The Elusive Film Look for Digital Filmmakers

Abstract: Digital filmmakers –visual storytellers who use digital video or HD as their preferred medium – have in recent years have developed an arsenal of cinematic tools to enhance the look of video towards more of a “film quality.” The Micro35 adds the last and arguably the most critical element – film-style cinematography – to achieve truly ‘film style’ digital video.

Film and Digital Video

Filmmaking is rife with key moments in its history; perhaps none more so in recent years than the advent of Digital Video (or more specifically Mini-DV). For the independent producer, gone was the prohibitive cost of exposing silver nitrate on celluloid: the new format seemed to be a tremendous improvement over home-video of the 1980’s, and offered many inherent advantages, such as the ability to edit inexpensively on PC computer systems in a nonlinear fashion.

Nevertheless, it’s been a tough sell for distributors, film-festival submission committees, and personal tastes alike: no matter how good the lighting, or how perfectly the actors all hit their marks, projects shot on Mini-DV seem to be forever branded with the stigma of being “video” and not “film.” Not even George Lucas could escape the wrath of cinema traditionalists who scoffed at the idea of acquiring moving images digitally. And so began the effort to find ways to get video, especially Mini-DV, to look like “film.”