A very noob query.

Digital projection removes film from the process entirely. It's just a scan of the film at 4k or 2k or whatever the projector is capable of, so effectively you're watching a Blu Ray, just with higher resolution. So you're watching something analog that's been converted to digital, and it doesn't look the same. It's a lot less natural.

Some Blu Rays do indeed have DNR applied to remove the grain. For an example of how this can ruin a film, check out the "Ultimate Hunter" version of Predator. On the other hand, the Blu of Aliens had the grain reduced by James Cameron though. I don't mind that one because the stock it was shot on created excessive grain, to the point of distraction.

Think of it like vinyl vs CD. CD is cleaner and clearer and doesn't wear out, but for an album recorded in the 70s on analog tape, vinyl is a more natural reproduction of the sound. Digitizing an analog source converts one form to another instead of retaining the original form, which is why digitized analog is inferior to analog-to-analog reproduction. It's not always easy to explain exactly why that is, without getting into all sorts of scientific jargon, but think of it as a painting (film) and a high-resolution digital picture of the painting (digital projection/blu ray).. the original painting will always look more natural and has nuances that just can't be captured by blocks of binary code.

I should also mention.. If you projected a Blu Ray onto a 40 foot screen it would look like absolute crap. It's still a heavily compressed version of the original scan, so it looks fine on a TV but on a large projector the compression would be extremely obvious.

Thank you for that in depth reply. I still have some questions and would be glad if you addressed them:

All the older films I have watched(pre 1995) have been on my computer on a DVD. But they still look different than digital films of the later years. I can have one look and tell that its that film look versus a digital look. So how does the transfer matter? To me as long as its shot on film it should be fine(if you want the film look).

My friend, who is a high profile television director in my country has emphatically stated that movies shot on film should be done for. It is reverse psychology in effect: He grew up on digital films and hates the film look. And so do many younger generation(in my scriptwriting class in Canada the professor had to stop showing Chinatown(1975) because everyone hated the "slow" look and feel. Do you think people like film only for nostalgic purposes or does it actually have something that digital does not, technology being so goddamn old(100 years plus?)



Thanks

Films shot back in the day were edited on film, but sometime (i'm not sure exactly when) they started to digitally grade them before re-printing to film. That's why they look different, that and the way they're shot. Films these days are often more brightly lit than older ones. Plus there's always a lot of visual effects going on even in ways you wouldn't notice, such as enhancing sets and backgrounds. Films from the old days up until the 90s were a lot less processed in general. It's just like how newer music sounds tighter and more precise than older music - there's just a lot more processing involved.

Anyway, film has a depth that digital lacks. Digital HD is a sharper, cleaner image but it looks flat - it can often make it hard to convey a sense of scope and size on digital compared to film.

I should also mention.. If you projected a Blu Ray onto a 40 foot screen it would look like absolute crap. It's still a heavily compressed version of the original scan, so it looks fine on a TV but on a large projector the compression would be extremely obvious.

I have yet to see any noticeable compression artifacts on any Blu-ray, and I own over 80. And screen size isn't the only thing that matters, what matters is the ratio between viewing distance and screen size. There is no difference whatsoever between viewing a 40 inch screen from 40 inches away and viewing a 40 foot screen from 40 feet away. And yes, a Blu-ray projected on a 40 foot screen would look like crap from 12 feet away, but so would a Blu-ray on a 40 inch screen viewed from 12 inches away.

What matters is that the pixels are small enough that you can't easily distinguish the individual pixels, but just barely (otherwise they're wasted).

Let's say you have a 10 foot (120 inch) screen, for example. If you're about 35 feet away, you won't be able to tell the difference between a Blu-ray and a DVD, because the pixels are too small and you can't see the Blu-ray's additional resolution from that distance. If you walk forward another 10 feet, the DVD will start to look worse but a 720p source or a Blu-ray will still look just as good. At 25 feet, you'll be able to see the full resolution of the 720p source, but if you get closer it will start to look worse and worse. It's not until you get to about 15 feet away that you'll be able to see the full resolution of the Blu-ray... and if you get even closer, that will start to look bad as well. You'd then start to get the benefit of 1440p or 4k.

Do you think people like film only for nostalgic purposes or does it actually have something that digital does not, technology being so goddamn old(100 years plus?)
You've nailed it, it's mostly nostalgia, and maybe a bit of Luddism as well. As they grow older and afraid of a future that they have little control over, they take comfort in the old familiar things.

Because children often emulate their parents, younger viewers may also possess the same views, although for different reasons. In addition, the novelty of seeing old movies "warts and all" would actually be something new and different for them.

There's also the snob appeal. Look at people who insist that vinyl records "sound better", and spend large amounts of money on their hobby. In such cases it's often more about the paraphernalia than any actual benefits, real or (more likely) imagined. A large collection of expensive stuff is a way to show off wealth; it's a practice as old as time.

People such as your TV director friend may have other, more personal motives. A friend of mine who was an antenna engineer (he climbed tall towers, and masts atop tall buildings to maintain TV transmission antennas) once shocked me when he predicted that broadcast TV would be gone shortly and that everyone would have cable instead. I was shocked because that meant the end of his job! In retrospect that was probably exactly what he was looking forward to: the end of having to scale tall structures and work high in the air! He was close to retirement age, that was it. BTW, his prediction is even further from becoming true 25 years later. ;)

The sober truth is that the days of chemical film as a mainstream medium are coming to an end. Because people in Hollywood have become extremely wealthy, I wouldn't rule out one or more old film makers spending massive amounts of money to keep film alive by throwing money at it, but it's not going to be profitable in the long run. That's just the way it is. There's very little left that film can do better than electronic means, aside from looking like film. And there are digital effects to do the latter...

Adding film grain and other junk to emulate the film look is a legitimate special effect for electronic production, just as simulated clicks and pops in audio recordings were once a popular effect. If you have the opportunity to shoot on film, by all means do. Just don't expect a long term job doing so. Stuff like digital post production became popular because it's so much easier!

"Whilst it is perfectly understandable if the movie is shot digitally(It looks nowhere like film), why is it a concern if it is projected digitally?"

I agree, it shouldn't be a concern. TI (Texas Instruments) DLP (Digital Light Processing) digital cinema projection technology, which is essentially an ultra-bright Xenon lamp projecting the image through a spinning color-wheel and millions of micromirrors that comprise the picture, does a great job of presenting film digitally.

Tarantino and others effectively argue that films projected on film have more of a richness, a depth and a higher contrast ratio, and I would agree, IF the film projected is a first-generation print made right off the original camera negative.

But film distribution tends to be a print made from an internegative made from a first-generation print made from the original camera negative, a copy of a copy of a copy, resulting, just like a Xerox paper copy of a copy of a copy, through the associated analog generation loss of making a copy of a copy, in a print that is not as sharp, has duller color and not as great a contrast ratio as a first-generation print. Add to that the dirt flecks and hairs caught in the projector gate and I think digital projection of a digital "print" made right off the original camera negative transferred as a 2K or 4K digital intermediate file on a hard drive might have a visual edge over film projection.

I have yet to see any noticeable compression artifacts on any Blu-ray, and I own over 80

I own about 800 and most of them are fine.. however some of the early one such as Lethal Weapon and Full Metal Jacket have some visible aliasing, and FMJ also has some nasty de-interlacing artefacts. The BD transfer of Once Upon A Time In America has some very obvious blocking in the darker areas. It's generally not noticable during playback, unlike DVD compression, but if you pause the image you'll see it easily.

Obviously newer films that have been digitally processed (or shot on digital formats) are going to translate better to HD digital than scanning a 30 or 40 year old film through a telecine, especially since in many cases the master used to create the BD is the same one used to create the DVD. Hell, even the 4K-mastered BD of Taxi Driver still looks washed out and murky, because that's how the film was intended to look.

Ah, but the DLP engine isn't digital, it's totally mechanical! It's an evolution of Archimedes' heat ray, the Nipkow disk, the failed CBS-Goldmark color TV system, the Apollo LEM color wheel cameras etc. The "semiconductor chip" style packaging doesn't automatically make it "digital" any more than an op-amp. The device may be controlled by digital logic, but the engine itself is just a bunch of mirrors.

For that matter, most camera sensors are not digital either. The voltages are sampled and digitized in the camera, but the main difference is that they use solid state circuits, not thermionic tubes.

In both cases, the use of numbers, digits to transport and manipulate the video signal is the prevalent method, but the transducers themselves are not inherently "digital".