star wars shift from film to digital techniques

Image: Steve Yedlin ‘The camera doesn’t make the look’

digital,” but about how people think about cameras themselves.Ī juxtaposition from the Display Prep Demo, which can be watched in full here. But for Yedlin, the first paradigm he hopes to change with his study isn’t actually about “film vs.

To anyone concerned with cinematography, the implications are huge: If you can make digital footage look convincingly like film, the debate over which format is visually superior is effectively moot. Except, as Yedlin tells Polygon, when screened in theaters to an array of industry professionals, almost no one could tell the difference. Both have been processed to achieve what Yedlin says is “the look culturally associated with a traditional all-film system,” the kind people like Nolan say can only be achieved by actually shooting on film. In April 2019, Yedlin released his scholarship’s latest fruit, the “ Display Prep Demo.” An updated version of a video first released in 2015, the demo alternates between footage shot on 35mm film stock and an Arri Alexa, industry standards for film and digital, respectively. But since the early days of digital, he’s also gained a reputation for his rigorous technical study of the science behind image creation. Cinephiles might know Yedlin as Rian Johnson’s go-to cinematographer on everything from Brick to Star Wars: The Last Jedi to Knives Out. Steve Yedlin disagrees - not just with this conclusion, but with the foundation of the debate itself. “Film is oak, digital is plywood.” And even in an era where more films are shot on digital than ever, it remains a truism among everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Detective Pikachu’s cinematographer that celluloid offers a visual quality that digital simply cannot match. “Film has tremendous balls,” Christopher Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015.

Star wars shift from film to digital techniques