Here's Why You Shouldn't Worry about Resolution According to DP Geoff Boyle | No Film School

It's difficult to define what makes an image "good". Is it the composition? The lighting? The use of color and texture and depth? The answer is yes to all of that—and so much more, not the least of which, as some would argue, resolution. As the industry standard continues to get higher and higher, with 4K making way for 8K and beyond, many filmmakers have no doubt wondered about the correlation between high-quality images and resolution, including DP Geoff Boyle, who in this interview with Cooke Optics TV, expressed his stance on the debate in one of the more colorful ways we've seen.

"Don't worry about the color space, don't worry about the resolution, just worry about the images."

Whether you're in favor of, against, or 100% neutral on the high-res debate, one can appreciate and even be inspired by Boyle's sentiment. It's easy to get sucked into the vortex that defines what a "cinematic" image consists of and how they're captured, but not every filmmaker has access to the technology or gear that can help them "keep up with the Joneses." Instead of getting inspired and going out and shooting something with what we have, we spend our time lusting after expensive, "pro-quality" Alexas, Zeiss Master Primes, and ARRI SkyPanels that we forget what actually makes people respond to images on an emotional level.

It's framing and composition, costuming, location, set dressing, actors' performances, color, lighting, subtext, movement, editing, music, sound effects, and a good, good story to tie it all together. Does it really matter if all of this stuff is packed inside an HD or even SD image?

As Boyle points out, what resolution is a Rembrandt, Seurat, or Rothko painting? It seems like a preposterous question to ask in regards to painted masterpieces, so maybe resolution is something that can, or maybe even should, take a backseat to everything else that makes an image worth looking at. Of course, at least some image quality is necessary—we need our audience to be able to know what it is they're looking at—but how much is "some"?

What is your opinion on resolution? Do you agree with Boyle? Let us know down in the comments.

Source: Cooke Optics TV

dps cinematographers Geoff Boyle resolution

What's the Hype With 'Interstellar' Revisiting Cinemas After a Decade in 70mm IMAX?

Here's Why You Need to Revisit 'Interstellar' in 70mm IMAX

Celebrate the love and hope at the center of Nolan's space epic in the format it was meant to be seen.

If we know anything about Christopher Nolan, he likes to go big. Nolan started with smaller-scale stories (as many of us do) with early noir adjacent works like Following, Memento, and Insomnia, then started going and staying big with his illusionist drama The Prestige. Since then, the scale has been various degrees of massive, with the biggest scope in his time-and-space sprawling epic, Interstellar.

While Interstellarmight not be everyone's favorite Nolan outing, there's no denying it's an impressive feat of filmmaking and his most emotional—if watching Matthew McConaughey's Cooper desperately try to reach his family through quantum space-time doesn't make you cry at least a little bit, what's going on, dude?

With Interstellar'sIMAX release, it's a great time to shed some tears in a public setting in one of the most prestigious film formats around. As we mentioned in our film gauge piece, Nolan loves shooting on film and utilizes 65mm intentionally to provoke a tone of massive scale. In that regard, Interstellar was made for 70mm IMAX. That goes without saying, dawg. That being said, other factors make Interstellar a perfect movie to revisit in theaters while you can.

Let's break down the release further below.

Keep ReadingShow less

Popular

Latest