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Monday, May 19, 2008

Spielberg Concedes He May One Day Have to Shoot Digitally...

...but he hopes it isn't soon.

From some Chicago Tribune Cannes coverage:

    "Making a film on celluloid," [Spielberg] said, is a threatened mode of expression.

    "Digital cinema is inevitable. It's right around the corner. And someday," said Spielberg, "even I will have to convert."


The official Cannes site has a slightly longer Spielberg quote that offers some more nuance:

    "The film is being released digitally on a lot of screens, about 300. Making a film digitally and releasing a film in the same digital process gives a beautiful image. It creates an extraordinarily clean, sharp image, but making a film on celluloid - as I’d like to do with all of my pictures –then transferring, releasing it, and projecting it digitally is a very inferior image. So the decision to go out to a vast number of motion picture theatres was a simple decision for me to make. But digital cinema is inevitable, it’s right around the corner and even someday I will have to convert, but right now I love film.”

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2 Comments:

  • This from the guy who still edits on a flatbed. There are plenty of very good arguments for shooting film or printing film, but it's wrong to frame the argument like there's something being irretrievably lost in the conversion from film to digital. No one is going to stop Mr. Spielberg from shooting film if he wants to, just like they don't force him to use an Avid now.

    By Blogger Owen, at 10:20 PM  

  • I love film, but I haven't had a project that I could do on film in over a dozen years. Now the point is moot. Somewhere in the process the film goes digital. Almost every major film gets colorized digitally. With Speilberg's VFX lists, I doubt there isn't much that doesn't get digitized. He seems like he is being snobby for the sake of being snobby. So unbecoming.

    By Blogger GBH, at 2:12 AM  

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