Out of the shadows, cinematographers debate
Submitted by Peter Cioni on Mon, 01/16/2012 - 17:16
Not sure how I feel about this article in the Chicago Tribune about the differences in sculpting light between digital and film.
"It's the death of shadows!" a gaffer, i.e., movie-set electrician, said to a Los Angeleno friend of mine. He was decrying how the digital filmmaking revolution had compromised the image quality (not to mention his own freelance employment) in feature filmmaking.
The quotation from the gaffer is naive and mis-informed, in my opinion. How can digital capture replace the need for gaffers? I think it's funny that they use "Public Enemies" as an example of bad digital capture (shot on F23 and graded by Stefan Sonnenfeld btw).
Overall, it's the skill of the cinematographer that dictates whether the images will look good or bad. Whether a digital camera can or cannot re-create the finale of "War Horse" remains to be seen and is quite subjective. Both film and digital have aesthsetic differences, and there's always the right tool for the right job.
The biggest takeaway from the article--not that it's a surprise to us--is that digital cameras "improve by the hour." This will never be true about film.
