What's Unique About the 2009 Oscar Noms?

We've had a CG-animated film win an Oscar ('Toy Story' won a special award in 1995, and 'Shrek' won in 2001, when the Best Animated Feature Film category was created.)

We've had a digitally-edited film win an Oscar ('The English Patient,' in 1996, was edited using an Avid, as was 'Titanic' in 1997.)

We've had lots of Best Visual Effects winners that have relied on computers.

But what have we never had, so far? A Best Cinematography winner -- or even a nominee -- that was shot using a digital camera.

Until this morning, that is, when 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' showed up on the list of nominees.

If it wins, what a milestone for all the cinematographers and techies who've helped test and improve digital cameras over the past decade. (And what a kick-in-the-teeth tipping point for our friends at Kodak, which is still running magazine ads about how much better film is than digital.)

Here's a piece from Film & Video about cinematographer Claudio Miranda's use of the Viper digital camera, from Thomson Grass Valley. (This Apple.com piece offers even more.)

Update: Mike Phillips points out, in the comments and via e-mail, that perhaps as much as 80 percent of 'Slumdog Millionaire' was shot with the SI-2K digital camera from Silicon Imaging. Cinematographer.com says it was used on more than half of the film. Ben Cain of HD Cinema has some criticism of the results.

What do you think? Is it as big a deal if 'Slumdog,' a film/digital hybrid, wins?

No More Digital Cameras for Dalsa

The Canadian company Dalsa is getting out of the business of making digital cameras for cinematographers. "The Origin camera, launched in 2004, won many accolades but may have been ahead of its time, as it was never used to film the entirety of a major studio's feature-length film," writes Matt Walcoff in The Record, adding that the Origin "was used to film advertisements and short films, as well as a skydiving scene in the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace."

Wired Notices Red

Wired has a nice piece about the development of the Red One, the first camera from Red Digital Cinema. It's the sort of story that Wired probably should have run in 2007, when Peter Jackson used Red cameras to make a short film (first endorsement by a major directeor), or in May, when Steven Soderbergh's 'Che' played at Cannes, but better late than never.

Michael Behar writes:

...[Jannard's] team of engineers and scientists have created the first digital movie camera that matches the detail and richness of analog film. The Red One records motion in a whopping 4,096 lines of horizontal resolution—"4K" in filmmaker lingo—and 2,304 of vertical. For comparison, hi-def digital movies like Sin City and the Star Wars prequels top out at 1,920 by 1,080, just like your HDTV. (There's also a slightly higher-resolution option called 2K that reaches 2,048 lines by 1,080.) Film doesn't have pixels, but the industry-standard 35-millimeter stock has a visual resolution roughly equivalent to 4K. And that's what makes the Red so exciting: It delivers all the dazzle of analog, but it's easier to use and cheaper—by orders of magnitude—than a film camera. In other words, Jannard's creation threatens to make 35-mm movie film obsolete.

Two quotes later on in the article neatly encapsulate the debate about digital cinematography that has been simmering in Hollywood for about a decade now:

"In the slammin', jammin' world of production, you want a really tough machine that takes very simple approaches to problems," [Steven] Lighthill [of the American Film Institute] says. "I'm not sure Red is the way to go. It's a supercomputer with a lens on it."


Proponents dismiss such criticism as Luddite drivel. "Hollywood is just used to shooting on film," says Bengt Jan Jönsson, cinematographer on the Fox TV show Bones. "Honestly, if you proposed the film work-flow today, you'd be taken to the city square and hung. Imagine I told you we're going to shoot on superexpensive cameras, using rolls of celluloid made in China that are a one-time-use product susceptible to scratches and that can't be exposed to light. And you can't even be sure you got the image until they're developed. And you have to dip them in a special fluid that can ruin them if it's mixed wrong. People would think I was crazy."

Cinematographers and Digital Cameras: Why the Wait?

I adapted a section of my new book "Inventing the Movies" to run in the newsletter of the Digital Cinema Society, a group run by cinematographer James Mathers. It touches on the hesitance (as I see it) among top cinematographers to test and then adopt digital cameras.

From the excerpt:

At least since 1972, there have been discussions in Hollywood about the benefits of using electronic cameras on the movie set. One of the pioneers was Lee Garmes, who had begun his career in 1918 as a camera operator for silent films, cranking the camera by hand. As a cinematographer, Garmes had shot the original Howard Hawks Scarface in 1932, and a large portion of Gone With the Wind. He'd also won an Academy Award for Shanghai Express, directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich.

In 1972, at a gathering at the American Society of Cinematographers clubhouse in Hollywood, Garmes, a past president of the group, announced that he'd just finished shooting a feature on videotape, and “hoped never to see another piece of film.” The movie was Why, a drama about teen suicide, commissioned by Technicolor as an experiment in transferring material shot on videotape to 35-millimeter film for theatrical release. But Garmes may have made shooting with video sound too easy for his peers' liking, as when he told American Cinematographer magazine, “Looking at the monitors, the job was so easy. I could have phoned it in.” Most cinematographers preferred for their work to seem complicated, mysterious, magical.

Into the 21st century, proponents of digital cinematography - most notably George Lucas - have continued to face skepticism.

Mathers also posts his own reply to the excerpt, in which he says:

I’m currently well into Scott Kirsner’s book, enjoying it a lot, and seeing many similarities in Hollywood’s technological history to the modern Innovators on the scene today. However, I can’t abide by statements which seem to suggest that Cinematographers are interested in maintaining the status quo only to make their work seem “complicated,” or for fear of looking like “novices,” or only in an effort to maintain their status on set by requiring an unnecessarily large crew.

Modern Cinematography is indeed complicated, whether captured on film or new digital formats. Why should we Cinematographers seek out new technology only for the sake of being on the bleeding edge? If we have tried and true tools that have reliably stood the test of time, why jettison them before better tools arrive to serve our purposes? And nothing makes the hair on a Cinematographer’s neck stand up faster than the implication that with Digital less crew and equipment are needed, because somehow you don’t have to light as much. We are constantly in search of the best tools, not just the newest; and it’s only fear of Producers buying into this type of fantasy that truly worries us. These misplaced attitudes could rob us of the resources we need to do our jobs in controlling light and shadow while serving as the visual guardians of the motion picture image.

(The book is available here in paperback form, and here in e-book/PDF form.)

Netflix/Roku Alliance ... USC's Anytime/Anywhere Content Lab ... More with Spielberg and Lucas

- The WSJ, Wired, and TechCrunch all have news and reviews of a new $99 set-top box from Roku, which will deliver movies from Netflix. From the Journal:

At $99.99, the Netflix set-top box is priced like a DVD player and is as simple to hook up to a television. A high-speed Internet connection can either be plugged into the box or the device can pick up a wireless signal.

Netflix's new set-top box, made by Roku, will stream movies from Netflix's library directly to customers' televisions.
Similar Internet-to-TV devices made by Apple Inc. and Vudu Inc. cost $229 to $295.

"We think this is something that offers a big value at a low cost," said Reed Hastings, Netflix's chief executive officer.

The Netflix box, made by Silicon Valley startup Roku Inc., is the first of several devices that will pipe Netflix's streaming service to TV sets. South Korea's LG Electronics is expected to include the streaming capability in a Blu-ray DVD player that it plans to debut during the second half of this year.

Wired writes:

Choosing content to watch is done on your computer, using the familiar Netflix interface. Anything that’s available for instant viewing can be added to the player’s queue -- in fact, the box checks your DVD queue and adds any available content to the Roku player automatically. The upside is that browsing the amount of content on Netflix is much easier on a computer than TV; the downside is that you’ll find yourself wanting your laptop by your side.

What's not to like? Well, the choices are still limited. Netflix has 100,000 DVDs available, but only 10% of them can be procured for streaming. Also, fast forwarding and rewinding is a bit of a chore, given the limitations of video streaming, although the player smartly displays a visual time line of scenes to help with navigation.

$99 seems to me to be a decent price point for a set-top box... though there's still the issue of setting it up, which can be intimidating for many.

- Jon Healy of the LA Times pays a visit to the Anytime/Anywhere Content Lab at USC, where they assess new entertainment technologies for the home. From the post:

David Wertheimer, the ETC's executive director and a former digital guru at Paramount, said that while studios focus on their product, the lab concentrates on the user. The hope, he said, is that its work will show studios and tech companies how to "meet in the middle and provide new kinds of products" that appeal to the next generation of consumers. In addition to interviewing USC students on campus every week about their media consumption habits and attitudes, the ETC brings about 20 students into the lab to talk to its board and try out some of the gear it has assembled.

- Entertainment Weekly has a nice, long Q&A with Lucas and Spielberg. From it:

How much did George nag you to shoot film-free, with digital cameras, the way he did on the Star Wars prequels?

SPIELBERG: All through three years of preparation. It's like he was sending these huge 88 [millimeter artillery] shells to soften the beach, y'know? He never swears at me. He never uses profanity. But he calls me a lot of names. And in his creative name-calling, he topped himself on this one, trying to get me to do this digitally.

What did he call you?

SPIELBERG: I guess the worst thing he ever called me was old-fashioned. But I celebrate that. He knows me like a brother. It's true, I am old-fashioned.
LUCAS: I think the word ''Luddite'' came into it. In a very heated discussion.
SPIELBERG: I said I wasn't, I was Jewish! [Laughter]
LUCAS: The end of it is, I said, ''Look, Steve, this is your movie. You get to do it your way.'' And in the end, I didn't force Steven to do it. That doesn't mean I didn't pester him, and tease him, and get on him all the time.
SPIELBERG: It was all 35-millimeter, chemically processed film.... I like cutting the images on film. I'm the only person left cutting on film.
LUCAS: And I'm the guy that invented digital editing. But we coexist. I mean, I also like widescreen and color. Steven and Marty [Scorsese] have gone back and shot in black-and-white [on Schindler's List and Raging Bull, respectively]. I don't get on their case and say, ''Oh my God, this is a terrible thing, why are you going backwards?'' I say, ''That's your choice, and I can appreciate it.''

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.”

AMPAS on Archiving

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just issued a report on archiving digital material. From The Hollywood Reporter's piece:

We are already heading down this digital road ... and there is no long-term guaranteed access to what is being created," said Milt Shefter, who is the project leader on the AMPAS Science and Technology Council's digital motion picture archival project. "We need to understand what the consequences are and start planning now while we still have an analog backup system available." In fact, the council already has identified instances where digital content could not be accessed after only 18 months.

Variety also has coverage. David S. Cohen writes:

The document, distributed to a variety of filmmakers and decisionmakers with a letter from Academy prexy Sid Ganis, calls for industrywide cooperation in creating storage and archiving systems that are even better than film, and in establishing unified standards for what is archived and how.

Hmmm... no sign of the document on the AMPAS site. Why not share this report openly, so that we can all work together on solutions?

Sony to Do Video Downloads? ... Mike Shoots with the Red ... Studio Chief Job Security ... One Less Drive-In

If you, like me, are trying to fend off the start of fall with some good old-fashioned procrastination, here's some Tuesday reading for you...

- Sony may soon challenge Apple in selling video downloads, according to the Wall Street Journal. (Oddly, the Journal story goes on for a while before mentioning that just last week Sony exited the business of selling digital music through its Connect online store.) From the story:

People familiar with the situation say [Sony chairman Howard] Stringer is planning to use Sony's technology-packed PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable videogame machines, along with its Bravia high-definition televisions, to develop products and services to let users download television shows and movies, similar to the way they download music and videos using Apple's iTunes store and iPods. A Sony spokesman declined to comment on the company's strategy.

As Internet connections have become faster, analysts have expected the next big potential market to be in downloading movies and television shows. Some analysts believe it could be significantly larger than the digital music market.

The writer says that Sony's main advantage in getting into digital video could be that "Content companies like movie studios may be wary of the way Apple dominated the digital music market, and may be more encouraged to work with another company, especially one that owns a movie studio of its own and understands their concerns."

The story also contains a projection from Parks Associates that total video download revenues for 2007 will hit $2 billion. That's real money.

- Mike Curtis is in New York playing with some of Red Digital Cinema's first production cameras.

- From Sunday's NY Times: 'For Studio Chiefs, the End of the Revolving Door?' Michael Cieply observes that the job security of studio chairmen may actually be increasing. Here's the gist:

Over the last decade or so, managers of big companies like Sony, the owner of Columbia Pictures, and the News Corporation, owner of 20th Century Fox, came to realize that the film business is less about scoring the odd hit than keeping the pipeline full of something other than losers. That happened as the DVD explosion and growing sales abroad showed that even a modest success at the box office could bring home a substantial profit.

Stability trumped brilliance. The cool of a John Calley, the longtime producer who took charge of Sony Pictures Entertainment in the period, replaced the heat of a Peter Guber, whose stormy reign preceded him. High-tension types like Michael D. Eisner and Michael S. Ovitz left the stage.

For studio chairmen, an increasingly colorless lot, the shift in values brought with it a level of job security that was only occasionally achieved a generation ago.

- Also from the Sunday Times... this may make you sad: an obituary for a Buffalo drive-in.

Cine Gear Expo: Next Week in LA

Just back from another one-day round-trip to LA (yes, I've sworn those off before).... sorry I won't be in town next week, too, when Cine Gear Expo happens. There's always an interesting mix of cinematographers hanging around...and a series of seminars and master classes. If you didn't go to NAB, at Cine Gear you'll get a chance to see the 4K Peter Jackson short, 'Crossing the Line' that he shot with the Red Digital Cinema camera.

On Saturday, June 23rd, according to an e-mail I got from the Digital Cinema Society, there's another event at Cine Gear focusing on 4K production, post, and projection. From that message:

DCS members are encouraged to attend an exploration of 4K for Production, Post, and Projection. Various samples acquired in 4K RAW with Dalsa cameras, edited in HD with Apple's Final Cut Pro, then conformed using EDL into the final project for color correction and creation of the DCP will be projected in 4K via the Sony SXRD Projector. Following the screening, James Mathers will moderate a panel made up of Cinematographer David Stump, ASC, Dalsa's Rob Hummel, Sony's Andrew Stucker, Denis Leconte of Pacific Title, as well as Directors Anurag Mehta and Joe DiGennaro. Find out the benefits and challenges of Digital Filmmaking at 4K resolution.

The time slot is 10-10:45 AM on Saturday, the 23rd at the Wadsworth Theatre. Note: You must be registered for the Cine Gear Expo - Free of Charge Until June 15: http://www.cinegearexpo.com/click here.

If you go, please *blog about it!*

Acting for the digital camera

David Cohen has a great piece in Variety about how digital cameras are changing acting. He talks to 'Apocalypto' director Mel Gibson and Tony Bill, who made 'Flyboys.' (Both were shot with Panavision's Genesis digital camera.) One interesting source is Marley Shelton, an actress who appears in both halves of 'Grindhouse,' Robert Rodriguez' (shot with the Genesis) and Quentin Tarantino's (shot on film.) Cohen writes:

With film, says Shelton, "there's a beginning, middle and an end between 'action' and 'cut.' As an actor, one is trained to listen for cues such as 'roll sound' and slate, and you use that moment to prepare and go on a journey as your character for a few minutes or seconds. You use that time to suspend disbelief for yourself. In that 10 seconds, you're sort of going into a zone."

But, Shelton says, when shooting digital, the freedom to keep rolling means "you're sort of sifting for diamonds. It's great in that you can probe deeper in certain moments, but it's less conducive to riding the impulses your character is having chronologically."

Rodriguez would gather the cast and crew around the monitor, show them the playback and give notes.

Tarantino, by contrast, took a more old-school approach, watching with the naked eye and not even using playback.

"At that point," Shelton says, "I was so used to Robert's style that it was disconcerting to have (Tarantino) standing next to the camera."Another difference, Shelton notes, is that digital "dailies" include much more of what goes on on the set than do film dailies, which only include what happens between "action" and "cut."

"Whoever is watching the dailies can see the entire process, the good, the bad and the ugly," Shelton says. "You really have to be able to let go of your ego in high-def."

Grindhouse: Half digital, half celluloid

I happened to be visiting Troublemaker Studios, Robert Rodriguez' Austin headquarters, last March when they were unpacking the Panavision Genesis digital camera they planned to use for 'Grindhouse.' At that point, the plan was to shoot both halves of 'Grindhouse' digitally, with Rodriguez shouldering the Genesis for Quentin Tarantino's 'Death Proof.'

"I'm gonna be Quentin's DP [director of photography], but have him operate the B camera on my half ['Planet Terror']," Rodriguez told me around that time. "He can learn about it."

But somewhere along the way, Quentin decided to serve as his own DP, and shoot on film. Mike Curtis has some background on HD for Indies, and there's a bit more detail in this Q&A with Rodriguez, from the March issue of Wired. An excerpt:

You tried to coax Tarantino, a film purist, into going digital. What was your argument? I told Quentin we could make a digital movie and have it look exactly like a film from the era. He said, "If you can do that, I'll be convinced." I took footage from Sin City and From Dusk Till Dawn, degraded it digitally, and mixed it with some music. I wanted it to look like a living graphic novel. I showed him the results, and he was blown away. He said, "All right. You win."

But he ultimately shot his movie analog. He has his own style. But he is adapting. He picked up on digital techniques right away. For instance, he knows he can ask the tech guys to previsualize car crashes, which means he can choose angles and things like that in advance. I think he's starting to see how valuable it is to have all this stuff at your disposal.

ShoWest 2007 News: Opening Talks from the MPAA and NATO

ShoWest officially opened yesterday in Las Vegas, with speeches from NATO head John Fithian and MPAA head Dan Glickman. The mood seems pretty bouyant, according to the Variety and Hollywood Reporter coverage. Everyone's jazzed about this summer's releases, which star pirates, Harry Potter, Shrek, Danny Ocean, and Spider-man. At the opening session of ShoWest, Disney showed the audience a short trailer for the third 'Pirates' pic, and also a 12-minute segment from Pixar's 'Ratatoiulle,' which opens June 29th.

You can read the opening addresses from Fithian and Glickman (both are in PDF form.) The big themes were piracy and preserving the theatrical release window.

Fithian also noted that there are about 2300 screens now capable of digital projection in the US, and said the roll-out will "accelerate considerably" in 2008. He predicted that 2009 will be a "bellwether year" for 3-D projection.

Also, he said:

It became fashionable during the downturn of 2005 to pit emerging technologies against the great American tradition of going to the movies, to see new technologies as some seismic shift in consumer preferences—and therefore to depict movie theatre operators as frightened by and hostile to new technologies. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, in so many ways, the exhibition industry is exciting and dynamic today precisely because of new technologies— and not only because we’re now embarking on the most technologically significant and sophisticated revolution in exhibition history with the advent of digital cinema. Our appreciation extends even to home technologies. A recent survey by Nielsen Entertainment confirms that consumers with many home technologies are actually more avid moviegoers than those with fewer home technologies.

Hmmm -- does that list of home technologies include YouTube and the Internet, John? I wonder....

David Fincher's 'Zodiac': The Latest Feature Shot with the Viper FilmStream Digital Camera

David Fincher's 'Zodiac' is out this Friday. Early reviews are positive. This is the first feature that Fincher has shot with a digital camera: the Viper FilmStream from Thomson Grass Valley, the same camera Michael Mann used for 'Miami Vice' and 'Collateral.'

As far as I know, it's also the first feature shot digitally by Harris Savides, the cinematographer on 'Zodiac.' One more first: 'Zodiac' is likely the first Hollywood feature recorded directly onto hard drives from the camera -- no videotapes were used.

So a few links about the digital cinematography on 'Zodiac'...

From Filmmaker Magazine, a piece headlined 'Are We There Yet? HD Continues Its Journey Into the Mainstream' Jamie Stuart writes:

The straight-talking Savides describes the situation bluntly: “Everybody who’s shooting this stuff is a guinea pig right now.”

“Everything is still R&D,” he elaborates. “I feel like these movies being made are just little experiments for the big conglomerate studios. They’ll see what it’s like, what’s gonna happen, see the best way to handle it down the road.”

The fluctuating nature of the technology means that most filmmakers still have to fight to shoot their films on HD. Directors like Steven Soderbergh and Robert Rodriguez can get away with HD because they keep their budgets down. But once budgets start rising to $100 million, or tent-pole status, the resistance is much fiercer. Savides says his hat is off to Fincher for making Zodiac happen in such an unconventional manner: “He’s amazing. I don’t think anybody could’ve done it this way. David had to figure it out on his own, and then present it to the studio. He had to do smaller projects, commercials. He’d been using the Viper, got really used to it. So by the time I stepped in he had gotten the Viper integrated and he’d figured out how to make the camera work. When I got there, 90 percent of the problems had been ironed out. I was just part of the creative solution.”

Digital Content Producer has a piece about the movie's workflow and an audio interview with Fincher.

Fincher also talks a bit about the Viper in this interview with film critic Emmanuel Levy.

And here's even more on 'Zodiac' from HD for Indies.