"Film is Dead," says Director George Lucas

Los Angeles Times, front page article, July 11th.

"Oliver Stone stared in disbelief. Here he was sitting in a velvet seat in George Lucas' private screening room, listening to the director fortell the death of film.

To Stone, director of such films as Platoon, and JFK, Lucas' vision of digital movie making sounded like blasphemy. Around him, other A-list directors-including Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Robert Zemeckis-fidgeted as Lucas challedged a century of tradition, warning his colleagues to embrace the future of be left behind."

From my perspective, this is absolutely stunning.

J. Roberts

J. Roberts said:

Los Angeles Times, front page article, July 11th.

"Oliver Stone stared in disbelief. Here he was sitting in a velvet
seat in George Lucas' private screening room, listening to the
director fortell the death of film.
To Stone, director of such films as Platoon, and JFK, Lucas' vision
of digital movie making sounded like blasphemy. Around him, other
A-list directors-including Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola,
and Robert Zemeckis-fidgeted as Lucas challedged a century of
tradition, warning his colleagues to embrace the future of be left
behind."

From my perspective, this is absolutely stunning.

J. Roberts

Click to expand...

--

Like the term "dial the telephone", the term "seeing a film" will still be used but our children's children will ask why they call it "film", since it's plastic, round and small.

Jim DeLuco
DeLuco Photography
http://www.delucophoto.com

Most or all of the last Star Wars movie was shot with DV. I think Lucas expected the movie theaters to be all digital by the time the movie was realeased. From my understanding the quality on the big screen from a digital projector is nothing short of phenomenal! This is the future of movie making for sure! And I think this bodes well for us still photogs as well. Film may very well be dead. [pretty soon anyway ]

J. Roberts said:

Los Angeles Times, front page article, July 11th.

"Oliver Stone stared in disbelief. Here he was sitting in a velvet
seat in George Lucas' private screening room, listening to the
director fortell the death of film.
To Stone, director of such films as Platoon, and JFK, Lucas' vision
of digital movie making sounded like blasphemy. Around him, other
A-list directors-including Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola,
and Robert Zemeckis-fidgeted as Lucas challedged a century of
tradition, warning his colleagues to embrace the future of be left
behind."

From my perspective, this is absolutely stunning.

J. Roberts

Click to expand...

--
Robert Rodriguez
Rodriguez Photography
[email protected]

Interestingly enough, Spielberg, Coppola, and Zemeckis left George behind a long time ago.

It isn't too hard to imagine movies going the way of all digital once it is economically feasible for both filmmakers and theaters. As it stands, 35mm motion picture film/lab costs are insane. Maybe affordable "theater quality digital" will make it easier for quality films (er, digitals?) to get made.

James

J. Roberts said:

Los Angeles Times, front page article, July 11th.

"Oliver Stone stared in disbelief. Here he was sitting in a velvet
seat in George Lucas' private screening room, listening to the
director fortell the death of film.
To Stone, director of such films as Platoon, and JFK, Lucas' vision
of digital movie making sounded like blasphemy. Around him, other
A-list directors-including Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola,
and Robert Zemeckis-fidgeted as Lucas challedged a century of
tradition, warning his colleagues to embrace the future of be left
behind."

From my perspective, this is absolutely stunning.

J. Roberts

Click to expand...

James Kallstrom said:

Interestingly enough, Spielberg, Coppola, and Zemeckis left
George behind a long time ago.

Click to expand...

Is this a joke? Don't you realize how much box office Lucas' last film did? And when was Coppola's last hit?

J. Roberts

I was speaking more of the "creative ability" of those three directors, but yes, Lucas has made a TON of money.

James

J. Roberts said:

James Kallstrom said:

Interestingly enough, Spielberg, Coppola, and Zemeckis left
George behind a long time ago.

Click to expand...

Is this a joke? Don't you realize how much box office Lucas' last
film did? And when was Coppola's last hit?

J. Roberts

Click to expand...

I can only speak for myself (and I am a very enthusiastic digital snapshooter) but there's no way "film is dead."

Film quality is still superior, in most instances, and there are always going to be movie producers who find it cheaper to shoot on low-quality film stock instead of investing in digital-ready equipment.

I read where Lucas only recently became aware of how poorly "Phantom Menace" was received. Maybe he should read some of the complaints about "Clones"' image quality.

Anyone know how Minority Reports was filmed? I thought it looked cool--much MUCH better than Phantom Menace from a film projector. FWIW, Star Wars sucked on film. The noise in the darker areas looked like really poor jpeg compression--blobs of color and all.

Terry M said:

I can only speak for myself (and I am a very enthusiastic digital
snapshooter) but there's no way "film is dead."

Film quality is still superior, in most instances, and there are
always going to be movie producers who find it cheaper to shoot on
low-quality film stock instead of investing in digital-ready
equipment.

I read where Lucas only recently became aware of how poorly
"Phantom Menace" was received. Maybe he should read some of the
complaints about "Clones"' image quality.

Click to expand...

The difficulty that film will have is that the major movie chains will go digital and there will be no place to show film movies except perhaps at boutique theaters.

Depends on the economics. Right now all the economics say "digital" with only two exceptions: The capital investment in digital equipment for the theaters and the fear of piracy.

The capital investment won't be a problem for the major chains--they can hack the breech cost, and digital will pay them back within the first year. For instance, a movie chain can move a picture from theater to theater or show a picture in several different theaters, within seconds to fit the box office receipts, all by a kid on a keyboard.

But the piracy issue is stickier and is probably the only thing holding them back so far.

Terry M said:

I can only speak for myself (and I am a very enthusiastic digital
snapshooter) but there's no way "film is dead."

Film quality is still superior, in most instances, and there are
always going to be movie producers who find it cheaper to shoot on
low-quality film stock instead of investing in digital-ready
equipment.

I read where Lucas only recently became aware of how poorly
"Phantom Menace" was received. Maybe he should read some of the
complaints about "Clones"' image quality.

Click to expand...

--
RDKirk

'I know you're smarter than I am. But I think you're making up some of those words.' Rocky Rooster from 'Chicken Run'

Further eading:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/725920.asp

RDKirk said:

Depends on the economics. Right now all the economics say
"digital" with only two exceptions: The capital investment in
digital equipment for the theaters and the fear of piracy.

The capital investment won't be a problem for the major
chains--they can hack the breech cost, and digital will pay them
back within the first year. For instance, a movie chain can move a
picture from theater to theater or show a picture in several
different theaters, within seconds to fit the box office receipts,
all by a kid on a keyboard.

But the piracy issue is stickier and is probably the only thing
holding them back so far.

Click to expand...

James Kallstrom said:

Maybe
affordable "theater quality digital" will make it easier for
quality films (er, digitals?) to get made.

Click to expand...

Nice dream. However, it is more likely that after switching to digital will just make it easier for your local megaplex to show the same movie on all 20 screens. Right now they are limited by the number of prints a studio distributes. If films are distributed digitally, you'll see just a handful of blockbusters.

The digital video cameras might be there, however the presentation equipment still leaves a lot to be desired.

I watched 'Attack of the Clones' in one of Lucas' fancy THX/DLP theatres and was anything but impressed. The black level was more like a middle grey, there were stepladder artifacts all over the screen and the contrast ratio was extremely poor. That is not to mention that the movie couldn't be digitally projected in the cities better theatres because the DLP projectors can't provide sufficient power to light the large screen surfaces. DLP is a great technology for small HT screens, however it doesn't seem to be up to the task of true cinema projection just yet.

Don't get me wrong, I am an avid fan of my D1H and only use my F5 as a backup and for certain special purpose applications (when I need real wide angle shots for the most part). Digital has a huge number of advantages in both still and video, and naturally it also has a few disadvantages as well. Film > is

Going back to movies, I think the recording/editing technology is there - however without decent projection technology it is still in its infancy and film is still the superior medium in that market. However, with that said - the digital recording system Lucas is using should allow home theatre systems to provide every bit of quality that the theatre offers once blue laser DVDs come around and HDTV sets become more standardized.

Thomas Sapiano said:

The digital video cameras might be there, however the presentation
equipment still leaves a lot to be desired.

Click to expand...

Did you see the movie Ali? The article that I quoted containted a story about how a part of Ali was shot digitally.

J. Roberts

J. Roberts said:

A-list directors-including Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola,
and Robert Zemeckis-fidgeted as Lucas challedged a century of
tradition, warning his colleagues to embrace the future of be left
behind." From my perspective, this is absolutely stunning.

Click to expand...

Why? Lucas has turned out nothing but garbage since the original

Star Wars. I know he is a technology freak, but he was in the company of directors/producers who are light years ahead of him in talent.

I think this thread touches two different issues. The first is how a film is shot and edited; the second how a film is distributed and brought to public vision. In the first issue there will always be two different worlds: the Hollywood garbage, in which special effects are more important than direction, plot, acting, art direction and music; and the rest of the cinema world, where (sometimes) you can even find ideas. Going digital for the Hollywood garbage is natural, since special effects are digital. For the rest of the world it is just a waste of money and technology. Now the Hollywood garbage makes lots of money, while the rest does not make any (with the exeption of Indian cinema): but that has relevance only to those poor people who think that money is the measure of the world, and Titanic is more important to the history of cinema than a Kieslowsky movie since it made a lot of $$$s.

The second part is: how is film delivered to the screens? There digital distribution makes a lot of economical sense; and you can distribute digitally a perfectly traditional film, or print on film a perfectly digital movie. It is only a matter of economics and logistics. Moving big pizzas around the world is costly, does not make big sense and is prone to piracy just like sending a film through optical fibers or satellite.

Arthur Dent said:

Why? Lucas has turned out nothing but garbage since the original
Star Wars. I know he is a technology freak, but he was in the
company of directors/producers who are light years ahead of him in
talent.

Click to expand...

Garbage? Do you think these famous directors listen to Lucas because he produces Garbage? Since your artistic sensibilities are so finely honed, why don't you call a meeting, and see how many of these guys show up? Oh by the way, the end of the article tells about Oliver Stone asking Lucas' studio for a digital camera.

J. Roberts

Fabio said:

I think this thread touches two different issues. The first is how
a film is shot and edited; the second how a film is distributed and
brought to public vision. In the first issue there will always be
two different worlds: the Hollywood garbage, in which special
effects are more important than direction, plot, acting, art
direction and music; and the rest of the cinema world, where
(sometimes) you can even find ideas. Going digital for the
Hollywood garbage is natural, since special effects are digital.
For the rest of the world it is just a waste of money and
technology. Now the Hollywood garbage makes lots of money, while
the rest does not make any (with the exeption of Indian cinema):
but that has relevance only to those poor people who think that
money is the measure of the world, and Titanic is more important to
the history of cinema than a Kieslowsky movie since it made a lot
of $$$s.
The second part is: how is film delivered to the screens? There
digital distribution makes a lot of economical sense; and you can
distribute digitally a perfectly traditional film, or print on film
a perfectly digital movie. It is only a matter of economics and
logistics. Moving big pizzas around the world is costly, does not
make big sense and is prone to piracy just like sending a film
through optical fibers or satellite.

Click to expand...

Fabio, why bash hollywood? It is what the world wide audience wants. No one wants those deadly boring foreign films. No body cares.

J. Roberts

Choice said:

James Kallstrom said:

Maybe
affordable "theater quality digital" will make it easier for
quality films (er, digitals?) to get made.

Click to expand...

Nice dream. However, it is more likely that after switching to
digital will just make it easier for your local megaplex to show
the same movie on all 20 screens. Right now they are limited by
the number of prints a studio distributes. If films are
distributed digitally, you'll see just a handful of blockbusters.

Click to expand...

On the other hand, maybe with having digital "prints" easily accessible (downloadable) to the theaters, without having to ship and store celluloid reels, they'll be able to show a greater variety of films on a day-to-day basis. Anybody know what the lead time is for a theater to order and get shipped to it a particular film? Anybody know how much the shipping and ordering costs vs. the showing? Lower switching costs could bring greater variety of re-runs. (The big problem is going to be the price of the digital projectors. A place like http://picturepubpizza.com isn't going to be able to afford expensive new equipment.)

J. Roberts said:

Fabio, why bash hollywood? It is what the world wide audience
wants. No one wants those deadly boring foreign films. No body
cares.

J. Roberts

Click to expand...

Because history of vision is made by those deadly boring foreign film, not by some specal effects box office kings. And the history of vision influences the way we see things, the way we frame the reality, the way we press the shutter. Kubrick, Tarantino or the Cohen brothers may have had some influence on it. But they were and are very far from the Hollywood mainstream. Box office is not the measure of the world.

Fabio