6. Digital Cinema Is Cheaper Than Film
Having spent the last article bolstering the digital filmmaking industry, I am now going to betray myself as a filthy Judas. Many of you reading this will possess a camera, and will be filmmakers. I am a filmmaker myself, and though I own no such equipment, I have very good, talented friends with whom I collaborate, and they have the whole shebang Canon 550Ds, Zoom h1s, tripods, shoulder mounts, lighting, plus the whole roster of editing software necessary to cut what we shoot together. My main collaborator has not had many jobs, he doesn't have a lot stashed away and doesn't come from a very rich background, and yet he has the ability to make HD films with hardly any expenditure beyond the initial purchasing of the equipment itself. And better equipment is getting cheaper. My friends own a small production company and shoot using the Black Magic Camera, a camera capable of shooting at 2.5K resolution which costs £1955 ($3,044.62) from the Black Magic website. Most US movie theatres are now projecting at 4K resolution, but until 2012, the standard resolution for cinema projectors was 2K. Compare this with the Epic-M Red Dragon, capable of shooting at 6K resolution, which is available pre-rig and lenses for $29,000. One is able, therefore, to shoot cinema quality film for nearly a tenth of the cost of industry standard equipment. The numbers are pretty impressive, and in terms of shooting, digital is incredibly efficient as a stock in comparison to film. Look at David Fincher, a director infamous for shooting great numbers of takes. Where before he would have to cut and print most of those and then watch them in rushes the next day - an expensive process - now he can watch his footage in HD as it is being shot, and is able to delete 30 or 40 takes at his leisure (much to the consternation of some of his cast; Jake Gyllenhaal spoke about how frustrating he found this on Zodiac). And many editors - Walter Murch primarily - are available online to discuss the pleasures of online non-linear editing compared to the labour-intensive flatbed cutting systems of yore. However, there is a key downfall of digital filmmaking which few people discuss, but which has been receiving more and more attention thanks to the efforts of Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation, and that is the business of archiving and storing films after their primary release. In 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science released a report entitled The Digital Dilemma, a document which examined the ramifications of the sudden proliferation of Digital Image Acquisition as a popular format. The report detailed some of the key issues of digital imaging in terms of archiving, namely that the specific formats of videos are constantly changing as the technology evolves. Have you ever been unable to open a Word document because your current software didn't support the old system? Same principle. This creates the issue of moving files from format to format, creating prohibitive expenses, and this is where the money gets dodgy. To quote from the report: "Economic models comparing long-term storage costs of film versus digital materials show that the annual cost of preserving film archival master material is $1,059 per title, and the annual cost of preserving a 4K digital master is $12,514,
an 11-fold difference." Consider the hundreds of films studios release each year. Consider the thousands of films they own which have to be preserved in a studio's archive. And consider all of the 20th, 30th, 50th anniversary re-releases which require constant digital remastering, and you will see just how important a film's existence as a long term product is, and how costly, in the long term, the expedient measure of adopting digital image acquisition wholesale can be. Note: Watch Side By Side, there are many detailed discussions concerning the digital vs. film debate with some of the best filmmakers in the business which are well worth investigating. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFGJY_NJwwg