Physical film is a dying medium, and one of Hollywood's top directors thinks we need to step up our efforts to keep it alive.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Christopher Nolan spoke about the importance of film this weekend, arguing that film and digital should be able to co-exist. He said that choosing one or the other should be a creative choice, and that we "need film projectors and film prints - forever."
Nolan also stressed the importance of archiving film, noting that there's no stable digital archiving medium, but film is future proof, and preserving a library of film prints is extremely important.
Film versus digital has become a huge debate in the film community and in Hollywood. In recent years the majority of theaters across the country have converted from film to digital projection, with physical film projectors becoming increasingly rare. A number of directors have spoken out against this such as Quentin Tarantino, who called digital projection "the death of cinema," as we previously reported.
Nolan didn't go that far, but he did support keeping film projection around, saying that theaters can keep film projectors as a selling point for people who are seeking that sort of experience. He noted that a number of theaters projected his latest film Interstellar on film, and those theaters did very well. So while some directors like Tarantino downright despise digital, Nolan thinks filmmakers and theaters should have both as an option.
In addition to projection, shooting on film has becoming increasingly less common, with film sales down 96% since 2006, as we previously reported.
It seems inevitable that eventually film will die out completely, but for now we have directors like Nolan and Tarantino keeping it alive. And it may not be a lost cause, as last month Kodak reached a deal with major Hollywood studios to extend the life of film.
Notable upcoming movies that were shot on film include Star Wars Episode VII and Tarantino's upcoming film The Hateful Eight, the trailer for which boats that it was shot on "glorious 70mm."
So recent thinking was that film was just about dead and would be on its way out within a year or two, but with directors like Nolan, Tarantino and Abrams still in the game, and with Kodak's most recent deal, it seems like the medium might have a bit longer left than we had thought.
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