As “film” ceases to be an actual thing and becomes just an idea, what will be different? We’ve always worried about film degrading, but should we worry now that it won’t? Digital has its own flaws, but they’re very different flaws.

While experiencing the imperfections of music on vinyl or movies on film holds an attraction for those of us who enjoy a lo-fi aesthetic, I doubt that these flaws have any inherent value. They just trigger memories and it’s those memories that contain the real value. People who never know such decaying media likely won’t miss anything. Their memories will have their own triggers. From Richard Verrier in the Los Angeles Times:

“In a historic step for Hollywood, Paramount Pictures has become the first major studio to stop releasing movies on film in the United States.

Paramount recently notified theater owners that the Will Ferrell comedy Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, which opened in December, would be the last movie that would it would release on 35-millimeter film.

The studio’s Oscar-nominated film The Wolf of Wall Street from director Martin Scorsese is the first major studio film that was released all digitally, according to theater industry executives who were briefed on the plans but not authorized to speak about them.

The decision is significant because it is likely to encourage other studios to follow suit, accelerating the complete phase-out of film, possibly by the end of the year. That would mark the end of an era: film has been the medium for the motion picture industry for more than a century.”