven, or because that additive makes it taste that way?
While Nolan might have a point that film isn’t quite there yet, he isn’t alone. Lots of high-profile films from THE HUNGER GAMES to MONEYBALL were shot on film in recent years, and if this documentary has a flaw, it’s that believers in stock like Steven Spielberg and P.T. Anderson couldn’t contribute to the discussion. Still, the flock is dwindling with each passing year, and the main reason is that the quality of digital is getting better and better. For proof, dig up a blu-ray of 28 DAYS LATER. Compare its cold, pixelated, low-res look to the vibrance of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. Those two films were shot by the same DP, using the latest and greatest he had available to him…just six years apart.
Predictably, leading the charge for digital are directors like George Lucas and James Cameron. What’s interesting though is the way they classify digital filmmaking: they see it as a tool – a means to an end. They don’t necessarily call it “better”, so much as they underline the possibilities. Perhaps in the media they have seemed as though they are cramming the new down everyone’s throats…but the doc points out something we might never have known, or have since forgotten. Lucas and Cameron had to yell that much louder for the advancement of digital filmmaking because there were a lot of detractors. People within the industry thought these filmmakers were trying to force something inferior upon everyone, when the truth of the matter is that they were just trying to open people’s eyes to possibilities.
Digital filmmaking has had an interesting effect on audiences. In many ways, I believe it has jaded a new generation to the achievements of the greats. They have no respect for what was done practically because they’ve grown up in an age of digital effects. Seeing hundreds of Arabs storm Aqaba doesn’t impress a young film watcher because they saw Peter Jackson create hundreds of orcs with a MacBook Pro. These shots don’t resonate for this generation of filmgoers, because they’re used to cameras being a smaller size. What’s even more interesting is the lack of respect for shots in new films – again images that younger audiences think “were special effects”. Well no – often these amazing images are practical shots, footage that never could have been captured before. Still, to many it’s met with a shrug.
Listening to the directors speak about what drives them as artists in SIDE BY SIDE is fascinating. Lana Wachowski wonders if film will continue to influence filmmakers because “archeology always inspires”. Then there’s Robert Rodriquez who sums up the symbiotic relationship between the carpenters and their tools. He’s the one to point out that “technology pushes the art, and art pushes technology”. For me though, the quote of the night came from Steven Soderbergh who said that when he first saw what the RED camera could do, he felt the urge to “call film and tell her I’d met someone”.
Ultimately the question of “what’s better” is unanswerable – it could only be determined by capturing the same material on film and digital and presenting the results (as the film’s title alludes to) side-by-side. If you ask me, film has a lovely aesthetic, and has given us some amazing pieces of art through the first century of film. However, I believe some of its allure is romantic, and some is psychosomatic (actors talk about concentrating harder when they hear film whirring through a camera). Digital has come a long way in a short time. It has opened up possibilities previously unimaginable, and has made the art form more accessible to up and coming filmmakers.
SIDE BY SIDE might not come down in one camp or the other, but for me the answer is clear.
SIDE BY SIDE is available on-demand and currently showing in select cities around America. For full details, check out the film’s official website.
I’m looking forward to watching the documentary soon.
The way the course has been paved, the outcome is almost inevitable at this point.
“Soon”? Hopefully “soon” has come and gone for you over the past six days – it’s super easy to see this one so do yourself a favour and bump it up the queue.
The Last Projectionist covered a lot of the same ground but on a smaller scale and more intimately as it dealt with the people who exhibit films not those who make them.
I will be interested to see this. Until I do, a few thoughts on the subject:
I have mixed feelings on the move to digital. From a production point of view, it is an easy cheep format in comparison to film that is giving more independent low budget filmmakers more opportunity to enter the game. On the other hand, is it too easy, great art has always come out of overcoming limitations. If the limitations are removed will more filmmakers become lazy and follow the path of least resistance instead of being creative?
On an exhibition point of view, my local multiplex moved over to total digital projection more than a year ago and now only shows films on celluloid when a digital version is not available. The advantage of this is they do not scratch and mark the way film prints do, they are also always in focus (thanks to auto focus), something you can not say for film now that projectionists have all but disappeared. The downside they are clinical and lack a certain warmth you get from film.
Then you have the problems when they go wrong that I tweeted about on Sunday and you responded to. More on that on my own site in the next few days.
I don’t think “too easy” is a real knock against it. Reason being that good art is still good art. Sure, now you might have a wider net of artists all with access to the paints and the brushes, but that doesn’t mean they are all going to paint you something special.
I think the positives and negatives for digital presentation are on a par with what we used to commonly experience with film…we just all have selective memories.
Thanks for reading buddy.
Thought it was a very intresting documentary. I loved the fact it showed so many great scenes out of various movies. I also got the feeling that the cinematographers felt threatened by digital.
I don’t know why they would though. Just because the tools change doesn’t mean that the people using the tools would be out of a job. Pfister seems genuinely grumpy, but that comes more from him being unconvinced at the capability of digital right now (and he’s not entirely wrong).