The 120-frame version of "Gemini Killer" has caused some controversy some time ago. During the film's release, Ang Lee talked about his views on digital films and film films. He believed that digital methods should not be used to imitate traditional film films. It is to explore how to develop beauty in digital movies. The digital film of
does have a lot of potential. It should be different. It should not be learning from traditional movies... Not only is it narrative, but it also has the beauty of distance. When you experience it yourself, it is another world. That is what digital should do.
In fact, today's film movies are no longer the mainstream of the film industry under the impact of digital technology. But why does Ang Lee think that digital movies seem to be the weaker party and still cannot get rid of the influence of film?
is not just in the film industry. Even though the most popular personal camera device today, smart phones, has made digital photography unprecedentedly popular, but the film style has not died out due to the popularization of digital technology, but the sales of digital cameras in the past It has fallen by 60% in 9 years.
▲ The male protagonist holding a film camera in the MV of Jay Chou’s new song "Say No To Cry". The resurgence of
film is reflected in the increase in the number of people playing film cameras, and on the other hand, the film style is reborn through digital technology , Living in more people’s phones in another way.
uses digital technology to simulate film. It’s not just about adding grain.
When it comes to film, many people’s first impression is "graininess." In some people’s eyes, this seemingly rough picture quality reflects a kind of worthiness. Savor the texture of the image.
The grains in film photography are actually the grains formed by the solidification of silver salt during film exposure. It is a bit similar to the pixels in digital photos. The so-called graininess is equivalent to the noise in digital photography. The larger the grain, the rougher the picture.
Therefore, the "graininess" talked about in film is actually a by-product of poor photographic quality. It is a flaw under technical limitations in the past, but today it has become a unique image style, even through digital technology. To imitate this style.
Just as Li Ang said, many digital movies pursue a "film sense" by imitating the film style. But not many people can clearly say what the cinematic sense is. Similar to the "graininess of film," the cinematic sense can be said to be a texture created by the audiovisual language of movies. Directors such as
Quentin Tarantino and Nolan are well-known Hollywood "film pies." They still insist on shooting movies with film. In their eyes, the level of picture brought by film movies is unmatched by digital movies. Director Steve McQueen, who won the Oscar for Best Picture for "Twelve Years of a Slave", described film as follows:
film has a romantic charm and a charm-as if it can breathe. The film feels more...how do you say it, perhaps more "humane"?
may be the obsession of many major Hollywood directors for film. Even though digital formats have almost replaced film movies, digital movies still seem to feel inferior to their own aesthetics. They need to use analog film to balance them. It is also one of the reasons why Lee's film technology innovation has been difficult to be widely recognized.
admires film style not only for media such as movies, but also for games. In 3A games such as Tomb Raider, Titanfall 2 and Uncharted 4, there are not only the option of "Film Grain", but also the effects of overexposure, optical refraction and large depth of field in traditional photography. .
However, it is not enough to simply add some "film grain" to the screen to simulate the effect close to the real film through digital technology. It is not easy to restore the film imaging process with a computer.
Like many film simulation apps on mobile phones, the film industry also has software that converts material shot by digital cameras into film style. FilmConvert is one of them. Lance Lones from its development team introduced the technology of such software in an interview. detail.
Lance Lones is also a professional cinematographer himself. He has participated in the special effects production of "Avatar". He said that the working principle of film processing is similar to that of the human eye, but the electronic sensor is different.The channel responds linearly to the number of incoming photons, which means it cannot really perceive color. The
FilmConvert team members will first calculate the color exposure for a roll of film, then measure the corresponding film density, then build a measurement model to establish a negative-sided model, and finally print the negative with the same data. The whole process is very complicated, and the most difficult one is It uses algorithms to simulate human perception modeling.
According to Lance Lones, this kind of software brings up a topic worth thinking about: protecting endangered technologies through more technologies. Lance Lones hopes to bring similar tools to film and television workers around the world, but obviously the scope of this topic can be discussed beyond the production of film and television works.
In the more popular mobile photography, the analog film-style app has given many young people who grew up with smartphones the first exposure to "film", and to a certain extent the declining film has been revived in the digital age.
Ai Faner has experienced film camera app NOMO, which was selected as Apple's 2018 App of the Year. Aifaner used traditional film to compare with NOMO, and found that NOMO can reproduce many film styles into the color palette, and even the effects of import/development are not exactly the same every time like film.
▲ Shot by MINOLTA Sweet S + AF 50mm F1.7, film is FUJIFILM C200 expired
Although NOMO’s simulation of film is quite realistic, as Ai Faner’s previous evaluation article said, “Algorithms are always algorithms. It still cannot simulate the effect of film through chemical reactions. NOMO can only be similar here, not consistent."
According to the founder of NOMO, Feizhu, in an interview. The whole process of filming is to arouse users' memory and recognition of film cameras, and NOMO reproduces more of a sense of ritual.
NOMO actually gives users a sense of ritual. We do NOMO to translate the entire process of ritual.
film looks "more advanced", is it just because of feelings?
is similar to vinyl. The resurgence of retro techniques such as film often comes with a feeling filter. Whether it is film directors' insistence on film or literary youth's keenness to shoot film, they are all considered to be a blessing of nostalgia. However, Is this the whole reason why film looks "more advanced"?
Researchers from universities in Sweden and Switzerland have done such a set of experiments. The researchers divided hundreds of volunteers into four groups and watched film shooting film screening, digital shooting digital screening, digital shooting film screening, and digital shooting digital. Screened, but added noise and jitter to the same movie in the later stage, and asked each group of volunteers to rate the movie.
The results showed that the average scores of the three groups of watching film shooting, film screening or post-analog film are basically the same, and they are all higher than the group of digital shooting and digital screening.
Therefore, the researchers concluded that the reason why the audience prefers film quality is because of the lack of information caused by noise and jitter, which gives people more room for imagination. This may also be the 120-frame "Gemini Killer" that some people complain about. The reason for "too real".
In addition, some people also explained the reasons why people love film from a technical point of view. According to the answer of a PhD in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Leeds on Zhihu, general digital cameras do not have high color resolution, and the color separation is often not as good as film. Although it can be adjusted later, it will disrupt the color in the original light. Logic, picture quality will also be compromised.
Some people think that the taste of film belongs to color cast and grain. This statement is correct, which is equivalent to saying that most Sichuan dishes are spicy. But it makes no sense to say that you are delicious Sichuan cuisine if you add chili to the dish. This kind of reasonable complex color cast cannot be handled by digital cameras. This is one of the reasons why film still exists.
One reason for adding "film grain" to the game is to make the color transition more natural when the number of color bits is insufficient or the color gradation is lost.
Of course, the popularity of film styles is not entirely caused by these objective factors. The so-called feelings are also an important reason. modernMike Luhan, the founder of communication theory, put forward a point early on: media is not simply a physical attribute, but also human perception.
As Kevin Kelly said in "What Technology Wants", technology is an extension of ideas. We are moved by a photo. In many cases, it is not only because of how high the pixels are or how coarse the grain of the film is. It has nothing to do with digital or film.
title picture from: "One One"
