by James Mathers
Cinematographer and Founder of the Digital Cinema Society
(Excerpted from the July 2026 Digital Cinema Society eNewsletter)

It’s an exciting time in the long history of celluloid acquisition and exhibition and no one is happier about it than DCS. With “Digital Cinema” in the name of our group, it may surprise some who don’t know us well, but we have been longtime champions of film. In fact, one of the very first articles DCS ever published was penned by my co-founder, Brian McKernan, in 2003 entitled, “Ten Reasons Film Will Never Die.” We have never been about promoting digital acquisition over film, instead, we’ve just been trying to help everyone keep up with motion picture technology so that they can choose the best available tools to tell cinematic stories.

I have personally shot millions of feet of film over many decades, starting in the 1970’s, and although it has been a few years since I exposed celluloid, I yearn for the chance to do it again. I’m not alone in my love of film, and in fact there is a great resurgence currently happening in celluloid acquisition. 

Oscar winners in the last few years have been dominated by movies shot on film. Michael Bauman, ASC shot the 2026 Best Picture winning One Battle After Another in the 8-perf 35mm VistaVision format and the Best Cinematography award winning picture, Sinners, was also shot with Panavision cameras along with IMAX 15-perf 65mm format by Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC. 

I’m very excited to see Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC’s work on Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic, The Odyssey, also shot on IMAX 15-perf 65mm format, as was their previous collaboration on Oppenheimer. Shooting on this format is not without significant challenges; IMAX cameras are large, cumbersome, and have been quite noisy. In an interview while promoting Oppenheimer a few years back, Matt Damon likened it to having “a blender… a Cuisinart in your face” when the camera was filming close to him. However, these filmmakers obviously think it all worthwhile and their huge success certainly proves it. 

Industry partners have also been hard at work to help filmmakers face these challenges. IMAX has developed a new sound blimped camera system to quiet the cameras used on The Odyssey. (It is named the “Keighley” after their longtime, and recently deceased, technology leader David Keighley.) This did help the sound issues, but made the camera even larger and more cumbersome, making it challenging for off-screen actors to get close enough for proper close-up eye-lines. 

Ingenuity once again came into play to also help solve this problem by using a series of mirrors to place the off-screen actor’s reflection directly next to the lens. In a more recent press interview for The Odyssey, Damon praised the system, saying that during intimate scenes with Anne Hathaway he could still feel close, despite acting into a reflection, and that the setup was so convincing he genuinely forgot they were using mirrors when he looked back on the shoot.

Meanwhile, Panavision, besides recently fully refurbishing their System 65 Studio cameras, has been busy creating custom lens solutions for VistaVision and IMAX 15-perf 65mm formats. Leitz has also answered the call, and customized a set of their ELSIE lenses for Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, ASC, AMC to use on Digger, the upcoming feature starring Tom Cruise and directed by Alejandro Iñárritu. 

The production faced two distinct challenges: they wanted to capture simultaneously on film with a Beaumont VistaVision film camera (the same as used on The Brutalist) for analog capture with a Panavision mount, as well as digitally with the new Sony VENICE 2 Extension System Mini and an ARRI ALEXA Mini LF with LPL mounts. That’s a lot of optical mechanical engineering, but it reportedly worked well…Whatever Chivo wants, Chivo gets.

Perhaps no industry providers are more crucial to large format film production than Kodak and FotoKem. In fact, they are pretty much the only games in town, (read “the world,”) that are still servicing film. Kodak, of course, manufactures the raw stock, and FotoKem provides the lab processing, scanning, and printing.  That’s right, printing; FotoKem is striking dozens of IMAX format 70mm prints from the original cut negative. I’m looking forward to experiencing what I expect to be a visual treat at one of the handful of L.A. area IMAX theaters actually exhibiting 70mm prints. 

Note: not all IMAX branded theater screens are projecting this very special format. It should also be noted that not all features exhibited in IMAX, whether they may have been shot on film or digital, have been designed to natively project in 1.90:1 or 1.43:1 aspect ratios to fill the entire IMAX screen. Many offerings, while still impressive, have been blown-up, expanded vertically, sometimes with VFX to fill the void, or somehow cropped.

Notable streaming productions are also returning to shoot film. Marcell Rév, ASC, HSC shot the final season of HBO’s Euphoria (2026) on large-format 65mm film alongside 35mm anamorphic, using Kodak’s new VERITA stock that is said to have been developed specifically for that production. He mixed 5-perf 65mm (ARRI 765 with custom lenses) for some key dramatic moments with 35mm anamorphic Panavision Primo Zoom framed in 2.20:1 for emphasis on key scenes.

Downstream from these major motion productions there has also been a resurgence in film acquisition. There’s definitely a cost consideration, and for a major motion picture, that can add up to no more than a rounding error; in other words, insignificant compared to the investment in onscreen talent and other above-the-line costs. However, even many tightly budgeted productions have recently been choosing to acquire on film. Indie projects can shoot on Super16, or even Super8, and “2-perf” 35mm is another way to stretch a film acquisition budget. This technique uses a 2-perforation pull-down instead of standard 4-perf, capturing a native widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. By exposing half the negative area of 4-perf, productions can cut film stock, processing, and scanning costs by 50% while doubling the camera run time per roll. 

According to Kim Snyder, President & CEO at Panavision, “Over the last few years, we’ve seen a steady uptick in rentals across our inventory of 35mm and 65mm film cameras, and demand for the 16mm film cameras in our inventory remains strong.” She adds, “There are many reasons filmmakers choose to shoot on film. First and foremost, it’s about the unique imaging qualities that film provides. Shooting on film also impacts how the cast and crew work on set. The fundamentals of the craft don’t change, but when film is actually moving through the camera, everyone feels it, director and crew and actors alike.” 

So, it may be that any technical explanation fails to explain what draws us to prefer shooting on film. There are certainly unique visual qualities, but much of the success of projects acquired on celluloid perhaps have more to do with the discipline and special care provided knowing such a precious resource is running through the gate. When sound and picture call speed, the clapper snaps everyone to attention, and they tend to be at the top of their game. In this way, limited camera run times when shooting on film, as compared to digital formats, might be considered an advantage rather than a problem. I think Editors might prefer not having to wade through hours of dailies when multiple cameras are just allowed to run almost endlessly.

The same enhanced attention to the work can also be summoned by the use of celluloid for exhibition. I have to admit that I have not been the biggest fan of film projection compared to digital. This comes from a bad experience where I had carefully timed an answer print from the camera original at the lab, and it looked great at the premiere. However, when I happened to catch a screening of the same movie shown later in the theatrical release, it was dark, scratched, and missing frames where the print had apparently been broken and haphazardly spliced back together…It was horrifying!

I brought this up to Andrew Oran, SVP Film Operations at FotoKem, who has been busy supervising all the film work for The Odyssey, (and just about every other project acquired on celluloid for the last decade.) He assured me that the same heightened care and discipline taken when shooting film, is also exhibited, (no pun intended,) when projecting film prints. Great care is taken to make sure screen brightness is up to par and that the prints are pristine and handled with kid gloves, (literally special film handling gloves.)

Andrew Oran made another observation that I found interesting. He has been surveying many emerging filmmakers who stretch their resources to be able to shoot on film, and believes that they are drawn to the authenticity of celluloid. In these days when AI and digital effects have become so prevalent in all our media, movies captured on film seem more real somehow. Of course, it is all subjective, as is everyone’s aesthetic judgement of what looks best.

As Kim Snyder says, (and I couldn’t agree more,) “People respond differently to these factors, but for some, they can lend the process a more tactile, handmade feeling, and a sense of connection to earlier films and filmmakers.  At the end of the day, the choice between film and digital — and between formats and sizes — comes down to what’s right for the story.” She adds that “Whatever the filmmakers decide, Panavision is honored to be able to support their creativity and artistry.”

For more information on motion picture camera film visit Kodak website: https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/products/camera-films/

To review Brian McKernan’s 2003 essay Ten Reasons Film Will Never Die, visit: https://dcsonline.org/tips/ten-reasons-why-film-will-never-die-first-published-dcs-2003/