Shooting on film is a wonderful thing when you can afford it. For the low budget filmmaker the money for shooting on film is usually better used elsewhere. It is indisputable that film will make a better looking movie, but there are many disadvantages besides the expense. Shooting your movie on video will save you from some concerns you normally would have when shooting on film.

How Long A Take Is

Your average 35mm film camera can hold enough film at a time for around 4 minutes of shooting. Compared to video cameras with tapes or memory cards that can hold from 30 minutes to hours of footage this is a major handicap. Not only will single takes be limited to 4 minutes, your cumulative shooting before a film change will be just 4 minutes. If your camera operator starts rolling a little too early or keeps rolling a little too much you might find yourself waiting for someone to change the film more often than actually shooting a scene.

Light Exposure To Tape

For those whose experience with 35mm film consists of pre-digital camera era photography, you are in for a wake up call. Movie film does not come in a protected case that once rewound will be protected in a light-proof case. Movie film is just film on a reel and you need to keep it protected yourself. It need to be held in light-proof containers and loaded it into your film camera without exposing it to light. Once you have shot the footage you also need to keep it away from light or else it will wash out whatever you have on film.

Stock, Development, Printing

It might not be apparent to those only familiar with video cameras but a camcorder does a lot that a film camera cannot. You cannot reuse film like you can a video tape or memory card. Once you shoot the film you cannot then just run it in a projector and see what you shot, you have to have someone develop it first. Once you develop it all you have is a negative which is not what you imagined your film looking like, you have to then have a positive printed so you can view it. All these steps involve expense and expertise and equipment likely beyond your current capabilities.

Editing Footage

Editing is such a joy now with digital non-linear editing systems. Editing with film is not fun. Joining two scenes together means physically cutting them where you want them to meet and taping them together. Oops. I didn't mean to cut there, there is no undo button you now need to re-tape it together. You want to extend a certain part by repeating it over and over. Well you now have to pay to print more strips of that shot. On a computer you would hit copy and paste. You want titles? You will have to take it to an optical house to help you make it happen. Not only is this traditional film editing tedious and costly but it inhibits experimentation.

Hairs in Gate

For a video camera you just need to make sure the lens is clean and the footage will come out ok. But the lens of a film camera is only one place where problems can arise. You have to physically inspect the innards of the camera to make sure nothing is in there that will show up on film. The most obvious would be a hair that sticks to the gate and flits about as the film is pulled through, which you have likely seen in countless B movies and do not want for your film.

Matching Tape Stocks

If you run out of video tape or memory cards in the middle of a shoot you just have to go buy new ones. The footage will look the same no matter what brand you buy. Not so with film. Every manufacturer makes the film in a slightly different way and every type of film is made in a different way. Not only can you not guarantee that film from the same manufacturer will develop the same, you cannot always be sure the same type will come out the same. If you do not buy a lot of film at once that was manufactured at the same time you run the risk of some shots looking different than others. This is something you can compensate for but it is a skill and one you probably do not have.

Do not just think of the expense when considering whether to shoot on film, think of the skillset required to pull it off. If you have the money but nobody with the skill you may end up pouring it all down the drain and in the end have something that looks worse than a home movie.