The Death of Cinema pt. 94

digital totally degrades, it's just in a different way from film. hard drives crash, files become corrupt, software changes too quickly etc.

The fules who pooh-pooh the problems with digital should look at some of the threads about "how can I store my digital music collection" or "remastering digital recordings"

^^^

what do you mean I can't get my .wav files off this outdated minidisc format

I saw The Five Year Engagement Digital today, and it didn't look very good (a bit dim, a little fuzzy maybe). Then again, I went to see War Horse on film and it didn't work at all. Wound up waiting 90 minutes before they said they couldn't fix the projector. Got two passes for other films though.

what do you mean I can't get my .wav files off this outdated minidisc format

^ exactly, and that's only going back a decade or two. challenge for archiving digital film & cet is to make sure it's still accessible a century from now.

punch cards dudes

You can just scan punch cards and OCR them! The holes are big!

I like that the basic argument here is that equipment changes

when what that basically boils down to is "film has been this 35mm bulky format for so fucking long"

I mean, yeah, it works, but.....

Like I said before: the ability to view films, long-term, is completely contingent on someone curating and preserving the work, regardless of physical medium. Anything beyond that is quibbling.

I mean, yeah, it works, but.....

if it ain't broke let's spend a bajillion dollars to maybe fix it or make it worse!

Anything beyond that is quibbling

some mediums are simpler and more cost-effective than others, is the issue

Like I said before: the ability to view films, long-term, is completely contingent on someone curating and preserving the work, regardless of physical medium. Anything beyond that is quibbling.

yes, that is the exact intention and there are absolutely no pluses to this from an audience, theater, or film archivist standpoint

cinema's dead, lock thread

some mediums are simpler and more cost-effective than others, is the issue

keeping up on projector tech is pricey

shipping huge-ass film reels made out of expensive materials all the time? no prob!

btw I have no real horse in this and just like prodding Shakey and Morbs, so you can dismiss me at will

watch out guys, digital might take over and celluloid will go the way of the VINYL AUDIO RECORD

btw I have no real horse in this and just like prodding Shakey and Morbs, so you can dismiss me at will

― mh, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 5:14 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark

if we all 'dismiss' you will you leave the thread

watch out guys, digital might take over and celluloid will go the way of the VINYL AUDIO RECORD

lol this is a really lazy/inaccurate parallel and you know it.

Yes, there were still be a place for vinyl records and physical books and other great analog technologies, but the much smaller scale of the these things and their production allows them to keep going alongside their digital equivalents whereas the enormous cost involved in the making, distribution and preservation of motion pictures is a game changer.

Yes and no, I do think there will be boutique/specialty theaters that always have maintained film equipment, but it's a risk.

If anything, I think the real risk coming from widespread digital is the loss of talent and respect for theater. The thing lost in home viewing, or in some cheaper theaters (which sadly is what art house ones tend to be) is the lack of craft and attention to viewing conditions, setting, and attention to the equipment and presentation of the film.

That's less of an issue in smaller theaters showing small-run or art films, in that they usually show a lot of care for the material, but I've been in a number of those places that were also just chain places that didn't get refurnished and they wanted to make a few bucks without any more investment. So we're left with crackling stereo sound and seats that are falling over.

Digital projectors are a risk in that the theory is you turn the thing on, push a button, and the film plays itself so you can just have one of the kids from the concession stand go up and push the button. That lack of care is going to kill the presentation value if anything even starts to go wrong. The main issue I've heard with that is Ebert's issues with theater owners not properly swapping lenses when going from a 3d to standard feature and occasional system glitches, but it's probably the tip of the iceberg.

If anything, I think the real risk coming from widespread digital is the loss of talent and respect for theater

I should have said cinemas, mea culpa

digital totally degrades, it's just in a different way from film. hard drives crash, files become corrupt, software changes too quickly etc.

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 5:27 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hardware crashes and corruption can be prevented. Basically you put multiple copies in different locations and compare them to each other regularly.

Software changes are not degradation, although they are a significant problem.

aren't theater digital systems really expensive though? i suspect most of my local megachains are still using film, unless they've digitally added scratches and pops somehow

Hardware crashes and corruption can be prevented.

film decomposition and degradation can also be prevented. QED.

They can be mitigated, but not prevented, if the film is actually played.

aren't theater digital systems really expensive though? i suspect most of my local megachains are still using film, unless they've digitally added scratches and pops somehow

yes they are really expensive, and no all theaters have not converted, because the studios are insisting that the theaters absorb the costs entirely.

xp

They can be mitigated, but not prevented, if the film is actually played.

thought we were discussing archiving/storage, not things being shown regularly

afaik all the megachains near me have switched over to digital in all their main theaters, which isn't a backwater. I want to go to the independently-owned chain nearby to check that out. The couple local small indie theaters are definitely film-only.

film decomposition and degradation can also be prevented. QED.

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 8:34 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thought we were discussing archiving/storage, not things being shown regularly

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 8:37 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and then a warehouse burns down and you need to make another copy...

and then a virus eats your backups and your files are gone

I don't see what the point of going around like this is

just stop pretending like there are no issues with digital, okay? There are.

just stop pretending like there are no issues with digital, okay? There are.

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 7:45 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark

mh admitted that he's just trolling the thread. i wouldn't even bother if i were you

I never said there were no issues! And I'm not trolling the thread, I was prodding Shakey and Morbs' cynical-at-all-accounts ideas of digital.

it's not an all-accounts sort of idea, it has to do with the amount of money involved. whenever someone insists that I buy a SHINY NEW product that is SUPER EXPENSIVE but offers nothing beyond eliminating people's jobs and offering up a different set of problems than the ones we already have I'm inclined to be suspicious.

like, "here's this shiny new toy that does the work of 10 people! Except it doesn't always work. Also it costs 1 jillion dollars."

it's always illuminating to see which rubes want to be the first in line

There are shitloads of problems with digital, the largest of which being that there's no body establishing good baseline standards. The HDTV standard was started in the early - mid 1980s and took until recent years to gain implementation after adoption. On the theater front, if there is a similar body, I'm not aware of it (MPAA lol?). 2K projectors are standard and 4K are being pushed. 3D is 'standard' but I kind of doubt it is, although others probably could speak to that. Peter Jackson wants to project in 48 fps -- does existing hardware support that? I mean, making theaters jump through hoops constantly is more of an issue than people squawking about their moving looking 'too smooth'

Can we all just accept as a given that cinema was, from the beginning, an incredibly fragile medium with little potential for lasting permanence?

I don't see anyone here complaining about movies looking too smooth

xp

Point of evidence, it looks like the locally-owned theater chain that exists in the suburbs/smaller communities has all 4k, bright-lit 3d-capable projectors, but only at their three largest locations.

yes, that is the exact intention and there are absolutely no pluses to this from an audience, theater, or film archivist standpoint

cinema's dead, lock thread

― mh, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 5:13 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Like I said before: the ability to view films, long-term, is completely contingent on someone curating and preserving the work, regardless of physical medium. Anything beyond that is quibbling.

― mh, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 5:01 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

i mean what the christ is this. nobody's calling for the death of digital, the upsides of it are obvious to everyone, and even if they werent it wouldn't matter because it's here to stay. even nolan isn't anti-digital, he's advocating for the director's choice. theater owners want to make their own choices about how they exhibit movies, not be bullied into changing at massive expense and at the expense of programming options. and quibbling? it would be convenient for you if that were so, but the specific differences do matter hugely. you're just being wildly disingenuous all over the place

No, I just felt, perhaps wrongly, that "The Death of Cinema" and the general tone of articles posted is all nay-saying and speaking about the problems, where in the long term many of these changes could make some archiving easier for film from here on out.

It just kind of rings to me like the entire threads of Dr. Morbs naysaying on anything made fewer than 30 years ago. I agree that it'd be a horrible tragedy if we lost even one film from that era due to an inability to project an old reel, a distributor only shipping in a new format that film had not been converted to, or if we end up with fragmentation of the market and an inability to just, you know, watch a movie.

The point is that the upsides are _not_ obvious to everyone and that there is a lot of naysaying on digital, not just due to the effect it is having on traditional filmgoing.

I do appreciate the call-out, though. "quibbling" and the like was overreaching, sorry on that

i would think it is in mega-chain/studio's interests to make digital as cumbersome and high-barrier as possible -- as soon as a low-cost, low-maintenance format/system is entrenched, this would effectively put every dork with a fancy camera rental and a kickstarter project on the same playing field as brett ratner.

Good point. Can we just burn the MPAA to the ground?

yeah sorry i didnt wanna be mean it was just frustratin to read. i do feel like the truly anti-digital partisans are a pretty miniscule minority at this point, ten years ago it was more of a thing but it seems that just about everyone has accepted it, some with more misgivings than others - everyone knows now that you can make some amazing looking movies on digital, and everyone knows that top shelf digital projection looks pretty darn good. these weren't taken as a given a decade ago.

i mean part of the thing with the academy's digital dilemma 2 study is that basically every filmmaker they surveyed was totally ignorant about or unconcerned with the archival issues related to digital, and when it comes to documentarians and indie filmmakers, those are the guys who arguably benefit the most from the digital revolution and also stand to get hit the hardest re: these archival issues

from the 55 new answers I figured celluloid musta been banned today.

Two years from now (or less) the studios aren't even gonna be sending out film prints.

and then a virus eats your backups and your files are gone

I don't see what the point of going around like this is

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, May 1, 2012 8:44 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't want to continue this either, but: not a degradation issue. (also not something that has ever happened to a bank or other financial institute)

sorry but thats insanely reductive (and to what purpose??)

Reductive, but true. BTW, the great advantage of digital over analog is the ridiculous ease of making as many copies as you like. If arguments are being made that analog is durable, then the counter argument is that digital is reproducable. You can put all your eggs in one master analog copy in cans in a vault, or you can distribute your eggs in a hundred, or a thousand, or a million, or more digital copies for amazingly little cost in money or effort.

But, as I said so reductively, anything can be lost if no one pays any attention to saving it. Digital or analog makes no difference to that part of the equation. And it is desire and attention that make up the lion's share of any archival effort. It actually helps if it is in a cheap and easy to reproduce medium, tbqf, so long as the desire to save it exists.