Simon Ratigan on Film versus Digital

In this feature from issue 145 of shots magazine, HLA director Simon Ratigan talks about having shot on film and digital and, below, discusses which, if either, is best. You can also see and hear him talking on the subject in the accompanying video, above.

Film vs Digital: Sounds like a heavyweight contest with only one winner and everything to play for. 10 years ago that may have been the case. Those using and loving film refused to consider working with anything else, companies developing digital technology refused to believe film had any kind of long term future. Well, the contest is not quite over, but that’s not to say there isn’t a winner.

What’s surprising is there’s more than one. Film may have lost its dominance of the industry, but it’s still around and in terms of pure aesthetics, most filmmakers would choose it over digital. This is because it has the ability to transform a scene, a face, a landscape into something more beautiful than the original. It does this irrespective of the lighting, camera angle or grade. Digital imaging has improved beyond recognition and is successfully blurring the boundaries between the two formats. But it still needs more control and consideration to produce images comparable to film.

An uneasy truce

So for the moment, there is an uneasy truce, which while it lasts is great news for filmmakers, who have got a bigger choice of cameras and formats than ever before. Of course, this is changing by the day and the appeal of high-end digital cameras like the Arri Alexa is a sign of where things are heading. By combining the many benefits of shooting on digital with much of the beauty of shooting on film, these cameras are rendering the older format virtually obsolete. And with the demand dropping for film stock and cameras, so the hire companies are turning to digital, the film retail and processing infrastructure is shrinking and the skills and experience needed to work with the medium are beginning to vanish.

I‘ve just completed a 35mm spot [Total Greek Yogurt Nineteen Twenty Thirteen] the first in a couple of years and was shocked by how hard it was to find people who could help once we had finished filming. We weren’t asking for a lot, just a film lab and a neg cutter, but there were none left in London. Of course, many will argue that it doesn’t matter. As film disappears, digital technology is opening up new cinematic territory and they’d be right. With bigger sensors, increased light sensitivity, higher-speed image capture and full HD functionality on the smallest and lightest of cameras, filmmakers are increasingly able to explore and capture the visual extremes of our world on a shoestring budget.

Intimacy, intensity and scale

Whether it’s filming at night, at high speed, from body mounts, from heli-cams, from weird handheld angles, from under the ground, above the troposphere or inside previously inaccessible spaces, digital technology is injecting images with an intimacy, an intensity and a scale that is redefining the language of filmmaking. Not surprisingly, it’s also triggering a shift in craft skills and on-set creativity. The role of the clapper loader is being increasingly overlapped by the allimportant DIT operator, whose remit has already expanded from data manager to primary colour grader and assembly editor.

Art directors, set designers and model builders are affected too, refocusing on the minutiae of what they paint, build and dress into a set, as high-resolution digital images reveal more and more detail. Likewise, cinematographers and their lightingcrews, may have super sharp monitors to help them shape a shot more precisely, but at the same time they're having to adjust the way they light, as digital deals with colour and skin tones differently and is a less forgiving when it comes to highlights and shadows. These are the growing pains of an emerging format, one that has now been fully embraced by the industry and is beginning to leave film behind.

The beautiful world of film

This change seems an inevitable one, especially with the growing demand from clients and agencies for greater control, quicker turn around and ease of workflow, all of which digital delivers superbly. It’s not a process we can stop, nor do we want to, as we’ve all fallen in love with the benefits digital offers. Half the projects we work on couldn’t be shot using anything else and the technology is only going to get better, which seems exciting and reassuring in equal measure.

But that said, I couldn’t quite forget the moment I sat down to view the rushes on my recent 35mm shoot. I thought I knew what to expect, but was taken by complete surprise and just watched spellbound, as I was reminded how beautiful the world is when it’s shot on film. I kept thinking how different it looked from anything remotely digital. Slowly I began to realise how successfully we’ve been seduced by new technology and how quickly we’ve forgotten what real filmic beauty looks like.

I don’t want to give digital up, it’s great looking and immensely useful and luckily it’s here to stay. Film, on the other hand, is a different matter. It’s still the most glorious format and deserves to survive and for that to happen we need to use it. But even if it doesn’t survive, it’s available right now and we’d be foolish not to make the most of it while it lasts.