Celluloid is praised for its character, or as Dick Pope, who worked on the The Illusionist, puts it, its "grit and grain and texture." Film is consistently described as more emotional, and even, by the cinematographer Reed Morano, as a "comforting thing" to hold dear to. "Grains of film," says David Tattersall, of Star Wars Episodes 1-3, are "just constantly moving...the result is a kind of fuzziness." Digital, by contrast, is precise. It's praised for its "immediacy." Producer Jason Kliot, of Coffee and Cigarettes, remarks that video "occupies a space in your mind" where you think "I'm in that room with them, oh my god is this really happening." Digital, at least traditionally, isn't sentimental.
This tension between grainy romance and discomforting immediacy helps drive the documentary's momentum. It also suggests, in the broader context, a subtle question: could the digital revolution actually change the way we think of nostalgia? If nostalgia is triggered by comforting "fuzziness" and "texture," then could the digital age alter the way future generations remember the past?
With digital you see the product immediately. We've lost the magic of opening that pack of photographs after they've been developed, just as cinematographers are losing the magic of viewing "dailies"--or yesterday's efforts--on the day after shooting. ("They are no longer dailies," Reeves tells us, "they are immediatelies.") With digital, the "preciousness" of film is lost. In cinema, you don't hear the sound of "money running through the camera," as Morano says. With photography, you don't have that 24-picture limit anymore. Snap away. And the images don't degrade, either.
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