Why the art of film is on an irretrievable course of decline
I seem to be making a specialty of depressing lunchtime reading this week. Today's star attraction was a lengthy study of film projection in the Boston area. Even though I almost never go out to films any longer, I do want to know that if I decide to spend TEN DOLLARS for two hours of my own time, I'm going to see something along the lines of what I expect of what was once called "the silver screen." Even with my very occasional sojourns into cinemas, I have been noticing some distinctly odd visual failures in the past few years, and this passage explains a good part of the problem:
Kornfeld explained to me that this print [from an early 1960s cartoon feature]looks so good at least in part because it predated the introduction of the dreaded "DI" - or Digital Intermediate. In Kornfeld's color wheel of film technologies, DI occupies the polar opposite position to Technicolor. In a DI film, every frame of the original is scanned, digitized, manipulated, and transferred back to negative for mass printing. "It screws up the color. It screws up shadow detail, contrast values, everything," he says. "It's junk. It looks terrible, it can't handle low-light scenes - so if you ever see a low-light scene, you'll see a lot of noise and digital error correction crap because it does not know what to do with it. It looks like doggie doo compared to what film can look like. So you're getting this extremely degraded image."
And this is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. As most of you know at this point, actual film is steadily being eroded in favor of DVD projection. Because US consumers are sheep, US corporate interests are all about convenience and more bucks for the minimal amount of bang, and theater managers are caught in between. And projectionist guru David Kornfeld is printed in the current Phoenix pointing out in words of one syllable that the shiny digital emperor has no clothes:
"Digital sucks. It is a giant, complete, total crock. It is a scam. It is a lie. It is a de-evolution, it is a step backwards, it is garbage. You are not getting the kind of experience that you would be able to get with film. You are being cheated. You have an inferior image, inferior sound, inferior color rendition, inferior motion tracking, inferior shadow detail, inferior light, inferior in every conceivable, possible thing.
"When you talk about quality and digital in the same sentence, it's almost laughable to me. You can't uphold a high standard of presentation with digital. That's the problem with it. It just naturally sucks. And you know, it's one of those things where if you read these jerkweeds it's like, 'Oh, we have this resolution now and this resolution, and we can do this to this, and we can do this to this, and we can add the grain to it and scratches and make it look more like film' - just so that no one in the world will shoot or project in film! Now if you can explain that crap to me, I would love to understand it. You've already got the superior technology right in your hands.
"It's the death of an entire craft and the death of an entire way of seeing movies. And the problem is, if it goes too far, if this ridiculousness goes too far, it's something you're never going to be able to bring back, alright? At least not easily. And so, you know, if you think watching, oh, I don't know, Lawrence of Arabia on your television screen at home is the same as watching a 70mm presentation of it, you're out of your mind. OK? It isn't. And the problem is that they can push it to the point where you'll never see it right again."
The same could be said about mp3s and other widespread methods of recorded sound distro preferred by US consumers today. Our films look like crap. Our music sounds about as full-fidelity as an old-style elevator muzak tape. Our cultural legacy: ready for the compost bin.
Full article:
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/movies/141871-david-kornfelds-high-noon/
Kornfeld explained to me that this print [from an early 1960s cartoon feature]looks so good at least in part because it predated the introduction of the dreaded "DI" - or Digital Intermediate. In Kornfeld's color wheel of film technologies, DI occupies the polar opposite position to Technicolor. In a DI film, every frame of the original is scanned, digitized, manipulated, and transferred back to negative for mass printing. "It screws up the color. It screws up shadow detail, contrast values, everything," he says. "It's junk. It looks terrible, it can't handle low-light scenes - so if you ever see a low-light scene, you'll see a lot of noise and digital error correction crap because it does not know what to do with it. It looks like doggie doo compared to what film can look like. So you're getting this extremely degraded image."
And this is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. As most of you know at this point, actual film is steadily being eroded in favor of DVD projection. Because US consumers are sheep, US corporate interests are all about convenience and more bucks for the minimal amount of bang, and theater managers are caught in between. And projectionist guru David Kornfeld is printed in the current Phoenix pointing out in words of one syllable that the shiny digital emperor has no clothes:
"Digital sucks. It is a giant, complete, total crock. It is a scam. It is a lie. It is a de-evolution, it is a step backwards, it is garbage. You are not getting the kind of experience that you would be able to get with film. You are being cheated. You have an inferior image, inferior sound, inferior color rendition, inferior motion tracking, inferior shadow detail, inferior light, inferior in every conceivable, possible thing.
"When you talk about quality and digital in the same sentence, it's almost laughable to me. You can't uphold a high standard of presentation with digital. That's the problem with it. It just naturally sucks. And you know, it's one of those things where if you read these jerkweeds it's like, 'Oh, we have this resolution now and this resolution, and we can do this to this, and we can do this to this, and we can add the grain to it and scratches and make it look more like film' - just so that no one in the world will shoot or project in film! Now if you can explain that crap to me, I would love to understand it. You've already got the superior technology right in your hands.
"It's the death of an entire craft and the death of an entire way of seeing movies. And the problem is, if it goes too far, if this ridiculousness goes too far, it's something you're never going to be able to bring back, alright? At least not easily. And so, you know, if you think watching, oh, I don't know, Lawrence of Arabia on your television screen at home is the same as watching a 70mm presentation of it, you're out of your mind. OK? It isn't. And the problem is that they can push it to the point where you'll never see it right again."
The same could be said about mp3s and other widespread methods of recorded sound distro preferred by US consumers today. Our films look like crap. Our music sounds about as full-fidelity as an old-style elevator muzak tape. Our cultural legacy: ready for the compost bin.
Full article:
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/movies/141871-david-kornfelds-high-noon/