Fincher’s THE SOCIAL NETWORK and why digital photography still sucks
Fincher’s THE SOCIAL NETWORK and why digital photography still sucks
Apr 16
News regarding David Fincher’s The Social Network has been getting stranger by the minute. First there was the project itself, about the founding of the Facebook empire, and then there was the director involved, who isn’t usually associated with seemingly trivial stuff like this. Then there was the casting — Justin Timberlake (remember: he was actually pretty good in Black Snake Moan) and Joe Mazzello (Timmy from Jurassic Park — you know, whiney one; now in HBO’s The Pacific) in lead roles. Now the latest in a lengthy list of strange news comes in the form of the film’s shooting format.
Slash received an inside tip that the film would be shot on Red One cameras, which are essentially digital cameras with massive resolutions (but, disappointingly, they are not red). The resolutions are so large, in fact (4,096 × 2,160), that they look almost as good as regular old-fashioned 35mm film … from the 1960s. Remarkable!
Plenty of films have been shot on Reds, such as The Lovely Bones, 21, Knowing, and District 9, so that’s nothing new. What’s new is that big American cinema franchises are rolling out a new compliment of projectors capable of projecting in the new, Red-native format (known as 4K).
Lest we forget, digital photography is shit. It’s all grainy and noisy and low-res and doesn’t handle colours well. As bad as digital photography is, digital projection is even worse. Current digital projectors throw 2K, which is, surprisingly enough, about half the resolution of 4K, and works out roughly to the equivalent of 1080, the current standard resolution of home theatre.
Current Imax cinemas project two 2K images simultaneously (no, that doesn’t double the resolution), and this awfully low resolution may account for some of the colour-banding and motion problems people have had with movies like Avatar, Alice In Wonderland, and The Final Destination.
It could well be that 4K projectors will help assuage these problems, but it’s doubtful. More pixels on the screen will mean more information, sure, but the important stuff like contrast ratios and motion just won’t be as crisp or poppy as they are in film. Bear in mind that true Imax film, the 70mm stuff that Kubrick shot 2001 on, could be scanned to resolutions of around 10,000 x 7,000, which is, you know, massive. And don’t forget, these figures don’t increase linearly: 4K is quadruple the resolution of 2K, which is quadruple the standard US high-definition benchmark of 720, etc.
So as it currently stands, there’s still no substitute for real 35mm film.You see, film does a pretty good job of emulating the way our eyes perceive light, and a strong culture and art has been developed over the past century exploiting this fact (hint: it’s called cinema). Film’s full of little grains of minerals that absord light at different wavelengths, not square pixels arranged in orderly, symmetrical rows and columns.
Our eyes perceive the colours and motion of film better than digital, and digital photography and projection will be inferior to film until such time as digital cameras and projectors can perfectly match the images produced by old-fashioned film reels.
To summarise: the issue with digital isn’t the clarity — 1080 blows up pretty well on a big old Imax screen. The issues are elsewhere in the image, and until they’re all sorted out, digital cinema’s just going to be an affront to cinephiles the world over.
Oh, and I hope The Social Network turns out to be good, regardless.
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Fincher has shot his last couple of films on digital and it's worked out OK IMO. Avatar was 2K. I was lucky enough to see Blade Runner: The Final Cut in 4K on a Sony projector, and short of TDK IMAX shots, it was the most vivid cinema experience I have ever had – and that's an old movie.
Each film calls for a different visual approach, which means that digital video is sometimes the way to go. I think District 9 fits this prescription. Check out the Arri Alexa for a digital film camera with greater ISO (i.e. light sensitivity and low noise response) than film, and comparable dynamic range to film. Scorsese is shooting his next film in 3-D on these cameras.
The technology is definitely progressing, but theatres aren't equipped yet to project a variety of stuff. All the cinemas in my town show 35mm, some have 2K digital / 3D projectors, and there are two 2K Imax screens here as well; it'll be a while until 4K projection swings in.
Digital can look great if treated right, but a lot of studios are still treating it (and grading it) wrong. I'm still a sucker for 35mm, what can I say!