Film-school administrators and a student weigh in whether the celluloid celebration is here to stay or merely a passing fad
I couldn’t care less if it was shot on video tape as long as the writing is solid and the story is fresh, interesting, and meaningful.
See, you say that but, like ice cream, that’s another flavor. Whether you consciously notice these things or not, there is a distinct difference between digital and analog.
I agree though that first and foremost is the story, then the writing, acting, cinematography, usually but not necessarily in that order.
Fyi for people curious, digital cinema tends to max out at 4k resolution (digital IMAX is probably higher though). Yeah, you’re going to the theater to see a movie at a resolution you could watch it in at home. Now there is a catch, the movie and audio is lossless 4k, which you can’t get anywhere else currently, and therefore higher quality than what you can see at home.
…unless you happen to have unencrypted DCPs, and some are, in which case the quality will be very similar. Though have fun storing your movie collection when they normally weigh in at 200-300gb.
Now, will you see the difference between 35mm and 4k DCP, or 70mm and digital IMAX? Maybe? Part of the question comes down to how the movie was mastered (was it fully analog mastered to digital or digital mastered to analog), the quality of the cameras, the quality of the projectors, the quality of the projectionist, and how familiar you are with the movie. If it’s digital to analog, almost certainly not. If you’ve never seen the movie before then you may not notice the difference either. However, if you’ve seen the movie in a different format, if the movie was mastered in analog, and the projectionist has good, properly calibrated projectors, you probably could.
