Side by Side

Since the late 1880s, visual artists and storytellers have

used moving images to create amazing works.

You ain't heard nothing yet.

Movies have inspired us...

I have something more than a hope.

Thrilled us, and captured our imaginations.

Film has helped us share our experiences and dreams.

Photochemical film has been the exclusive format used to

capture, develop, project, and store moving images for over 100 years.

It is only recently that a new technology has emerged that is

challenging film's place as the gold standard for quality and work flow.

Digital technology is evolving to a point that may very well

replace film as the primary means of creating and sharing motion pictures.

The documentary we're doing is called side by side, and it's a

documentary about the science, art, and impact of digital cinema.

filmmaking right now has reached

a kind of threshold tipping point.

In this conversation, in this kind of intersection of time,

it's historic.

We've kind of come to this place where- is it the end of film?

Where are we today?

It's exciting because it's a reinvention of a new medium.

If the photochemical process has worked its way through our culture,

we're on to another level.

And how do you use it to tell a story?

How do you use it to paint a picture?

Are you done with film?

Don't hold me to it, Keanu, but I think I am.

Digital cameras are the new aesthetic that's coming to cinema,

and at the same time, we're going to mourn the loss of film.

I am constantly asked to justify why I want to shoot

a film on film, but I don't hear anybody being asked to justify

why they want to shoot a film digitally.

I wanted whatever I could imagine to be something that we could realize.

I saw the door opening on a field of possibilities that you

just couldn't do with film.

It's really sad right now to see cameras recording imagery in

an inferior way starting to take over film.

I'm not gonna trade my oil

paints for a set of crayons.

There will be people who will

cheapen digital.

There are people who will not only kill the goose that laid

the golden egg but they'll sodomize it first.

If the intention is that digital is gonna replace film,

I would be sad if it didn't

actually exactly replicate it.

They process digital now to

make it look like film, as if

film is inherently better.

Just- we like the way it looks better, which seems kind of arbitrary.

It's just what we're used to.

Film is a 19th century invention.

We are at the top of the photochemical process.

This is about as far as it's ever gonna go.

Digital is here now, but it's gonna keep going, and you got to

be a part of that.

Who's gonna be a part of that, dictating where that goes?

I don't think film's going anywhere.

I don't think it's to the advantage of anybody to totally eliminate film.

There are gonna be many of us that are gonna fight for film,

that are gonna fight for the experience of shooting on emulsion.

We really are in the midst of some sort of revolution that

threatens the status quo.

This is a potentially either scary thing or a very liberating thing.

One of the first steps in the

production process is capturing

the images in camera.

The director, actors, cinematographer, and the entire

production team work together to

bring the script to life.

The cinematographer, also called

the director of photography or

DP, helps the director achieve the look of the movie.

The DP is responsible for

knowing what equipment is needed

and how it works in order to

capture the scenes.

Now take your big bolge camera off, please.

There.

Action.

A director of photography looks at color and composition

and angles and all of these things in terms of how the movie is being built.

The quality of light off skin, the quality of light through

hair, the quality of light through the window or bouncing off the floor.

They're equating the building of this world in terms of energy

that reflects off of objects.

The question is about framing, sensibility, how to make people feel.

Bringing emotion into the light comes from being

appropriate and being- somehow being- you know, the great ones

are more than appropriate.

They really startle you with how

wonderfully evocative this look

is of whatever they're doing.

That level of craftsmanship

or, you know, if you will, that

technical expertise-

you can't explain what you're

gonna do, so there is a certain

amount of a leap of faith that

they have to have in you.

To be a cinematographer is to have the knowledge of the art.

Without any doubt, cinema today

is a mixing of art and technology.

Today in this era, you also have to be a bit of a

technician and you have to know the equipment.

and it's really important for DPs to understand the entire

link of the image chain from

acquisition to exhibition.

Ready to go in five and...

on five, please.

And action.

The camera is a tool that focuses and measures photons of

light and records them as images.

With a film camera, light enters

through the lens and hits a

frame of film behind the lens.

The film is covered with an emulsion that contains grains

of silver halide crystals.

These crystals react chemically when light hits them, and the

crystals change into silver metal when they are developed.

A photographic image is formed on the film.

There is something about the

texture and the grain structure

of film that I've- personally

I hold onto and it's like

a comforting thing to me.

And it feels more tangible.

The halides open up and flip

themselves and give a sort of

textural quality.

You still have some granularity in the image that keeps highlights living.

It keeps blacks with a little bit more nuance and character in them.

I like grit and grain and texture.

It gives you a variety of

different opportunities.

The work flow on a film set

basically means that you take

thousand-foot loads of film,

load it into the magazines, and that enables you to shoot for

roughly ten- plus minutes per roll of film.

Cut.

That's a cut.

Camera reload.

And then it gives you a natural break in the action

while someone pulls the magazine off the camera and puts

a new magazine on.

Then the film goes away to

a film lab and is developed

overnight and printed.

And then the next day, you get

to see dailies.

There was a joy for many,

many years for us to be,

you know, the genies on set.

You know, that's why we love dailies.

We'd all go, we'd act,

we'd light, we'd do what we do,

we'd love what we did, and then

everybody would wrap, and the

next morning, it'd come back

from the lab and we went,

"Wow, look what we got."

You know, it was magic.

The director of photography was a magician.

He was the only one who actually

probably knew what was gonna be

on the screen next day.

And this gave you a lot of authority and power.

And there's a certain leap of faith that you take when you

shoot film, and there's something really romantic about

that- getting your dailies back and everyone being really

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