Hard News by Russell Brown

Digital production has changed with incredible speed. HD has gone from expensive professional formats to remarkable quality in 'throw-away' consumer gear in less than 5 years. It's astonishing, liberating, and a little daunting for anyone in the production game.

Before you get too celebratory the current workers have apparently all been made redundant when the lab closed last week. If any of the current workers are rehired it will probably not be for several months. If the lab becomes part of the public service,in effect the responsibility of the large and sometimes unwieldy Department of Internal Affairs (and the transfer to it has been problematic in many ways for Archives NZ and the National Library) who knows when and what terms and conditions they will be hired on? So far from a smooth transfer of skills and technology.

Hobbit forming...

Archives New Zealand is to take over the equipment and use it to to preserve deteriorating heritage film

Hopefully no money changed hands, and it was seen as the NZ Govt getting a return on its investment in the Warners/Jackson empire...

While films maybe shot on film, as of the end of this year you'll be hard pressed to find a distributor who'll be willing to provide film in NZ/Oz. By extension, there aren't many cinemas that still have film projectors. Film may not die, but it's going to get very niche.

Hopefully no money changed hands, and it was seen as the NZ Govt getting a return on its investment in the Warners/Jackson empire…

I think it was of the order of a single dollar. You could say the lab, which came as part of Jackson's acquisition/rescue of the National Film Unit, has been renationalised.

Jackson and Archives NZ have had a good relationship since he gave the use of Park Road for the remastering of 'This Is New Zealand' in 2007.

If you didn’t catch it at the cinema, Keanu Reeves’ doco Side By Side provides an excellent overview of the shift from film to digital. Gets some great interview access too, including Soderbergh, Rodriguez & Scorsese. There’s a good short intro interview here.

I'd lament the demise of film shooting, but projecting in that way - does it have any advantages whatsoever? Is there any aspect of the quality of the projection that is lost in a digital projection? I can't think of anything at all.

In other film news, Dargaville is about to open a new art house cinema (in the old town hall), after years of fund-raising and no cinema for 30 years.

Yes, it is a great little doco (well, 90+ minutes long). The film vs digital debate sort of ends up in a scoreless draw.