I’ve seen so many movies that try to replicate an old film aesthetic, or have a sequence with a fictional vintage film, that sort of thing. The audio and video quality is always way too sharp and modern and never actually convinces the audience that it’s a legitimate piece of vintage camera work. Is it that hard to replicate the effect? Would you need an actual 80-100 year old camera to achieve that quality?
EDIT: Thank you literally everyone for your responses. Seems like the general consensus is a mix between technnology and artistry…both the way film handles light/shadow/colour/speed, and the advancements we’ve made in artistic direction. I can’t wait to watch Mank (as recommended) because just the trailer is fascinating. I can definitely tell how much of the difference is amplified by the cinematography itself–quick changes into closeups, lingering shots of objects as opposed to faces, just general directorial taste. Older films utilize fewer angles, quick shots, and camera tricks for longer, more sterile sequences and that a really matters so much. I loved learning all of this, seeing it firsthand with a different psychological lens, and I appreciate the time you took to help me along!
In: 35
Probably they want to say “this is an old footage” without dealing with downsides of an old footage, like poor picture quality.
It would look really crappy on a modern screen. I’ve seen one that *did* use actual old footage. It looked really bad on a giant modern movie screen.
They pick making the movie look better over authenticity.
Was there a recent film you saw that had this problem? It might be easier to speak to the problems with a specific example.
In general, there are a few different things going on. One of them is film grain. Digital camera tend to not be as grainy as cameras from back in the day, so something shot digitally in black and white may have pure whites and pure blacks that you could never get from an old camera. This is a problem I had with Mank.
You don’t need an 80-100 year old camera, but if you really want that look you need to use actual black and white film (which hasn’t changed much).
Maybe it has something to do with color balance. Even in black and white color saturation, hue, and whatever the third one is all affect how those colors appear in relation to other colors in bnw.
Some movies do it well. I thought the light house looked pretty old school, but I believe it was actually shot on 38mm film. Also a lot of old film we see was quite aged before being digitally transcribed, so it had physically deteriorated by the time you saw it.
It has to do with the film stock used then and the lenses. On top of that it most likely looks bad now because it was not preserved well before being scanned into digital. Theres nothing inherently bad about older lenses or film. If you had a good lens from the 20s and perfectly preserved film stock you could make something that looks very good. We also have much better equipment now to make glass lens that have stricter tolerances so they can let more light in etc… the answer is that its really a combination of many different things. Audio was much worse back in the way because it couldnt be recorded digitally and had a high noise floor. Microphones didnt have much dynamic range to pick up the softest or loudest sounds.
It is a combination of available film and projection technologies. One of the reason we can keep releasing HD versions of classics is that 35mm film resolution is something like 87 megapixels *a frame*. Provided the film was properly exposed initially and then protected, you can scan that with increasing resolution almost at will.
We are still shooting some movies on regular old film with all the benefits and drawbacks, but because screens are so sharp they have spend a lot of time in post editing with computers that you simply didn’t get before the 90s.
In iron man 2 the old retro films of Howard Stark looked really good in my opinion, I just rewatched it yesterday and noted exactly this.
There are a few reasons. Let’s explore just some of those :
1. Film Grain : Digital cameras provide much, much cleaner images compared to film cameras used back in time to shoot BW films. Film cameras tend to be grainy, have imperfections and have “off-white” and “off-black” colors while modern cameras pick up full spectrum of color and digitally turn it into BW by color correcting.
2. Lighting : Our methods and tech of lighting have changed drastically since the times of OG BW films. You can clearly tell that when comparing a modern and old BW film.
3. Filming methods : Again, times have changed the methods and techniques we use to shoot movies. New angles, new movements, new panning. You can subconciously tell that it is in fact a modern movie.
I’ve seen so many movies that try to replicate an old film aesthetic, or have a sequence with a fictional vintage film, that sort of thing. The audio and video quality is always way too sharp and modern and never actually convinces the audience that it’s a legitimate piece of vintage camera work. Is it that hard to replicate the effect? Would you need an actual 80-100 year old camera to achieve that quality?
EDIT: Thank you literally everyone for your responses. Seems like the general consensus is a mix between technnology and artistry…both the way film handles light/shadow/colour/speed, and the advancements we’ve made in artistic direction. I can’t wait to watch Mank (as recommended) because just the trailer is fascinating. I can definitely tell how much of the difference is amplified by the cinematography itself–quick changes into closeups, lingering shots of objects as opposed to faces, just general directorial taste. Older films utilize fewer angles, quick shots, and camera tricks for longer, more sterile sequences and that a really matters so much. I loved learning all of this, seeing it firsthand with a different psychological lens, and I appreciate the time you took to help me along!
In: 35
Probably they want to say “this is an old footage” without dealing with downsides of an old footage, like poor picture quality.
It would look really crappy on a modern screen. I’ve seen one that *did* use actual old footage. It looked really bad on a giant modern movie screen.
They pick making the movie look better over authenticity.
Was there a recent film you saw that had this problem? It might be easier to speak to the problems with a specific example.
In general, there are a few different things going on. One of them is film grain. Digital camera tend to not be as grainy as cameras from back in the day, so something shot digitally in black and white may have pure whites and pure blacks that you could never get from an old camera. This is a problem I had with Mank.
You don’t need an 80-100 year old camera, but if you really want that look you need to use actual black and white film (which hasn’t changed much).
Maybe it has something to do with color balance. Even in black and white color saturation, hue, and whatever the third one is all affect how those colors appear in relation to other colors in bnw.
Some movies do it well. I thought the light house looked pretty old school, but I believe it was actually shot on 38mm film. Also a lot of old film we see was quite aged before being digitally transcribed, so it had physically deteriorated by the time you saw it.
It has to do with the film stock used then and the lenses. On top of that it most likely looks bad now because it was not preserved well before being scanned into digital. Theres nothing inherently bad about older lenses or film. If you had a good lens from the 20s and perfectly preserved film stock you could make something that looks very good. We also have much better equipment now to make glass lens that have stricter tolerances so they can let more light in etc… the answer is that its really a combination of many different things. Audio was much worse back in the way because it couldnt be recorded digitally and had a high noise floor. Microphones didnt have much dynamic range to pick up the softest or loudest sounds.
It is a combination of available film and projection technologies. One of the reason we can keep releasing HD versions of classics is that 35mm film resolution is something like 87 megapixels *a frame*. Provided the film was properly exposed initially and then protected, you can scan that with increasing resolution almost at will.
We are still shooting some movies on regular old film with all the benefits and drawbacks, but because screens are so sharp they have spend a lot of time in post editing with computers that you simply didn’t get before the 90s.
In iron man 2 the old retro films of Howard Stark looked really good in my opinion, I just rewatched it yesterday and noted exactly this.
There are a few reasons. Let’s explore just some of those :
1. Film Grain : Digital cameras provide much, much cleaner images compared to film cameras used back in time to shoot BW films. Film cameras tend to be grainy, have imperfections and have “off-white” and “off-black” colors while modern cameras pick up full spectrum of color and digitally turn it into BW by color correcting.
2. Lighting : Our methods and tech of lighting have changed drastically since the times of OG BW films. You can clearly tell that when comparing a modern and old BW film.
3. Filming methods : Again, times have changed the methods and techniques we use to shoot movies. New angles, new movements, new panning. You can subconciously tell that it is in fact a modern movie.
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