It seems to be a growing trend for independent films to be shot on DV, the few I have noticed are "Tadpole", "Personal Velocity" and "24 Hour Party People". What other films have been released as such?

Many of the Dogme (Dogma) movies, like Festen (The Celebration).

RUSSIAN ARK - that's the movie that is one long take, something that only became possible with DV.

This thread subject makes no sense!

If a film is shot on video is it still a film?

BTW, I think there was a indepedant film called "Star Wars -- Attack of the Clones" that was shot entirely on digital video.

Sure, but if it was shot on tape, then it's not a film.

"Video" just means a visual medium. Like "audio" refers to sound.

Here are some suggestions of the top of my head:

There's A Real Job, a recent gem I found thanks to Geoff's review. An interesting little indie film shot all in DV.

An interesting experimental film shot on DV is Time Code, which shows 4 different images in "real time" showing different aspects of the same story (DVDTalk review here).

Finally, a good example of what can be done with DV is Waking Life, which was filmed digitally and then animated over by different artists for each scene. The extras on Fox's DVD show some of this process, which is really interesting.

I'll post more if I think of any.

Also shot with DV:

Dancer in the Dark
The Anniversary Party

It looks like the upcoming film about September 11 firefighters, The Guys, was shot on DV. If it wasn't the trailer shure looks like s**t.

Bamboozled

When the video gets transferred to celluloid it becomes film? In other words CGI is not film until it gets transferred to celluloid...

Italian for Beginners
Julien Donkey-Boy
Our Lady of the Assassins
Center of the World
Idiots, The
Full Frontal

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Vidocq is the very first film shot entirely on digital. Pretty awesome movie also.

Chuck and Buck!

Maybe someone could answer this... but The 25th Hour sure looked like it was shot on digital video and transferred to film. Movement is, at times, jumpy and a tad sped-up looking.

28 Days Later
Session 9

Tape and Chelsea Walls

For those fans of Takashi Miike, I offer Visitor Q

correct, twas the 1st one.
And yeah, it was also pretty good too.

Robert Rodriguez is apparently a huge digtal video convert. He shot Spy Kids 2 and Once Upon a Time In Mexico (the El Mariachi/Desperado sequel) on the format.

Personally, I think it's a huge mistake. While I think digital IS the future, it's simply not as good as film today.

IMDb says film:

Film negative format (mm/video inches)
35 mm
Cinematographic process
Spherical
Printed film format
35 mm
Aspect ratio
2.35 : 1

In some cases though I believe it is the intent of the Director/DP for the film to not look like 'film' but convey a psuedo-docu video feel and look. The first five minutes of "Personal Velocity" I saw (the film broke - how's that for ironic) achieved this and could only be done on DV. "Tadpole" and "24 Hour Party People" also did this for this effect.

That I WOULD agree with. I think it's also an excellent choice for documentary filmmakers, as it's much cheaper and easier to work with than film.

But to shoot a big budget action sequel? I wouldn't do it.

I agree too, while not an action-movie, the 35mm print of "Chicago" at DC's Loews Cinema theatre is absolutely stunning and impressed me all over again that standard 'film' can and is vibrant as ever.

The Japanese zombie spoof, STACY and BAISE MOI were SODV.

Not even close

There were many before that. And as for being the first, this came ten years after the first theatrically released HD acquired feature film - Prospero's Books.


And yes, it is appropriate to call an HD or DV acquired narrative a film. Film is what images may be acquired with, and a film is what images are assembled into.

Many of us were debating this a decade ago, when first experimenting and alternating between film and video acquisition for narratives and shorts, or even in naming our little production companies and such. In the end a film is a film, no matter how it is acquired. Even Webster's has settled in with the industry terminology, their first definition of the noun being "a form of entertainment that enacts a story by a sequence of images giving the illusion of continuous movement". It makes little sense to debate this particular semantic issue anymore as the lines are blurred even in the traditional film acquisition with digital technology playing such a large part. Thus, among other examples, the oft used term digital filmmaker.

nyr4321, SESSION 9 was a 24P HD feature and not DV. There is a huge difference in quality between the two and 24P HD is clearly the winner.