The Death of Celluloid

A friend wrote:

I read that the last theater in America is now getting rid of celluloid and turning to digital...I'm not sure but I think I can tell the difference.  The celluloid seems to have more depth and sharper colors, etc.  It's a different viewing experience. Can you tell the difference?  Do you have an opinion on celluloid vs. digital?   Is digital photography (not video) just as good as film?  

Jagor's reply:

I tend to think that celluloid-film movies will disappear just as celluloid-film still photography has virtually disappeared.

First of all, celluloid is far more expensive than digital. Those Arriflexes and the film stock cost colossal amounts of money, especially in the hands of perfectionist and egotistical directors who insist on dozens of takes for every scene in the film!  Many good films could never have been made without digital cameras.

Secondly is the quality of the medium.  Perhaps earlier digital cameras—both for still photographs and movies—weren't as sharp and colors weren't as good.  But I think that nowadays there isn't much difference.   I, for one, never notice a difference until I see the credits.

A  third thing is that fewer and fewer people want to drive to the multiplex and pay money for a ticket to watch movies in big cinemas, preferring either DVD or Blu-ray or dialing them up on Netflix.  All of these are television-based or computer-based, not big-screen based.  Thus, nobody really knows or cares how the thing was made.

Digital is now part of the rapid democratization of all media. First you had free websites like the now-defunct Geocities--that's how I got my start; then everybody had a blog [like the Jagoriade].  But now everybody's on social media like Twitter and Snapchat and Instagram and sites like Flickr that can store virtually unlimited numbers of digital images on the cloud.  

It seems that the next wave will be free, online video. People are now making movies with their smartphones. There is a very popular app called Vine—over 40 million downloads by August 2013—that allows you to make short, looping videos with your smartphone.  Some companies have even organized contests where Vine film-makers upload their creations for prizes and recognition.

That's the complete and ultimate democratization of the visual media: movies that cost nothing to make and cost nothing to watch.