Film pros:
More depth
Looks better on most occasions

Digital Pros:
Much cheaper
Much easier to use
Quickly advancing to compete with film.

It's hard to be more specific than that in just Digital vs Film. Film could be 8mm to 35mm and digital can be anything from a Canon GL2 to a RED one. RED is a massive breakthrough in digital technology(debatable). I personally think it's awesome, but not quite the second coming that some people make it out to be. On the other side, I think it's a fair deal better than the old film guard does, who says 'it's still video'.

If the question is really "which should I use?" than consider that if you have less than 10 grand for a project, you should probably use digital unless you have a friend at the lab who can telecine for free and you can get cheap stock somewhere.

The argument for using digital over film has been going on for quite sometime, but the census is swaying towards digital in a big way. Unless you were raised on film then I would go digital. I've shot both film and digital and digital is the way to go. As of right now the digital product, when transferred to film, is very close in quality and within the next year the evolution will continue to close the small gap. Today's audiences for the most part have been raised on digital and they really could care less about the slight difference in appearance. Tell a great story and you can show it on a flip-book and people will watch it...or some people will watch it. I will watch it!

Film is an animal all of it's own. You have to match lighting (color of light), you have to keep the temperature right during storage and after shooting, you have to worry about the gate in the camera scratching the film, it takes10 times longer to use film, because after several minutes of shooting you have to change mags, etc. Plus you have to develop the film and sync up the dialog during transfer to tape (telecine) to watch your dailies. That is an expensive process. If you have millions of dollars and can hire professional crew to handle the film and equipment then shoot away. If you are just starting out then don't even think twice about it. By the time you get up and running and ready to shoot your films...film may be extinct except for a few diehards...very few diehards. Save yourself more time and go digital. If you shoot a great digital film then the experts can manipulate it to any look they desire. Shoot it!

I went to a talk by a Hungarian filmmaker named Béla Tarr a while back where he described film and video as being two entirely different mediums. One isn't necessarily better than the other, but they're incredibly different.

In school this semester I'm in a 16mm production class so I'm shooting film exclusively, mostly black and white negative. I think in the arena of cost, HD in the form of RED one or even something as cheap as the HVX200 has film soundly beaten. Still, I shoot film whenever I have the money. Yes there are hassles associated with it and yes 16mm color negative costs somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 cents per foot just in terms of raw stock and sure you can only shoot 11-minute loads and there's labs to deal with and telecine and storage issues, but those are just the realities of working in the format. And I think that no matter how huge HD gets in the coming years, film will be around for a good long time.

Video can look very nice if you shoot it right, and film can look absolutely lousy if you don't light correctly. It really is an issue of personal preference and the aesthetic you're working with.

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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com

Great! Thanks everyone. That helps. Like I said, I'm just starting out...so I'll probably go with digital. I do hope to at least become experienced with film, though--in a film school of some sort.

What is this RED you are all talking about?

"Sort of a wait-and-see. But then I waited...and I saw."

-Elizabethtown

go to www.red.com

It's basically a really fancy HD camera with an effective resolution of over 4k. Apparently Jumper was shot on a RED. What makes it remarkable is that you could theoretically put together a full camera package for under $30,000. Not exactly pocket change, but you could easily spend that much just on film stock and processing and telecine from a single day of shooting on 35mm.

I'll be honest: looking at what this camera can do makes it very difficult for me to see the advantages of shooting 35mm color negative, and I think that Hollywood will be switching over to a full-digital workflow in just a few years. It's a different story if you're shooting black-and-white, since black-and-white negative is still very much its own look. I also think that the aesthetic qualities of small-format film like 16mm and super 8mm are enough to differentiate them from HD, and I love those film formats. But if I got to pick between shooting with a RED and shooting 35mm, I'd definitely choose the RED.

-----------------
Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com

Ok, thanks!

By the way, this is what I'm using now.

What is that considered? (lol, don't even know what I'm using)

_____________________

"Sort of a wait-and-see. But then I waited...and I saw."

-Elizabethtown

quote:

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?i?Originally posted by mako0248?/i?
What is that considered? (lol, don't even know what I'm using)

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That is considered Video8. An older analog format.

agingeri - Jumper was shot on film. The Red One camera
was used for selected second unit scenes to get a look
that was very different than film.

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

Ah, I stand corrected.

-----------------
Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com

CON: You cant be creative with film when you have to worry about overpriced film stock, overpriced camera equipment , overpriced camera crews, incessant checking of color temperature and intensity, incessant changing of mags, restrictive weight and dimensions of said camera equipment, and the ever present threat that a particle of dust or a ray of light could touch your precious film and you will be back at square one.

PRO: You'll have no idea what your movie will look like when your shooting it so it will be a suprise when you get it back from the telecine lab, no wait, thats a CON. Oh, yeah, it might look slightly better than digital, but if you suck at filmmaking then it wont make any difference.