Comments on: Paul Thomas Anderson & Nicolas Winding Refn Join Forces To Save Fragile 35mm Film Prints

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 13 May 2016 07:39:01 +0000

His name is Craig Denney, not Denny.

By: ASLAM SIDDIQUI

ASLAM SIDDIQUI — Fri, 13 May 2016 07:39:01 +0000

I agree with the fact that digital projection is improving and having seen 300 rise of empire and amazing spiderman on 2k projection i feel the digital projection is now way ahead or atleast equal to that of 35mm projection and i feel it was e-cinema with its crappy 1.3K resolution which gave a bad name to digital projection.

By: Buddy

Buddy — Fri, 13 May 2016 07:39:01 +0000

Kodak is not 'going away'. They've recovered from near bankruptcy and are doing well as the only surviving supplier of 35 and 16mm film. Check out the 'shot on film' section on their website. (Which I can't link here because of anti-spamming detection- motion dot Kodak dot com)

By: Jaffar

Jaffar — Fri, 13 May 2016 07:39:01 +0000

Vinyl does not *clearly* sound better than CD nor does 35mm *clearly* look better than a DCP. Either one can look and sound better than the other depending on what encoding, method, and equipment is employed for playback. Solely quantitative or qualitative assessments and judgements must be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, AGFA is a crucial archive of independent exploitation cinema and genre cinema generally. They are making the right decision to digitize and restore their archive so that it can be distributed as DCPs, but I would not say that a 2k scan is sufficient for their longer term hope that the scans might be outputted to a 35mm polyester print. With more of their titles in distribution, and with the restored titles only they control for distribution, they would open a great revenue stream for the archive. I hope that they use some of this money to develop archival practices that benefit their physical holdings. Digitizing their collection to relieve wear on physical prints is good, but not providing a sufficient storage space with the correct environmental controls and microhousing would be a naive preservation effort.

By: buddy

buddy — Fri, 13 May 2016 07:39:01 +0000

I'm the manager of an arthouse theatre and I can tell you categorically that there aren't a 'myriad' of reasons why cinemas switched to digital, there's only one: 2 years ago studios announced they would stop making prints. We had to adapt or die. As for 'cost effective', it cost us about eighty thousand per screen to convert to digital. Many cinemas couldn't afford to do that and have shut down; we only could because our own sold one of his theatres to pay for conversion for the rest. The only way we're saving money is the lesser cost of shipping; versus the cost of conversion, it would take about 50 years for that saving to materialize. If we last another 10 thanks to internet availability of films, that would be a miracle. The only people saving money are the studios because as you say the costs of making and shipping digital prints are lesser.

By: James

James — Fri, 13 May 2016 07:39:01 +0000

I think there are two issues here that get blurred most of the time – movies being A) shot on film and B) sent as release prints on film. I'm fine with the people who'd say there's some magical quality to shooting on film, it definitely looks distinctive, though I've grown used to digital at this point as well. However the bigger issue is movies released across the country on 3000 screens on film. I hadn't seen a movie projected on film in a standard multiplex for years until I saw "Moneyball" in a dumpy theater in Vegas a few months after its release. It looked like garbage and the scratched, poor quality release print, poorly projected and out of focus, reminded me of countless such experiences when I was younger. Film, properly projected somewhere like The Egyptian or The Aero here in LA, still looks gorgeous, no argument, but the vast majority of movies aren't properly projected, and digital projection improves the experience of watching them for the majority of the audience.

By: Xian

Xian — Fri, 13 May 2016 07:39:01 +0000

The "vinyl is better" argument is based on specious reasoning and a lack of understanding about the halcyon technology from yesteryear. Go to Vox online and look up the article "Vinyl's Great But It's Not Better Than CDs" to get an idea of why this is. Same with film vs. digital… I've been to recent screenings that decry the use of digital projection/distribution and pile on the praise for film prints, then they screen a print fresh from the studio that's cleaned up, and voila… it's faded, full of pops and scratches, the focus often feels soft, etc. etc. etc. One man's trash, I guess. But let's put to rest the fallacy that somehow older technology is better because that's what we grew up with, or "that's the way it's been" or any other myriad reason behind such Luddite attitudes.