From VistaVision to Virtual Production: Film's Unexpected Second Act

Film isn't dead — it's finding new life alongside cutting-edge technology. Join Addy and Joey as they explore why major productions like Fallout and Poor Things are combining film with virtual production, the psychological benefits that shooting on celluloid brings to directors, and the surprising technical advantages film offers over digital. Plus, discover how Kodak and Fujifilm took dramatically different paths in the digital age, and why affordable anamorphic lenses are changing the game for indie filmmakers.

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In this episode of the Denoised Podcast, we're gonna do a big breakdown of film and how it's still being used and if it's still relevant. Let's get into it. Alright, so we're gonna do a little special episode here because right now NAB's happening, and we're recording this before NAB as a, this evergreen ish episode. And we have mentioned talking about this for a while. You and I have always been wanting to cover film this topic. Yeah, and I think a big reason why it was Team 2 Films did this really great, yeah, YouTube video about a month ago where they shot on 35 millimeter film, 60 millimeter film, compared it to digital. Kind of showed the whole, the chemistry, the chemistry process of processing it, but kind of did a good breakdown of. You know what it's like shooting on film if you've never shot on film before. And good kind of cost comparison. Yeah. Of, you know, is it really that much more expensive? And I think the other interesting thing was the psychological benefits of shooting on film. We'll get into that. Yes. And the restraints that it forces on you and how that could also make you shoot better. Yes. To couple that it feels like film is making a mild comeback. I know. I mean, last year a lot of the best picture nominees. Yeah. Were shot on film. Anora, shot on film. The Brutalist, famously, shot on VistaVision, which resurfaced as a old format that found life again. Yeah. And we're getting to like how difficult it was to get VistaVision processing up and running for The Brutalist. Yeah. I mean, just to recap with the difference in VistaVision. So most film cameras, they're shooting three five millimeter. Yeah. And they're shooting. Vertically and the picture comes in like in the vertical strip. And so you can only get as wide as the film is wide. VistaVision rotates that 90 degrees. Okay, so the film strip is going in horizontally, being exposed, and you're able to expose a larger image, not as large as imax, but larger than you would get with a three perf or four perf 35 millimeter. Yeah, standard projection. So like if you're shooting anamorphic, you're squeezing all that aspect ratio into a vertical. Like a square box versus VistaVision where you now have more of a rectangle, more of a 16x9 box uhhuh. Exactly. So you're getting more film grain per pixel. I can't even say pixel. More real estate per frame. Yeah. I'm trying to, what did we call resolution back? What did we call it? What was a pixel before pixel? What was, uh, anyway, I'm glad we're having this conversation because these are some of the things that are, I feel like we've challeng now feel we've lost. The language. Yeah. Of what exactly he even call this, make it a comeback. VistaVision imax also like Christopher Nolan, huge fan of IMAX uh, what's he working on? The Odyssey, which is like Homer, one of my favorite books and reading in high school. I'm excited about this one. That's awesome. But yeah, they're shooting that on IMAX and they, there was talk that IMAX was developing a new IMAX camera, sort of specifically for Christopher Nolan that was supposed to be smaller. Yeah. And also run more quiet because a big issue with IMAX is it's very loud and very heavy. It's huge. Heavy. I think it's like 200 pounds. The camera. Yeah. It's crazy. Like you can't shoulder rig that. No, I don't believe so. I think they were trying to do a more Yeah. Version that you could shoulder rig Can't tell. Yeah. And, and quieter. So they could record sync sound because I believe everything has to be adrd. Yeah. After, because it's just too, too loud to Yeah. Record anything. Practically talk about the expectations of this film. I mean, Christopher Nolan has been hitting home runs like a hundred percent of the time, uh, for the last two decades. And now you have Matt Damon as releases. You have some big A-listers. It's being shot right now on a new camera. I can't wait to see it. This is the return of the film that Seth Rogan was talking about. Yeah. It just takes one film to turn it all the conversation around. Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, we mentioned that last time too. It's like this year might be a little bit quieter in the big. Big blockbuster films, but there's a lot coming out in 2026. Yep. Okay. So yeah, film. Let's see, I have a graphic of just film ish stories. I don't have any good logical order to go through them, but talking about Team 2 Films, and so one of their arguments was like shooting on film because it is a limited resource because you know, every time you hit roll, you're running through film. You gotta pay for the film stock, then you gotta pay for the processing. Yeah. You gotta pay for the digitization. So you, there's a, there's a counter in your head. Yeah. You need to like have that discipline to know like. When you hit record, you want to use this. Whereas I feel with digital, there's such a, you know, it's, it's pixels. It's like, yeah, bits, you know, it's a media card. We've got tons of storage. Right. We can just copy it over. We don't have to, there's no actual, like monetary cost. We can talk about, there's actual, there are costs associated with storage and hard drives and all that. You're not like, oh, we gotta pay the, you know, per foot. We don't have to do that with digital. Yeah. I've worked with some dps, you know, that are younger and others. It seems to be more of a habit where they'll just like kind of hit roll and like let the thing record and then you get five filmmaking. Yeah. And then you get a whole like, you know, string out of just like the different B roll shots. But then I still see them moving around in between takes and it's like one big long file. Well, one of the things that bugs me the most is like when you get into double digit take numbers, you are like on take 25. Like, are you sure you didn't get it in the last. 24 takes? No, I mean, uh, Fincher is known for doing a lot of takes and he shoots film as well, so, oh, I think social network, they did like 99 takes on, oh my God. One of the, like the, the, the restaurant scene. So you're on one shot the entire day pretty much, I guess. Yeah. That needs to have more discipline. I, I agree. So film is gonna enable you to naturally build that into your head. It forces you to have that discipline. That's, so that was something. So, yeah, A good story with this is El Mariachi. So you're familiar with El Mariachi, Robert Rodriguez's. Absolutely first film. Legendary film. Legendary film. And one of the parts of it being legendary was that he shot it on a $7,000 budget. And part of the lore, I mean true story, but lore behind that was that he raised the money by doing a medical test for a month and living in this medical facility to do some drug trial stuff. And that the $7,000 was like the payment for- That's such a cool story for such a cool film. And this is like in the early nineties, I think. I believe it was the early 90s. 90, 91, 92. Yeah. And he was So just that for inflation is probably like, I don't know, 15,000, 20,000 today. Yeah. Which is still, still nothing. Right. And obviously, but you're in the nineties and your options are either film Yeah. Or. Like VHS or something that where the quality is nowhere near what film would be. And I believe his original plan was like he was just gonna try to crank out these kind of low budget action films, you know, shot to Mexico where he has friends and family and call in a lot of favors and then try to sell it, you know, for whatever 50,000 and, you know, make more of these. Yeah. But two things that sort of went under the radar from like that story. I mean, then the story happens, he makes a film and then he gets it into Sundance and then it sort of becomes this big like hit and then he get that launches his career. Then Desperado and all that Desto find New Mexico, uh, spy Kids, sin City, some of the Star Wars TV shows. But one of the things that, or two things that get lost in that, I mean a part of the reason the film was so good and so dynamic was he shot like. Over a hundred or 200 films, like growing up as a kid on VHS. And he would just make these kind of short, fun action films. So he had the rep experience, he like, he had the reps. He had the reps. And even though he's shooting VHS, you know, which is a cheaper format, he was still, you know, back in the day it was, uh, linear editing, not non-linear editing. So you cut the film. Or two vcr. Oh yes, just do the two VCRs. And you gotta like play your, you know, your raw footage and then you're editing by like hitting record on the other one. And so you gotta like piece your VHS together in sequence. Insane, insane. And so he got very good at like, you know, I need the shot, I need this shot, I need this shot. Which came into play in El Mariachi when he like sprung to get some film. But he had a very limited film stock. Right? And so he knew exactly what shots he needed to get. And then the other thing was that$7,000, pretty much that entire budget went to film stock and processing. That was the bulk of the money. What a smart way to spend the 7,000. It's like the one thing. That he physically can't do 'cause he doesn't have a chemical processing lab and a dark room and all that. But everything else, he was able to scrap up together. You know who, whatever friend as an extra, whoever his house has a location. Yeah, I think you have to borrow the camera. Yeah. Yeah. And he just like knew some people, so he was able to like, you know, the production value raises the, the perceived value of the budget. Incredible resourcefulness. I just using all the resources. Yeah. Yeah. And then the punchline to that is like, once it played at Sundance, he met some rep from Kodak, and I think they found out that like all of the money went to film stock and then they were like, oh. We have an independent film program, he would've just given you the film stock. That's awesome. But yeah, the big thing is like he had the discipline. Yeah. To, you know, the film forces you to have Yeah. From all of his, all of his previous records. I mean, can you imagine him not completing the film?'cause he ran out of film stock. Like that's the tragedy. That's the pressure you're under. You know, this is like all the money I have. I went through some horrible drug medical exam thing to get the $7,000. You better believe I'm gonna make the movie of my lifetime. Right. You gotta make it work. Yes. Yeah. I mean, even a film school they would give us, it was like everyone had to have the same resources. And so basically for like one level of films we did, it was like, all right, everyone, you get like two cans of film. Yeah. And that's it. And so it's like, you know, don't make magic. You know what your limited resources are. You know, there's no other additional media cards or anything. It's like it's two cans of film. That's all they're gonna pay for and that's all they're gonna pay for processing. Yeah. And that's about a can is about 16 minutes, I believe. A reel for 16 millimeter. I think like now you have two terabyte cards in the, a lot of the directors like, oh, but I want the four terabyte. Like, really? What are you gonna do with all that data? What if you're shooting on the 12K PYXIS or the uh, 17K URSA? Yeah, it fills up, but that's the other. Hidden costs. Yeah. Of digital, especially like storage and archiving. Yeah. Where, okay, sure. You're not paying for the processing, but film, we know that has proven to be archival. We know time. Yeah. It's like you, the, like when resolve or whatever Premier is, um, transcoding. Mm-hmm. There's hours and hours of transcoding on, you know, two, four terabytes of data. Yeah. Time is money. Yeah. But even after you're just. You're done and storing it. Yeah. Like we know we could just take a film canister and throw it in a shelf in a climate controlled environment. And it's good for a hundred years. It's literally good for a hundred years because we have this a hundred year old film. Yeah. You know, you can literally see it. So as the technology and standards change, it's like, well, we just need to shine light through it. We can. We can see it. We can figure out how to scan it a hundred years from now with better scanners. But you still have, we can see it. It's still there. Whereas digital storage, right? It's like hard drives fail, CDs will fail, DVDs will disintegrate formats outlive, you know, formats are gone. Right? Of like, what, did you ever put stuff on zip drives or jazz discs or those other formats that now are obsolete? Like, what's open EXR 20 years from now? Whatever format that is, you know? Yeah. Is it gonna read this format? I remember seeing some rough numbers where it was like the cost to archive of movie shot on. Film was roughly like a thousand a year. Yeah. And the cost to archive digital was like about 10,000 a year. Yeah. Just from like having to keep moving the data around and make sure everything, how do stays relevant lead, uh, here with the discipline and the psychology thing. Mm-hmm.'cause it's really interesting if you know that you've only got, you know, a couple of takes per shot, you're gonna spend as a director way more time with the actors to rehearse and get those emotions, get those beats right. And then shoot it. Mm-hmm. And I think that. Overall makes the production cheaper'cause then you're not spending as much time on set speeds up the editing. Yes. All, all of the above. Yeah. So I think having some kind of a funnel with film here is actually very conducive to a better film. Yeah. Or even if you just do it, like learn on it, you know? Yeah. Shoot a film on it. Kind of get some of that discipline. Yeah, that you can apply to digital. Obviously it doesn't make sense to shoot film for everything. You still, it, it's still costly, but it's not Yeah. Off the table as I think people, you know, might think or perceive. Yeah. NFL Films is a separate part of NFL that shoots, they don't really do anything with the broadcast. They're shooting on the sidelines, like very cinematic. Yeah. Super slow mo, high quality looking shots of the games. Looks great that they license out or use in documentaries or other films. And they were, I could have sworn, I saw stat a long time ago that they were like the single largest purchaser of film stock like for a few years running. I can't find proof to back that up again, but they were a very large purchaser Yeah. Of film stock because they would just shoot film to get that like 120 frames per second, like very beautiful cinema. And imagine how many NFL games there are at any given time. Yeah. How many cameras you need for coverage and so on. Yeah. And they were big film users. And again, also they, I remember there I did find some articles saying like, well, I don't know if we overshoot switched to digital because, you know, film you could just put on the shelf. It's uh, you know, the archive quality. Yeah. And I, this was another thing I can't prove, but I believe Ari had a few 16 millimeter cameras. There was the SR2, the SR3, kind of the workhorse. 16 mil cameras and then they came out in the early two thousands with the four 16. Okay. Which was a more updated, streamlined, uh, shoulder mountable version of their 16 millimeter camera. Yeah. And it was also kind of came out at the time when everything, we started to switch to digital. So I think Yeah. But you gotta remember that early days of digital, like broadcast cameras were terrible. Yeah. And I mean, maybe you had like collateral Yeah. That was shooting digital. Exactly. But it had a very. Distinct look. Yeah. Yeah. And then maybe like Star Wars, episode two was like another early, yeah. Like if you go to like Digital Air 10 Sena F1 coverage, or some of like the nineties stuff where they first started to use broadcast digital cameras, that footage just didn't hold up man. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, you have chromatic aberration, you have like scan lines and all these other things. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. The four 16 was a new, I mean, I kinda came out and then the digital switch happened, but I also could have sworn that that camera was developed for NFL films for the camp. Find proof of that. Okay. But NFL Films was a big user of film stock. Yeah. So we're sort of talking about like the last fall of film. Mm-hmm. And now we're talking about the rise of film. Right. And we can't talk about film too without talking about the two big film manufacturers, Kodak and Fuji Film, where the. Pretty much the two main, yeah. How are ones? How are they different? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, every film stock has a distinct look. I mean, so Ko Kodak had the chroma 72, 19 72. I mean, what was it called? Like I guess the point where you remember the numbers. Numbers in the film stock. Kodachrome. Kodachrome was their photography. Photography. Yeah. I don't. I don't think they ever did a film stock. Yeah. With Codachrome. I'm curious about that. But yeah. Coded Chrome was known for accurate- I mean, a lot of this comes down to color science and like how well these stocks can accurately reproduce the color they see or have the vibrant colors and then sensitivity. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, 50D was a popular one. If you're shooting outside a 50 iso daylight. I mean, your, your film stock was colored, timed based on the color temperature Yes. That you were gonna be filming in, or there was a variety of techniques to, to, you know, convert them. You know what blows my mind is they did all this without knowing what the final look and feel of the image is. And now we could just look at it in a viewfinder. I will say I feel like yes, being able to see what you're getting, like you're using white meters has improved for exposure. Yeah. And just trusting that whatever iris that is why to be that is a season cinematographer. Yeah. Do you know like, well you, when you hit record, you know what you're gonna get. And you're talking about recording on like million dollar film sets. Where there is like, you know, imagine shooting Gone with the Wind. I mean, this is like a fear with, um, The Godfather. Yes. This is like, I can play, like the studio is watching the dailies and you know, they're intentionally shooting dark, but it's not like shooting raw format now where it's like, oh, it's dark, but we can recover all that You post. There's dynamic range left. Yeah. Yeah. There are a few things you could do, but you're pretty limited on like what you shot is is what you'd get. Yeah. Now, but the nice thing about film was like if you did blow it, like if it was overblown, the highlight clipping would be very aesthetically pleasing. It would bloom and ha nicely. That must be the ugly, like white. Yes. That way you get now. So it was like, oh, that looks cinematic, even though you completely blew the exposure. Or if it's too dark, then the crush range also looks really cinematic. Mm-hmm. So it was kind of like a give and take. Yeah. It's funny or ironic. To mention, you know, it's like there's also a lot of resources and research and tools that go into adding film grain back into digital. Oh boy. Resolve has its own built in film. Look emulator that they just launched last year. It's really good. DEH is another big popular yes. Uh, Resolve plugin. That is pretty much the adding alation, adding film grain, I mean just film grain overlays are hugely popular. I remember like YouTubers and stuff like early two thousands. I would go back and forth from work to home and there would be a really nice souped up expensive Corvette. On the freeway probably gets out the work at the same time as me. The license plate said film look on it. Yeah. So it's somebody who made their living a pretty good living, just converting digital to film. Yeah. And yeah, that was a big business for a while and now everybody has that power on their resolve desktop. Yeah. But no, as far as difference, Kodak and Fuji, I'm thinking back, I mean, 'cause also I've not shot film in in a long time, but I think I pretty much always just leaned on, I think it was the 72 19 was the stock number, uh, 500 T. Okay. 500 tungsten. Because for that reason, I knew with the 500 Tungston, we would definitely get something like, it was more a safety net of like, I know if we hit record, we're gonna pick up stuff is not, we're not gonna run the risk of uh, being underexpose and stuff's gonna be too dark. Exactly. Yeah. You rather, uh, err on the side of over exposure with film, I think. Yeah. Again, don't listen to us, listen to a real set photographer. Listen to someone who has ASE after their name. Yes. Yes. So it's interesting that Kodak and Fujifilm are going in two completely different paths. They are now. I mean, you know, there's still the famous story where it's like Kodak did develop digital camera, like the original early digital first digital camera, camera technology. And then was like, it's gonna cannibalize our film sales and you know, shelved it and yeah, they died ish. Yeah. Looking at them today. So I was at CS earlier this year. Mm-hmm. And it was crazy because there was a, there were two Kodak booths. One Kodak booth did have like consumer cameras, like kind of Polaroid ish and you know, actual camera stuff. But then the other booth was the wildest thing. It was like the Kodak brand on every type. Of product under the sun, like boom boxes, smartwatches, binoculars. It is all yellow and red and Kodak. I mean there Yeah, it was like purely, I mean the brand obviously still has like a, it's probably the most valuable part of this company. Yeah. Like it is still a very like valuable story brand. Also, I would think that brand would resonate with Gen ZA lot because it's, it's like a legacy brand. It's very predates millennial. That's a great brand. Yeah. But yeah, it was basically just licensing, like on everything. And it was just, it just made no sense. I mean, they have that easy money. Didn't they have that Bitcoin miner box was not a Kodak. There's like a Kodak, like a Bitcoin mining box. Absolutely Crazy. Nothing, I mean, I think anything they're still generating visually wise, uh, photographically is like consumer still cameras. Yeah. And I am gonna guess they're probably just bringing in other people's chips. Yeah. Uh, and building that Fuji on the flip side. Yeah. What's Fuji up to? Successfully, I would say successfully embraced. The digital, digital age. Yeah. They've had their digital still cameras for a while. Yep. And then last year they came out with the, uh, Fujifilm GFX ETERNA. Yes. Which is with the weird handle on the side. Yeah. We're gonna put up a screenshot here. A 65 millimeter. Yeah. Digital. Sensor camera for around $7,000 or $8,000. Yes. So like, and the, and the crazy big sensor, really compact body to small body. Yeah. Compared to other six, five millimeter sensors. Pretty affordable price. Yep. And this is their, you know, original sensor and color science. Yep. Yeah. Fuji, I would say has successfully transitioned over, transitioned and adapted maybe like slower than, you know, other companies where you have Red and Ari that successfully transitioned earlier. Yeah. We talked about Panion, right? Pan. Yeah. And how they sort of, uh, went. The way of the dinosaurs a little bit. Mm-hmm. You know, Kodak did as well. Fuji made the, then it's so hard for a tech company to do, you know? Yeah. It's a completely separate thing. The last episode we were talking about Apple and are they gonna transition mm-hmm. Into the AI age, right? Yeah. Although they dominated the hardware, software age, so Yeah. We'll see. Yeah. But yeah, Fuji has, yeah, definitely been. Doing a lot more updates. Also, you know, going back to the flip side, you if you're still shooting film and then digitizing, not a people realize, but like Blackmagic sells a film scanner that's the $30,000 Cintel Film Scanner. I believe it's one of the companies they acquired years ago. I think 30,000 is a bargain.'cause those are generally like giant refrigerator size things that are like hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah. Most likely will be at NAB. They usually have it in a little corner, you know, where it's just like, by the way, we still, we still sell film scanners. You can scan your film into resolve. Yeah. So how does, how does that work? So you scan a frame of film and it's like a e XR file, and then you apply like a cion l to it to get it into rec 7 0 9 or whatever. I have no idea. Okay. I, I just, uh, just don't know what the you post-production will flow is. You don't just plug it into your thunder bullet on your computer and hit it import. Almost, almost. You gotta spool up the, the perforations. I do remember it wasn't the Sintel scanner, but in the Team 2 Films, they did show that process of how they were scanning it. And the other interesting thing was like, how many times they would have to run the film through like, just dusters. Oh. Just to ensure like that there's like zero dust.'cause like if you scan Yeah. If you, if you scan it and you have dust on the negative, yeah. When you scan, it's gonna be in the image. So like maybe some, some new creators like that, they're. Sprinkling in more dust for a more grimy look. Yeah. When's the day that, uh, Mr. Beast is gonna start shooting his, his, I spent a million dollars on film stock to shoot this video. I would love that. So yeah, they still, they stole black magic, still sells film scanners and yeah. We mentioned at the beginning of the episode that there were a good amount of. Best picture nominees that were shot on film, but then there's also been a good blend of movies and TV shows that are shooting on film and using virtual production, two of the big ones, uh, Poor Things from a few years ago. Yes, virtual production background for a lot of the sets, but shot on film and then also Fallout more recently from most Amazon. Yeah, most, I think the most, um, an amount of. Minutes shot on film with VPs, probably Fallout. Yeah, that makes sense. It's interesting. So when Fallout was being shot mm-hmm. Obviously it was a big secret. There was a giant stage in New York. Mm-hmm. I knew some of my friends who were working on it, they couldn't talk about it. And then, uh, I was at a party and one of my friends that is on it kind of whispers to me and says, Hey, uh, they're shooting on film. I'm like, wait, what? Yeah, it's amazing because you don't need genlock. There's no moire. The pixels bloom better like film and vp. Work really well together. So there is no concern of like, you don't, do you have to sink anything or it's just because the refresh rate is so fast that doesn't Yeah, I, I think because so much light is entering each film exposure, it doesn't matter what refresh rate the LED really is at, I mean, those things are refreshing at 3,000, 4,000 times a second, versus this thing is open for 33 milliseconds, so you can imagine how many times it's being sampled and then, uh, Moray goes away because you have no pixels. On the sensor because there is a, it's film. It's film stock. Yeah. Like the, the, the pixel would be the actual chemical molecule, uhhuh, which is like way smaller than a pixel. Yeah. Think about that. And then also you get all the added benefits of dynamic range on film, which is arguably more aesthetically pleasing. Mm-hmm. So like if you do clip something, it looks beautiful and not harsh. Or if you crush something, it also looks beautiful. Color reproduction is also amazing. Yeah, like a lot of sensors struggle with red, specifically uhhuh. Uh, so like if you have a really saturated red, by the time you bring it into post, it starts to look more burgundy, like it starts to have an off color, okay. Where film preserves the red really, really well. So, all right, great marriage, and the, who would've thought. Yeah. Older tech and newer tech. Yes. That is interesting. Yeah, I never thought about those, those benefits. I remember because I remember one of the earlier uses of virtual production was the Sandra Bullock film, the space one. Oh, Gravity. Gravity, yeah. Yeah. Gravity was all green screen. There was no LED volume work. Oh, that wasn't LEDI thought. Yeah, the virtual production book. Oh, maybe I'm thinking of, um, First Man, that was another space. First Man did use some LED volume work. Yes. Yeah. And I think it was shot on film, but uh, yeah. Their LED volume stuff was like stars in the moon, not Yeah. Yeah. Crazy background stuff far away. Yeah. I mean, fallout was. I would imagine really difficult for a VP volume because of all that detail in the environment, and then all that physical set that had to sit in front of it. Mm-hmm. And blending and matching between the two. They're shooting season two right now here in L.A. Hey, L.A. Production. Yes. Yay. Yeah. Right. Aside from the discipline, you know, benefits that we talked about, you think there's any visual advantage? Shooting film and also sort of the question of like, can you shoot digital and use the tools at hand to make it look as visually pleasing as film? Or, you know, is there something that, like film's always gonna contain that. Like digital can never, can never replicate. All right, I'm gonna make a really extended reach here. Hang with me. Let's go. I think it's the same difference as a really capable photographer versus a generative AI image that's meant to mimic photography. So what I mean by that is you take something like the Brutalist, which was shot on VistaVision, and it just naturally, intrinsically. Has this cinema feel to it. Mm-hmm. Right. Of course, the aspect ratio and like the contrast and the color shifts, like those are the things you can quantify. But then you're consuming this thing for 90 minutes and now your brain is kind of. Uh, in, in this style aesthetic choice, yes, you can totally replicate it with resolve up to a point, but I think there is a 10% of it that you just can't get. Mm-hmm. That just comes naturally with the territory. Mm-hmm. And it's the same thing with real life photography. You give. You know, a really capable photographer, a Canon five D Mark iv, like a very standard DSLR. Tell 'em to go do some street photography and then you give a really capable generative AI artist ChatGPT image generator. Tell 'em to prompt and. Yeah, they'll look about the same 90% there, but you will prefer the natural one and you won't know why. Because our brain looks for fine, fine details that sometimes we don't even process. Like we just prefer things. I'll even give you another stretch. Uh, it's the same reason why we have uncanny valley. Mm. You know, with digital humans, we're so used to looking at real faces. Our species have survived on trusting families and friends and partners over the eons that anytime we see something, anything off about a face, that we look at a TV instantly, stuff gets triggered in a brain and we don't really know why. So these are all the things that are unfortunately very esoterical and very kind of out in the ether, but it's definitely an element that is there. And it is why I think film ultimately is the most natural. Medium for cinema. Was that too much? You can edit it out. That's great. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I'm thinking too, like all these things, you know, AI and, and film and digital it, it always comes back to the story and you know, like, yes, you could have the most beautiful VistaVision or IMAX shot film, you know, but if it's crappy or your boring story, you know, versus something that's on an iPhone. Yeah. And is engaging in a, you know, moving story, like you'd still prefer to watch Yeah. The engaging, moving story. Absolutely. Do, I mean, I, I don't wanna say film is the only way. Like we've had No, I mean, my question was like more on a, on a, an aesthetic level. Yeah. You know, can you, is there something that just sell film and cellular Will will Yeah. Always have that, uh, you, you can't match with digital. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that digital cinema cameras have a really hard time matching with film is motion blur because that exposure is happening over time. And that film. Frame is getting exposed and then it is then going away and the next frame is coming in. Mm-hmm. And then that shutter angle is going in and out. Like these are physical and chemical reactions. Right. A literal shutter Yes. Spinning. Spinning in front of the film. Yeah. I mean, that did improve when we got like global shutter and, and, and a different way to process even then it's all electronically controlled. Mm-hmm. Like it's mimicking something. That is physical. Uh, yeah. I feel like, I mean, that's a good, I think that's probably the biggest takeaways. Like so much of digital is mimicking, mimicking what we already created with, you know, even going all the way to specifically the film emulation, plugins and modifications. Yeah. I mean, there's a reason why Lawrence of Arabia holds up even today. Mm-hmm. Like it was shot, what, 80, 90 years ago. Mm-hmm. It's as good aesthetically as anything that we're producing in 20. I think that's a whole separate conversation. It's something I'm not even familiar or knowledgeable enough, but seeing the. Discourse online of like, why do more films today look just color-wise, like a bit more muted, a bit less saturated. Compared to something like Lawrence of Arabia or the, you know, the, the technicolor, the films that had like these very vibrant, very saturated colors, it imprints on your head so much better because just so much more stimulating to watch. The argument that I heard is because most modern films have to shoot more conservatively because of VFX, so you can't put a hard light on someone because in VFX that'll be a problem. You can't punch up the saturation because in VFX that'll be a problem. So then everything is shot. Very, very muted and drab, and then punched. Up in post. So do you think that could be something where AI becomes the solution? If the reason is because it's gonna be hard to, I'm assuming the, the comp or segment, the things you shoot on set to composite them into posts? Yeah. If the AI tools get better at helping the crews. Do compositing and AI can relight, can we shoot? Yes. Yeah. So like there's also, and can we shoot hierarchy more saturated even if we're going into a VFX pipeline? I think so. Yeah. You know, people, and that could be a good argument if you're on the edge of ai. Yes. Of uh, yes. We can bring back the technical color super, not maybe specifically technical, the super saturated colors and use AI to help make that happen. Yeah. Look, uh, we see a lot of you and I. Cover a lot of ai. We see a lot of generative AI content stuff that's made out of nothing. Mm-hmm. Just generated. I think the key to success of AI in our industry is perhaps not so much that, but it's really building a post process pipeline, A VFX pipeline, if you will, and having AI make VFX. Incredibly accessible and quick. Yeah. So we could do more Yeah. Do more creative work. Yeah. Yeah. Similar to what we talked about at the NAB episode of the new AI tools helping out in editing Yes. And other tasks. Like that's, that's where it's got good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And there was one other sort of in the, in the film space ish, but more in the lens space. Yeah. So Anamorphic for the longest time since the film days have been kind of inaccessible for the normal videographer like you and me. Joey, we have cameras, but do we have anamorphic lenses? Probably not. No. I just got my first one. Thought about messing with them, but not really. Yeah, so I mean, the advantage of anamorphic is you can squeeze a wider picture into a smaller sensor, right? And then when that's you. Play it back. You get this big wide image, but you're able to squeeze it. Yeah. So you can take like, you know, a 2, 7, 8 aspect ratio or whatever crazy, and then squeeze it into a 2, 4, 8 aspect ratio. Mm-hmm. On paper, that's the big advantage. The stuff that's not on paper is like the Boca looks oval. Mm-hmm. The shallow depth is way more buttery. Mm-hmm. There is a pleasing color shift, so it'll like desaturate certain shades and saturate certain shades mm-hmm. To make things more cinematic. It's a natural vignette that forms at the edge of the frames. All those things that we were missing in the sort of prosumer DSLR, Sony FX3, RED KOMODO users. Pyxis users. Like hyper clean. Yeah, like very sterile looking. Digital images. Exactly. So now you can actually afford anamorphic. There's a few lower end lens manufacturers, like DZO. Mm-hmm. Uh, SIRUI Blazar. Mm-hmm. And I think a lot of these guys are Chinese manufactured. Mm-hmm. And now they're offering. Amorphic and for like a thousand, $2,000. Yeah. What were they traditionally? 10, 20, 30. I mean, 10 20 is like entry level. So if you're looking at like for one lens. One lens a prime, right? So if you're looking at a cook, S eight. Special flare, 50,000 a lens. And then if you are talking to somebody like Greg Fraiser, they're taking that and detuning it or like taking it apart, completely rebuilding it from scratch. And now it's like a million dollar lens. That's only one in the world, right? Serial one of one, yes. Yeah. Uh, Atlas, I was trying to think of when you're naming the company, Alice is another lower cost, uh, amorphic lens manufacturer. I think Atlas Mercuries are probably the most affordable of the traditional anamorphics. You also have Arjun. Uh, French company. There is, uh, there's a few, you know, of course the re master prime. Mm-hmm. But those are all inaccessible for the average filmmaker, especially as we go into. Indie Hollywood. Mm-hmm. And sort of the, the small scale Hollywood that we covered on the show, right? Mm-hmm. Like we think that's the next wave of filmmakers. Content and creator space. Yes. Or the YouTube creator economy. I think these next generation of anamorphics that are affordable, that can autofocus. This is a new one from a serial lens, and so it's amorphic and autofocus. Yes. Which also, yeah, that sounds crazy. Yeah, it's crazy because the autofocus. Algorithms are happening on the sensor and now it's receiving an image that it's not used to 'cause. It's like warped. Mm-hmm. And it's a different aspect, which it's skewed. It's way more soft and buttery than what it's used to. So the fact that anamorphics can autofocus at all is a technical achievement and the fact that you can buy this for relatively low prices mm-hmm. You're talking about, you know. Single digit thousands. That's incredible. And if you pair that with all of the tools that we have available now with generative AI and sort of easier VFX easier cloud workflows, I mean, this is the best time as an indie filmmaker to get into this. Or yeah. Even just, uh, smaller camera bodies and be like, I'm thinking, you know, like, well, what's the most common use case for something that where you need auto focus? And it's like when you're running gun and handhelds, either if you're doing like, yeah. A very indie kind of film like the a El Mariachi. But you know, you wanna like make your budget look like bigger and more impressive and Yeah. Amorphic or, you know, documentaries. I remember when there was like kind of the switch when documentaries started shooting on the 5Ds and the DSLR cameras and then the C300s and you know, suddenly like documentaries, like look very cinematic. So you can have your person that was focus pulling the AC. Mm-hmm. Just give them another camera. Yeah. And now your second coverage.'cause this thing is out of focusing itself. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like to get my hands on. Some of these amorphic, like I've never shot amorphic so would like to like love to mess around with it. I think you'll see from maybe I'll some, some of them at NA. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. All right, well that's a good way to wrap up our film intermediate episode. Yeah. If you've got any thoughts about like shooting with film, not shooting with film digital, let us know what the comments. If you wanna share any projects, we'd love to take a look. So, yeah, let us know. Yeah. All right. Thanks for everything we talk about, as usual, deno podcast.com. Thanks for all your support on YouTube and on Spotify and up Apple podcasts. We're continuing to grow and we love it. If you can spread the word, tell your friends, tell your family about Deno all. Thanks everyone. We're catching the next episode.