Who would have dreamed film would die so easily?” – Roger Ebert
It’s 9:30 a.m. and I’m about to sit down with Rob Groeneboer, one of the Senior Lecturers at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. I’ve come to interview Rob about the school’s film program.
Students in the program write, direct, shoot, edit, act in and mix sound for their own motion pictures. They take courses on the history, theory and criticism of film, while learning the practical skills required to make their own movies. The program is among the most well-regarded in the country: just last year, 21 of the 60 films in the Canadian Student Film Festival in Montreal were made by SFU students.
Many SCA graduates go on to become important members of the film industry. “For such a small program, we do exceptionally well,” Rob remarks. It’s not difficult to see why: the program is notoriously selective. Only about 20 students are accepted to the program every year, from over 100 applicants across the world.
The campus itself is located in the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, inside Vancouver’s historic Woodward’s Building. Film majors rub shoulders with dancers, visual artists and screenwriters, in the heart downtown Vancouver. The third floor — reserved for film students — is often decorated with art installations, film posters, and folded issues of Cinemateque. It’s hard to believe this is Simon Fraser University.
What interests me most about the film program — and the reason I’ve come to speak with Rob — is their dependence on analog equipment and celluloid film. Until recently, first year students in the program would shoot films on spring-wound Bolex cameras, which use 16 mm film and weigh about six pounds. They would then edit the analog footage on flatbed film editing machines called Steenbecks, which are large desks with metal discs and knobs on which students and filmmakers can physically cut their films together, tape, scissors and all.
Each Steenbeck features a small screen on which students can review footage from their film and tape different sections together. It’s a tiring but ultimately rewarding process. “It’s physically draining,” says Alysha Seriani, a second year student. “It’s not like throwing it into Final Cut Pro and pressing undo if you don’t like the way those shots look together. When you make a cut, you can’t put those back together . . . but you learn the value of a cut, and you learn the value of a shot.”
Though these analog processes have been the film school norm for decades, institutions worldwide are now beginning to move towards digital cameras and computerized post-production tools to teach students. The School for Contemporary Arts has been slow to follow suit. When I ask Rob whether SFU is the last school in Canada to use analog film to teach students, he laughs and adds, “I think possibly in North America, possibly the world.”
However, even the SCA is making the transition towards digital. Sixteen mm is the main film stock that SFU students use. As opposed to 35 mm, which is the standard format for analog motion pictures, 16 mm is “a very square little image,” Rob says. “It’s not a great latitude, it has definition that isn’t great, you have to fight for depth of field; there’s all kinds of limitations. With the new digital technology, none of those limitations exist.”
This year is the first in which new students will be editing digitally — all of the program’s Steenbeck machines have either been given away or put in storage.
An Industry Divided
Five years ago, SFU’s move from analog to digital might have shocked us — today, it feels inevitable. Filmmakers across the globe have traded their analog cameras for state of the art digital models, and some of the most popular films in recent years, such as Avatar, Gravity and The Hobbit, have been shot entirely on digital. The rise in digital filmmaking has been exponential; only one decade ago, three major motion pictures were filmed entirely in digital, whereas in 2013, the number is closer to 40.
Digital distribution has also become commonplace: in 2012, Screen Digest reported that over 91 per cent of theatres in the United Kingdom had made the switch from analog to digital projection. All of the major movie camera companies — Panavision, ARRI, and Aaton, to name a few — have quietly ceased production of film cameras, citing decreased revenues and a flooded market of used equipment. Fuji has officially stopped producing motion picture film, and Kodak isn’t far behind. It seems that the writing is on the wall for celluloid.
“We wouldn’t survive in the film industry if we weren’t designing a digital camera,” says Jean-Pierre Beauviala, the co-founder of Aaton. “Almost nobody is designing new film cameras. Why buy a new one when there are so many used cameras around the world?”
Still, many of Hollywood’s most revered filmmakers have refused to give up on analog. In an interview with the Director’s Guild of America, Christopher Nolan, the director of The Dark Knight and one of digital’s most outspoken critics, defended his continued use of film: “It’s cheaper to work on film, it’s far better looking, it’s the technology that’s been known and understood for a hundred years, and it’s extremely reliable.”
Quentin Tarantino, the man behind such po-mo flicks as Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds, took his passion for analog even further by threatening to stop making movies altogether, should film ever stop being an option. “I’ll probably just be a writer,” he quipped in an Oscar roundtable. “All of this digital stuff, this is not what I signed up for.”
However, many directors have embraced the digitization of filmmaking. In Side by Side, a 2012 documentary about the digital vs. analog debate, Danny Boyle recalls shooting one of the first digitally shot films, the zombie flick 28 Days Later: “You could shoot illegally, surreptitiously without people knowing, and you could do unconventional things. The rhythm of film which had been passed on since it began, and crews had learned . . . you interrupted that. And I loved that feeling.”
Institutions worldwide are now beginning to move towards digital cameras and computerized post-production tools to teach students.
Six years later, Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire — shot almost entirely on digital cameras — would become the first of its kind to win an Oscar for Best Cinematography.
Others have similarly championed the retirement of celluloid: George Lucas, James Cameron, Guillermo del Toro and Steven Soderbergh have all been key supporters of the digital revolution. Before the advent of the HD digital cameras used in the big-scale productions of the day, digital was a popular choice for independent filmmakers on a low budget, such as Lena Dunham and Miranda July. Cheaper, lower-definition cameras are still popular with independent filmmakers.
Many students in the SCA’s later years have chosen to use digital cameras to make their films. “For the last probably five or six years, we’ve had students who have been able to make the choice [between analog and digital],” Rob remarks. “We had all the Super 16 gear here, and people were going out and renting cameras.”
Analog versus Digital
So, what’s the difference between the two? Unlike analog film, which has a certain permanence to it, digital filmmaking is constantly evolving, making this question a difficult one to answer. However, it would be a mistake to call them the same medium: though they bear many similarities, film and digital are separate formats, and thus create separate experiences for the viewer. For example, a magazine of analog film must be switched after filming 10 minutes of footage, whereas digital cameras in general have much more storage capacity.
This has a profound effect on the filmmaking process and the experience of the cast and crew: with fewer breaks between shots, actors are required to spend more time on their feet and directors are able to assess their performances immediately via a small pixelated screen. Digital filmmaking also affects the way that films are staged: with lighter and more versatile equipment, as well as the boon of computer generated imagery, filmmakers are able to shoot scenes and depict images that would never have been possible with analog cameras.
From a financial standpoint, film cameras are relatively inexpensive. “They’re somewhere between cheap and boat anchors,” Rob says. Many can be bought for relatively little, while high-definition digital cameras are expensive and run the risk of obsoletion. Digital filmmaking also requires updated post-production technology, such as editing software, memory cards and computer applications. However, developing film stock may become more costly in the future, as labs continue to disappear around the world.
The image itself is another point of contention: some prefer the grainier, more tangible look of analog film, while others consider the crispness of digital cinema to be superior. Ultimately, the resolution of most modern digital films is about the same as celluloid — depending on the quality of the camera. Analog film produces fuller skin tones and better dynamic range, while digital images are more precise, and tend to perform better in low light situations. Some prefer the cleanliness and precision of digital imagery, while others hold true to the authenticity and subtleties of analog film.
Founded by Jim Jannard in 2005, The Red Digital Cinema Camera Company has quickly become one of the giants of digital filmmaking. Red Epic, the company’s latest digital camera, is a model that SFU will begin using within the next few years. “There’s no question this is the future,” Jannard said in an LA Times interview. The Epic may be the most sophisticated digital movie camera ever designed: its lightweight structure, resolution and versatility have made it the industry standard, especially when shooting in 3D.
However, celluloid still dominates in the realm of archival. The key is simplicity: films made over a century ago can still be viewed today, provided you have a film projector and the patience required to set it up. Film preservation is far from perfect — about 90 per cent of silent films made before 1929, and 50 per cent of sound films made before 1950, are lost — but it’s the best we’ve got. “Digital formats don’t store well; you have to keep transferring it over and over and over,” Rob says. “They’re now looking at 35 mm primarily as an archival tool.”
Fade to Black
According to Rob, the switch from film to digital at the SCA was inevitable. “It’s like a party that’s over, and there’s great memories there, but you move on.” Though he assures me that the program will still be in possession of analog film equipment, he’s doubtful that students will use it — after all, shooting film is a more difficult and time-consuming process.
For his part, Will Ross, a fourth year SFU film student, welcomes the program’s digitized future. “When I switched from film to digital in third year, it completely solidified me as a pro-digital person,” he says. “There’s a school of thought that film is better to learn on because it instills discipline . . . that it’s a proving ground. I actually feel the opposite of that: I never improved more as a filmmaker than when I had the freedom to make mistakes, digitally. It just gives me so much more creative freedom.
Paradiso, a short film which Will edited, was recently featured at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was shot in — you guessed it — digital. “I no longer see any reason why anyone would work with film at any stage of the process,” he says.
Still, not all film students are celebrating the end of celluloid. “You have to be a really special kind of crazy to work with film,” Alysha says. When I ask her what the film program will lose when celluloid is eventually phased out, she replies, “It’s the blood, sweat, and tears of analog. It’s wasting away in the Steenbeck room, looking for the 12 frames that you need in order make a cut. It’s the idea of creating a work ethic, and not having a safety net other than yourself. It’s about learning that process of responsibility.”
Is this the death of film? Not necessarily. Though many have been quick to announce the impending doom of celluloid, it’s likely that the two media will continue to coexist, at least for the time being. However, it’s likely that digital and film will have traded places by the end of the decade — film may well become a medium reserved for the artistic, the independent and the alternative, while digital will propel the Hollywood industry into a techno-savvy future.
“I imagine there will always be 35 mm projectors at film festivals and various shrines of cinema,” the late Roger Ebert wrote in a 2011 post on his website. “But my war is over, my side lost, and it’s important to consider this in the real world.”
Ultimately, whether you prefer film or digital, the format used to make movies isn’t nearly as important as the work put into them by people. “The ideas are more important than the tools you use to capture them,” Rob says, and this rings truer than any argument on either side of the debate. Like any artistic medium, film is first and foremost a tool for personal expression, and the students at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts will doubtlessly continue to make immersive, thought-provoking films — regardless of whether they’re “films” at all.
The future of SFU’s film program may be made up of ones and zeroes, but analog-loving students still have a chance to use celluloid when they begin their degree — at least, for now. “It’s a great teaching tool — that’s what I miss about it,” Rob says wistfully. “The idea of being able to hold something in your hands and see the images and become conscious of what a frame is, just to have a tactile connection with what you’re doing, is I think invaluable.
“That’s why we still use it in first year, we continue to shoot films on the Bolexes and we hand-process it ourselves, here. Then we project it on the wall, film it, and edit digital. We’ll keep doing that just to give students that experience. And in second year, if you’re burning to use the Super 16s, God bless you, they’re there for you.”
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