Is film dead should it be buried in favor of digital film Essay

Is film dead should it be buried in favor of digital film - Essay Example For nearly a century, film has been the leading choice of professionals for capturing images, unraveling a multibillion-dollar industry until 2000. Digital capturing devices got their start in 1969 at Bells Lab with the invention of the charge-coupled device (CCD). The CCD, an invention by George Smith and Willard Boyle, uses an electrical charge to activate pixels when light hit the censors rather than create an image through grain re-arrangement It was not until the Dogme 95 era in the early 1990's that filmmakers saw the potential of digital cinema as a viable form for telling stories. Approximately a decade later, George Lucas and Sony teamed up to create the first professional digital video cameras that offer many of the same features of 35mm motion picture cameras. The release of Star Wars II in 2002 marks the instance in the film history when a one-hundred percent digital production of the film becomes successful, sparking the embracement of digital film revolution. For nearly a decade after 2002, companies such as ARRI, Red, Sony, Canon, and Panavision on digital film have spent billions of dollars on research and development to further the efficiency of digital film cameras. It is a digital millennium. Everything is going digital: cars, houses, computers, everything under the sun is. Just like in every other industry, controversy dominates as to which between the devil we know (old), and the strange angel (new), is the path to maximum achievement and not doom of the film industry. This study will discuss in depth the features of digital film that saw it overtake and kill the film, plus the mileage it has so far gained above it. Color grading This is the process of alteration and enhancement of an image, video, or motion picture to achieve a certain appearance. Digital film allows for capturing and post-editing, making this process much easier as compared to film. According to Paramour Productions, digital shooting allows for post-shoot editing of indiv idual scenes unlike in the film era that supported only two shooting modes: tungsten-balanced and daylight-balanced films. This means color temp fluctuation was very likely, varying as per the available light’s intensity, which meant all the footage needed correction to achieve a white consistent point to start the grading. This further explains why in the film era, a shoot required several rooms with different customizations to achieve variations. However, today, digital filming allows shooting from a single location or prop and with the use of advanced software, allows easy color alteration or grading from just a computer unlike the use of actual rooms, props or scenes to achieve certain effects. In addition, and according to Hoad, Hollywood incorporates much use of digital color grading to achieve extreme special effects impossible with film as it allows for post-production alteration as with the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? It is the first filming to be put on a hard drive, allowing for creation of a Digital Intermediate point (DI), from where the editor used â€Å"virtual crayons† to achieve an explosion of special effects. The guardian refers to color grading as an absolute necessity. Distribution, marketing, and exhibition According to Fischer (95), in the year 2000, Hollywood disseminated a full movie, Titan AE via the internet, which it digitized before sending it to its destination,