"Digital perfection has no feeling."
Digital signals run the world now, and the latest sensors copy whatever is in front of them perfectly, without a speck of noise. But in a world where fast and efficient has become the right answer, there are still filmmakers who load heavy film magazines into their cameras instead of cold memory cards.
There's a kind of beauty, half chance and half inevitability, that only a chemical reaction can make and that smooth images chopped into pixels never hold. Film grain, boiling up at random, makes the frame tremble like a character's ragged breathing, and the rough colors are what finally give a story its texture.
For the 〈Feature〉 section of Vol.02, 5ft magazine picked 10 movies shot on film. From the chilly winter air of 〈Carol〉 to the blazing summer sun of 〈The Florida Project〉, the tungsten nights of 〈Chungking Express〉 and the heavy black-and-white IMAX film of 〈Oppenheimer〉. Ten movies, and the ways the masters handle light, brought into your own viewfinder.
All 10 at a glance
01
Carol
Carol · 2015
02
Mid90s
Mid90s · 2018
03
The Florida Project
The Florida Project · 2017
04
Happy Together
Happy Together · 1997
05
Call Me by Your Name
Call Me by Your Name · 2017
06
Paris, Texas
Paris, Texas · 1984
07
Marriage Story
Marriage Story · 2019
08
Chungking Express
Chungking Express · 1994
09
Asteroid City
Asteroid City · 2023
10
Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer · 2023
All images used here were made with Google Gemini.
Five to start with
Let's look at the light in five of the ten first. For each one: the film stock it was shot on, a stock you can buy that gets closest to its look, and a tip for getting that mood into your own camera.
Carol
Carol · 2015
My angel, flung out of space.
New York in the 1950s. A department store clerk and an alluring customer fall into a fated, forbidden love. Feelings rising through cold winter air, caught delicately on 16mm.
The Florida Project
The Florida Project · 2017
Right next to the most magical place, the most real of lives.
The world as seen by six-year-old Moonee, who lives in a run-down motel next to Disney World. Kids' innocence and the harsh reality of poverty, told in bold, pop-art color contrasts.
Call Me by Your Name
Call Me by Your Name · 2017
Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine.
Italy, 1983. The record of a burning first love between a 17-year-old boy and a 24-year-old young man. The sunlight and lazy air of that summer, all of it captured on film.
Chungking Express
Chungking Express · 1994
If love has an expiry date, I want it to be ten thousand years.
Hong Kong at night under bright neon, and the loneliness and romance of four people who brush past and miss each other. Restless handheld camerawork and one-of-a-kind color paint the city's night streets.
Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer · 2023
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
A biopic about the glory and guilt of the genius scientist who led the development of the atomic bomb. Moving between black and white and color, it was the first film ever shot on IMAX black-and-white film, and it pulls you all the way in.
The other five are in the magazine
The rough grain of a kid skating through LA streets in the '90s, a sticky love in Buenos Aires, a road movie across the desert, warm Kodak in a cold courtroom, Wes Anderson's obsessive symmetry. The stories of five more movies, each etched in its own light, are in Vol.02.
The film stock behind each movie, our picks and detailed shooting tips for getting the mood into your camera are all in the 〈Feature〉 section of 5ft magazine Vol.02.
The light of the other five, in the magazine
The full curation of all 10 films, plus photos by three photographers shot on Cinestill 800T. See them on paper.
