DV Movies

[Sigur Rós]

Are all the dogme 1995 - films ( like The Celebration) DV???

[Ghostboy]

I think the vast majority of them have been -- even though one of the rules is that you have to shoot 35! Go figure. Anyway, the only one that comes to mind immediatey is Mifune, which was shot on 35 and looked great.

[Sigur Rós]

I think the vast majority of them have been -- even though one of the rules is that you have to shoot 35! Go figure. Anyway, the only one that comes to mind immediatey is Mifune, which was shot on 35 and looked great.

Have you heard about Søren Kragh-Jacobsen (the director of Mifiune) new movie; Skagerak?

[MacGuffin]

Can This Man Save The Movies? (Again?)
In the digital era, is film dead? As audiences gravitate to DVDs, Hollywood wonders if the movie theater can survive. The rebels are surging. Can the Empire strike back?
By RICHARD CORLISS, TIME Magazine

Here's a magic glimpse into the future of movies. A big blockbuster opens. Some people see it in sparkling digital clarity on wraparound screens in ultraswank theaters; others watch the same movie the same day on an 8-ft.-wide screen in their home media center; still others get it transmitted instantly through their computer, iPod or cell phone. It's a looking-glass scenario that could happen in a future near you--if the people who finance and exhibit Hollywood movies want it to.

On Oscar night last week, though, the looking glass was not a crystal ball but a rearview mirror. Hollywood's gentry celebrated the past--the misty history of cinema, evoked with montages of ancient genres and deceased artistes. From the films honored, you would hardly have noticed that under the academy members' smartly shod feet, a seismic shift was taking place.

We are at the bright dawn of the movies' digital age, but the Hollywood establishment still has its shades drawn. In the Oscar show at the Kodak Theatre (named after a company that is crucially invested in the film-stock status quo), the most popular live-action digital movie in history, George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith, won no awards, not even one for technical achievement. The year's boldest, most innovative digital experiment, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's Sin City, got no nominations at all.

The Oscar revelers seemed unaware that movies have two big problems: the way they're made and the way they're shown.

It has often been noted that if Henry Ford were to come back today, he would wonder why no one had come up with a better idea than the internal combustion engine. A similar thought may occur to any visitor to a movie shoot. Dozens, maybe hundreds of technicians adjust the lights, apply the makeup and dress the set, much the way it was done almost 100 years ago. And as in D.W. Griffith's day, the film still runs through a camera, then is processed, reproduced many times and sent to theaters.

The addiction to doing things that way baffles Lucas. "Do you still use a typewriter?" he asks a TIME movie critic. "Do you go to a library and consult books for most of your research? Is your story set in type, letter by letter? No. Your business takes advantage of technological advances. Why shouldn't my business?"

Well, for one thing, say the movie atavists, film has a more human texture, an emotional weight. "Digital is just too smooth," says M. Night Shyamalan, writer-director of The Sixth Sense and a defender of the film tradition. "You almost have to degrade the image to make it more real. If you take a digital photo and I take one on film, there's just no way you're going to compete with the humanity that I can create from my little Hasselblad. Yours will be smoother, crisper, perfect in every way, and mine will be grainy, but you would definitely grab my picture over the digital one."

Directors who have worked in digital don't agree. They say it's capable of a chromatic subtlety that film can't match. Michael Mann, whose 2004 Collateral was, he says, "the first photo-real use of digital," is using the same process to shoot the big-screen version of his old Miami Vice TV series. "In the nightscapes in Collateral, you're seeing buildings a mile away. You're seeing clouds in the sky four or five miles away. On film that would all just be black."

What Mann pioneered is now a trend. "When we shot Collateral, we were one of the first," he says. "This year there were about 25 films shooting digitally." That number is bound to mushroom as young directors, whose computers were their boyhood buddies and who have no nostalgic attachment to film, come to the fore.

One is Rodriguez, 37, the Lone Star maverick who writes, directs, shoots, cuts and scores his own movies as well as supervises the special effects, doing it all at his home ranch on the Pedernales River and at a small Austin, Texas, studio. Using high-definition cameras, he shot his Sin City actors against a green screen, filling in the backgrounds digitally, and rarely went beyond a second or third take. That's one secret to making a gorgeous all-star movie for $40 million--less than half the average Hollywood budget.

It was Lucas who turned Rodriguez on to digital after a visit to the elder's Skywalker Ranch more than five years ago. All Lucas had done was perfect the modern blockbuster and create the first major special-effects company (ILM) and the first digital-animation outfit (which became Pixar). He changed the way movies were made and marketed. Now the richest, most influential maker of movies had found in Rodriguez an apt pupil, another "regional" filmmaker who could buck the system.

In one aspect of moviemaking--crew size--Rodriguez has outstripped Lucas. The two most recent Star Wars movies, made digitally, employed as many on-set crew members as did the last filmed episode, The Phantom Menace. (Lucas offers that as an argument that Hollywood technicians need not worry that a switch to digital would put them out of work.) But do-it-himself Rodriguez has a crew that is tiny and tight. "It's nice because you don't have this huge army," he said in 2003. "It's a commando group of people really into the project." Rodriguez loves his outlaw status, boasting, "I'm years ahead. The professionals are not paying attention."

But the independent directors are. Many of them have used digital equipment for years. Steven Soderbergh shot his indie movie Bubble with the same camera, a Sony F950, that Lucas used on Sith and Rodriguez on Sin City. And indie imp-guru Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy) notes, "There is a Panasonic camera, the 100, that gives a picture that's about as good-looking as 16-mm or 35-mm film. The kids today who are making their do-it-yourself features are doing it with high-definition video. If I was shooting Clerks today, I'd probably use that camera."

Smith wanted to use a digital camera for Clerks II, the sequel to his 1994 debut hit, but his director of photography didn't feel comfortable with the process. "A lot of directors and directors of photography are resistant to put down what they're familiar with," Smith says. Besides the shock of the new, there's the love of the old. "Most people in film have a great affection for film stock, for the medium. And they feel that moving in a digital direction is kind of leaving their history behind. It's more sentimental than anything else."

If moviemakers won't shoot digitally, they'll edit digitally, citing ease and efficiency. But Steven Spielberg and his longtime editor Michael Kahn don't. "Michael and I are the last persons cutting movies on KEMs," he says, referring to the German flatbed machine that is no longer manufactured. "I still love cutting on film. I just love going into an editing room and smelling the photochemistry and seeing my editor with mini-strands of film around his neck. The greatest films ever made were cut on film, and I'm tenaciously hanging on to the process."

Once a film is shot and cut, it has to be copied, sent to theaters and put on the screen--steps that are expensive and risky. Print quality, for example, can vary drastically from frame to frame and print to print. The quality of projection may also vary. "There are still theaters that run the projector lamp at less than proper brightness," says Mann. (A digital projector is much more accurate.) Finally, film degenerates, the way a vinyl record does under a stylus or a videocassette does with frequent use. "With film you have degradation problems," Smith says, "where the stock starts breaking down. Frames get lost when they cut reels together." The digital look will stay fresh for the life of the theatrical run.

If there's an argument for digital that Hollywood can get behind, it's this: it's far cheaper than film--cheaper to shoot, cut and duplicate. But the big savings come in getting the product to the public. Says Lucas: "Making a big movie, a Harry Potter or a Spider-Man, you're spending $20 [million] to $30 million for the prints just to strike them and ship them to the theaters. Smaller movies have to spend a huge part of their budgets on prints." Digital would cut print and shipping costs about 80%. Even Spielberg, who wears many hats, sees the efficacy of digital. "I may be the last person as a director to accept it," he says, "but I won't be the last person to accept it as someone who runs a film company."

So who doesn't love the new movie deal? Well, some studio chiefs, who are worried that a movie on disc is much easier to dupe, and piracy is a huge drain on their income. But mainly theater owners. When they hear the word digital, they reach for their digitalis. Already feeling the hit from the 13% slump in moviegoing over the past three years, they aren't eager to spend the more than $3 billion or so that it would cost to convert approximately 36,000 film projectors to digital.

"Digital cinema is probably a lot further away than most people would think," says Kurt Hall, president and CEO of National CineMedia, the marketing arm of AMC, Cinemark and Regal Entertainment Group. "There's still a lot of work to be done on the technology, both in making it secure [from piracy] for the content owners and in making sure that the systems work and can be operated efficiently by the theater circuits."

In the late '20s, when talking pictures replaced the silents, theaters converted to sound within two years. But the coming of sound was immediately and immensely popular. Today, although films shown on the giant IMAX screens make money and although computer-made animated features have been spanking the butts of traditional cartoons, there's no conclusive evidence that the billions it would cost to go digital would be repaid by a box-office surge. "Our research shows that the audience generally isn't going to pay more and isn't going to go more," Hall says. "So there's no financial model that creates an incentive for the exhibitor to make this investment."

Lucas has tried for years to be the irresistible force to the exhibitors' immovable object. In 2002, when he released Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones, he opened it on 63 digital screens in North America, along with the thousands of screens showing the film version, and declared that in three years, when Revenge of the Sith came out, it would play only digitally. He says he even offered the exhibitors a financial incentive: "It costs about $1,200 for a film print and about $200 for a digital print. So what you do is charge the distributor the same $1,200 they would ordinarily be charged, and $1,000 of it goes into a pot that eventually pays for all the projectors and everything. In about five years you would reconvert the entire industry." And who bought in? "No one's bought in yet. But they will. It's just a matter of time." Digital Sith played on 111 screens in the U.S. and Canada--still a tiny slice of the total number of venues.

Lucas and other directors don't subscribe to the cheap-date theory of movie attendance--that kids go to get out of the house, to be with their peers and away from their parents. Directors also ignore the complaints about moviegoing--the glop on the floor, the indifferent projection, the half an hour of ads and in the row behind you a nattering couple rehearsing their Jerry Springer act. No, to directors, moviegoing is an almost religious act: a Mass experience. You walk into a cathedral, feel your spirit soar with hundreds of other communicants and watch the transubstantiation of images into feelings. The audience becomes a community, the movie the Communion.

"A 65-ft.-wide screen and 500 people reacting to the movie--there is nothing like that experience," says Mann. Shyamalan sees it as a mystic conversation. "With enough strangers in the room," he says, "you become part of this collective human soul--which is a much more powerful way to watch a movie" than seeing it alone at home.

But will they still go--if day-and-date distribution comes to pass, that is--when they can buy a DVD the same day and see it with a bunch of friends on a 45-in. screen? Much was made of Soderbergh's experiment with Bubble--a minimalist, low-budget, no-star movie that opened nearly simultaneously in theaters, video stores and homes. And people didn't go for it in any format. Shyamalan sees a lesson there: "Bubble had $10 million worth of free publicity. Bubble had the advantage over any independent movie of its same ilk. It had so many advantages, and still it didn't perform. If Bubble did well, wouldn't that have been evidence that day-and-date works? Well, they tried it, and they failed."

Lucas, who thinks day-and-date is an inevitable step to fight piracy, also believes it won't hurt the box office. Moviegoing, he says, "is like watching a football game. Who in the world would go out in 20-below weather and sit there and watch a football game where you can barely see the players? Football games are on TV, and it doesn't affect stadium attendance at all. It's the same with movies. People who really love movies and like to go out on a Saturday night will go to the movie theater."

Some blame the shrinking theater audience on the narrowing gap between a movie's premiere in theaters and its debut in video stores--from six months a few years ago to about four months or less today. "With the window getting smaller and smaller," says Smith, "people don't want to leave the house. The audience is being trained that they don't have to run out to the theater to see something." For many viewers, especially adults, the kids who see the big blockbusters and the critics who review the little indie films have essentially become focus groups that help them decide whether they should see a movie--when it comes out on DVD.

The genius of late 20th century entrepreneurism was to get people to pay a lot for things they were used to getting cheap (coffee) or free (water). A quarter-century ago, Hollywood made most of its money from showing films in theaters. Now the biggest bucks come from DVDs and pay TV. Producers also got something for nothing by packaging recent and old TV shows for the DVD market. All those revenue streams give folks more reasons to stay home, encased in their all-media cocoons, in some cases chained to the desktop deity that can never get enough attention. Just as the computer helps them do many things that used to take them out--work, shopping, buying books, renting movies--so will it soon allow them to download movies to watch on it. As Smith notes, "It's tough to cram three or four people in front of a computer to watch something. But no doubt Steve Jobs is working on this."

If the Internetting or iPodding of movies does take over, that would be a strange revolution indeed. It's one thing to miniaturize phones and radios for easier use. It's another to reduce the 65-ft. movie-palace dream images of old--the ones revived for last week's Oscar show--onto a screen the size of Dick Tracy's wristwatch.

Directors say they frame a shot with the big--not the small--screen in mind. "I only paint on the one size sheet of paper," Spielberg says. "I make my movies for a movie theater, and I like to imagine how big that screen is. But I also realize on a laptop on an airplane or, even worse, on an iPod, they are never going to see that character, and an element of the story will be lost." Whatever is lost on the smaller screen, DVD has become, in Smith's words, "historically the final record of your movie. That's the one people watch over and over." Rodriguez has said that the "real versions" of his movies are the extended, unrated ones on DVD.

So what can lure us to a movie theater? One thought: better movies! But by better, most directors mean "more sophisticated technically." Because with Star Wars in 1977, Lucas spurred another revolution: the triumph of the special-effecty, kid-friendly fantasy blockbuster. With space-age technique and retro, '40s-serial content, the film made so much money, it seduced the studios and fired the imaginations of directors. "The great thing about computerized effects," says Spielberg, "is that now we can do anything our imaginations tell us." Absolutely--if your imagination runs to dinosaurs and space aliens. And no question, those critters sell tickets. All five of last year's top worldwide grossers were fantasies, and all but one (The Chronicles of Narnia) a sequel or a remake.

In the brave new digital world, form is defining content. Because the toys are so cool, directors make movies to exploit their technical possibilities. That's why James Cameron, after doing Titanic, the all-time top grosser, stopped making feature films to shoot underwater documentaries with his favorite new toy, the 3-D camera. Going back to his old camera, he told ComingSoon.net "just seemed like going back from a car to a bicycle." Battle Angel, his first feature since 1997, will be shown in 3-D. (And yes, with the funny glasses.) Lucas is planning to release all six Star Wars episodes in 3-D as well.

That's one future of movies--IMAX-size extravaganzas you can see only in a movie house. It's a throwback to the Cinerama and CinemaScope the studios used against the first home-viewing medium, TV.

But Shyamalan has an even more radical--or counterrevolutionary--idea. "Let's say you can see any movie you want anytime. You can see it on a phone in the toilet when it opens," he says. "Well, somebody like me is going to go to somebody like Warner Bros. and say, 'I want to make a movie but only for the movie theaters. How much money will you give me to make a movie like that?' And they'll do the math and say, 'We'll give you $20 million.' And someone like me is going to say, 'O.K., I'm in.' Well, one of these someones is going to be successful at it. And people will go see it and fall in love with it and tell everybody, 'Hey, did you see that movie? It's only playing in the movie theaters!' And it's going to be magic."

[modage]

if lucas and co. really want theatres to upgrade to digital, all they have to do is say they're only releasing their films on digital screens.  and if he can get enough of the blockbuster directors behind him the theatres will have to comply.  they need that revenue.  shymalamadingdong is an idiot 'bubble failed so day and date failed'.  uhh, whatever.  your rosie o donnel movie failed so you fail as a director?  i dont think so, twistboy.

[pete]

richard corliss always writes the most putrid and middle-American garbage.

[Gamblour.]

I'm glad you think so pete, the article really sounded like it was something brand new and groundbreaking. but when he said "effecty" I knew something was up. The only truly interesting thing is the completely contradictory views that Spielberg and Lucas have, though they come from the same school. Mann too, though it was kinda pompous to call Collateral the "first" "photo-real" film. I don't think that's true. Rodriguez is from the full-of-yourself Tarantino school, as is Smith.

[Pubrick]

all those big shot directors fail to see the bigger picture. while they're off debating the pros and cons of digital media, i'll be sleeping with their daughters and taping it on DV.

[Redlum]

Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

I'm so sick of this.

[MacGuffin]

Digital cinematography
With more cinematographers going digital on high-profile studio projects, industry insiders predict that film purists might soon become a thing of the past.
By Scott Kirsner, Hollywood Reporter

Digital cinematography, during its formative years, had much in common with kryptonite: It was mysterious and dangerous, as far as most mainstream directors and cinematographers were concerned. And digital cameras, like the Superman-sapping rock, might as well have come from outer space because many early prototypes were developed for television, not feature films.

But after an early wave of big-budget movies shot digitally -- including 2002's "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones," directed by George Lucas; 2003's "Once Upon a Time in Mexico," helmed by Robert Rodriguez, and 2004's "Collateral," from director Michael Mann -- were dismissed as interesting experiments conducted by directors eager to tinker with the newest camera gear, this summer is bringing another trio of high-profile studio releases made without film. Their arrival could make digital cinematography more difficult to brush off.

With Warner Bros. Pictures' Bryan Singer-helmed actioner "Superman Returns" set to open domestically June 28 and Sony's Frank Coraci-helmed comedy "Click" debuting June 23 -- both shot with Panavision digital cameras -- and Mann's Universal actioner "Miami Vice" due out July 28 -- shot with a Thomson Grass Valley digital camera -- the default decision to shoot major motion pictures on film might no longer be so obvious.

"A lot of people haven't seen films other than 'Star Wars' that have started digital and ended digital," "Superman Returns" director of photography Newton Thomas Sigel says. "The reality is, this is the direction that image-making is going."

He adds that even "religious die-hards," as Sigel dubs directors and cinematographers who are holding tight to celluloid, "are going to be shooting digitally."


Adoption of digital cinematography is "happening kind of like the way wind erosion happens: slowly," says David Stump, a member of the American Society of Cinematographers' technology committee. "It's still a polarizing issue: You have cinematographers reacting either by saying, 'I only want to shoot film,' or, 'I better get on the bandwagon.'"

Sigel and other cinematographers who have made digital features say they were attracted to the technology primarily for aesthetic reasons. "It's a cleaner look -- a modern, painterly look," Sigel says.

That is one of the reasons even more upcoming films are being shot digitally, including Paramount's planned November release "Zodiac," from filmmaker David Fincher; Buena Vista's planned December release "Apocalypto," directed by Mel Gibson; MGM's planned December release "Home of the Brave," helmed by Irwin Winkler, and even Francis Ford Coppola's next project, "Youth Without Youth."

Speaking from the "Apocalypto" set in Mexico, cinematographer Dean Semler notes that he has been struck by the absence of blur in the foreground of his digital shots. With a Panavision Genesis camera suspended on a cable, he says, "we were moving it at running speed with our actors, tracking them through the jungle from about 20 feet away, and you'd see branches and bushes and leaves with highlights on them, streaking by in the foreground. The results were extraordinary -- these stunning images of speed."

Semler also appreciated the ability to shoot for longer stretches -- about 50 minutes -- without having to reload the camera while working on the Adam Sandler starrer "Click." "We shot for 20 or 30 minutes at a go on 'Click,'" Semler says. "It allows actors to keep 'in the moment' and allows directors to try alternatives without calling, 'Cut!' and breaking the flow. We'd change tapes maybe twice a day."

Like Semler, Dion Beebe has shot two digital features: "Collateral" and "Miami Vice." "I think there are still issues with the (digital cameras' imaging) latitudes during daytime," says Beebe, who won an Academy Award for 2005's "Memoirs of a Geisha," which he shot on film. "But we made use of the amazing depth of field: You're seeing literally from 2 inches to infinity."

But plenty of producers, directors and cinematographers still have reservations about going digital, from qualms about resolution to questions about the long-term preservation of digital files to skepticism about whether dispensing with film results in real savings.

Despite recent advances, digital cameras remain more cumbersome than hand-held Arriflex film cameras. "You're tethered to a recording deck," Beebe says. For some shots on "Miami Vice," he adds, a tape desk was stashed in the hull of a boat, with cables snaking above-deck to the camera. (Beebe used TGV's Viper FilmStream camera, Sony digital cameras and, on occasion, a film camera on that movie.)

In fact, DPs continue to rely on film cameras for shots that require variable shutter speed or especially high frame rates. "We carried an (Arriflex) 435 because the cameras we had initially wouldn't go beyond 30 frames a second," Semler says. "But about a month into 'Apocalypto,' we were given three new (Genesis) camera bodies that could do 50 frames per second."

Some cinematographers also express concern about how original digital files -- essentially, the high-tech version of camera negatives -- will be archived. "With a negative, you have the security of something that is stored on film," says Allen Daviau, who has shot numerous tests with digital cameras but has not yet made a digital feature. "What we don't know -- and won't know for some time -- is how well the digital masters survive."

Beebe notes that the process of capturing images digitally and moving them through postproduction has not yet been standardized. "I think if you did a flowchart, you'd find that everyone who has directed a digital movie has taken a different path," he says.

As with digital cinema projection, debates linger as to how many pixels are enough and how sensitive to light and color each pixel ought to be. While most current digital cameras capture about 2,000 horizontal pixels for each frame, cinematographers like Daviau are holding out for twice that resolution, or 4K.

"I think we'll see a true 4K sensor in the next two to four years, and then the reservations are going to disappear," TGV senior marketing manager Mark Chiolis says. "It will be a lot closer to what film is."

But can shooting digitally save money? Panavision president and CEO Bob Beitcher estimates that "on a substantial feature, where the crew would have shot 750,000 feet of film, we can save customers about $600,000." Panavision keeps some of that savings, charging more for Genesis rentals than for those of comparable film cameras, but Beitcher says the company passes along about two-thirds to customers.

Sigel notes that aesthetics and flexibility, not cost savings, were the primary reasons he and Singer decided to shoot "Superman Returns" with seven Genesis cameras. "When you do a movie that has a $200 million(-plus) budget, the amount of money you save on film stock -- or not -- is, with all due respect, a joke," Sigel says.

For projects with smaller budgets, though -- such as two independent features made recently by writer-director Adam Rifkin -- the savings are more noticeable. On his caveman comedy "Homo Erectus" and "Look," a drama seen from the perspective of surveillance cameras, Rifkin estimates that shooting digitally saved at least 25% of each project's camera budget. While it might be more difficult for big-budget movies to measure how much they save by not shooting on film, "for indie films, the savings are dramatic and very, very worthwhile," he says. "These films look more expensive than their budgets."

The result, on most big-budget films, might be that digital cinematography does not shrink the size of crews, the sums spent on camera rental or the days required for principal photography -- just as the arrival of digital editing during the 1990s did not radically reduce the time or crew members required for editing. Instead, it might simply offer new aesthetic possibilities and allow directors and cinematographers to squeeze more minutes of shooting into each day.

"It's not as important to save money as it is to be seen as being concerned about saving money," says Stump, who recently shot Mars Callahan's upcoming romantic comedy "What Love Is," starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Anne Heche, with a Viper FilmStream.

Without the lure of major cost savings, though, studios are not yet pressuring producers, directors and cinematographers to go digital.

"It's going to be up to the filmmakers," Beebe says. "Filmmakers are going to look at these three projects this summer, and if they're excited by what they see on the screens, that's going to be what determines their interest in digital cinematography."

[pete]

aw not that shit again.  chris doyle and herzog have gotten it right, people are having futile debates right now are not the people that will determine the future of DV.  the future of the medium is not going to be determined by 50 year old execs or DPs.  it's gonna be some asshole kid with a camera.  they can chillax.

[MacGuffin]

Cinematographers turn to new cameras, experimental formats in pursuit of better storytelling
Playing it fast and loose
Source: Variety

The film format may be the gold standard for features, but some lensers are experimenting with advances made in digital formats. Daily Variety asked four cinematographers to share their experiences and impressions on recent high-profile projects shot in digital formats.

Dion Beebe (ASC, ACS) earned an Oscar and American Society of Cinematographers Award for his 35 mm film "Memoirs of a Geisha." He sandwiched that cinematic achievement between "Collateral" and "Miami Vice."

Both of those Michael Mann endeavors were shot with Grass Valley Viper FilmStream digital cameras, with the common denominator being many large, dark exterior locations.

"It's never really been my interest to pursue a film look with a digital camera," Beebe says. "I'm more interested in creating a look unique to the system. Digital video is a developing tool that is still in its infancy.

"The story and the director are the main considerations for me. Everything else is ultimately the means to an end. Whether you choose to use a digital or a Super 8 film camera, what remains most important is the integrity of the story. I would happily shoot a movie on Super 8 film tomorrow if I thought it could help me tell the story."

Beebe notes that both "Collateral" and "Miami Vice" were urban, contemporary pictures. "When I've used digital cameras, the images feel very immediate. I think the emotional response is something that comes from television and electronic images. I couldn't have visualized 'Geisha' in HD or any other digital format.

"Sometimes you hear people pushing HD as a quicker, easier, cheaper medium," he adds. "I certainly don't think it is at this point. It's improving all the time, but it's not a simple, quick solution to anything. The decision has to be about the story you are trying to tell and whether the camera system serves that."

Newton Thomas Sigel (ASC) began his career in the documentary field and moved into drama on Haskell Wexler's "Latino." His credits range from the visually striking "Three Kings" to the effects-heavy blockbusters "X-Men" and "The Brothers Grimm."

He also shot "Superman Returns," which was billed as the first major feature shot with the Panavision Genesis digital video camera. Sigel and director Bryan Singer envisioned images with a vibrancy that pushed the envelope of reality. He has since finished a yet-to-be-titled project with director Alan Ball using the Genesis.

"I've been very pleased with the images," Sigel says. "The Genesis has a chip the size of a Super 35 mm frame, a log curve that emulates film, and a depth-of-field characteristic that is similar to what we have come to appreciate with film cameras. It's the first time I've seen digital images look like something that appealed to me, rather than like some kind of video."

Sigel notes that on "Superman Returns," there was no significant advantage over film in terms of time and money saved. "It was a very difficult movie, involving a lot of rigging and effects," he recalls. "I insisted on timed dailies since no one had used the camera before. It wasn't the cheapest way to do the movie, but it was right for this project."

Dean Semler (ASC, ACS) has more than 50 feature film credits, with Oscar, ASC and BAFTA awards for his cinematography on "Dances With Wolves." He shot "Apocalypto" with the Genesis camera.

Semler says that during pre-production, he anticipated difficult lighting conditions in the jungles of southern Mexico. "There was no way I could have lit the jungle and had it look natural," Semler says. "The low-light capabilities of the Genesis enabled me to keep going in there, even when it was overcast and very dark in the middle of the day. It also allowed me an extra hour or two of shooting at the end of the day. The electronic shutter can be set to 360 degrees, which gave me another stop of light and the equivalent of a 2,500 exposure index."

Semler also cites the ability to keep the camera rolling for up to 50 minutes without stopping to reload. "That was a big plus for (director) Mel (Gibson)," he says.

A number of digitally shot features require the use of film for certain specialized applications. For example, Semler handed tiny Aaton A-Minima Super 16 film cameras to actors to grab dynamic running shots of themselves during chase sequences. Beebe shot 35 mm film for high frame rates and other shots on "Collateral" and "Miami Vice."

Tony Pierce-Roberts (BSC) photographed explosions on 35mm film at 150 frames per second for Irwin Winkler's "Home of the Brave."

Pierce-Roberts, who has earned Oscar nominations for "A Room With a View" and "Howards End," used Viper cameras to shoot the majority of "Brave," which was filmed in Morocco and Spokane, Wash.

"The decision to shoot in HD had been made before I got on the film," he says. "I think Irwin and the producers were attracted to the idea of a hefty shooting ratio without the attendant film-stock costs. In retrospect, I wish we had shot the Moroccan scenes on film. But I enjoyed working with the Viper, and we had no problems with the camera.

"I wanted to make sure there was detail in the dark skin tones of some of our cast, so I lifted the waveform a bit in order to have maximum flexibility later in post.

"If I were doing a film with a lot of action and stunts, a film where you wanted to use different speeds on any given setup, HD cameras would be inappropriate.

"But for 'Home of the Brave,' I liked the idea of trying something completely new."