Film isn’t dead, yet

by Tom Morrison

What does it take to end a 100-year-old tradition? With more and more advances in digital cinema camera technology, some people in the film industry will have to face that question sooner than they want to.

Until a few years ago, movies were almost exclusively shot on rolls of film. In 2002, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones became the first major Hollywood film to be shot entirely on a digital camera. Acceptance of this relatively new format has grown in the last 10 years, with directors like Martin Scorsese and David Fincher (The Social Network) abandoning the film format. However, other directors such as Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight) and Steven Spielberg are saying they will continue shooting on film until it’s not possible for them or digital cameras can produce a quality better than film.

This movement toward digital is affecting cinemas as much as it is actual production. According to a recent report from IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence Service, 51.5 per cent of theatre rooms worldwide were using digital projectors instead of traditional film projectors at the end of 2011. Movie studios will stop distributing 35 mm film prints to the U.S. and other major markets by the end of 2013.

The Windsor International Film Festival will be using digital projectors to show Blu-Ray DVDs in all three of its screening areas, but two 35 mm projectors will also be used for certain films. Executive Director Peter Coady says he has been warned by distribution companies that his festival will soon have to stop shining a light through celluloid strips.

“Any year now, we’ll have to switch over to complete digital, which is why many smaller theatres in Ontario are shutting down, because they can’t afford the new projectors,” Coady says.

Coady isn’t against this digital movement, but he says it’s “unfortunate” that WIFF will have to spend money on digital projectors to continue the festival. He does like how digital filmmaking has opened the door to the industry for a lot of people. Now almost anyone with a camera can make a film.

Gavin Michael Booth, 34, has been a fan of movies since he saw Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and E.T. when he was young. He likes how far digital filmmaking has come. The Social Network, which was shot with a Red One digital camera, was the first movie he saw that made him realize this format would replace film.

“That’s one of the most beautifully shot movies I’ve ever seen. I never even questioned that it was shot on 35 mm the whole time I watched it,” says Booth, who also runs Mimetic Entertainment, a film and music video production company. “I think Star Wars Episode II was the first film shot on digital and that scared me because that looked like a video game.”

Booth says story matters more to him than the format and the quality of a film image depends mostly on the quality of the cinematographer, who is responsible for controlling the camera and the lighting of every image on the screen.

“If you give a Canon 5D to a professional photographer and you give it to my mom, it’s not going to be the same quality of image. The camera doesn’t make the photographer. It’s all about how that camera is used.”

Best Cinematography seems to be the category digital filmmakers have the best chance of winning an Academy Award in. Of the last four winners, three – Slumdog Millionaire, Avatar and Hugo – were shot with digital cameras. Slumdog Millionaire is the only digital Best Picture winner and last year’s winner, The Artist, was not just shot on film, but also in black and white, in full-screen instead of wide-screen and almost completely without sound.

As of November, two of the five highest grossing live-action films of 2012 in the U.S were shot on film. Compare this to 2007, in which none of the top 10 were shot digitally.

Cinema is heading toward being completely digital, but it hasn’t reached the frame where everyone in the industry is willing to make the switch. It takes a lot to end a tradition this old.