It's not a coincidence that analog film is making a comeback.

People value imperfections and asymmetry more than they're willing to admit. The human is face is not symmetrical even if it appears to be. That's where our appreciation for assymetry and imperfection begins. But it goes beyond that.

Everything natural around us is more often than not asymmetrical, imperfect and highly detailed. Just look at a piece of wooden furniture, and look at the tiny intricasies of the wood grain. There's always something new to look at.

We're tuned to an asymmetrical, imperfect world. Our brains are accustomed to imperfections. Perfection is unnatural. We get tired of perfect things because they present a monotous, unflinching vision of the world.

But more than that, we value effort. We value when someone goes takes the time and effort and pours their love for the craft into making something. For example: A true neapolitan pizza cannot be made with a dough that was fermented in 2 hours, you got to put in the hours to have it rise nicely.

When you're looking at analog film projections you're looking at an imperfect projection. The film-grain is random, each frame of the 24 frames per second, has a randomised grain pattern, even if you're seeing something that looks cohesive, it's made of tiny imperfections, intricasies that we're so used to seeing in the nature. It's also difficult to master, so when something looks polished, it's probably because someone went through a lot of effort to make it look that way.

The pesian rug is another perfect example. It's value lies in its intricate designs and its imperfections. They indicate that it's not machined but made from the efforts of a person.

In many ways the tables have completely reversed with digital. In a digital world, visual polish is no longer equivalent to effort. It's not an indication that someone took care to make something. It's more often than not an indication of sameness. So when we something digital that's visually perfect, we look elsewhere for perfections.

We're seeing this happen with generated text (the overly polished grammer of the ChatGPT output makes us yearn for spellling mistakes), generative images, video, AI cleaned up images. We look at it and call it slop, but what we're really commenting on is the lack of effort put into making something.

With Photography and Filmmaking, digital cameras became so good and so accessible that it has become trivial to shoot a high quality video. The effort is in storytelling, in writing a great story, in getting the lighting right, in composition, in dialogue. But that's also table stakes after a point.

We're constantly looking for effort and care. And when we see a filmmaker shoot everything on 70mm film reel, to bring his vision to life, the length he goes to, to capture the grandiose nature of his story, we value that.

At the end of the day, it's about showing care, and going one step further than the rest.