How is the digital revolution affecting professional filmmakers? As acquisition, workflow and archiving continue to undergo seismic changes, what are the promises—and the pitfalls—of this far-reaching transition?

Two of Hollywood’s leading technologists—John Galt, senior vice president, Advanced Digital Imaging Group, Panavision, and Larry Chernoff, chief executive officer of MTI Film—explore those key issues in a video on the Panavision media site. (The video is called Going Tapeless 2007.) A written transcript is also available on the site.

Taped last November at HD Expo in Burbank, the open forum/conversation offers pertinent information for directors, DPs, producers and postproduction experts.

On the use of disk drives as an archiving media, for example, Galt comments, “Conceptually, if we look at recording media reliability, I think at the bottom of the reliability heap I would put disk drives....They fail more often than the manufacturers would like us to believe; however, with appropriate application of striping or RAID-type arrays, often you can recover. Many facilities use large disk arrays for the post process....But they do have backup because things do fail.”

Chernoff, probably best known for his stewardship of Encore Hollywood and RIOT Santa Monica, notes, “To have a complete hard drive environment and to administrate that hard drive environment....I'd rather shoot myself. But the idea of using hard drive technology is absolutely important for online access. [F]or near-line access, whether it’s videotape or LTO, or whatever tape format you wish, that’s an inexpensive, accessible way of archiving your material until you need to bring it on line.“

The role of dailies also received considerable attention during the conversation. “The idea of seeing high-quality dailies in a timely manner...is extremely important,” Galt comments. “It was something that used to happen when we shot film and looked at print dailies. And now it’s completely gone....[W]e need to reconsider how we do production and postproduction. [S]ometimes problems exist that are not seen in a cursory viewing of highly compressed low-definition images.”

Chernoff reacts this way: “What are you supposed to do during dailies? [Y]ou need to check the image...actually check the image...the whole image ...not just a frame here and a frame there. With all these acquisition formats, just like film, nothing’s perfect. And if you think it’s perfect, that’s when you’re going to have your first catastrophe.”

In a discussion on managing the acquisition of digital recording from cameras to a postproduction environment, Galt observes: “[S]o much of what we do is time-sensitive. At the end of the day, someone is either going to be sitting in a trailer [on location] making duplicates or sending something [like the Panavision SSR-1 Solid State Recorder]...to a post facility. And then you need to get these boxes back—this is your magazine. In the long term, things like LTO [tape storage] make a lot of sense, but in the immediate term, [I] don’t think it’s a very practical archival format.”

For any production person interested in a top-level look at production, postproduction and archiving, the John Galt/Larry Chernoff dialog posted on the Panavision media site is a good place to begin.