YM Cinema covers cinema cameras, film and digital production, color grading, and camera industry news.
HN links it in discussions of film versus digital look, Vimeo's business model, and camera patent disputes; one commenter calls a film-look article mostly nostalgia.
as someone who used to work at a digital intermediary (DI) company (think photoshop filters but for film) most of this is bollocks.
> But every time I watch something made before 2000, it looks so beautiful to me
No, the author is confusing nostalgia with aesthetics.
Heat for example is a great movie, fun story, good suspense. It looks ok, but its colours are all over the place. you don't notice it, because its an old film and old films should feel like that.
The quote:
> Tungsten allows for more accurate color in camera but LEDs are cheaper, cooler, and more convenient. So the solution is to film on a nice digital camera and fix the color in post.
very much nope. None of the stuff you've seen in films since about 2005 looks like it was shot. No film ever gets to screen without colour correcting. In fact every setup will have a macbeth chart film so that they can conform the colours so they are consistent.
More over, film is colour corrected in 16bit log, which is way more colours than most of us can observe, and a fuckton more dynamic range than can be displayed.
yes shite LED lights have worse spectral response than tungsten, but its fairly easy to correct for (hell if you are good enough you can film under sodium lamps and make it look good. )
but ARRL lights have full RGB, with loads of effects that were not possible before. I as a mere mortal can light a room like the Holywood golden age for <$1000(but not with ARRL lights, because they are $5k each). For the…
https://ymcinema.com/2022/03/28/braw-vs-prores-raw-which-is-better/
> "Sherif analyzed noise levels by comparing ProRes RAW and BRAW and found that ProRes RAW has significantly higher noise levels than the external BRAW. Furthermore, Sherif has used a blue channel as an X-ray to explore macro-blocking that appears in highly compressed media (H.265 for instance), and that compression is presented by pixels structure that indicates an unbaked image that came straight out of the sensor. Yeah… it’s a bit complicated. To make the story short, ProRes RAW demonstrated much better (and real) raw compared to BRAW. In a sentence, ProRes RAW has defeated BRAW"
> "According to Sherif’s analysis, ProRes RAW is more… real raw than BRAW. And external BRAW is less accurate (in terms of White Balancing) compared to internal BRAW from Blackmagic cameras. But generally speaking, ProRes RAW won. However, it must be taken into consideration that ProRes RAW is not natively available in Resolve."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPB6wrVKHiw
> "...partial debayering theory regarding BRAW. The reason being is that Black Magic does that to get around RED' RAW patent of pure internal RAW. That's why prores Raw is only acquired through external devices."
It's standard practice for me to watch films w/ subtitles as the sound (as the article suggests) is all F-up.
I take my films seriously and my Mrs just bought ticket to 'Oppenheimer'. First question out of my mouth was "Is it in IMAX"? No, but it was on sale! Ugh. I re-iterated that Nolan produces movies for IMAX [0] with very good sound systems. Apparently only 30 theaters WORLDWIDE [1] are capable of showing that film in the correct format! Fingers crossed, it will be somewhat acceptable.
Inevitable with all of Nolan's films, I re-watch them at home with subtitles because I need to know wtf is going on. (Tenet was next to impossible without them).
[0] "Christopher Nolan explains best ways to watch a movie, which theater seats to pick" https://www.mywabashvalley.com/news/national-news/christopher-nolan-explains-best-ways-to-watch-a-movie-which-theater-seats-to-pick/
[1] "Oppenheimer: IMAX 70mm Screening at Only 30 Theaters Worldwide" https://ymcinema.com/2023/06/05/oppenheimer-imax-70mm-screening-at-only-30-theaters-worldwide/
Funny that I see this while searching for this story here: https://ymcinema.com/2022/03/17/vimeo-we-are-a-b2b-solution-not-the-indie-version-of-youtube/
It makes sense. Without ad revenue or premium subscriptions, there's no viable way to pay for creators in the say way a proper "indie youtube". In addition, many creators who post on Vimeo very much did not want their content to be publicly viewable. That was a feature.
Is it that much crazier than previously, when a movie was shot on film, scanned to a digital intermediary, then printed back onto film for distribution?
EDIT: Now that I've read up on Greig Fraser's reasoning, it makes a lot more sense for Dune! https://ymcinema.com/2021/12/03/dune-was-shot-on-alexa-lf-transferred-to-35mm-film-then-scanned-back-to-digital/
Apparently Dune was transferred to film and back again to try and get the look. I'm not sure how much it really mattered in the end- I'm sure there are digital methods- but it did work.
https://ymcinema.com/2021/12/03/dune-was-shot-on-alexa-lf-transferred-to-35mm-film-then-scanned-back-to-digital/