Superman Returns

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

So I guess Pixar is just completely bonkers, then... B)

No, as it happens, there is no way of doing computer animation on 35mm film. Are you suggesting you can't tell the difference between Pixar animation and film origination? Maybe one day that will be the case, but not today :ph34r:

[David Mullen ASC]

No, as it happens, there is no way of doing computer animation on 35mm film. Are you suggesting you can't tell the difference between Pixar animation and film origination? Maybe one day that will be the case, but not today :ph34r:

 

You were suggesting it was this big risk for a feature not to originate on film -- Michael was just pointing out that Pixar has been successful without having to originate on film.

 

I'd also point out that I just shot a 35mm feature for the man who made "Blair Witch Project", mostly on Hi-8 video, and more than likely it will still be more profitable than the 35mm feature we made.

 

There have been a number of financially successful digitally-shot productions, and a lot of financially unsuccessful film-shot productions, so I don't think there is a high-risk factor unless the image quality is radically different than audience expectation, and even then, it still may be successful.

 

A lot of these blockbusters are geared towards young people who spend more of their dollars on computer games, so for all you know, shooting digitally may actually play into their expectations and what they are conditioned to seeing visually. Someday, with enough conditioning, the risk may be shooting on film and upsetting their expectations...

[Guest Aaron_Farrugia]

im with michael

i just saw it and i could only spot about 3 shots with a bit of distortion, and were a bit muddy but nothing as bad as alot of people have been saying it did look like film going through a 2k DI

the only give away for me for its digital origination was the movement, it has a different looking motion blur

but

i dont see what all the fuss is about, why are people trying to compare digital with film, their completly different, its just another choice in which to originate on for a certain look,

 

another addition to the paint on our pallete

Edited July 1, 2006 by Aaron_Farrugia

[Michael Nash]

No, as it happens, there is no way of doing computer animation on 35mm film. Are you suggesting you can't tell the difference between Pixar animation and film origination? Maybe one day that will be the case, but not today :ph34r:

 

I was pointing out that artists can choose whatever format they feel is best, whether it be film, digital, computer animation, claymation, Super-8, sequenced photocopies; whatever.

 

It's the same thing I said in the other film vs. digital thread; these are tools, and they are different. The filmmakers chose them for a reason. And since nobody's said it yet, these are not dumb people we're talking about. Bryan Singer, Michael Mann, David Fincher, Tom Sigel, Harris Savides et. al. are intelligent, experienced filmmakers. They're not going to go into a multi-million dollar studio movie casually or ignorantly. Not every audience member may like the result, but that's to be expected.

 

I'm not pretending the current HD systems are as good as film in every way, or that film is dead or will be soon. I'm only pointing out that digital is HERE, and it's a viable alternative.

 

Could Superman Returns have been made on film and looked as good or better? Sure. It likely would have had to go through a DI to get the grainlessness and "color smoothing" (my term) the Genesis lent, but it could have been done. But with the look desired by the filmmakers AND the number of digital effects, it made sense to shoot it with the tools they did. For this film at least, I probably would have done the same thing.

[David Mullen ASC]

OK, I just saw the movie in 35mm. My impressions of the Genesis photography:

 

Overall, fairly good. I'm partially comparing this mentally to how "X-Men 2" looked, the last Singer movie, which was shot in Super-35 on 5218, which to me was a little disappointing compared to the first "X-Men" movie shot in anamorphic. "X-Men 2" was a little soft, grainy, and pastel.

 

"Superman Returns" is not grainy for one thing. The sharpness looks like Super-35 going through a 2K D.I., the grain looks like 65mm or 35mm anamorphic using slow-speed stocks. In other words, it would have looked sharper if it had been shot in anamorphic, and maybe if it had been shot in Super-35 and went through a 4K D.I., maybe not. So the sharpness, the detail, was average. The lack of grain was very pretty in my view for this particular movie.

 

The way the camera handled overexposure was fine too -- it didn't block up quickly into featureless white like so many HD productions. It burned out more pleasantly.

 

As for the noise, it wasn't bad except in one scene (that night interior at the Kent house) where it looked like they had switched to high-speed film or something, pushed (I'm not saying they did, just that it had that texture). Don't know what happened there, but even that scene was only bad in how it intercut with all of the noise-free scenes.

 

There seemed to be some sort of compression artifact now and then, sort of lag in the color, but perhaps that was a shutter issue.

 

I'd say that the Number One problem I saw was color, in particular skintones. Actually 90% of the time, they were fine, but there were several shots where the fleshtones were downright odd-looking, especially in warm scenes. I've seen this problem in some D.I.'s too, and definitely in other HD movies, but I don't know what causes it when you have so many other scenes where the skintones were excellent, even in warm scenes. But now and then, they seem to go flat pancake-tan-band-aid colored. Other times, they were oddly desaturated in cool scenes, but I think that was more of a creative choice to play some night scenes as near monochromatic.

 

The lighting of faces was beautiful, and the compositions at times were appropriately iconographic, heroic, and comic-book-ish.

 

I think one of my favorite bits was just how the wrecking of Lex Luthor's model train set resembled vaguely little scenes in the first Superman movie, a cute in-joke.

[Ricardo Diaz]

I have seen the film three times now, twice in 35mm and once Digitally projected. I may not be a professional like many of you fine gentlemen on these boards but to my eye the difference is significant. The DLP projection was far and above better than both film prints I saw. To me it felt more like film origination when I saw it DLP then when I saw it on film. The colors were brighter the image sharper the digtal artifacts (especially in the kent farm scene and the kitty/superman hospital scene) not nearly as apparent (possibly made worse by the grain of the film print?). To refernce somone eariler, the only thing that gives it away is the moments of digital smear or blur during some of the non CGI flight scenes. I think that this camera is a great improvement over past HD cams but I feel like in order for them to move in that direction it would also need to be projected accordingly. I insist that many of you check it out at your local DLP theater and let me know if you felt the same way. Also do it because I am a huge Superman geek and the weekend numbers havent done well! Anyway watch it the way it was meant to be watched, digitally.

[Krystian Ramlogan]

Hey guys, I'd like to share my thoughts on Superman Returns.

 

I thought the cinematography was pretty good, especially the flying shots. I know they worked on those a lot and it paid off. I do think there was too much of an emphasis on them at one point, but they were cool. The look of the scenes all seemed to be well designed but the lack of texture on skin and the set to a lesser degree wasn't to my liking; the actors' skins seemed too smooth, almost plastic like.

 

The effects were pretty good but not quite as visceral as those in say XMen: The Last Stand.

 

The movie was at times, sloooow, slow, and a bit faster than slow; I'm not sure why Martha Kent had such a small role, or why Superman would have felt the need to go right back to the Daily Planet "just before" Superman shows up - one plot point was always Clarks efforts to have their "switch" as ambiguous as possible.

 

The casting, hmm. I think Brandon Routh did a credible job and I think he should have had more lines; where was the dialogue in this film?

 

Lois. Did not work for me. Too young. Not a seasoned reporter in my opinion.

 

Kid. Hmm, why?

 

Competitor for Lois'? Not really. Waste of screen time.

 

The themes; Superman as Christ. Overdone. What's the point? The father becoming the son? Did I blink? When did that happen? Superman is now the savior of humanity? Self-appointed? Hmm. Seems like a god-complex to me - Heil Hitler anyone?

 

Lex. Sighh. Waste. Not a slight on Kevin Spacey, he brought it. But, the lines? The plot? The villany? Not really. The henchmen, waste of air there.

 

The Story. Too much of a mish mash, seen it before: Superman I and II.

 

I'm being a bit hard on it, but that's how I see it. If I'm really wrong anyone can give an alternate view and I'd be willing to change my opinion, a bit :-)

 

Feel free to disagree, but I really wasn't too impressed and I was a bit disappointed.

 

K.

[Patrick Neary]

The Story. Too much of a mish mash, seen it before: Superman I and II.

 

You said it! it felt like a slow, less clever remake of the original- same basic story, some of the same lines, for crying out loud.

 

I thought the DLP projection of "Superman" looked pretty good, now if they would just use it for good instead of evil.

 

There was a trailer for "Invincible" which looked like it had been shot on film (and projected here digitally, obviously) which I thought looked far richer, more detail, better color, everything...does anyone know whether or not it was shot on film?

[Scott Marshall]

I just saw it at the Loews Jersey Gardens in Elizabeth, NJ USA -- Technicolor Digital -- and although crisp, I was quite disappointed by the overall image quality. There was no shadow detail -- zero -- plain dead shadows. The overall brightness seemed low. Colors didn't pop, and it really looked like there was an error in the gamma curve. The dark parts of the picture seemed too dark, and there were moments when it looked like you were supposed to see something in the shadows but couldn't. It wasn't believable as an artistic choice. It looked like a technical problem. Also, there was some really bad pixillation (aliasing) in the opening credits. When each credit first appeared fine lines showed rather awful stairstepping moving up and down the letters. Will probably not go out of my way to see digital again.

 

As a movie, I found the story to be rather bland. Outside of the thrashing action, there's hardly anything going on. The Clark Kent/Superman character seemed especially bland. Christopher Reeve's performances were much more rich and nuanced.

[Michael Nash]

I just saw it at the Loews Jersey Gardens in Elizabeth, NJ USA -- Technicolor Digital -- and although crisp, I was quite disappointed by the overall image quality. ...Will probably not go out of my way to see digital again.

 

Don't let one example of poor digital projection swear you off of it. It's not perfect yet, despite what you may read in the press. Film projection is far from perfect also. The DLP presentation I saw of Cars at the El Capitan in Hollywood last week was one of the smoothest, crispest, color-rich showings I've seen of digital projection.

 

FWIW, the film print I saw of SR had good-looking brightness and color saturation.

[Max Jacoby]

Also, there was some really bad pixillation (aliasing) in the opening credits. When each credit first appeared fine lines showed rather awful stairstepping moving up and down the letters. Will probably not go out of my way to see digital again.

I've seen those same problems and I think that the reason is quite simple: 2K is simply not enough resolution.

[Guest Kai.w]

I've seen those same problems and I think that the reason is quite simple: 2K is simply not enough resolution.

Was that a 2k projector then...?

 

-k

[Patrick Neary]

I've seen those same problems and I think that the reason is quite simple: 2K is simply not enough resolution.

 

I didn't see those problems in the DLP projection- but was bothered by the muddiness of the shadow areas.

 

There was also a weird effect in blank white areas where you could see a kind of fixed texture/pattern, I wondered if it was the actual screen surface or a pattern imposed by the projector?

[Max Jacoby]

Was that a 2k projector then...?

Of course...

 

That is why 4K projectors are being developed. Although another problem of digital projection besides resolution, as Patrick mentions, is that it has lots of trouble with contrasty scenes.

[David Mullen ASC]

When I saw "Chronicles of Narnia" digitally projected, all the white snow scenes had a horrible pattern over them -- sort of a grid, but it was almost like what happens when there is too much depth of field and a net over the lens comes into focus (not that this is what happened here -- it was a digital projection artifact.)

 

BTW, the title crawl in "Superman Returns" had the same stair-stepping aliasing problem in the film prints, so in that case, it was not a digital projection issue.

 

The older 1.2K DLP projectors had a terrible problem with dark scenes -- "Signs" looked terrible in DLP. I tend to avoid dark moody movies in digital projection, although I heard a rumor that the 4K Sony projector being used for "The DaVinci Code" over at the Century City AMC as an experiment handled the dark scenes well.

[Michel Hafner]

BTW, the title crawl in "Superman Returns" had the same stair-stepping aliasing problem in the film prints, so in that case, it was not a digital projection issue.

Why are these title generators not using anti aliased fonts? Too fuzzy? Better somewhat fuzzy than jaggies all over. Maybe new fonts are needed with only horizontal and vertical elements. :lol:

Michel Hafner

www.imdb.com

[David Mullen ASC]

Why are these title generators not using anti aliased fonts? Too fuzzy?

 

It may have something to do with the fact that they were posted in HD, I don't know.

[Scott Marshall]

Don't let one example of poor digital projection swear you off of it. It's not perfect yet, despite what you may read in the press. Film projection is far from perfect also. The DLP presentation I saw of Cars at the El Capitan in Hollywood last week was one of the smoothest, crispest, color-rich showings I've seen of digital projection.

 

FWIW, the film print I saw of SR had good-looking brightness and color saturation.

 

I've seen plenty of digital and have been a fan of it and hoped to impress a friend with the SR presentation. Saw Phantom Menace in Secaucus, NJ and SIGNS at the Riverfront. The digital SIGNS looked better than the film prints to me.

 

Anyone know who the vendor is who is doing the digital work for Technicolor? Who's servers?

[Michael Nash]

Does anyone know what projector they're using at the El Cap? The blacks were rock solid, and no aliasing or screen-door effect of any kind.

 

In other DLP screenings elsewhere I've seen the foggy/murky blacks, and the pixel pattern in white areas.

[Scott Marshall]

One more thing:

 

I noticed some strobing in this digital presentation that I hadn't quite noticed in others. White highlights against black in motion looked briefly like Edgerton strobe photos. I didn't know at the time SR was digitally filmed. It's clearly a camera artifact. The effect should have been apparent in the film projection as well. Needs more motion blur.

[Max Jacoby]

The DLP presentation I saw of Cars at the El Capitan in Hollywood last week was one of the smoothest, crispest, color-rich showings I've seen of digital projection.

I think digital projection looks best when the film is digitally originated as well. If it's shot on film, it's bound to be disappointing. There is no point in projecting a film like 'The New World' digitally for instance.

[Jeremy Rumas]

When I saw "Chronicles of Narnia" digitally projected, all the white snow scenes had a horrible pattern over them -- sort of a grid, but it was almost like what happens when there is too much depth of field and a net over the lens comes into focus (not that this is what happened here -- it was a digital projection artifact.)

 

Interesting. I saw a film print of Narnia and noticed the same thing. I thought the snow scenes looked horrible. And even with the film print, I could see the pixel grid in the snow scenes. Like looking at a computer monitor set to white. Granted, I sat close when viewing the film. But I couldn't believe how noticeable this was.

 

Jeremy

[Guest Jim Murdoch]

Hey guys, I'd like to share my thoughts on Superman Returns.

 

I thought the cinematography was pretty good, especially the flying shots. I know they worked on those a lot and it paid off. I do think there was too much of an emphasis on them at one point, but they were cool. The look of the scenes all seemed to be well designed but the lack of texture on skin and the set to a lesser degree wasn't to my liking; the actors' skins seemed too smooth, almost plastic like.

 

The effects were pretty good but not quite as visceral as those in say XMen: The Last Stand.

 

The movie was at times, sloooow, slow, and a bit faster than slow; I'm not sure why Martha Kent had such a small role, or why Superman would have felt the need to go right back to the Daily Planet "just before" Superman shows up - one plot point was always Clarks efforts to have their "switch" as ambiguous as possible.

 

The casting, hmm. I think Brandon Routh did a credible job and I think he should have had more lines; where was the dialogue in this film?

 

Lois. Did not work for me. Too young. Not a seasoned reporter in my opinion.

 

Kid. Hmm, why?

 

Competitor for Lois'? Not really. Waste of screen time.

 

The themes; Superman as Christ. Overdone. What's the point? The father becoming the son? Did I blink? When did that happen? Superman is now the savior of humanity? Self-appointed? Hmm. Seems like a god-complex to me - Heil Hitler anyone?

 

Lex. Sighh. Waste. Not a slight on Kevin Spacey, he brought it. But, the lines? The plot? The villany? Not really. The henchmen, waste of air there.

 

The Story. Too much of a mish mash, seen it before: Superman I and II.

 

I'm being a bit hard on it, but that's how I see it. If I'm really wrong anyone can give an alternate view and I'd be willing to change my opinion, a bit :-)

 

Feel free to disagree, but I really wasn't too impressed and I was a bit disappointed.

 

K.

I pretty much agree with everything you say. That is, the cinematography was good, but I don't think much of what the Genesis did to the actual images that were lensed. It's just not particularly good film, and I can't see too many other producers being sold on the Genesis on the basis of this movie either.

 

I decided to leave it for a week or so "to avoid the crowds". Bit of a joke really. I went with my wife to our brand-new local multiplex, and they asked us where we'd prefer to sit, and we indicated our preference and were given numbered tickets. But presumably because it's such a long film it started immediately so we missed the first couple of minutes and the theatre was pitch-dark, so using my mobile phone screen as a light we fumbled our way to the nearest vacant seats and plonked ourselves down. Then, when when our eyes grew more used to the dark we realized that there were only seven other people in the theatre!

 

I could have written many of the scenes a lot better without adding a cent to the production cost. The whole thing reminds me more of the last two of the older Superman Movies than the first two.

[Max Jacoby]

So Jim,

 

Since your signature said that you are based in the UK, I'd be very curious to know where you and the wifey saw Superman, since it's not released here until the 14th of July. They wait here until the end of the World Cup you see...

 

Or were you so anxious to finally get a look at it after you've been bashing the Genesis for so long that you took the little wifey on a trip to the US?

[Guest Kai.w]

I pretty much agree with everything you say. That is, the cinematography was good, but I don't think much of what the Genesis did to the actual images that were lensed. It's just not particularly good film, and I can't see too many other producers being sold on the Genesis on the basis of this movie either.

 

I decided to leave it for a week or so "to avoid the crowds". Bit of a joke really. I went with my wife to our brand-new local multiplex, and they asked us where we'd prefer to sit, and we indicated our preference and were given numbered tickets. But presumably because it's such a long film it started immediately so we missed the first couple of minutes and the theatre was pitch-dark, so using my mobile phone screen as a light we fumbled our way to the nearest vacant seats and plonked ourselves down. Then, when when our eyes grew more used to the dark we realized that there were only seven other people in the theatre!

 

Well, apart from the very interesting story on how you managed to find your seats... would be nice to share what exactly you did not like about what the genesis did to the images...

 

-k