Film’s Not Just Back, It’s Evolving

Filmmakers never fell out of love with shooting on film and the number of projects to have utilised the medium in the last five years is evidence to this. Hard as digital tries, it’s still not able to replicate exactly the tactility, colours, or dynamic range film has.

And now that AI has entered the conversation, further saturating audience's eyes and feeds with digitally-manipulated images, and in many cases, ‘slop’. It’s then no wonder that more and more people – in the industry and beyond – are hungering for visuals that look and feel crafted with real care, inspiring an analogue film resurgence.

On the opposite spectrum, we’re seeing a rise in and a return to fondness for indie cinema, driven by character, narrative, and a real investment in cinematography – rooted in commitment to shooting on film. Last year, Alice Rohrwacher’s ‘La Chimera’ spent 11 weeks screening at The Garden Cinema in London, making it the longest-running title at the cinema in 2024. It was shot on blended 35mm and 16mm formats by cinematographer Hélène Louvart and received praise for captivating visuals fusing fantasy and reality. Over on streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Mubi, shot-on-film features are enjoying continued popularity too, including the Best Picture-winner ‘Anora’, the Palme d'Or-winning ‘The Substance’, and the smash hit ‘Sinners’.

Above: adidas x Oasis, 'Original Forever'

Advertisers are picking up on this shift too and, while some are embracing AI in a ‘faster, cheaper’ race, others are committing to the value of storytelling that feels real and looks beautiful, like the recent ‘Festival’ film from Burberry and ‘Original Forever’ from adidas.

“Film holds a kind of mysticism for me,” says RSA/Black Dog’s Tom Dream. “I keep coming back to it because it feels magical. It invites presence on set and makes everything feel more alive. It absorbs light and emotion in a way that feels more human.”

Above: The North Face x Gucci

Tom shot two campaigns for Gucci on film. “These were the first times I experimented with 16mm, and the first time I composed the music myself in an experimental way. Those two processes, shooting on film and making music from scratch, feel very connected. They come from the same place psychologically. I can’t fully explain it, but they seem to feed into each other, often leading to unexpected and pleasing results,” Tom says.

Joe Ridout, filmmaker and co-founder of Ana Projects, a post house specialising in handmade animation and VFX, says that working with 35mm “has been intrinsic to our practice at Ana Projects since we started our studio six years ago.” The team is committed to continued experimentation with film and the use of new techniques, working with paint, ink, charcoal, cut paper collages, analogue glitches – and so much more – to expand the possibilities of filmic effects.

“The first project we worked on involved scratching, burning and splicing animations for Daniel Kaufman’s ‘Recode Running’ spot for adidas. It was facilitated by Cinelab, who we’ve worked with ever since, pushing film as far as we can – they even worked out a way for us to put film covered in glitter through their six-figure scanners,” says Joe.

Above: adidas, 'Recode Running'

“We both come from a fine arts background,” he says about himself and co-founder Jack Greeley-Ward, adding "specifically painting, and our interest in working with 35mm comes from our interest in texture, and how that can be introduced to film. There are so many ways of capturing images, all as important and interesting as each other – I think film making is about picking the right tool from the tool box, but on a personal level, it’s most often an image on film that captures my attention and imagination, it feels direct and tangible, it’s flawed and unpredictable and it awakens the senses.”

Once old, now new

Filmmakers in recent years have turned to film stocks and formats that had fallen out of use while the resurgence of shooting on film means that companies like Kodak and ORWO are investing in celluloid innovation once more. The use of the old formats and stocks hasn’t been limited to features and prestige TV either, with evidence of the revival seen across ads and music videos too.

Brady Corbet’s ‘The Brutalist’ took home the Best Cinematography Oscar at this year’s ceremony. It was shot in the revived VistaVision format, an 8-perf 35mm process in which the film runs horizontally through the camera instead of vertically. Last used in 1961, the fornat was chosen by cinematographer Lol Crawley, capturing rich, detailed images that communicated the architect protagonist’s epic vision. It was selected specifically because it gives a wider field of view and higher resolution, preserving details like angles and lines essential to a narrative exploring the power and beauty of architecture.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2023 feature ‘Poor Things’, which Cinelab Film & Digital scanned, likewise utilised the VistaVision format for a few select shots while most of the feature was shot in colour and black and white using Kodak’s Ektachrome film stock, among other film stocks. The stock first developed in the 1940s and revived in 2018. Critics lauded ‘Poor Things’ for its saturated colour palette depicting a fantastical Victorian London that felt as new and enticing to viewers as it did to Bella Baxter’s developing brain.

The recent ‘Original Forever’ spot from adidas, directed by Leigh Powis with cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, for the launch of the Originals x Oasis collaboration likewise utilised the VistaVision format in the mixed media spot, including 16mm, likewise processed and scanned at Cinelab. The format’s exceptional image quality lent an instantly cinematic feel to the film, cementing the ‘original’ and 'forever’ sentiments of the campaign into the images.​

The revival of VistaVision is not a fluke. Yorgos Lanthimos opted for the format once more for the upcoming ‘Bugonia’ as did Paul Thomas Anderson for ‘One Battle After Another’; both are due to be released in the UK this autumn.

Another notable Ektachrome project is HBO’s TV series ‘Euphoria’ which used the stock for the whole of season two. The move from cinematographer Marcell Rév marked an aesthetic evolution for the show, shifting from the digitally-shot season one, creating a more intimate and reflective visual mood. The decision led to a cinema history first when the show’s director, Sam Levinson, contacted Kodak to see whether enough of the discontinued stock could be used for the series – Kodak reopened parts of its factory to make the request possible, effectively reviving an almost dead product. Recently, Cinelab handled another highly anticipated project to have utilised Ektachrome, Lynn Ramsey’s ‘Die, My Love’; it promises to be an intense emotional and visual exploration of a mother’s psychosis, portrayed by Jennier Lawrence.

Above: Harry's, 'Guide to Being a Rugged Man of Mystery'

We’re also seeing a return to a ‘bleach bypass’ film processing technique as seen in the desaturated visuals of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘Fight Club’. Harry’s ‘Guide to Being a Rugged Man of Mystery’ spot, directed by Lovesong’s Elliott Power with cinematography by Harry Wheeler, was captured digitally before undergoing a digital-film-digital (DFD) process by Cinelab, including bleach bypass. On a technical level, the metallic silver layer of the stock was undisturbed, producing for more colour contrast alongside slight desaturation, allowing the spot to tap into dramatic, noir-ish visuals and spoof them in the process.

More to come

A new film stock entered the market last year, somewhat quietly, while Kodak gears up for an official launch in due course. Unofficially, it’s going by ‘New Pilot Stock’ and filmmakers have been making use of it in ads and music videos already. It was the medium of choice for cinematographer Rina Yang and director Kim Gerhig for ‘Festival’, the latest film from Burberry – a tribute to ‘90s and Cool Britannia aesthetics, which Cinelab processed and scanned. It’s part gritty, like a British festival should be, and part glamorous, channelling the look of a fashion editorial while feeling imminently touchable.

Above: Burberry, 'Festival'

Marcell Rev also utilised the stock on Moses Sumney’s ‘Vintage’ music video. In an Instagram post, Marcell said that the forthcoming stock is “similar to a beloved professional still photography film,” adding that he’s “been testing it for a while but this is the first project actually shot on it.” The video is a sumptuous jewel-toned dream self-directed by Moses, taking inspiration from music videos of the ’90s and the 2000s and giving the song’s title, ‘Vintage’, added layers of meaning.

Why do filmmakers continue to opt for film? For Salomon Ligthelm, the director of the grandiose black and white music video ‘Flood’ for Little Simz, the decision to shoot on 35mm with cinematographer Rina Yang “about alchemy.” Both were “drawn to film’s unpredictability, its texture, and its ability to breathe life into abstraction,” says Salomon. “‘Flood’ is a visual parable – something ancient yet remixed – and the film gave us the materiality to ground that mythology while allowing for the surreal. Every frame needed to feel sculptural, tactile, almost haunted. And film, with its imperfections and grain structure, offered a kind of visual instability that digital just can’t replicate – it’s always alive, always shifting slightly beneath the surface.”

Above: Little Simz, 'FLOOD'

The resurrection of old film stocks, the creation of new ones, filmmakers’ commitment to the medium, the existence of film processing facilities, and – in the commercial world – clients’ appetite for work shot on film can only be a good thing for its future. “Long may this continue,” Lol Crawley commented in The Wrap. “The more that directors shoot on film, the more film’s gonna continue.”