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Quentin Tarantino and Sylvester Stallone are teaming for a 1930s-set series filming in black and white with “1930s cameras”
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- Title
- Quentin Tarantino Teaming Up With Sylvester Stallone for New Series
- Published
- Mar 20 2026
- Word count
- 200 words
To avoid anyone else wasting their time: this is a scroll-down-to-surprise-paywall article.
The originally submitted substack seems to have just taken this bit of news from TMZ and then thrown it behind their own paywall, so I'm actually just going to replace it with the original, paywall-free source.
I was surprised to hear they are using film cameras, but I just learned that Tarantino always shoots on film. I guess they digitize the film to edit. For a moment, I envisioned them cutting film and that seems completely crazy today.
The process to digitize film editing happened in the 90s, with the AVID being released in 1989. Walter Murch, who wrote In The Blink of an Eye, being an early adopter and advocate for digital editing. He won the Film Editing Oscar for The English Patient which he edited digitally. The first feature film to be shot entirely on a digital camera, at least the first mainstream Hollywood production, was Attack of the Clones which is over 10 years after the AVID came out.
Tarantino’s whole shtick has always been everything must be shot on film. The Hateful Eight was shot on 70mm panavision, which Sinners later used as well. Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Wes Anderson are have only ever made movies on film.Spielberg and Scorsese still shoot on film for the most part. There’s other filmmakers that prefer to work on the format like Damien Chazelle, Emerald Fennell, and the Safdie brothers. And other productions will make use of it; notably Twisters and Jurassic World Rebirth shot on 35.
It is a bit interesting that the camera is really the only thing that people care about still being analog, like no one really cares about sound being captured digitally, the film being edited digitally.
Not an expert, but I think it has something to do with the fact that some specifics of color recording and representation in film still cannot be recreated digitally because different films have different sensitivity curves for individual color channels. Once a color spectrum passes through that "input filter", information is lost and a different curve response cannot be faithfully recreated. This is not the case with analog vs digital sound.
Doesn't mean that film curves are necessarily the best, but they're different and nice, and film also automatically does other things that can be recreated digitally (like dynamic compression), but have to be done by hand, so it gives a slightly more finished image, the way I understand it.
There are apparently ways to replicate the look of film with digital to at least some extent -- at least, I know the Steve Yedlin, the cinematographer for Rian Johnson's films, has developed techniques that can make digital footage look convincingly like film. It apparently has a lot to do with not the camera's physical ability to pick up the signals, but in how they process them in order to display an image afterwards. He goes into some of the technical details in that interview but I believe there are places where he's gone into more detail for people with more technical know-how out there online if you dig around. It's a very interesting thread of work (though ofc I'm biased because I've loved the look of every film he's been DP on).
These days, I think in practice it has more to do with the taste of the directors and cinematographers, than what is technical possible. Whenever I watch a modern film and think it looks great, 4 out of 5 times when I look up the technical details, it is shot on film. A few manage to fool me, and I believe it is certainly possible to achieve a similar look digitally, but in practice the current trend in how most movies look these days are going in a different direction.
Yeah, I agree, I think the technical possibility is absolutely there, but that it's the taste and skill of the director and cinematographer that play the greatest role. It's kind of amazing how much other elements of a film can be affected by cinematography choices tbh, for better or for worse (cough cough Wicked)
They do. Historically, the editing software generates a precise cut list that is then reproduced by cutting actual film. I'm not sure how that works now, but I bet Tarantino uses the oldest, truest method he is allowed to have.
Fun fact: I am one of the people who actually shot (directed) on film. It was 16mm and a short. But still. It was pretty cool. I was also a camera assistant for two other 35mm shorts. Celluloid is a pain to deal with. It is also beautiful.
AFAIK they just convert the film stock into digital edit do everything there and have a digital master, since that’s what’s gonna get distributed to most theaters. When they want a film reel version of the movie (like say all of the screenings of Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Sinners, Oppenheimer etc) they print the digital master onto film stock.
While not using vintage cameras, I believe the black and white 2019 film The Lighthouse was shot on film using lenses from the 1920s and 30s. It’s a great film, I would say one of the best black and white films of the modern era, yet I feel it doesn’t visually quite reach the heights of the best black and white films of old. And how could it, if the know-how of lighting and composing shots for that aesthetic has largely disappeared as it hasn’t been done for decades.
That said, knowing Tarantino’s encyclopaedic passion for cinema, he might just be the right person to pull off the impossible.
There's little information about this online. At that point this is barely a rumor in my view. I'll believe it when I see it. I'm still a little annoyed we won't get a Star Trek movie by Tarantino.
I have never watched a Tarantino film, and I'm at a point where I'm fine with not having to figure out why I know he's got a thing for feet despite that. I'm shocked he's only 62 though, I thought he was closer in age to Stallone.
Ha! That feet thing is an overblown meme. Though admittedly, there are numerous shots of feet throughout his films.
I mean, he has also defended it as a normal amount of feet iirc. Which is just an odd thing to have to do. And doesn't seem to be statistically true. But I shouldn't know about it having never watched it.
Don't underestimate cultural osmosis. I have a friend that can recount the entire original Star Wars trilogy without having seen any of them.
But no I get your point.
That said, is it his problem or the fact people foist it onto him to the point he needs to defend it? I'm personally leaning towards the latter.
Eh, without googling further than I have he apparently has a statistically notable number of foot shots in his movies.
Is it even a problem? Idk. But if you make movies people will comment on what's in them. I suspect personally it's the sort of thing that people wouldn't have commented on 30 years ago and then like 15 years ago or whatever it just sort of added up. I guess I also know about a Royale with Cheese
I know I'm the oddball for not having watched his work either way.
I think the amount of foot stuff has gone up in his films, but I haven't revisited some of his earlier films.
On a funny note, my partner saw one of his movies for the first time (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood), and without knowing his thing for feet, unprompted asked me, "Does the director really like feet or something?"
See it's not just a meme!
He was in his 20s when he got his screenwriting career off the ground. Actually he stated he seriously pursued a career in the industry by the time he was 25 because a coworker at the video store turned 30 and talked about how he hated his life.
Ah motivated by the plot of Clerks.
But still, I'm good at this point, ya know?
Watch "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", if you want proto-Tarantino without Tarantino. "Proto-Tarantino" is doing it a massive disservice.
I've seen it actually. Not much of a Western fan but I have actually seen that!
I'm not a huge Tarantino fan (though I respect his craft, not all his movies are for me), and you can continue your Tarantino-less life if you want without any judgement from me, but if you ever do have an empty few hours and want to break your streak, I would genuinely recommend Inglorious Bastards. I watched it once in college, and a couple of those scenes were such masterclasses in tension that they still haunt me. Plus, watching Nazis getting blown up is cathartic these days, and I don't remember there being much feet in that one.
Unrelated but I saw Ridley Scott's Legend recently at a friend's place, and it did not take long for us to start joking about him having a thing for Tom Cruise's thighs the way Tarantino likes feet. Young Tom Cruise was squatting in almost every shot he was in, poor thing.