(Above) Satyajit Ray wields his 35mm film camera on actor Utpal Dutt; (Right) Christopher Nolan shot his Oscar-winning Dunkirk on a 65mm film camera

Old School Film Scores Over Digital Tech In Aesthetics, Preservation & Discipline
Mohua Das (THE TIMES OF INDIA; March 25, 2018)

Ravi K Chandran seems a little wound up. The ace cinematographer is contemplating the shifting sands of the film industry — particularly the relentless feed of new digital film formats. “All this change in technology every few days has enabled new possibilities. Anyone can film anything anytime at the press of a button,” he says, “but there is a difference, the kind you can sense between home-cooked food and fast food or between a Rembrandt oil painting and its digital printout.”

K U Mohanan, who wowed cinegoers with his camerawork in Don, Talaash and Miss Lovely, reminisces about the old-fashioned reel-to-reel film he used since he picked up his first camera as a student at FTII in Pune. “There’s romance, magic and something natural in the image captured on film.”

You hear such musings quite often in Bollywood these days. For more than a century, their world was ruled by celluloid—the medium on which movies were shot, processed and projected in theatres until about a decade ago when the digital wave turned grains into pixels.

Cans and reels have since been replaced by hard drives and digital files; while classic hallmarks of cinema-grains, flicker, and drone of the projector—are rapidly becoming antique.

The Indian film industry, whose cinematic heritage of 135 years is based entirely on analogue prints, witnessed a digital revolution in the past decade with 85% of films going digital in 2012. It was the same year that Prasad Film Laboratories, the largest chain of post-production facilities in India, shut its celluloid-processing units and rebranded itself as a pioneer in digital services. Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection and Fuji stopped selling negatives and 35mm film stock. Today, India is among the first few countries to have completely broken away from its analogue past.

What changed was not only the making but also showcasing. Instead of lugging around kilos of film cans across halls, they could be transferred to a disk or wirelessly. New releases could hit hundreds of screens at a go and enter the Rs 100-crore club while independent filmmakers could afford small-budget films. Digital tools made risk-taking easier in terms of techniques and touching up scenes.

Yet, senior cinematographers are almost desperate now to bring celluloid back. Sudeep Chatterjee, the man behind the lens for films such as Padmaavat, Bajirao Mastani and Dhoom 3, is not anti-digital. But he says film—his “favourite medium”—should be an available choice. “Today there are digital interventions—graphics and visual effects—at every level. But not every movie requires it. In such cases, why shouldn’t film be available?”

“In India, we’ve never had a culture of preserving our past while leaping on to something new. Age-old cameras, scanning machines and projectors are being junked. Big companies such as Arriflex have stopped making film cameras. It’s unfair for India to discard its time-honoured format for something still in its infancy,” says Mohanan.

Chandran, known for his visual metaphors in Tamil and Hindi films such as Kandukondain Kandukondain, Yuva and Dil Chahta Hai, talks about aspects of traditional film that a digital one would not be able to recreate. “Film is a chemical process in which light enters the lens and hits the negative. The chemical reaction creates rich hues, light and shade dynamics, and dreamy textures that go missing in digitally regimented visuals.” These lensmen also believe that limited film stock breeds discipline and rigour on the sets. “The sanctity of a shot is gone when one knows they can indulge in a flurry of takes,” adds Chatterjee.

Archival durability in the time of constant upgrade cycles is another growing concern. “Something stored on your floppy disk cannot be played anywhere anymore; 1K and 2K cameras have no value now while film format cameras from the black-and-white age can still be used,” says Chandran.

Anyone who has ever suffered the heartbreak of a hard drive crash or tried to watch home videos recorded in a now obsolete device knows of the dark side to digital storage. In two reports titled The Digital Dilemma published successively in 2007 and 2012, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences raised concerns about the longevity of digital material. Although archives surveyed for the reports showed that unlike traditional motion picture film stock that can be stored at proper temperatures and humidity, long-term preservation mechanisms to maintain access to digital content for 100 years or longer had not yet been developed.

This perhaps explains why some reactionaries are gearing up to preserve celluloid in India steered by filmmaker and archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur who set up the Film Heritage Foundation in 2014 to protect India’s decaying film heritage. Dungarpur’s efforts and the cinematographers’ wish might get a shot in the arm given that Hollywood stalwart Christopher Nolan is making overtures to the country’s film fraternity.

After bringing together professionals from art, film preservation and cinema to discuss steps needed to protect the medium of film and reposition its importance in an aggressive digital market in Los Angeles, London and Mexico City, Nolan and Tacita Dean, visual artist and founder of Save Film, a movement petitioning Unesco to safeguard the medium of film will be in Mumbai next weekend to dwell on the need to preserve photochemical film and keep it available for future generations. “Getting rid of celluloid is like getting rid of the grandmother. It’s not about choosing one above another but the need to co-exist. Hopefully, Nolan and Tacita, who wrote to me wanting to come and support our film heritage will draw our industry’s attention,” says Dungarpur, just back from a rescue mission of resuscitating 30,000 film reels in Sri Lanka. “This was possible because of the stability celluloid has achieved since 1895 when the Lumiere Brothers showed the first film.”

Celluloid is staging a comeback in Hollywood; some of the nominees at this year’s Oscars—Dunkirk, Phantom Thread, The Post, I, Tonya, and Call Me By Your Name— were mainly shot on film, not digital cameras. “I’m so glad that veterans such as Nolan, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino are sticking to film. I wish we could do the same here,” says Chandran.