Brett Sinclair

I agree wholeheartedly. But I'm hoping that a digitally created boom in home grown films will open the door for some genuine talent that wouldn't otherwise be seen...I know that most of the product will be dross, but I'm pretty sure that the rubbish won't even be shown by independents. Let's face it, the cinema owners must do their homework, they need the posteriors on mock crushed velvet in order to survive. And don't forget, punk did lead to a revolution in the sort of music (and fashion) that became acceptable in the main stream. God help us if we had still been listening to heavy metal, glam rock or disco in 1995 Flares did have a revival though...didn't they?

There's no need to kneel, I'm a very democratic sort of lord.

ChristineCB

I worry about the film stock being wound together, bound so firmly together, and while it's a fairly air-tight seal because of their weight, it's not perfect. And the ability to transfer bits from one frame pressed against another - I just wonder about that as a source of degradation.

I'm so glad that we live in this Perfect World and we can now believe everything we read about Digital Media lasting forever and ever. Yup. SO glad...

Steve Crook

Have you never seen "digital breakthrough" on a DVD when it shows a shadowy version of another scene overlaid on the scene you should be watching.

Steve

Brett Sinclair

Are we looking at separate issues here?

Film as a tangeable commodity vs film as a medium?

There's no need to kneel, I'm a very democratic sort of lord.

DB7

Certainly, there's the economics of digital media as a method of distribution to small independent cinema's and Mr Crook's skepticism of DM as an archive format.

ChristineCB

Another log that Steve can throw on the bonfire: equipment and interfaces. Anyone got a working QIC-80 tape drive on a PC since 2001? 1998? And before that, there were MFM hard-drives. It's pretty tough to find a ISA slot on today's motherboards.

All of those come with some form of a digital interface but the equipment - much less the media - is only a dust-collector now. Or less.

Even if Digital turns out to be wonderful and perfect, accessing it in 10 years is tough, but probably not impossible. But after 20 years? There are slim chances that any video-card is available to replaced a failed on on a Compaq 386/33. And without that, it's pretty hard to figure out how to access QIC-40s or -80s.

Steve Crook

Exactly. I've seen many different formats come and go, often go quite quickly. And although the data stored might still be usable, it's no good if you don't have the correct physical devices and interfaces and can't get to it.

I'm not saying digital is hopeless, far from it. I just ask people to be a bit sceptical and not to believe all the hype associated with it.

Steve

penfold

And, to reiterate, I'm not anti digital projection, digital distribution or digital filmmaking...I can see the advantages....but for the foreseeable future, archival holdings, even of digital movies, must be done on good old 35mm celluloid as it's the ONLY medium we KNOW will be accessible in fifty or more years time. Celluloid, kept properly (and if you're lucky, even improperly) can hold a recording 110 years and still be 'read' and duplicated. It may not be perfect, but it will still be accessible. And there are no equipment compatibility problems either, a problem with digital media I neglected to mention ..... In a future of digital distribution and projection, the fall back, back-up copy of the movie will still be on film...future digital copies will be taken from it.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

ChristineCB

I've unfortunately learned that BBC had an administrator who irresponsibly disposed of years and decades worth of tapes from their historic vaults. She couldn't do this alone - it had to be carried out, box by box, shovel by shovel, and by many people.

If I'm worried about digital storage and interfaces, that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Anyone wanna guess how many 'admins' it would take to delete 10,000 folders from a server? 20,000? A million?

One. All by her lonesome. "Say - I don't recognize this - my father was in the Navy anyway... no need to waste disk-space with TV shows about the worst branch of the service!" Click. "Are you sure?" Click. Yes.

Brett Sinclair

LOL

However, I don't really think you are giving credit to the studios/producers.

I would suggest that each film when made/copied will have several master copies made and kept on individual hard drives that will be stored separately in different geographical locations and in secure storage facilities...much like any large Plc keeps sensitive data currently. As and when technology starts to move up a gear, if necessary, the masters will be upgraded to the new media. A Western Digital Hard drive from 1997 is still accessible in 2007 is it not?

I understand Penfolds comments concerning safe archiving of the original films and I agree there are concerns there that digital media will not be able to solve as the actual celluloid becomes/already is a valuable commodity itself.

There's no need to kneel, I'm a very democratic sort of lord.

Steve Crook

Make that "much like any large Plc should keep sensitive data currently." :
It's amazing how many still manage to lose such sensitive data, especially when they print it out and carelessly discard those printouts.

It's also interesting to find out how many large companies regularly do a backup of sensitive information - without checking to see if the data is actually recoverable from that backup. They only find out that it hasn't been doing the backup properly when they need to recover something from it.

But with producers and copyright holders having their usual paranoia about unauthorised copies I would expect some resistance about copies being made and stored in remote locations.

Steve

Brett Sinclair

LOL...very true.

Ironically there are more hoops to jump through in terms of digital data storage than the old paper format.

There's no need to kneel, I'm a very democratic sort of lord.

MarkG

Done properly, yes. Also, many movies are being shot digitally these days, so you'll get the best picture you can possibly get.

By the time you've taken the original negative, created duplicate negatives, run off prints and then run those prints through projectors dozens of times, the resolution is generally significantly worse than 1920x1080 HD. Now, the studios may decide to use horribly high compression ratios on the digital video to save money, but otherwise in almost all cases a digital projection will look better than a fourth or fifth generation 35mm film print. Also, just look at some older movies on DVD: the grain is horrible... if grain on older film stocks is visible on DVD it's going to be very obvious on HD.

A further issue is that now TV is going digital, film grain is a very serious problem because it screws up video compression so badly: I've read that some stations now refuse to accept TV shows shot on 16mm film for that reason. So digital shooting is going to become more and more common.

ChristineCB

Generally, yes. But a Western Digital from 1987?

No.

And how many films do we discuss here that are within your 10-year "since 1997" mode?

The argument isn't over 10-years of data storage. It's not over 20 years. It's about storing material for far longer periods, and I see attitudes that seem to extrapolate into this "if it works for 10 years, then it must be forever!" notion that ignores all the actual physical changes that have occurred. Certainly, ten years should be sufficient time for any Storage Organization to make the conversion.

And we ALL know how wonderful those "Should Be's" work in our Oh-So Perfect World, eh?

At some point, we'll go back to chisels and stone for REAL long-term storage. "Pharoah Data Systems" or something like that. And just hope some other company doesn't build the next Aswan Dam nearby.

MarkG

Movie studios with any clue will stick their movies into some huge RAID system which will be invisibly upgraded over time... they won't be sitting on a hard disk on a shelf.

Also, don't forget that the 'Wicker Man' negatives are buried under the M3, and some of the 'Babylon 5' pilot negatives were eaten by rats while in 'safe storage'. Not to mention all the problems of old nitrate film.

Film is harder to store safely than bits.