I'm a colorist. It's dramatically cheaper to emulate than to capture on film. Not even close except for massive productions (tens of millions) where camera dept is a small line item.
As you say, when you get into tens of millions, film vs digital is less important cost wise.
I'd argue somewhere between no-budget and massive, there is a sweet spot to be had.
Everything else being equal, shooting on film is of course more expensive...
however film can be a forcing function, especially if you are on budget. (But not low enough you can't handle the fixed costs of film.)
It's all in the planning:
- you can't get "free" re-takes. That keeps everyone focused, including actors.
- you must have more light, so you are more likely to plan out your light, instead of shooting in different conditions and try to correct later
- film lends itself to a certain look. Shooting digital, you have so many options in postprocessing, you can lift stuff out of the shadows etc. Too much freedom can be a bad thing, film forces some coherence.
- the fact that you can't see the filmed results the same day means you get really disciplined and focused making sure everything works beforehand. When you have many people involved, this is key. (If you trust your process and use a video tap to see if scenes were nailed, you can even skip dailies to cut cost.)
- less raw video data to handle, post process, grade and cutting. The less film shot, the faster everything post shooting takes. There are many films which could have been cut into several completely different movies because there was so much material shot, and the "risk" of this being possible increases with the lure of cheap digital capture.
So to be clear, I think film can in some conditions be cheaper than digital, for social reasons. If someone has the skill to push back and keep such a tight ship on digital set, of course they will be cheaper and faster.
I base this on listening to producers saying they went for film for nostalgic or aestethic reasons, but were surprised to same or less total spend as their digital projects.
I may be full of it, feel free to shoot this all down, you are obviously in the industry and I'm just jealously peeking from the outside.
