Don't You Dare Eat Your Cake

Throughout my 10 years as a low-budget digital film-maker I've found that we are constantly faced with the challenge of having our cake but never quite being permitted to eat it too. New technologies constantly allow us to steal fire from the gods but not without getting burned.

With MiniDV we could make movies on our home computers with no image degradation, opening up a creative explosion that changed film-making and my life significantly. I had never made so much as a home movie in my life but suddenly a 16 year old film nerd could make lightsabers in his bedroom (is that a euphemism?). But the frame rate and the depth of field were respectively long and videotastic.

Then came 24p. When I first read of the Panasonic DVX-100 I thought I'd sell my organs for a chance to own one. But 24p came with a whole host of strange pulldown related issuses (until 24pA, although that wasn't perfect either). So we had our film-like frame rate but we were still stuck with heavily compressed, low-resolution images. For my own part, I went the (much cheaper) route of a PAL Canon XM2 (GL2) and used it's native 25p(50i), along with an anamorphic lens adapter to get my movies looking like movies.

Then came HDV. Finally high-definition images in the hands of regular folk. But it too was heavily compressed and used the same small-sensor technology of MiniDV. Baby steps.

From there we started the move away from tape-based to a variety of solid-state acquisition formats, most of which I avoided due to their complications and cost.

Then came the DSLR.

Finally the chance to shoot films with the beautiful short depth of field we'd all been raised on, at 24 fps and beyond. With this I was also more willing to invest in expensive high-quality lenses for my DSLR because I wasn't just using them for stills anymore. But of course there were the issues of scaling and Jell-o vision CMOS sensors. So once again we've taken a baby step forward, solving one problem while creating several new ones. But we're getting there and this is an incredibly exciting time to be a film-maker. Every day new cameras with new never before seen advantages are released and we are given the chance to make our less-and-less compromised visions a reality.

You kids don't know how good you have it.

I don't doubt that the coming years will give us Super35 sized sensors (and larger) without the compression and scaling issues of today's DSLRs but it will no doubt come at a cost. A cost which I will likely not be able to afford. So for the foreseeable future I'm going to have to settle for simply having my cake whilst remaining hungry. I could imagine worse fates. :-)