The art of moving pictures has been enjoyed by people all around the world for more than a century. During that time period celluloid film has been an industry standard for both capturing and projecting moving images onto a screen. As the world continued to progress forward into the future, the encroachment of digital into the sphere of moviemaking became a fact. My aim with this essay has been to by comparing the strengths and weaknesses of celluloid versus digital film in many different spheres (capture, projection, storage, economy etc.) establish why the American film industry still to this day uses film celluloid film. With the current trend that digital is superior to analog in all categories of discussion there must be a reason for the continued usage of celluloid stock footage.
In my essay I have concluded that both formats have certain advantages and disadvantages to one another. Celluloid film has a specific grainy and organic look that movie viewers have grown accustomed to which gives the footage a sort of photo-realism that digital film struggles to achieve. Celluloid film also has an advantage when it comes to dynamic range and color reproduction. Shooting film with celluloid stock footage requires and tends to lead to a more disciplined working environment. Celluloid is also great and cost effective for long-term storage of master archives. The drawback with shooting on celluloid film is that it in general has a higher production cost due to stock film costing more than digital storage. Furthermore, there is no way to view the footage shot directly after the shot has been made which you are able to do with digital film. As you need to process the stock footage before being able to view the content shooting digitally makes the entire workflow less tiresome as processing and scanning of film is not needed. As a final conclusion I would state that celluloid is still used within the film industry because not all cinemas have been digitalized as of yet but primarily because more than 100 years after it was conceived it still offers great technical and economical value that as of yet is to be surpassed by digital technology. No one on the other hand can predict what the future might hold.