Film itself, or the camera, isn't a guarantee of anything cinematic. I'm reminded that both Star Wars and The Love Boat were shot on the same film with similar cameras, like so many network shows in the 1970s. And while they certainly look better than the soap operas and game shows of their day, shot on video, there's nothing cinematic about The Love Boat (or CHiPS or any of the other shows shot on 35mm).

"Film" as a term has transcended physical emulsion. That's not new. In fact it hasn't been limited to just referring to physical emulsion by actual filmmakers. "Film" is synonymous with movie or motion picture at its most basic level but it carries a more serious implication as well. All "films" are movies but not all movies are "films", though this is an admittedly snooty perspective.

Just like "the pen is mightier than the sword" is still a valid phrase even though the most powerful words written these days are likely not written with a pen and the most common implements of oppression and violence are not swords. It would be ridiculous to start claiming people should stop using the phrase.

You say "wrong context". I say limited perspective.

I, like the others, agree on the story, the feel of the characters and the art of being there (experiencing the impact of the story/film). It can make and break what one can achieve.

I still can't, for the life of me, understand the debate on frame rates (24p/30p/the notorious 48p). My camera doesn't have the 24p, so I just use the PAL 25p to compensate/do it on post. Is the 24p really important to obtain the cinematic feel, or am I overstating this?

@BurnetRhoades I think these days they just use construction cranes and make them cinematic in post. ;-)

I hate to be anyone's pedantic Uncle Goanna here, but words matter and we have to agree on what were talking about.

Here are some hypernymic adjectives:

Childlike (pertaining to the behaviour of children); ecclesiastical (of the church); maritime (of the sea).

..and "Cinematic," (of the cinema).

Language changes with its usage and is defined by it. We are seeing the birth on this site of a new meaning of, Cinematic.

Until now there have only been two definitions/usages of the word:

• Pertaining to the cinema industry. "They manufacture cinematic cranes."
• Imagery evoking a movie-like aesthetic. "The sun rose over the cold Albuquerque morning with a cinematic foreboding."

The new usage of motion picture looking cinematic still strikes some of us native English speakers as a tautology.

"The film looked cinematic" is indeed meaningful when a film critic is saying it, is using imagery. We get the nuance. As in, "he is a very painterly artist."

On the other hand, if the farrier says, "your horse looks equine", he either fancies himself as a horse poet or has been kicked in the head by one.

Same for the absurd, "your child looks childlike," whereas "your grandmother looks childlike" is fine by everybody.

(How's my grammar lesson going? Keeping up, lost, distracted or already thought up a reply?)

OK so we're now all calling a video's look something "cinematic", whereas once, if you'd told Orson Welles his film looked cinematic, he'd have given you his best cinematic stare and sent for the studio nurse.

It's interesting to see how others are coping with using the word differently.

http://www.google.com/search?q=defIne%3Acinematic&client=ms-opera-mobile&channel=new&oq=defIne%3Acinematic&gs_l=mobile-heirloom-hp.12...24777.37995.0.40278.9.9.0.0.0.0.1113.4219.4-2j4j0j1.7.0...0.0...1ac.1.x1Av30PvRFE

These lofty references to writing, acting, set, etc., etc., etc. that always seem to crop up in these discussions do not address the power of a still frame from a film that can retain much of the impact one would get from seeing the scene in motion and fully in context. I think these other issues get pulled in when the folks trying to contribute simply don't know or can't put into words what affects their perception. They mostly add noise.

I'm not talking down at anyone, just acknowledging the difficulty even creative people have with accurate, useful articulation of complex, often emotionally-charged, intangible issues. That said, I think it's most useful here and other shooter-oriented discussions to keep to technical issues surrounding light, lens and how the interaction between these two things are captured, interpreted (technically and emotionally) and manipulated.

edit: with this in mind, "cinematic" to me, I would reserve for imagery that immediately looks better (more pleasing, more impressive, prettier, more dynamic...more...I know, another broad term) than the same scene with the naked eye. More than merely representative. More than merely a record. Every successful example I see I see as a different flavor satisfying that expectation (16mm, S16mm, 35mm, 35mm-Ana, 65mm, DSLR, etc.) ideally, with as many differences between each interpretation as there are similarities.

The most basic set of traits that need to be present when the picture moves, for me, are 24fps + 1/2 interval shutter speed where deviations from this are okay for slow-mo or select, action-oriented techniques that don't completely wreck the flow of the surrounding footage.

@goanna +1. Anything worth watching multiple times is "cinematic" to me.

Thank you very much again ! Great product indeed this GH2 ... I read that in some ways it could be even better (image quality wise) than Panasonic af100 camcorder, a big achievement indeed. Kind regards, gino

Hmm, 'cinematic' huh? How about when all the technical and creative aspects of motion picture storytelling combine to temporarily induce the audience to willingly suspend their disbelief and be engrossed by the experience (good or bad :p)

@lumiere61 No, there is not an inherent disadvantage in having a higher resolution sensor - the thing that makes the difference is how it handles that resolution (and in the case of the GH2, how it handles the drop in resolution from the sensor to the output). A smaller pixel pitch can mean more ISO noise, but that is not what you are talking about.

The R3D Epic shoots 5K horizontally (roughly the same starting resolution as the GH2 stills in 16:9 which is 4976 pixels in JPEG output) and is one of the preferred cameras for digital cinema. Hugo (which you described as maybe too detailed) was shot with a 2.5K Arri Alexa which has a soft filter built in - it looked detailed because they wanted it to, not as a byproduct of the camera. So it's not a question of the starting resolution being a problem. I mean, some other cameras handle the down-conversion poorly, and that is a problem for them but that's not he issue with any of the 3 mentioned so far. Hugo looked sharp because they wanted

Digital theaters (excluding IMAX, etc.) are generally based on 2K and 4K. Film is sometimes scanned at 2K and sometimes at 4K. RED movies are generally shot at 4K and above, and sometimes (like The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo - US Version) they are screened in 4K. So yes, the resolution does sometimes get used.

The GH2 has a tendency towards producing images that are both sharp and contrasty - to make it look more like film you can do some of the things I mentioned earlier. But you were on to something earlier when you said it was not the resolution that was the issue. The look you are going for is largely (but not completely) independent of the resolution.

"Cinematic" is an elusive term whose meanings slip and slide, and could point to everything and yet nothing. In today's post-structuralist, pluralistic world, "cinematic" could refer to anything from the qualities first associated with silent movies, to a short DIY clip recorded at this time with the iphone. So, given such diversity, what is "cinematic": Story? Structuralist elements like plot, cinematography, editing, use of music and sound? Today, any clip that has two black bars on top and bottom passes itself off as cinematic, but is it? :) Is a grainy picture cinematic? Must "cinematic" be of a certain aspect ratio, and even then must it always be 16:9?

What i find sad and ironic is that film has come to the end of its life, but digital is trying its best to simulate its properties. We have software that adds grain to digital files, trying to create a certain texture, but what's the point of it all? Reminds me of what an old pro used to say, "if you have $10, 000, just make a $10,000 film. Don't pretend otherwise."

Gino, you are trying to grasp one very wide and elusive subject. Previous posters have tried their best to describe it, some from technical and others from some other formal or narrative or artistic aspect. It's all true (well, most of it) in the same time.

General audio and visual atmosphere, consisted of elements such as photography (static and temporal), music, acting, editing etc. etc. and how those elements correlate is what makes us as viewers emotionally engaged towards the 'the story', the characters and their motivations, situations and outcomes. And that is cinema. Film. Cinematic or filmlike can be the term that describes some form that is not immanently film, but that has some, or all of it's qualities. To put it this way, you might shoot your backyard and dogs and flowers with 35mm film 100kW of light with best DoP and Sound, and it probably would look cinematic. But would that be cinema? On the other hand, there are many decent films shot on much worse cameras than GH2 for example, with cheap lighting and not so amazing and expensive gear.

Good morning ! Thank very much indeed to you all again for the very valuable inputs Maybe "filmlike" is more correct. Because I still think that the film look is the reference for movies. The GH2's shots that I have seen are very very good in terms of resolution, for instance. Filmlike ? I do not know ... it's different. Have you ever seen a filmlike video ? in which occasion ? I would like to add that I have seen highly compressed versions of movies shot on film. High definition ? not at all. Filmlike ? absolutely. Therefore it could not be a problem of resolution in the end. Thanks and regards, gino