digital or film, a cinematographers perspective - holiday blogger #3

Holiday Guest Blogger # 3

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How kind of Jerry to allow me to contribute to his blog. I only hope I am half the writer and communicator that Jerry is. As a Cinematographer my strength is with a camera in my hand, not a pen. Here goes:

My name is Ed Gutentag and as I was saying I am a Cinematographer. When I asked Jerry what I could write about he said, “The world is your oyster”. I am going to stick to my world and expound on Film Capture vs. Digital Capture.

I love film and digital will never look the same as film, but...what I tell producers, directors, agency, etc is that today in 2009/2010 there are so many amazing choices of cameras that you can actually pick the wrong camera if you’re not up on the latest technology. Today's Cinematographers have so many more choices of cameras and also post solutions at their fingertips (did I just say post and cinematographers in the same sentence?) What I tell people is the following:

Film is great, but digital is at the point (especially for TV commercials) that when viewed on a TV set (and yes more TV’s are HD) I defy any Cinematographer to tell me if it was shot on film or digital. (By the way, I participated in test which was screened at Panavision in Woodland Hills, Ca to try to guess which footage was shot on film and which footage was shot on the Panavision Genesis camera and I was right 50% of the time, and I also worked on the shoot with Alan Daviau.)

The other thing to keep in mind is what us your project? A perfect example of picking the correct camera is Danny Boyles “28 Days Later”; the entire movie except for one scene at the end was shot on a Canon XL-1S with Canon EC and EJ prime lenses and an Optex Adapter on DV Cam tape.

The choice of camera is an important one. It's like choosing the correct brush or paint; is it water base, acrylic, or oil? At the “end of the day” or maybe I should change the expression here and say at the “beginning of the day” your choice of camera, film or digital is a creative choice but also an economical choice, and on top of it all, no matter what camera you choose, you have to let go of the technology and help the director, agency, producer to tell their story, on time and on or below budget.

Ed Gutentag started shooting Regular 8 mm ( predates Super 8 mm) film with his dads camera at the age of 7. He worked his way up to Cinematographer from photography by sweeping floors for an advertising photographer in NYC. He transitioned to motion picture and started back in the dark room loading film. He has worked with and learned from some of the most talented filmmakers in the world. The list includes Steven Speilberg,James Cameron,Robert Zemeckis,Norman Jewison, Michael Mann, Barry Levinson and Steven Soderbergh.

He currently shoots features, commercials, documentaries and the occasional large scale stunt on an action film.

http://edgutentag.com/reelpg.html

http://digitalcinemafordummies.blogspot.com/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0349177/