Appendix 1

1 When Shooting on Film
The Film Format
Film provides the highest quality image currently available in motion pictures. Even with highdefi
nition (HD) digital formats and new digital cameras coming out every day, fi lm still provides the
highest defi nition, best colors, and broadest contrast range. While there will likely come a day when
digital surpasses fi lm, that day has not yet arrived. And fi lm has “legs.” As video formats have come
and gone, and digital formats will come and go, there has always been fi lm. It is high quality, it can be
scanned into any video or digital format, blown up to another fi lm format, or adapted to whatever
exotic format is created. It has always been and will always be marketable because of this universality.
And with new scanning systems being created for fi lm, it fi ts any workfl ow and keeps looking better.
While digital cameras are becoming a real alternative to fi lm, fi lm will be around for quite a while.
Film is expensive. A ten-minute roll of 16 mm fi lm can cost more than one hundred and fi fty dollars.
The same ten-minute roll of 35 mm fi lm can cost almost eight hundred dollars. And the fi lm still
needs to be developed and transferred via telecine to digital video. High quality comes with a high
price tag.
Telecine
In telecine, the fi lm is transferred to digital video, usually to tape, but it can also be done directly to
drive at some postproduction houses.
The fi lm negative is threaded on a telecine machine, in Figure 1.1, a Quadra at Laser Pacifi c in
Hollywood. Several different optics “heads” can be mounted on the device for transfer of different
fi lm formats and aspect ratios.
The telecine machine can also read “key code” numbers. These are a series of numbers and machinereadable
bar codes visible on the edge of the fi lm. Each key code is a unique number and can be
used to identify any fi lm frame in the project. (For more detailed information on key code, read
Chapter 5 on fi lm fi nish.)
1