“I like shooting on film, and I like to work with directors who want to shoot on film too,” Sandgren declares. “For me it’s about getting to the look as efficiently as possible. The reason to shoot digital would be if you want any of the footage to look like digital – like we did in parts of Don’t Look Up
with the TV footage, or in The Hundred Foot Journey (dir. Lasse Hallström) where the protagonist in the film goes to Paris and the emotions in the story go colder. But most of the time I prefer to use celluloid, and I think there are many good reasons for doing that.
“Aesthetically, film gives you lots of choices: different film stocks, daylight and Tungsten, at different speeds, different formats – Super8, 16mm, 35mm, 65mm and IMAX, as well as 2-perf, 3-perf, 4-perf and VistaVision 8-perf. You can greatly over- or under-expose on film, do push and pull processing at the lab – all to create different looks in-camera.
“Add to that the texture of film grain, the exquisite rendition of color, contrast and highlights, plus the little surprises when you see your rushes. The cameras themselves can also produce effects not possible with digital cameras, such as flashing, speed changes with and without shutter speed changes, double exposures, reverse photography, etc.
“All that amounts to an enormous range of creative options and flexibility when you want to tell a story and portray emotions. Because of the workflow, you get to your look sooner, which means fewer things to fix and less time spent in the DI.
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