The film, literally

A Love Letter
to Film

When I was in film school making my first short films, shooting on actual film seemed to be my good luck charm. These were invariably my best works compared with most of what I shot digitally. I don’t think it’s an accident. Film is what makes me want to get up in the morning. It’s precious and therefore demands precision. It brings a different level of focus to the set. As much as I love digital when it’s done well, it’s not ultimately what I signed up for. It’s hard to get me excited about it in even remotely the same way. I didn’t come to this conclusion overnight, though. I wasn’t always like this…

It was around the time I was in film school when movies first began to transition from being shot on film to being shot on digital, and the feelings of me and my friends were…confused? Digital suddenly gave us access to make work in a cheap and easy way that had never before been possible, and yet these didn’t look like films as we understood them (I’m being generous). Were we excited about this new and easy access? Or were we on the raw end of a bait-and-switch, where now those dreams of looking through the lens of a Panavision camera like Steven Spielberg seemed further than ever?

The first few years of digital cinematography had some of us feeling cautiously optimistic. Film was still the standard, and so the standard was high, meaning people tended not to mess with digital unless they were damn confident they could reach that bar. And top directors like David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh and Michael Mann were among the first to get their hands dirty, enthusiastically so, making the waters seem potentially safe for the rest of us…

But then something happened. Digital became the default. Not an option, or an alternative, or simply a new tool (which I’ve long felt is the best way to view it). Instead, it became thought of as a cheaper option than film, and as more films made on digital by great directors did continue to get made, those great-looking movies became justification for all movies (or almost all) to get shot on digital, because by that point most people couldn’t tell the difference anyway.

And now? People don’t go to the movies anymore. Okay, so they do, but at a fraction of what the numbers used to be. People are always so quick to point to streaming and Peak TV as the culprit, yet Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is still selling out showtimes in 70mm months into its release, to say nothing of its sales worldwide, and I believe there’s a direct connection. Christopher Nolan has always been one of the biggest evangelists for celluloid, along with people like Quentin Tarantino, and there’s a reason seeing their movies in theaters always feels like events.

The next time you go to your local cinema, take a look at the bright parts of the screen. Nine times out of ten you can see the wavy patterns of the silver screen itself. It almost looks dirty, but you don’t see those patterns and lines when film is being projected, because the silver screen was designed specifically to have film projected onto it, not digital. I’ve noticed that even if a movie is projected digitally, it still looks better on the big screen if it was originally shot on film.

Have I mentioned I love film?

To repurpose the Men’s Warehouse tagline, “You’re gonna love the way it looks. I guarantee it.”