Side by Side (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Christopher Kenneally
	Actors (host): Keanu Reeves (Point Break, Matrix)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 06.04.2013, Centre des Beaux Arts, BIFFF2013
Synopsis: Will film survive the digital age?
Review: I believe the time was just right for this fascinating documentary. You may have heard that more and more films are shot with digital cameras (not the consumer ones you possess but professional ones). This documentary will tell you the differences between traditional photosensitive film and digital sensors, not only from the technical point of view, but from the opinion of directors, special effects supervisors, editors and cinematrographers. The movie can be watched back-to-back with one I have reviewed recently: Visions of Light, as it starts with describing the dramatic change of role for the cinematographer (or Director of Photography, DP) between film and digital. The beginning of the documentay makes you to believes that the main benefactor from digital shooting is the director who is now able to watch the results of the daily shooting in real-time, and doesn't have to rely only on his DP for designing the look of the film. The movie then puts in parallel the opinion of several actors of the movie business, from the all-digital enthousiasts Georges Lucas (Star Wars), James Cameron (Avatar) or the Wachowskis (Matrix, Cloud Atlas), to the hardcore believers in film, lead by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight 1-3) and, unsurprisingly, many DPs. The following part is more technical and goes through the history of photosensitive and then digital film. The milestone digital cameras are the Sony that was used to shoot the first full-digital film: Attack of the Clones, the more compact RED One that spread the movement and the recent more sensitive Ariflex Alexa that is the real technoilogical breakthrough and that produces images of a quality equal or superior than the best film. We also hear about the recent trend of shooting with DSLR digital cameras like the Canon 7D. Another secion of the documentary shows us that all processes involved in filmmaking have progressively followed the digital revolution: image capture, real-time monitoring, editing, color grading (or DI for Digital Intermediate), special effects, storage, distribution and projection. It seems only logic to go for a full digital chain. But funnily enough, due to the absence of standard for digital film archiving, the best way is still to print a copy on film and keep it safe for decades! The documentary ends with a look forward, in which even the most reticent digital camera users admit that they will probably leap to digital with ten years, thanks to technology progresses. It is reminded that film or digital is only a tool that is used to tell a story, which is still what matters most. In the future it will have to be a choice of the director to shoot on film or digital. I also learned that all camera manufacturing companies in the world have stopped developing new products in 2011. The end of an era. It is a pity that I couldn't follow the debate that followed the projection of the documentary, and I hope the BIFFF would have the good idea to put the videos of those debates online.
Rating: 7 /10