The "day after" a typical Hollywood film shoot, when the film has come back from the lab in fine shape, can someone answer what was the advantage of having shot digitally?

The digital image staring back at you the "day after" may leave you with a hung over feeling, "but she looked so good when I was drunk and in the moment".

The "day after" the image staring back at you has already been recorded on a vulnerably thin piece of magnetic tape with unknown longevity on a format that probably won't be viable five years from now. Or you may shot on a 35mm film frame that will outlast the next 5 generations of video and will actually look new and improved everytime the video forat has been improved.

Too me it's the classic glass of milk being half empty or half full.

You choose which is more important. Do you desire having an instant guarantee that your digital shot came out (the digital difference), or, based on experience, do you choose film knowing full well that your filmed images probably have an over 99% chance of being developed properly and ready for transfer to video 6-12 hours from the time they arrived at the lab?

I think different media applications will gladly welcome digital. Documentarians on tight budgets will love being able to shoot as much footage as possible. Of course, you do have to be able to afford HD editing...

Reality TV loves digital origination. So too will sit-coms and their "wordy" formula.

Commercials will embrace digital cinematography because it means ad agencies can do more of their work "in house", and yet I've recently seen some horribly unhip and awful national commercials that were shot digitally instead of on film.

In an expanding world of media, Film may be destined to become the Mac as Digital becomes the
new Microsoft.

This doesn't mean that even with a reduced market share that Mac has taken a backseat in leading edge digital technology. Neither should Kodak worry if it's market share decreases as long as the amount of film being shot stays steady or slowly increases.

How do you make a bean counter sweat, you take away their heart. That will be Kodak's largest nemisis, the prognosticators and anticipators known as bean counters making the future even as they claim to only want to predict it.

<font color="#FFFF00" size="1">[ November 30, 2003 04:01 AM: Message edited by: Alex ]</font>