Movies Tarantino throws Roger Deakins under the bus (Film vs Digital)

[HenryFlower]

i prefer film to digital, but QT is being a gatekeeping dork in this interview. spitting on the digital photography work of Roger Deakins—a guy who has shot beautiful cinematography in both film & digital—is lame as fuck. if anything, Deakins should be praised for legitimizing digital photography in the film vs digital debate.

More crap has been shot on film and the last 2 decades have been abysmal for movies. Nobody's writing anything. A storytelling medium with no storytelling. That's the real problem. Not your goofy formats.

 

[Nightgunner05]

Blade Runner 2049 and 1917 are two of the best looking movies I have ever seen and they are both digital. My money is on digital.

 

[HenryFlower]

Blade Runner 2049 and 1917 are two of the best looking movies I have ever seen and they are both digital. My money is on digital.

see more movies.

 

[DM1982]

'You need 3 things to make a great movie;

A great script, a great script, and a great script' - Alfred Hitchcock stealing a line from Kenny Florien.


A great looking film is all well and good, but it doesnt mean shit if the story, script and acting isnt on point.

So idgaf about digital v film; plenty of gorgeous looking films that are boring and crap.

However, I prefer a classic, old looking quality to my films, that evoke an 80s and 90s time period. I dont like overly glossy, polished looking films, so I side with whichever method achieves that.

 

[Nightgunner05]

see more movies.

I have. Those are still the best looking.

 

[HenryFlower]

I have. Those are still the best looking.

 

[SSgt Dickweed]

I'll go with the guy who did NOT recently make the worst movie of his career because it's really just a love letter to himself.

 

[HHJ]

I tend to agree. I love Tarantino but he hates digital so much that I doubt he has even looked into it much. Saying Deakins "just doesn't want to light the set" was fucking ridiculous. Deakins is known for having huge, extremely complex lighting rigs such as this monster they used on BR2049:

I want this for my living room

 

[HHJ]

I'll go with the guy who did NOT recently make the worst movie of his career because it's really just a love letter to himself.

Fuck you,hippie

 

[Fox by the Sea]

tarantino can get fucked. washed up and doing the same movie for 20 years. he peaked with reservoir dogs.
deakins shoots some amazing movies.

 

[moreorless87]

i prefer film to digital, but QT is being a gatekeeping dork in this interview. spitting on the digital photography work of Roger Deakins—a guy who has shot beautiful cinematography in both film & digital—is lame as fuck. if anything, Deakins should be praised for legitimizing digital photography in the film vs digital debate.

He is being a bit dorky but there is truth to some of what he's saying in terms of "making digital look like film" being questionable. However with someone like Deakins I suspect if you asked him he would make the argument Tarantino himself states that he's using digital to create something that wouldn't be possible with film rather than just aping it.

I would say the most fundamental difference is less about colour or post processing(which is equally possible with scanned film) and more the very nature of the two mediums. Digital can have image noise of course but its not the same as grain, with film the image itself is built of grain which gives a different arguably smoother look to the exactitude of digital. Something like Blade Runner 2049 for example isn't beyond some basic design influences trying to look like Scott's original, its both more minimalistic in some ways much also looking for hyper detailed textures which digital brings out more of. I would say the same with other highly rated visual films from more recent years shot on digital like say Under the Skin or Blue is the Warmest Colour, the very exact look of digital is part of their nature. I mean personally as a photographer I do very much tend towards playing up this aspect in my work rather than looking to ape the look of film, when I want something to look like film I shoot film.

This for example playing up the sharpness on the frosty landscape with digital even with a relatively small file compared to my original. Its not just about detail which film can have plenty of but of higher perceived sharpness with more exact edges to things that shows up even on smaller files.

You could argue of course that in shooting Hateful Eight on 70mm Tarantino himself actually played down the difference as the larger format makes the grain structure less obvious, its why Kubrick for example shot 2001 on that format to give it a very "exact" look. That and Hollywood are probably my favourite films of his post Pulp Fiction though were he seems to have moved beyond being a script focused director towards a more visual one, hope he doesn't keep to his 10 film retirement talk now as I think his future career looks more interesting than it has for along time.

 

[Hollywood Jack]

What do you guys think about this? Do you agree with QT?

(timestamped)

Yeah. Digitally shot movies looked weird to me when I started watching them on Blu Ray. Movies shot on film looked awesome, though. Best of both worlds.

 

[SSgt Dickweed]

Fuck you,hippie

 

[Drain Bamage]

He is being a bit dorky but there is truth to some of what he's saying in terms of "making digital look like film" being questionable. However with someone like Deakins I suspect if you asked him he would make the argument Tarantino himself states that he's using digital to create something that wouldn't be possible with film rather than just aping it.

I would say the most fundamental difference is less about colour or post processing(which is equally possible with scanned film) and more the very nature of the two mediums. Digital can have image noise of course but its not the same as grain, with film the image itself is built of grain which gives a different arguably smoother look to the exactitude of digital. Something like Blade Runner 2049 for example isn't beyond some basic design influences trying to look like Scott's original, its both more minimalistic in some ways much also looking for hyper detailed textures which digital brings out more of. I would say the same with other highly rated visual films from more recent years shot on digital like say Under the Skin or Blue is the Warmest Colour, the very exact look of digital is part of their nature. I mean personally as a photographer I do very much tend towards playing up this aspect in my work rather than looking to ape the look of film, when I want something to look like film I shoot film.

This for example playing up the detail on the frosty landscape with digital even with a relatively small file compared to my original. Its not just about "detail" which film can have plenty of but of higher perceived sharpness with more exact edges to things that shows up even on smaller files.

You could argue of course that in shooting Hateful Eight on 70mm Tarantino himself actually played down the difference as the larger format makes the grain structure less obvious, its why Kubrick for example shot 2001 on that format to give it a very "exact" look. That and Hollywood are probably my favourite films of his post Pulp Fiction though were he seems to have moved beyond being a script focused director towards a more visual one, hope he doesn't keep to his 10 film retirement talk now as I think his future career looks more interesting than it has for along time.

I still havent really seen a convincing film grain effect on digital. It all looks like fake grain overlaid on a digital image, rather than the image itself being made of the grain. I bet they will solve that in the future though. With 8K sensors its so much data to work with.

I've been thinking with if they clump pixels together on the sensor, on a random basis frame by frame. You'd lose a lot of resolution that way, like your 8K sensor would effectively become more like a 2.5-4k sensor, but with randomized "grain" giving it a more organic, film like look.

 

[minute bull]

The cinematographer of Knives Out wants to end the film-vs.-digital debate

Article starts boldly: “Film has tremendous balls,” Christopher Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015. “Film is oak, digital is plywood.”

 

[Drain Bamage]

I'll go with the guy who did NOT recently make the worst movie of his career because it's really just a love letter to himself.

Lol how is it a love letter to himself?

 

[SSgt Dickweed]

Lol how is it a love letter to himself?

You can also skip to 6:45.

 

[Plissken]

Those huge lighting rigs Deakins uses are for using multiple cameras on a single scene something that happens more with digital now.
It's very difficult to make digital look good, imo, especially for certain types of films (like horror, or anything meant to be gritty by nature, sci-fi can get away with it more easily; though one of my favorite horror films in Session 9 was all digital, but it had a look almost of a documentary which made the format work perfectly for the film). Heck even watching the Dumb and Dumber sequel it looked like crap compared to the original due to going digital, giving it this weird fake candy colored look. As I mentioned before, comparing Twin Peaks Season 3 on blu-ray to the older seasons on the format make the new season look bad in comparison just due to the change in shooting format, and that's with Peter Deming at the helm (who also did Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive for Lynch, both outstanding looking shot on film). The original Blade Runner looks much better than 2049, Halloween H:40 looks worse than its' film shot predecessors (especially 1-6 and the Rob Zombie entries), despite a higher budget and someone at the helm that was an indie film darling before he decided to make stoner comedies.
It's not that digital can't fit or look good, it's just too difficult to get it to look good and then when it does it still doesn't compare well enough. It's like the lcd vs. crt tv debate where old tech that hasn't even had any advancements in years is still superior in image quality to modern tech that's being updated all the time.
I'd love to see analog film technology advance, they've been using the same cellulose (with some advances in smaller tighter packed silver grains) for a long time. If anyone has seen some of the silent era classics on blu-ray (the well preserved classics so they weren't too damaged) some of them look super lifelike (like eerily so) due to the super high contrast high silver content nitrate film they used, I'd love to look back at the type of film they used and combine it with modern tech to get that super lifelike look but even better.
There's room enough for both formats, but the abandonment of film for digital by so many is a big mistake in my opinion.

 

[minute bull]

There's room enough for both formats, but the abandonment of film for digital by so many is a big mistake in my opinion.

I don't think film will entirely be lost, but like with physical media vs streaming digital the latter is too convenient to pass up for many productions.

 

[Drain Bamage]

Those huge lighting rigs Deakins uses are for using multiple cameras on a single scene something that happens more with digital now.
It's very difficult to make digital look good, imo, especially for certain types of films (like horror, or anything meant to be gritty by nature, sci-fi can get away with it more easily; though one of my favorite horror films in Session 9 was all digital, but it had a look almost of a documentary which made the format work perfectly for the film). Heck even watching the Dumb and Dumber sequel it looked like crap compared to the original due to going digital, giving it this weird fake candy colored look. As I mentioned before, comparing Twin Peaks Season 3 on blu-ray to the older seasons on the format make the new season look bad in comparison just due to the change in shooting format, and that's with Peter Deming at the helm (who also did Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive for Lynch, both outstanding looking shot on film). The original Blade Runner looks much better than 2049, Halloween H:40 looks worse than its' film shot predecessors (especially 1-6 and the Rob Zombie entries), despite a higher budget and someone at the helm that was an indie film darling before he decided to make stoner comedies.
It's not that digital can't fit or look good, it's just too difficult to get it to look good and then when it does it still doesn't compare well enough. It's like the lcd vs. crt tv debate where old tech that hasn't even had any advancements in years is still superior in image quality to modern tech that's being updated all the time.
I'd love to see analog film technology advance, they've been using the same cellulose (with some advances in smaller tighter packed silver grains) for a long time. If anyone has seen some of the silent era classics on blu-ray (the well preserved classics so they weren't too damaged) some of them look super lifelike (like eerily so) due to the super high contrast high silver content nitrate film they used, I'd love to look back at the type of film they used and combine it with modern tech to get that super lifelike look but even better.
There's room enough for both formats, but the abandonment of film for digital by so many is a big mistake in my opinion.

I thought the most recent Halloween looked good. They made a good choice shooting on Cooke and Hawk lenses to desterilize the digital sharpness. That being said I do think Zombies Halloween's look outstanding. Again shot on Cooke. Those lenses just make everything look warm and inviting.