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News & Current Events Mar 24, 2026 at 1:43 PM

Why are movies still shot on film?

Posted by SirExampleGiven

With cameras being so advanced now, capturing almost true-to-life colours, and post production being easier when footage is captured digitally, why do brands like IMAX and the movie industry still consider film as the **gold standard** in the film industry? Looking at movies like Oppenheimer, One Battle After Another, Sinners, Interstellar and many other great titles, all of them were shot on film. I’m no expert on movies or their behind-the-scenes, nor am I familiar with much of what goes on during pre-production and the artistic choices, but it just seems so much more costly (time and effort-wise) to use film instead of digital. This is a question I’ve had for a while now, so I thought I’d just post it on here and see the response!
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31 Comments

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HumOfEvil Mar 24, 2026 +40
Because art isn't about what's efficient, it's about what the creator feels is best.
40
unkyduck Mar 24, 2026 +42
Film, weirdly, is more future-proof. Digital formats change, resolution goes up, until the film physically degrades, it can be re-scanned for the new need. Far higher resolution than any image capture sensor.
42
TheShadyGuy Mar 24, 2026 +2
The lack of pixels in the film allows this. Crystals in film can form all kinds of shapes that pixels just aren't ever going to be able to do (at least with respect to how we currently view pixels, maybe some crazy pixels will be invented that can change shape or something).
2
PseudoLucian Mar 24, 2026 +1
Yes, true, film has much greater resolution than digital. If you show digital on a big enough screen, the pixellation will be noticeable. There's also a big advantage in dynamic range. Digital goes from black to white in a set number of steps, and it's noticeable in dark scenes (you'll see zones where the background goes from darkest to slightly not as dark along a well-defined line, like a paint-by-numbers picture). Film has essentially unlimited dynamic range; light levels transition smoothly from black to white. BUT.... since theaters all use digital projection now, and streaming services are obviously digital too, the limitations of digital will be introduced before you ever see the movie.
1
SlightRedeye Mar 24, 2026 +3
You are the only person who replied to OP with anything useful, i swear people who post here just guess the answer and hit send
3
PertPriapism Mar 24, 2026 +1
Welcome to reddit?
1
ArchDucky Mar 24, 2026 +2
yeah that's why I like putting sriracha on my eggs.
2
Gullible_Key1382 Mar 24, 2026 -3
Film does not have higher resolution. Film is limiting on exposure latitude and isn't as sharp either.
-3
jeffplaysmoog Mar 24, 2026 +2
It has equivalent, basically.  35mm is between 4/6k and 70mm is 8k and higher.
2
Frequent-Hat-9835 Mar 24, 2026 +23
Film looks better
23
Environmental-Day862 Mar 24, 2026 +2
Agreed. And I recently heard someone saying (tongue in cheek of course), that with the cost of computer components going up - including digital storage - it may be CHEAPER to shoot on film than to shoot digitally and store it on HDDs!
2
Frequent-Hat-9835 Mar 24, 2026 +1
Movies look to so much worse now
1
tebla Mar 24, 2026
I feel like it looks worse, in a good way. Like vinyl records sound worse in a good way. Does that make any sense?
0
wldstyl_ Mar 24, 2026 +2
Yes, that’s analog warmth. It’s debatable if it’s a real thing but I personally believe it is. Perhaps we can subconsciously sense the “digitalness” of the signals, both audio and visual. The analog artifacts are nostalgic, but even if we had a perfect recording, like a vinyl and needle with no imperfections, we’d find it more pleasing still.
2
MusicFilmandGameguy Mar 24, 2026 +1
Little micro-changes in speed and tension as the tape runs over the heads in the mixing/editing room can help cause some of this in music. I wonder if it’s the same with film?
1
SevroAuShitTalker Mar 24, 2026 +6
Looks better and has better longevity
6
Impossible-Panda-488 Mar 24, 2026 +2
Aside from film just looking better, it may also be because film technology is consistent. Digital is constantly changing. Shoot something on film and it’s the same established media that stays relatively consistent with editing. Something shot digitally 20 years ago might be fairly useless now because the technology has changed a lot since then.  This is something I heard a recording engineer say about why he still uses analog tape.
2
mangalore-x_x Mar 24, 2026 +3
Because it provides the best quality. I believe digital would still need to more than double its resolution and push video files into the terabyte range to match that. There is actually an issue with digital movies shot early that lacking any physical media they are cooked as they only exist in low quality by today's standards.
3
SlightRedeye Mar 24, 2026 +2
Brother a terabyte is jack shit in recording An afternoon session where I work with two 4k cameras is over a terabyte. Any videographer who doesn’t want to hate their job has SSDs falling out of their ears
2
MuffinMatrix Mar 24, 2026 +1
Hah! Wait until he hears about VFX land.... I can easily have plates and renders that push 100gb... for ONE shot. Let alone all the versions we push out. CG simulations can get huge as well. Many studios servers are in petabytes.
1
mangalore-x_x Mar 24, 2026 +1
I don't remember what scope the source was talking about concerning full data integrity matching film so I kept it conservative. Doesn't matter, current streaming services use lower quality than Blu Rays to stream and Blu Rays are merely in the gigabyte range. My statement was about differing order of magnitudes.
1
mikeyfreshh Mar 24, 2026 +3
Because it looks better
3
pop-1988 Mar 25, 2026 +1
On set, digital requires an army of computer experts to juggle the terabytes of footage shot by each camera each day Film is less cumbersome, except for the daily processing delay If the director doesn't need to review every shot immediately, he might prefer film
1
Far-Bread-7027 Mar 24, 2026 -1
because its gorgeous.
-1
tomandshell Mar 24, 2026
Movies look better shot on film with IMAX cameras.
0
Hey-Bud-Lets-Party Mar 24, 2026
Film looks better than “true-to-life” video.
0
Felis_bieti Mar 24, 2026
There was a time when some film editors shunned non-linear editing. Not going to go into what their reasons were-- just saying those that refused to adapt were left behind. Nobody's sitting at a Moviola or a flatbed anymore. Likely, in a few years, with a few more advances, this will occur in production as well.
0
zowietremendously Mar 24, 2026
I hate attitudes like this.
0
NegativeComment8484 Mar 24, 2026 -7
why do brands like IMAX and the movie industry **still consider film as the gold standard in the film industry?** that is strange they would do that
-7
Bruxo_de_Fafe Mar 24, 2026 -9
you dont anything about photograpy, dont you?
-9
SlightRedeye Mar 24, 2026 +10
Condescending someone while f****** up the sentence, well done
10
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