Bob Dylan Goes Digital

PLUS: Unraveling the "28 Days Later" Digital Release Mystery

Author

Steve
January 07, 2025

Happy New Year Hollywood tech nerds!

In this week’s post:

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Bob Dylan Goes Digital

The Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has been getting rave reviews, including from my boomer-aged mom, someone who would be especially skeptical of a Hollywoodized Bob Dylan film. However, she loved it!

As for me, I of course was excited to hear legendary cinematographer Phedon Papamichael’s thoughts on using the Sony Venice 2 in an interview with Filmmaker Magazine. That’s right: the Bob Dylan movie was shot on digital cameras! Heresy you say? Not according to Papamichael:

Film no longer has the texture I was looking for because the stock is too clean and too slow. You’re working with 400 ASA, which you could push photochemically to 800 ASA. But with the Venice 2, I’m able to shoot at 6400 ASA, or 12800 ASA. That means I can shoot at a much deeper stop, get a greater depth of field, with minimal lighting.

On location at night, I could use practical streetlights and ambient light from cars and storefronts, lighting the actors with very small, handheld LED units. Keep it live and loose. At the same time, shoot at f8 or 11 to get the deeper f-stop that [director James] Mangold and I wanted.

Throughout the interview, Papamichael comments on how the look of old film had to be achieved digitally.

The look I was trying to achieve was those Gordon Willis movies, The Godfather and Klute. It’s a look that doesn’t feel like large format digital cameras.

Dan Sasaki created new Panavision lenses for A Complete Unknown. I told him I wanted something with stronger flare characteristics, more specular. I wanted a little more bending, a little more fall off, a little more vignetting. He built hybrid lenses using old glass from the B- and C-series with the rear elements from the T-series.

During post, the team did their color grading digitally, and then scanned onto film to be re-scanned back for the DCP:

We did some early testing at FotoKem with supervising creative colorist David Cole. They have what they call a SHIFT AI, an analog intermediate. You do your color grading, windows, all DI, in a conventional digital space. Then you scan out to Kodak 5203 / 50D negative stock with an Arri Laser. It takes on all the qualities of actual film. We scan that back to a digital intermediate to create the DCP.

…it’s not just grain. Film has other characteristics, like a slight flicker. It reacts to colors slightly differently. I feel it’s the optimal way to achieve a film look, but still take advantage of digital technology, like shooting with a camera at 12800 ASA at f8 or 11.

If you’re a cinematography nerd like me, check out the full interview over at Filmmaker Magazine.

Unraveling the 28 Days Later Digital Release Mystery

Sony Pictures recently released the trailer for their upcoming sequel 28 Years Later, which you can watch below:

24-hour traffic for the 28 Years Later trailer was so massive, that in response, Sony is releasing the original 2002 Danny Boyle directed zombie movie, 28 Days Later on digital Dec. 18 for purchase and rental. This is all because of the rabid fan response.

This last claim isn’t backed up by any actual reporting in the article, it just seems like conclusions based upon the admittedly large viewership on the trailer video. Would Sony pin a movie’s digital release entirely on how well a trailer did? What if tons of people watched it but hated it?

Then again, this is the studio that mistakenly re-released Morbius into theaters because they thought the popularity of a meme using the phrase “It’s Morbin’ time” translated to renewed box office interest. Wrong!

Rolling Stone also weighed in on this story with a bizarre headline:

While my film school thesis is a certified cult classic (because 20 people saw it and only 1 person liked it), I certainly wouldn’t describe 28 Days Later that way. While it was a low budget production, it earned over 10 times its budget at the box office and is largely responsible for renewing audience interest in zombie films in the 2000s and 2010s.

The reason it wasn’t streaming is simple (and sadly common in the modern streaming landscape): it had complicated distributor issues that were resolved when Sony acquired the rights to release it and its new sequel film. Sony may not be savvy enough to avoid a second theatrical run of Morbius, but certainly has enough business sense to tie in a new digital release for the beloved original when advertising its sequel. Some things just aren’t that complicated!

Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:

The strange box office lessons of 2024. (link)

A cinematography round table with DPs from the year’s biggest films. (link)

Disney got sued by Fubo… so they just bought them. (link)