Is film dead? That is the question.
I had lunch the other day with a former student. And when he is not being a tennis official, he works often in the Chicago film business. He told me that in the last year the only film (35mm) shoots he has worked on have been either $500,000+ TV commercials with celebrity talent, or big feature films. Everything else has been HD or some digital format.
More and more feature films, such as Zodiac, are shooting on a non-film format. Movie Theaters are converting to digital projection and soon there will be no film prints everything will be beamed in via satellite.
I have been trading e-mails with an Irish filmmaker who is about to make a film about backpacking through Australia. He has some corporate sponsorship- and is trying to get Canon to sign on as well- but he is shooting with a small HD camera, taking two laptops to do the edit and shipping his masters out of Australia. I think this model is the future.
So, again, the question: Why film?
PeterH
