I keep getting asked this question, so I suppose I have to answer it.
“Why is it that you hate everything digital?”
Here’s the short answer: I don’t. What follows is the longer answer.
Before I start, I know that I’ll be called on the carpet as a luddite, anti-digital idiot. This is inaccurate. The Dr. Film pilot was shot and edited digitally, right on a hard drive… only a few seconds of it was ever on digital tape. My background is in Electrical Engineering, and I used to write digital imaging programs that would make your eyes glaze over. I welcome digital technology, but I use film, too. They both have strengths and weaknesses, and I think that throwing out film is a mistake.
I can best describe my reaction to the digital revolution with an analogy. A good friend of mine once refused to go to a fast-food Mexican restaurant with me. “I hate that stuff,” he said. A few months later, he suggested going to a Mexican restaurant. “I thought you hated that stuff,” I said.
“No,” he said. “I just hate cheap Mexican food, especially when it’s passed off as the real thing.”
I was just in attendance at a premiere showing of a DVD. This was supposed to be a high-class, dress-up affair. The projection was inexcusable. It was set the way that 95% of all DVD projectors are set, with maximum brightness, so that the white levels bloom and clip, leaving anything bright looking like either hopelessly angelic or like a rejected effect from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
I sat calmly and gritted my teeth as I watched the projector’s brightness overload. Fortunately, most of the footage was shot indoors, because all of the outdoor stuff looked awful. It made me sit and stew for an hour as I watched a good documentary be marred by guy who set up the projector and didn’t know what he was doing.
This is the digital that I do hate, and I hate it not because it’s digital, but because it looks bad. We’re sold this bunkum about its being state-of-the-art, and yet it would look better on a TV screen. Now, mind you, I’m talking about a standard-resolution DVD, not a Blu-Ray. And I am in a good position to complain because I have run film in that very venue and it looked a whale of a lot better than their presentation did tonight.
I’ll make a few points here and then back away:
- Standard-resolution DVDs aren’t intended for large screen projection and seldom look good unless projected on the very best equipment. It’s easy to mis-adjust the projectors and blow out the whites on it. They have just 525 lines of resolution. (Sorry about the math, but more lines = sharper picture. That’s all you need to know.)
- Projected Blu-Ray (1080 lines) can look very good, and if it was sourced from good materials (usually film elements), it can look better than many 16mm prints and some 35mm prints.
- Many proud Blu-Ray owners tell me that their images are always better (or at least as good) as 35mm film. I can’t argue with your perception. What I will do is cite a measurable statistic: Blu-Ray uses 1080 lines. In theaters, the high-end digital projectors that will replace 35mm film are 4000 lines (actually 4096 in most cases, but let’s not haggle). That’s right. Cost-conscious Hollywood studios think they need 4000 lines to replace 35mm. Don’t you think they would all use cheaper 1080-line Blu-ray projection if they thought they could get by with it?
Even though it’s demonstrably not true, people tell me that a standard DVD is “just as good as film.” I heard those very words this weekend.
People are serving me Taco Bell projection and telling me it’s just as good as authentic Mexican. It isn’t. Good digital is fine. Third-rate digital is not only annoying, but it also makes good films look bad.
If good digital is out there, then why do I tirelessly advocate film? Well, for starters, a lot of really great material isn’t on Blu-Ray, DVD, or 4000-line digital. Much of it never will be. I also think projected film has a beautiful, rich quality missing in all but the best digital presentations. If you’re careful and picky about prints (and few are pickier than I am), then you can find nice, sharp materials that are sometimes better than what was used as a source for the DVDs.
Much of the point of the Dr. Film show is to give people an opportunity to see rare materials that are not easy to find in the marketplace. My live shows are intended as way to see rare films in a theatrical venue, with an audience, as they were intended to be seen.
I am fully aware that film projection will eventually go the way of the steam engine. It won’t be as fast as some say, because most movies are still shot on 35mm, and archival preservation still takes place on 35mm. I don’t mind being compared with a guy who fixes a steam engine. Diesel engines have no romance. I think we need to be able to see movies shown on film for as long as we can. I am not in a rush, as most places are, to throw out all my film and replace it with digital copies (partly because I can’t!)
I know lots of theaters that are gleefully ripping out their 35mm projectors and then running only third-rate DVDs, mis-adjusted, at sizes never intended for that use. They all say the same thing: “It’s just as good.” I will continue to rail against this, because it’s wrong.
It isn’t “just as good.” It isn’t even good. In the mad rush to get cheaper and easier projection, we’ve thrown quality out the window. I hope I’m not the only one who notices it.