Star Wars: Episode 9 To Be Shot On 65mm Film

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Most sites are reporting that this will result in a more detailed and colorful movie, which is probably true, but this also pretty much guarantees we will get excellent transfers for UHD—even 8K, if the need arises. In contrast to this are the prequels, which I think were shot and finished in 2K, which basically means any of the inevitable 4K releases will be upscales.

So what is 65mm film, exactly? Well the name refers to the width of the actual film cell, and shooting on 65mm film allows the filmmaker to capture a much larger frame with much higher quality. Images that may look a little grainy on 35mm will look pristine in 65mm. Johnson actually considered shooting Episode VIII in 65mm but, due to logistical reasons, had to stick with 35. It’s possible those logistical reasons were a lack of film processing facilities in the U.K., where the Star Wars movies are based, but with Kodak now ready and willing to process 65mm, new avenues have opened up.
 
We have 8k sensors now, why bother with film at all? You can't see what you shot during production until the film is developed.
 
Riccochet said:
they still film films on film? Why?
Click to expand...

Lots of reasons, actually:

  1. The film can be scanned into much higher resolutions (current estimates for the digital equivalent of 65mm film put it between 9.3k and 12k, though there is no direct comparison yet)
  2. Shooting on film, depending on the production, can sometimes be cheaper than shooting digitally in the long run. Digital films often require more post-processing hours to get the final image up to the quality audiences expect. Film still stores way more image information than a digital frame, though this will obviously change in the future.
  3. Shooting film on set is much different than shooting digitally. Film requires light readings, often a digital pass-through so that the director/assistant can monitor the image, and tweaks to shutter speeds/lens values. Digital shoots, especially at the studio level, require specialized camera technicians (a DIT) to monitor proper file storage, codecs, and a surprising amount of digital values/settings. Depending on the shoot you can have a crew of tens just to monitor the digital output of the camera and maintain logs of the camera settings. I've been on digital shoots where, after a take, we needed to sign off with five or more people just to ensure that the file was captured properly - you might consider this a waste, but when the budget for the film is +$200 million and the marketing is even greater, it makes sense to have as much on-set insurance as possible.
  4. The Director. Colin Trevorrow has a history of shooting on film (Jurassic World - which was a mix) and it is likely that one of the reasons he agreed to come onboard was Disney's agreement to shoot film.
  5. Some analysts/critics suspect that Disney is leaning toward film to recapture the look of the old trilogies. Keep in mind that Disney is willing to spend more on marketing a film than actually making it.

Now this is all very circumstantial. Anything I've ever shot that's been longer than a simple short has been on digital mediums simply because it was cheaper, but when you add a hundred or more to the crew and hundreds of millions to the budget/marketing costs the difference between film and digital is often not as big as some would think. There are a thousand other considerations to be made as well involving production schedules, VFX strategies, post-production deals, director experience, etc.
 
Krixon said:
Lots of reasons, actually:

  1. The film can be scanned into much higher resolutions (current estimates for the digital equivalent of 65mm film put it between 9.3k and 12k, though there is no direct comparison yet)
  2. Shooting on film, depending on the production, can sometimes be cheaper than shooting digitally in the long run. Digital films often require more post-processing hours to get the final image up to the quality audiences expect. Film still stores way more image information than a digital frame, though this will obviously change in the future.
  3. Shooting film on set is much different than shooting digitally. Film requires light readings, often a digital pass-through so that the director/assistant can monitor the image, and tweaks to shutter speeds/lens values. Digital shoots, especially at the studio level, require specialized camera technicians (a DIT) to monitor proper file storage, codecs, and a surprising amount of digital values/settings. Depending on the shoot you can have a crew of tens just to monitor the digital output of the camera and maintain logs of the camera settings. I've been on digital shoots where, after a take, we needed to sign off with five or more people just to ensure that the file was captured properly - you might consider this a waste, but when the budget for the film is +$200 million and the marketing is even greater, it makes sense to have as much on-set insurance as possible.
  4. The Director. Colin Trevorrow has a history of shooting on film (Jurassic World - which was a mix) and it is likely that one of the reasons he agreed to come onboard was Disney's agreement to shoot film.
  5. Some analysts/critics suspect that Disney is leaning toward film to recapture the look of the old trilogies. Keep in mind that Disney is willing to spend more on marketing a film than actually making it.

Now this is all very circumstantial. Anything I've ever shot that's been longer than a simple short has been on digital mediums simply because it was cheaper, but when you add a hundred or more to the crew and hundreds of millions to the budget/marketing costs the difference between film and digital is often not as big as some would think. There are a thousand other considerations to be made as well involving production schedules, VFX strategies, post-production deals, director experience, etc.
Click to expand...
5. is why I am excited. Disney's approach to the new trilogy aside, their ability to emulate the style of the original films (see what I did there?) are what I loved about Ep VII. This is great news.
 
Why are they remaking vinyl now? There's a sweet spot ( google it )

65mm film, although lacking the benefits of digital still has several pro's.

Only the unconcerned and less informed would ask "why?"

I lol'd at a few of the questions on this tread, for me personally, it's like when a kid comes up and asks you why the grass is green or the sky is blue. I really hope some of you don't go through life thinking all you need is a Walmart near you that that should be good enough for everyone.

Anyways.
 
This is good to hear, now if they could just get some decent writers on board who aren't afraid to make a NEW Star Wars story rather then copying the old ones....
 
SixFootDuo said:
Why are they remaking vinyl now? There's a sweet spot ( google it )

65mm film, although lacking the benefits of digital still has several pro's.

Only the unconcerned and less informed would ask "why?"

I lol'd at a few of the questions on this tread, for me personally, it's like when a kid comes up and asks you why the grass is green or the sky is blue. I really hope some of you don't go through life thinking all you need is a Walmart near you that that should be good enough for everyone.

Anyways.
Click to expand...
https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/
 
With the amount of cgi nowdays when even the actors are manipulated digitally seems like a total waste of good celluloid unless they decided to render everything at 8k. Which is highly unlikely considering even 4k renders are a luxury. Many films could benefit from 65mm, this isn't one of them.
 
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I just hope they keep track of the 65mm masters better than Hollywood kept track of the 70mm films shot in the 60s-70s. We lost so many incredible films from that era because they decided it was too expensive and too much work to maintain and store those that, for many movies, we're stuck with 35mm reprints at best. Hollywood has a nasty habit of dumping masters like that because for as much money as they make, archiving is something they don't like to do.
 
It’s possible those logistical reasons were a lack of film processing facilities in the U.K., where the Star Wars movies are based
Click to expand...
What? Star Wars movies are based in UK? Not Hollywood?
 
Stiler said:
This is good to hear, now if they could just get some decent writers on board who aren't afraid to make a NEW Star Wars story rather then copying the old ones....
Click to expand...

Or, you know, the books that have already been written and considered canon to the Star Wars timeline.
 
Skylinestar said:
What? Star Wars movies are based in UK? Not Hollywood?
Click to expand...
Pinewood studios. It's not just the physical lots themselves, but also the craftsmen (craftspeople?) and artesians that surround the production process (costume, set design, props, technical personnel, etc). That being said, the ownership is still in Hollywood (more or less).
 
Plenty of film processing in the UK back then. Pinewood was THE studio to use in the 70's and 80's if you wanted to make special effects movies. The tax breaks were not bad either...

You look up most big budget sci-fi/action moves from that period and it will probably have been shot entirely or partly at Pinewood. The only major sci-fi movie that wasn't really was Bladerunner.

AFAIK -

Star Wars, Empire and Jedi were all shot on mostly 35MM film stock. Some special effects (mainly the model stuff) shot in the USA by Dykstra's team used larger obsolete film formats (65/70MM) which would then be resized in post.

Phantom Menace was also shot on 35MM but Clones and Sith were shot digitally in Australia and IIRC Lucas made the decision to shoot them purely in 1080p/2K so they will never look great going forward...but who cares.

Force Awakens was mainly shot on film too.

Essentially in a ever changing digital world using 65/70MM film is the best bet for preservation. It's the equivalent of using stone tablets in movie parlance. They will endure better than anything else probably.
 
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Lol with the amount of post processing and editing that will take place this seems like a dumb way to shoot this kind of movie. Seriously just shoot it digitally it saves shooting time less time needs to be paid attention to things like lighting and you don't have to develop the film then transfer it to the computer you just need the storage space. lighting all you need to is safeguard against really low or high values and the rest can be done in post. Movie theaters don't even use physical film anymore so this is a total waste of time outside of memberries
 
Semantics said:
Lol with the amount of post processing and editing that will take place this seems like a dumb way to shoot this kind of movie. Seriously just shoot it digitally it saves shooting time less time needs to be paid attention to things like lighting and you don't have to develop the film then transfer it to the computer you just need the storage space. lighting all you need to is safeguard against really low or high values and the rest can be done in post. Movie theaters don't even use physical film anymore so this is a total waste of time outside of memberries
Click to expand...

So tell me...what major movies have you directed and produced so far...?
 
Krixon said:
Lots of reasons, actually:

  1. The film can be scanned into much higher resolutions (current estimates for the digital equivalent of 65mm film put it between 9.3k and 12k, though there is no direct comparison yet)
  2. Shooting on film, depending on the production, can sometimes be cheaper than shooting digitally in the long run. Digital films often require more post-processing hours to get the final image up to the quality audiences expect. Film still stores way more image information than a digital frame, though this will obviously change in the future.
  3. Shooting film on set is much different than shooting digitally. Film requires light readings, often a digital pass-through so that the director/assistant can monitor the image, and tweaks to shutter speeds/lens values. Digital shoots, especially at the studio level, require specialized camera technicians (a DIT) to monitor proper file storage, codecs, and a surprising amount of digital values/settings. Depending on the shoot you can have a crew of tens just to monitor the digital output of the camera and maintain logs of the camera settings. I've been on digital shoots where, after a take, we needed to sign off with five or more people just to ensure that the file was captured properly - you might consider this a waste, but when the budget for the film is +$200 million and the marketing is even greater, it makes sense to have as much on-set insurance as possible.
  4. The Director. Colin Trevorrow has a history of shooting on film (Jurassic World - which was a mix) and it is likely that one of the reasons he agreed to come onboard was Disney's agreement to shoot film.
  5. Some analysts/critics suspect that Disney is leaning toward film to recapture the look of the old trilogies. Keep in mind that Disney is willing to spend more on marketing a film than actually making it.

Now this is all very circumstantial. Anything I've ever shot that's been longer than a simple short has been on digital mediums simply because it was cheaper, but when you add a hundred or more to the crew and hundreds of millions to the budget/marketing costs the difference between film and digital is often not as big as some would think. There are a thousand other considerations to be made as well involving production schedules, VFX strategies, post-production deals, director experience, etc.
Click to expand...

Any idea how digital compared to film when it comes to shutter angle (for balance between blur and detail but with some judder)?
Classic examples using non-standard shutter angles for greater detail and remove blur was Saving Private Ryan, also some parts of Gladiator but adds subtle judder.
The issue would be different between film and digital (in theory shutter speed does not exist in same context for digital), but wonder if pro/con for both in context of blur vs greater detail vs judder vs frame variance (digital).

I wonder if the perceptual problems of recent Mad Max film comes back to the digital editing/processing related work and importantly the concept of greater detail over blur in action scenes.
Definitely did not look right at times and that was trying to provide greater detail vs blur in action scenes - this was shot with digital cameras.
At times instead of judder that you get with film, it looked speeded up or frame speed being erratic.
Cheers
 
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CSI_PC said:
Any idea how digital compared to film when it comes to shutter angle (for balance between blur and detail but with some judder)?
Classic examples using non-standard shutter angles for greater detail and remove blur was Saving Private Ryan, also some parts of Gladiator but adds subtle judder.
The issue would be different between film and digital (in theory shutter speed does not exist in same context for digital), but wonder if pro/con for both in context of blur vs greater detail vs judder vs frame variance (digital).

I wonder if the perceptual problems of recent Mad Max film comes back to the digital editing/processing related work and importantly the concept of greater detail over blur in action scenes.
Definitely did not look right at times and that was trying to provide greater detail vs blur in action scenes - this was shot with digital cameras.
At times instead of judder that you get with film, it looked speeded up or frame speed being erratic.
Cheers
Click to expand...

The blur and bokeh come from the aperture and lenses used, it's not a feature of film vs digital. Perhaps the movie makers are just conservative and like to work with equipment they know. New technology can also backfire, just look what happened to Peter Jackson and the 60fps fiasco.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Why are they remaking vinyl now? There's a sweet spot ( google it )

65mm film, although lacking the benefits of digital still has several pro's.

Only the unconcerned and less informed would ask "why?"

I lol'd at a few of the questions on this tread, for me personally, it's like when a kid comes up and asks you why the grass is green or the sky is blue. I really hope some of you don't go through life thinking all you need is a Walmart near you that that should be good enough for everyone.

Anyways.
Click to expand...

WTF is wrong with you? Why don't you enlighten some of us that would genuinely like to know the benefits and disadvantages who are not self entitled ************ such as yourself?
 
daglesj said:
So tell me...what major movies have you directed and produced so far...?
Click to expand...
You're right I haven't done shit but james cameron has and he's one of the leading directors who pushed the entire industry over to digital in the mid 00's for those very reasons and more. Let alone the other directors who all on-boarded this idea and which is why most theaters around the world use digital instead of film now.

But then again who are you to question me? What makes you more qualified?
 
B00nie said:
The blur and bokeh come from the aperture and lenses used, it's not a feature of film vs digital. Perhaps the movie makers are just conservative and like to work with equipment they know. New technology can also backfire, just look what happened to Peter Jackson and the 60fps fiasco.
Click to expand...
I guess it is context and interpretation.
It is shutter speed-angle and example as I mentioned Saving Private Ryan using 45degree, do a search on Saving Private Ryan and 45 degree shutter.
This is what Janusz says (involved with the film):


However shutter speed and angle is not applicable to digital as it does not have this mechanism, but you have a different set of technical challenges with digital that still fit into the concept of shutter speed-angle vs judder vs clarity-motion blur vs frame variance (digital context).
I do not know if you ever seen Mad Max (2015), but here this also has greater detail/clarity at times of action (less blur) but seems to suffer with frame variation, and is digital camera shot.
Cheers
 
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Here is a great in-depth video explaining the pros/cons of the various shutter speed/angle, even mentions why 60fps is also applicable such as used by Peter Jackson (comes back to though IMO how well digital related processes/editing is done).
A great vid to watch, the beginning explains traditional film and then expands to beyond that with digital, and why there is not just one shutter speed/angle (hence why I mentioned action scenes with a 45 degree shutter angle as director is after more action clarity or realism).


Cheers
 
CSI_PC said:
I guess it is context and interpretation.
It is shutter speed-angle and example as I mentioned Saving Private Ryan using 45degree, do a search on Saving Private Ryan and 45 degree shutter.
This is what Janusz says (involved with the film):


However shutter speed and angle is not applicable to digital as it does not have this mechanism, but you have a different set of technical challenges with digital that still fit into the concept of shutter speed-angle vs judder vs clarity-motion blur vs frame variance (digital context).
I do not know if you ever seen Mad Max (2015), but here this also has greater detail/clarity at times of action (less blur) but seems to suffer with frame variation, and is digital camera shot.
Cheers
Click to expand...


Having a digital sensor does not mean there's no shutter. Just look at your digital system cameras, some of them still have that shutter click despite being digital. And as that video above explains, shutter can be implemented fully digital.
 
SixFootDuo said:
65mm film, although lacking the benefits of digital still has several pro's.

Only the unconcerned and less informed would ask "why?"
Click to expand...
Not true, there are many that are informed and think this is more a publicity/marketing thing than anything else.

Analog film doesn't have "pixels" per se, but in the past it has been shown that the amount of detail that can be captured could be scanned up to around the equivalent of 8K.

Enlarging the 65mm film will eventually show noise/film-grain after all, at which point you can say that is the limit of the amount of visual data it can capture, but there are some that say this is "artistic" but its really mumbo jumbo.

So its a completely valid point to say that we have arguably reached the point that digital technology has not just eclipsed the best analog technology as a matter of filming convenience, but also in quality.

From a marketing perspective though, I understand it, as some would just say if the film was shot and developed in 8K in the first place, then that's it. That's the best it can ever be. But if you shoot in analog, you can convince people to keep buying the same 'remastered' movie over and over and over again at different resolutions, even above 8K even if that's nonsensical because 65mm couldn't capture higher detail than that in the first place.
 
When it comes to archiving and things film is better in the long run in terms of storing a film, which last longer and isn't nearly as much of a headache as digital can be, on top of this even go in and scan it for a re-release in the future even better then what was available to the public in earlier times.

The fact that they can take a film as old as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Suspiria, etc and then turn around 50 years or more later and release those movies in better quality then people have ever seen them in is astounding

That's something that digital movies, especially earlier ones, are not going to be able to do because of the limitations of digital.
 
B00nie said:
Having a digital sensor does not mean there's no shutter. Just look at your digital system cameras, some of them still have that shutter click despite being digital. And as that video above explains, shutter can be implemented fully digital.
Click to expand...
I think we are debating around semantics mostly.
It is not exactly the same context for digital compared to film, and again I said context and concept, I know it can be implemented fully digital and that is my point about it also possibly creating unusual behaviour as I keep mentioning about the digital film Mad Max (2015 film) :)
However the behaviour is not identical between traditional film cameras and digital cameras, for the reason the whole frame must be mix of exposed/closed in traditional film based upon the shutter angle and 'cycle'.
Even the video I linked mentions it is a totally different mechanism in behaviour and cinena camera has a rotary shutter but that is to simulate and having to apply that to a digital fps-framerate.
Remember with film the whole frame only captures half of the time if using 180degree (45degree is 1/8 of the time captured) and does not capture the whole scene continuously.

Anyway this is taking away from the context that is the primary point when I said
but you have a different set of technical challenges with digital that still fit into the concept of shutter speed-angle vs judder vs clarity-motion blur vs frame variance (digital context)
Click to expand...

Cheers
 
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I'm a little confused on this. A large majority of the movie will be made digitally. It will be rendered. Then transferred to analogue film, to then be transferred to digital again for playback and distribution.

The film step seems like a big waste of time.

I understand the resolution thing of film. But are they going to render the CGI in 12K or whatever the hell the end goal of this is?
 
blitzkommando said:
I just hope they keep track of the 65mm masters better than Hollywood kept track of the 70mm films shot in the 60s-70s. We lost so many incredible films from that era because they decided it was too expensive and too much work to maintain and store those that, for many movies, we're stuck with 35mm reprints at best. Hollywood has a nasty habit of dumping masters like that because for as much money as they make, archiving is something they don't like to do.
Click to expand...

Like the videos of the moon landing being lost or reused?
 
westrock2000 said:
I'm a little confused on this. A large majority of the movie will be made digitally. It will be rendered. Then transferred to analogue film, to then be transferred to digital again for playback and distribution.

The film step seems like a big waste of time.

I understand the resolution thing of film. But are they going to render the CGI in 12K or whatever the hell the end goal of this is?
Click to expand...

I think another aspect is depth of field/panoramic/etc, or some cinematography benefits of film over digital, but then it loses out in other ways.
The Hateful Eight (taken to the extreme with 70mm) I think was an example that highlighted at points the benefit of using film, but other sections looked less great.

Also didn't Hunger Games series use film?

Cheers
 
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One thing film used to have over digital besides resolution was dynamic range of capturing light. Seems that has evaporated as well as the resolution advantage. Now film does capture a lot of color/light data in a more self contained format, maybe less problematic too in capturing the moment. I wonder what the producers are saying in this respect why they choose 65mm this time around. I do think film has a unique feel to it over digital and that maybe because most of us has just been exposed and used to film characteristics and the best movie moments have been predominantly with film.
 
noko said:
One thing film used to have over digital besides resolution was dynamic range of capturing light. Seems that has evaporated as well as the resolution advantage. Now film does capture a lot of color/light data in a more self contained format, maybe less problematic too in capturing the moment. I wonder what the producers are saying in this respect why they choose 65mm this time around. I do think film has a unique feel to it over digital and that maybe because most of us has just been exposed and used to film characteristics and the best movie moments have been predominantly with film.
Click to expand...
Maybe with HDR *shrug*.
But I think that was also one benefit of film with The Hateful Eight and the snowy scenery, which would not be as effective with digital, shame most of the film was inside one room though :)
Cheers
 
Thing is, folks have been exposed to HDR movies for awhile - via film and a very bright lighted projector ;). If you could use one of the theater projectors and project it on a much smaller screen - one would be seeing some very HDR and high resolution imaging that would blow anything currently on the digital market away.
 
I get what you guys are saying, but much of the movie will be CGI, particularly background stuff. So I'm trying to figure how film can add to something that was digital to begin with. A live action movie like Hateful 8 I understand.
 
But why not 66mm? Or 67mm? Why's it got to be a 65mm thing, huh?

Kidding aside, I'm really looking forward to the results in my 4K equipped + Dolby Atmos compliant local theater.
 
So glad I live near multiple locations with projectors capable of showing this. Let's hope they actually release the print version instead of some pathetic 4K digital downsample.
 
So I'm not an expert, but even if they film at 65mm which has X to Y viable resolutions, don't they still have to render the CGI at a set resolution? Or do they just render it at the max resolution possible and then downscale?
 
EPVII was shot on 35mm primarily I think, but to match CG and composting it had to be DNRd. So you really couldn't tell it was when watching it.

EPI was shot partially on 35mm and had quite a bit of noise too. They tried to match all of the elements up as best as they could with the tech of the time. (Their digital cameras didn't have the best precision. Which was fixed for EPII. Which improved everything a lot. There was a great LF digital magazine that had some articles about this back in the day.)

EPII and III were both shot completely digital at 2k as that was the max resolution of the cameras of the time. Unfortunately, the reality is that a huge portion of content will be forever stuck to 2k max native or even less. And we will bank on studios creating decent 4k upscales for people to view on sub 4k filmed movies. Because TV sets are pretty terrible at upsampling. Stuff that is sub 2k, there isn't much hope for. Not enough information and too big of an upsample to look very good. Like animation.

I think if they had the tech progressed to the point of today like LF has the benefit of (Thanks to ILM and Lucas pushing the tech forward and taking the risks. TFA was about as barren in plot as the Prequels and had probably just as much if not more CG. But thanks to Lucas taking that risk and pushing the format as far as they could. TFA's CG and compositing is so good there are elements that are impossible to tell that are fake. And thus you didn't hear very many complaints about the CG. People were too fooled they were getting more Practical effects than the Prequels. While it's not at all true. )
then they could've shot the Prequels all in 35 or 70mm and would've looked much nicer.

As is, they could probably still go back and remaster the 3 prequels with current technology. I'm sure ILM could come up with some great ways to get good upsampling of the filmed/digital filmed parts, and then completely recomposite everything and re-do the CG to bring it up to par(And render it at 4k natively from a higher resolution).

Honestly, i've been hoping Disney would do this for a long time. Not just with the Prequels, but also the SE OT. Would really love if they could go back and work magic on the visuals of all 6 films to make them more consistent with the filmed footage. In the case of the OT, that would be more difficult. But could look incredible if they pulled it off well. Just look at TFA visually.
(Yes I know some people want as close to what they saw in theaters as they see in their rose tinted memories. This wouldn't hurt that at all. Disney could easily release both and probably will. And will make money just fine.)
 
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