KD^3C^3 - 20251116 The winds of change are always blowing
f you were to ask me if I gave a favorite cinematographer, I’d probably say, no I’m not enough of a film dork to have a favorite. But if I thought about it a little longer, I’d probably say, “wait no. Steve Yedlin”
I first discovered the work of Steve Yedlin in college. Something was making the rounds about “film vs digital” again and this time it was a video by some guy. In this video, only available through website, he presents self-shot footage of the same scenes side by side, one shot on film and one shot digitally. They were exactly the same, because he had to shoot each one twice, but they were as close as he could make them. It wasn’t particularly interesting footage, clearly shot in and around his house, and you figured he was the guy in the footage as well as the camera operator (I still don’t know if that’s actually the case, but I believe it)
In the video he deliberately doesn’t tell you which side is digital and which one was shot on film. He also makes it clear that he occasionally switches which which one is shown first or second or on each side, between shots. He does this because the goal is to make it clear how alike they are. It’s very difficult to notice any differences between the two images in terms of the sorts of things we film dorks tend to say are baked into the different formats. The colors are almost identical, the “grain” seems the same, I honestly cannot tell the difference between the two.
His larger point is that recording format is not, and should not be the deciding factor in how your movie looks. He demonstrates this rather well, in my opinion, and goes on to talk about how there is always a physical phenomenon (light hitting a recording medium) that can be studied and understood. A creator should be the one to define how their movie looks and anyone pushing only one way to accomplish that is probably selling you something.
I've thought about that short video a lot in the intervening years. Most often when some director or other talks about how they only shoot on film, for reasons. I was only after many more years that I realized the guy who made that video was actually a well regarded professional cinematographer who was probably pointing his argument directly at those directors. If you;ve even seen a movie directed by Rian Johnson, you've seen Steve Yedlin's work. Brick, The Brothers Bloom, Looper, The Last Jedi, Knives Out and Glass Onion all had Steve Yedlin behind the lens. And say what you will about those movies (I like to love all of them) I think it's undeniable that they look good.
As Yedlin's profile has risen (for a cinematographer, he's not exactly a household name) I have seen him continue to talk about how shooting a movie is physics and math, and limiting yourself by what you think the specific "feel" of a format has takes away creative control undet the illusion of giving it back.
I saw an interview (I can't find it now) how parts of Last Jedi were filmed on film and parts were digital and how nobody can tell because of his work. This is a man who understands things it feels like nobody else does when it comes to how a movie looks. He's fine with shooting your movie how you want, be it film or digital, but he wants you to have control over it and make the artistic decisions you want.
So that 8 minute video I watched a long time ago had a profound impact on my approach to understanding how movies work. To my wonderful surprise, when i was telling someone else about it (it comes up in conversation with me more often than it does other people) and I was pulling up the link to share, I discovered that he's done it again, but more. This year, he released a recorded version of a presentation he's given at least twice to industry leaders (Roger Deakins, for example, is in the audience). IN this two hour and sixteen minute long presentation, called Debunking HDR he once again does a side by side deep dive between two popular standards. Instead of film vs digital, he's now talking about High Dynamic Range versus Standard Dynamic Range.
The video is pretty dry, and very academic. He spends his setup time explaining the literal mechanics of how color is displayed, and how the two different standards display that information. His biggest point is that HDR and SDR are different ways of measuring and encoding the same thing. He says it's the difference between measuring in meters and feet. One is not better than the other and if you know math, you can easily change between them, but using meters or feet does not change how big your living room is.
He demonstrates this by showing various frames from his movies back to back (side by side in real life) where the same frame is encoded in HDR and SDR. They are identical. Not that they look the same, but that the light emitted from the display is identical becuase he is using each standard to display the image identically. He's showig the same image in meters and feet, but the image doesn't change. He literally pulls up the standards that define these two different "formats" at one point, which I think almost nobody else does. He read the freaking manual. The information has been there the whole time.
He goes on to demonstrate that HDR has exactly one feature that is can do natively that SDR cannot replicate. He demonstrates that feature (super bright highlights) and then goes on to show how, with some extra work, you can in fact accomplish that with some tweaking to SDR.
The last half of the presentation is him working through a bunch of marketing claims that are often made about HDR and demonstrating them to be either false or a misunderstanding of the technology. I'm not goign to cover all the arguments, because Steve does it better and understands it more deeply. Like with his film vs digital video, his goal is one of putting the control back in the artists hands. Letting them be the final arbiter of how their movie looks and not a format dictating how it should look.
If you care about how a movie looks, or if you've ever complained that a movie didn't get an "HDR Release" then I think you owe it to yourself to make the time to watch the video. The real audience is people who make movies, but people who like watching movies can get a lot out of understanding how they are made.
Anyway, like the film vs digital video, I'm sorry in advance for bringing this up every chance I can for the next ten years.
I first discovered the work of Steve Yedlin in college. Something was making the rounds about “film vs digital” again and this time it was a video by some guy. In this video, only available through website, he presents self-shot footage of the same scenes side by side, one shot on film and one shot digitally. They were exactly the same, because he had to shoot each one twice, but they were as close as he could make them. It wasn’t particularly interesting footage, clearly shot in and around his house, and you figured he was the guy in the footage as well as the camera operator (I still don’t know if that’s actually the case, but I believe it)
In the video he deliberately doesn’t tell you which side is digital and which one was shot on film. He also makes it clear that he occasionally switches which which one is shown first or second or on each side, between shots. He does this because the goal is to make it clear how alike they are. It’s very difficult to notice any differences between the two images in terms of the sorts of things we film dorks tend to say are baked into the different formats. The colors are almost identical, the “grain” seems the same, I honestly cannot tell the difference between the two.
His larger point is that recording format is not, and should not be the deciding factor in how your movie looks. He demonstrates this rather well, in my opinion, and goes on to talk about how there is always a physical phenomenon (light hitting a recording medium) that can be studied and understood. A creator should be the one to define how their movie looks and anyone pushing only one way to accomplish that is probably selling you something.
I've thought about that short video a lot in the intervening years. Most often when some director or other talks about how they only shoot on film, for reasons. I was only after many more years that I realized the guy who made that video was actually a well regarded professional cinematographer who was probably pointing his argument directly at those directors. If you;ve even seen a movie directed by Rian Johnson, you've seen Steve Yedlin's work. Brick, The Brothers Bloom, Looper, The Last Jedi, Knives Out and Glass Onion all had Steve Yedlin behind the lens. And say what you will about those movies (I like to love all of them) I think it's undeniable that they look good.
As Yedlin's profile has risen (for a cinematographer, he's not exactly a household name) I have seen him continue to talk about how shooting a movie is physics and math, and limiting yourself by what you think the specific "feel" of a format has takes away creative control undet the illusion of giving it back.
I saw an interview (I can't find it now) how parts of Last Jedi were filmed on film and parts were digital and how nobody can tell because of his work. This is a man who understands things it feels like nobody else does when it comes to how a movie looks. He's fine with shooting your movie how you want, be it film or digital, but he wants you to have control over it and make the artistic decisions you want.
So that 8 minute video I watched a long time ago had a profound impact on my approach to understanding how movies work. To my wonderful surprise, when i was telling someone else about it (it comes up in conversation with me more often than it does other people) and I was pulling up the link to share, I discovered that he's done it again, but more. This year, he released a recorded version of a presentation he's given at least twice to industry leaders (Roger Deakins, for example, is in the audience). IN this two hour and sixteen minute long presentation, called Debunking HDR he once again does a side by side deep dive between two popular standards. Instead of film vs digital, he's now talking about High Dynamic Range versus Standard Dynamic Range.
The video is pretty dry, and very academic. He spends his setup time explaining the literal mechanics of how color is displayed, and how the two different standards display that information. His biggest point is that HDR and SDR are different ways of measuring and encoding the same thing. He says it's the difference between measuring in meters and feet. One is not better than the other and if you know math, you can easily change between them, but using meters or feet does not change how big your living room is.
He demonstrates this by showing various frames from his movies back to back (side by side in real life) where the same frame is encoded in HDR and SDR. They are identical. Not that they look the same, but that the light emitted from the display is identical becuase he is using each standard to display the image identically. He's showig the same image in meters and feet, but the image doesn't change. He literally pulls up the standards that define these two different "formats" at one point, which I think almost nobody else does. He read the freaking manual. The information has been there the whole time.
He goes on to demonstrate that HDR has exactly one feature that is can do natively that SDR cannot replicate. He demonstrates that feature (super bright highlights) and then goes on to show how, with some extra work, you can in fact accomplish that with some tweaking to SDR.
The last half of the presentation is him working through a bunch of marketing claims that are often made about HDR and demonstrating them to be either false or a misunderstanding of the technology. I'm not goign to cover all the arguments, because Steve does it better and understands it more deeply. Like with his film vs digital video, his goal is one of putting the control back in the artists hands. Letting them be the final arbiter of how their movie looks and not a format dictating how it should look.
If you care about how a movie looks, or if you've ever complained that a movie didn't get an "HDR Release" then I think you owe it to yourself to make the time to watch the video. The real audience is people who make movies, but people who like watching movies can get a lot out of understanding how they are made.
Anyway, like the film vs digital video, I'm sorry in advance for bringing this up every chance I can for the next ten years.