My Rough Theater

Peter Brook's article on the "rough theater' denotes both the imperfections of theatrical works and the roughness of the elements that occur in everyday life. He suggests that the element of chaos is important to the structural parts of life. He also suggests that the crudity of theater is a part of life itself, noting the pursuit of imperfection of noises by  early electronic composers in order to replicate real life instruments.  So in relation to film-making, my rough theater is this: I like grain.

I know what some of you are thinking. Grain is old and dated, and takes away from the detail of the image that can now be brought to life more clearly with digital photographic technology.

And honestly, you're probably right. Film stock has been around since the turn of the century, and its artifacts belong to a different age. But I would swing this the other direction..film has been around so long, that it would be a shame not to use it, or at least pay tribute to its cinematic qualities.

I'm not gonna begin to go into the digital vs film debate-film is expensive and creates limitations in the production of a movie or short.  Not to mention the potential accidents that could happen to a print during production or when processing it.

So, I'm not going to be bothered that most lower budget productions choose digital over film.

What I do desire is some sort of visual callback to the earlier technology, the simulation of grain creating the image. There are various plugins and settings for that in various editing programs, some free, most commercial.

I'm not endorsing GorillaGrain, but I did want to give an example for the sense of three-dimensionality and texture that grain adds. In film, the grain literally is the detail of the film (the halide crystals reacting to the light).

In digital, grain is an optional a visual effect (not to be confused with digital noise that results from poor lighting), but one that I think adds personality and a sense of richness to the image.

The "con" is that the image is no longer "perfect", but I think the richness comes from it's roughness.

It's a rough theater of picture and texture.

Of course, one could argue that in addition to these film artifacts, one must add "jitter", scratches, fake timing devices, and dust and hair fragments. Of course when going that far, one must add in the hum of the projector.

Or one can make clean, perfect pictures..the likes that exist all over the place.

Take this all with a *grain* of salt. Or film :P