Exactly how the film experience feels.

Film Professor sent me this email Saturday at 4pm:

Came across this today (in Sight & Sound) & thought you might find it interesting. It's from an article about the films of Patrick Keiller, whose work I don't really know but who sounds really intriguing.

"Compared with videotape," he has written, "film stock is expensive to purchase and process, and the camera's magazine holds only 122m of stock, just over 4 minutes at 25fps. Film hence tends to involve a greater commitment to an image before starting to turn the camera, and there is pressure to stop as soon as possible, both to limit expenditure and to avoid running out of loaded film. Results are visible only after processing, which, in this case, was usually several days later, by which time some subjects were no longer available and others had changed, so as to rule out the possibility of a retake. I began to wonder why I had never noticed these difficulties before, or whether I had simply forgotten them.
"Another problem was that, with computer editing, it is no longer usual to make a print to edit. Instead, camera rolls are transferred to video after processing, so that the footage is never seen at its best until the end of the production process. This hybridity of photographic and digital media so emphasises the value of the material, mineral characteristics of film that one begins to reimagine cinematography as a variety of stone-carving."

Ciao.

Mitch