You don't think there's a place for it in smaller / specialized venues for some time? It makes sense for mainstream Hollywood not to bother with it anymore, but I for one would appreciate to be able to see Bela Tarr on 35mm or Antonioni on 70mm again. I know many of these older prints are passed around too rather than struck per showing.
This is interesting, my interpretation of what they were saying was for _new_ prints. But in the case of old prints, I see your point.
Long term, I hope this is self-correcting. People still like vinyl, and although you can't find a Tower Records anywhere on earth, you can find vinyl shops that are still doing really well. The same could end up being true for film-projecting theaters.
My bias for digital probably clouds my judgment now so I have a question: would you be interested to see these on film if you could see a cleaned up, perfect, version on a 4K+ digital projector? What about the film version appeals to you?
> A good, clean, new 35mm print is very clearly distinguishable from from a 4k projection. Even casually you can see the difference
What difference are you referring to? If you're talking about clarity/pixels, the source format is as important as the projection. Academy and super 35 waste a lot of space on the frame. Super 35, which was really common for big time movies a few years ago because you could use spherical lenses, actually requires an intermediate step making it anamorphic for projection... which makes it less clear on the print.
The only 35mm source format I would argue provides higher resolution on 35mm than a 4K projector is going to be anamorphic (aka Panavision or 'Scope). It requires no intermediate step before projection. It looks like Nolan is shooting Dark Knight Rises anamorphic and 70mm for the IMAX stuff.
Other than resolution, the blacklevels of film are higher and there's weave on film. Plus, unless you only go to high end theaters that take projection seriously, your typical projector jockey at the local AMC can barely get the movie in focus. I once saw Saving Private Ryan projected with no matte. So every time an effects shot came on, the top and the bottom were cropped. Non effects shots had full frame. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_matte)
Anyway, given what we've seen with digital photography, I'd expect the technology here to advance pretty fast.
Raw resolution isn't so much the issue as the overall feel of the image. Color is probably the biggest advantage of film over digital.
But yes, you're right that the capture method is the biggest influence. And since digital is becoming the default choice even on mainstream projects, 35mm projection would eventually seem sort of silly anyway. Even Malick is shooting Alexa now!
Plus there's all the 2k DI stuff that's been out there, muddying the waters even more.
Nolan is one of the few with both a strong preference and the financial clout to hold on to high quality film capture, but I suspect a couple of projects down the road even he will have to give in.
This thread already covered new releases pretty well, but as for old film, I'm wary of digital transfers that can be very sloppy with their "cleaning" by adding too much sharpness or other filters, distorting the colors, etc. It's something you have little choice over when the available film stock is poor, but there are still ones where the film is in good quality but the digital transfer mutilates it.
I have a weaker opinion of vinyl, but from what I understand, it's a similar situation. Vinyl is probably a lot worse than film for retaining quality technologically but because of commercial interests, sometimes the vinyl release has far better mastering than the digital release. You can see this with older music, such as David Bowie's original releases on RCA and the later CD versions that are "remastered" such that they have a lot more dynamic compression. And you can see it in new releases as well with electronic music, where the vinyl release is targeted at DJ use and the CD one for listening at home, leading to different mixing. So while digital may be strictly better than vinyl in terms of retaining quality of input, due to cultural reasons the input is uneven depending on medium.
