The Bourne Supremacy

[Tenolian Bell]

I was mostly interested in seeing this movie, because I saw a behind the scenes show about it on MTV. As they showed wide behind the scene shots of the film being shot I noticed they had little to no additional film lighting. That's interesting I thought it looks as though the whole movie is shot with available natural light. The director mentioned the entire film is largely handheld. So that peeked my interest.

 

My assessment is I hope no one else ever shoots a movie in this fashion again. With the movie being handheld shot under available light I was sure they framed for 1:85. But as the movie opens it turns out to be a super 35 blow up. Which means they were probably shooting with the lenses wide open.

 

Much of the movie was also shot on longer or at least narrow perspective lenses, probably the 50mm to 100mm range. So we were always looking at a tight frame.

 

That of course was reflected in the print. This being a summer action movie, the entire movie was very contrasty, but because of the variables they chose to use it produced a rather poor picture. Highlights were really flat and had no dimension to them. There was a lot of grain in the shadows and in some particularly dark scenes the shadows were completely fogged and grain danced all over the frame.

 

Then with their camera movement I would call this handheld on crack. The camera was literally shaking the entire movie. People sitting at a table in an office talking the camera was still shaking a little bit. During actions sequences the camera shook so much I started to become sea sick. I know the poor AC, there were so many out of focus shots. I know out of focus is used as an effect and in ways can be cool, but I think much of the time it wasn't on purpose, and they just went with it for effect. Because at crucial moments when people were talking they were clearly out of focus.

 

There would be a pan from a persons face to a book they were reading and the book would be totally out of focus. They would cut to another shot, and then back to the book which would then be in focus.

 

On top of the camera always shaking, the editing was frantic. Shots didn't last longer than 2 seconds and during action sequences shots were less than a second. They didn't keep any spacial continuity from shot to shot. So everytime they cut to a new shot spacially the camera was looking from a different perspective so you had to reorient yourself to where everything is, and the camera shook constantly so you had to refocus on what was going on, but that shot would only last a few seconds.

 

By the end of the movie I was so exhausted I just wanted it to be over. The visual style they chose completely overshadowed the story, so I couldn't even tell you what it was about. I just pray that I never have to sit through another movie with the camera shaking that much, it's just pure torture.

[Nate Downes]

I've been concerned over this movie mostly because I was a fan of the Bourne Identity novel, and cannot understand *HOW* you could make a sequel that makes any sence.

[John Pytlak RIP]

Many projectionists on the Film Handlers Forum at http://www.film-tech.com also complained that the jumpy camerawork was more of a distraction than an aid to the storytelling.

[Josh Hill]

downix,

 

If you're concerned about how it pans out sequel wise you should ask Robert Ludlum, because I do believe this is also based on a novel as was the first.

[Nate Downes]

I see the Bourne Supremecy is available from the local library, I think I'll take it out and have a read. The Bourne Identity was such a fantastic book, yet I have not seen the movie at this time. I am afraid of it not living up to the grandeur of the book, honestly. Plus, deep down, I had secret ambitions to do my own movie based on it and was rather saddened when I heard of the movie coming out.

[Bill Totolo]

I'm glad to hear it wasn't just me- I got stock with seats in the second row at the the Cinerama Dome. I couldn't even follow a lot of the fight scenes. They were so jerky on a long lens, constantly breaking the 180 line. Especially in the scene where he fights the agent at his home, in the kitchen.

It reminded me of the opening scene in NARC.

 

I did like the natural lighting though, very brave. I thought the scenes on the beach in India by the moonlight were very natural, though a bit videoish. Did anyone else feel that?

 

I'm sure they felt they had somewhat of a safety net. It looks like it went through a DI, and I'm guessing the grain/gain was something they felt contributed to the drama.

 

So, I liked the light just not the camerawork and editing style. Bit of a side note, I thought the acting was great for an action movie.

[Nate Downes]

You know, I wonder if my F1.3 lens is fast enough to do natural lighting with. I guess if I combined it with a fast stock like 320 or 500, probably. I wonder if it's fast enough for Tri-X tho.

[Matthew McDermott]

I think your f1.3 lens is going to be fast enough...

 

Though I haven't seen the film yet, I can't imagine the excess of handheld can be any worse than "Irreversible". And I'm sure the content isn't nearly as sickening/disturbing. If you can get past the content it's a great film to reference for how low a light level you can shoot in without any supplemental lighting. Granted they did shoot Vision 800, pushed it a stop and fully embraced grain for dramatic effect. (And matted the image down to 2.35 from S16.) Definitely not appropriate for all,or most, situations but it worked in the context of the film.

[David Mullen ASC]

I shot a whole scene handheld at T/1.3 in 35mm on a feature -- I don't think I'll do THAT again! Those lenses are not really sharp wide-open; they need to be stopped down to a T/2.0 at least. And of course, the depth of field is so low as to be problematic for movement.

[Nate Downes]

Depends on if you are aiming for sharp, as well. I have a few scenes by candlelight, for example, that are to be in softfocus as/is.

[David Mullen ASC]

The problem I had was shooting handheld close-ups -- the combination of the soft lenses and no depth of field made it seem like NOTHING was in-focus ever.

[Nate Downes]

Well, I won't be doing much closeups with this lens, it's focal length is 12.5mm. Can we say "major distortion" in closeups? 8) (note, it's a lens for a 16mm camera)

[Michael Nash]

With the movie being handheld shot under available light I was sure they framed for 1:85. But as the movie opens it turns out to be a super 35 blow up.  Which means they were probably shooting with the lenses wide open.

Huh? I don't get this. You don't have to expose Super 35/2.35:1 any differently than you do Academy/1.85:1.

 

Maybe I don't understand your statement...

[Tenolian Bell]

Well in shooting super 35 for blow up as well as anamorphic its better too have a healthy negative instead of a thin negative to avoid some of films nastier artifacts.

 

They were shooting a lot of available light and handheld.

 

Available light by definition will leave you with a rather thin negative at times, especially in really dark or underexposed scenes, then try stretching that two times wider. It leaves you with huge obvious blocks of grain, milky blacks, and soft focus.

 

Using a 1.85 frame you are not demanding so much of the film and is a easier to hide underexposure and soft focus.

 

Also before I saw the film when the director said it was largely handheld, I expected there to be a lot of floating and unsteadiness. Seems logical to me that would work better with a 1.85 frame than stretched across 2.40. But it was worse than I could have ever imagined. The audience had to watch a 55 to 60 foot screen mercilessly shake and jidder for two hours.

[Michael Nash]

Well in shooting super 35 for blow up as well as anamorphic its better too have a healthy negative instead of a thin negative to avoid some of films nastier artifacts.

I still don't agree. You don't need to expose a negative any differently for a blowup than you would for a contact print. It's true that a blowup adds a little bit of grain, and you might choose to minimize the grain on the negative by overexposing -- but you'd be just as likely to overexpose the same amount for a contact print as well. Optical blowups also add a bit of contrast to the image, so you may not want to overexpose TOO much and get too contrasty.

 

And anamorphic doesn't require overexposure to hide grain, because the grain is automatically smaller by virtue of surface area of the camera negative. And you typically want to work at a slightly higher f-stop with anamorphic lenses, to preserve the best optical quality of those lenses. Anamorphic is contact printed just like 1.85:1, so the assertion that anamorphic needs a healthier negative than 1.85 doesn't make sense.

 

I also don't agree that available light will by definition leave you with a thin negative, unless you're talking about night exteriors or slow ASA film. I haven't seen the movie and don't know light levels or what stocks they used, but 500 speed film gets you a healthy stop in many available light situations.

 

>then try stretching that two times wider.

>Using a 1.85 frame you are not demanding so much of the film and is easier to hide underexposure and soft focus.

 

No, only the print is compressed 2x for anamorphic projection. The surface area of a 2.35:1 Super35 frame is about the same as a 1.85:1 Academy frame, meaning the grain of the film will appear about the same size. And you could argue that a Super35 blowup will look even softer than a 1.85 contact print, hiding focus buzzes even more than 1.85. But in practice I think both formats reveal sloppy focus just the same. Milky, grainy shadows look every bit as bad in crisp contact printing as they do after a blowup.

 

And all this is considering traditional optical techniques, disregarding digital intermediates.

[David Mullen ASC]

It doesn't hurt to rate a stock a little slower if a blow-up process will be involved, but it's not definite that any film shooting in Super-35 must therefore for overexposing their stock. They could choose not to (and from what I hear about the graininess, it sounds like they decided not to.) For example, "Panic Room" was shot underexposed in Super-35.

[Tenolian Bell]

I still don't agree. You don't need to expose a negative any differently for a blowup than you would for a contact print.

 

And anamorphic doesn't require overexposure to hide grain,

 

I also don't agree that available light will by definition leave you with a thin negative, unless you're talking about night exteriors or slow ASA film. I haven't seen the movie and don't know light levels or what stocks they used, but 500 speed film gets you a healthy stop in many available light situations.

 

No, only the print is compressed 2x for anamorphic projection.

I didn't say overexposure I just said a healthy negative, you can achieve that through several different means. You could actually light the film with proper exposure, preflash, production flash, post flash, or push process.

 

Here are some quotes from Russle Carpenter (True Lies, Titanic) and his thoughts on super 35 blow ups.

 

>The grimmest reality of Super 35 is that your entire film basically gets re-photographed in order >to be released "widescreen" in theaters --

 

>1.) Give the original photography a healthy exposure. I rate the films quite considerably, giving >the exposure an extra 2/3 stop. Underexposure looks pretty grim in the blowup, however, the >new Vision print stocks give you a little more room to screw up here.

 

>2.) Use the sharpest part of the lens. You have a choice to extract the image from the upper >part of the negative (common top framing) or from the center.

 

>3.) Use finer-grained films when possible if you are going for a lustrous rich look. Look at the >extraordinary blow-up Caleb Deshanel got on "The Patriot" using medium- and fine-grained >films. On the night exteriors on "Titianic," I had to use a fast film -- Kodak 5279, but it held up >quite well because I exposed it somewhat conservatively.

 

With anamorphic again I didn't say it needed over exposure I was saying not too thin of a negative. I agree underexposure doesn't automatically bring on execessive grain and I didn't say it would. But there is a threshhold of low enough light where grain comes into play.

 

I pretty much said that available light will yield you a thin negative when shooting dark or underexposed scenes, what is there to disagree about? If you are shooting outdoors under the midday sun available light, you are not having underexposure problems.

 

I know the print is compressed for anamorphic projection but that is still made from a dupe of a dupe of the original negative, which if was really underexposed in the first place will yield a great deal of grain in the third or fourth generation copy that will be projected two time larger.

 

Well all I have to say is the proof is in the final image. The Bourne Supremacy was a super 35m blow up, which at times had excessive grain, milky blacks, and soft focus.

[Tenolian Bell]

The surface area of a 2.35:1 Super35 frame is about the same as a 1.85:1 Academy frame, meaning the grain of the film will appear about the same size. And you could argue that a Super35 blowup will look even softer than a 1.85 contact print, hiding focus buzzes even more than 1.85. But in practice I think both formats reveal sloppy focus just the same. Milky, grainy shadows look every bit as bad in crisp contact printing as they do after a blowup.

Both surface areas are not the same in projection though.

 

Once you are stretching the same frame across twice the surface area it will reveal more technical defects in the frame.

 

A 35mm blow up could hide soft focus if the entire picture is soft in the first place, there wasn't a sharpness problem withe "Bourne" the shots were outta' focus. You can only show it even more projecting it on a larger canvass.

 

Grain will not reveal itself as easily in a straight contact print as it would in an optical blow up. Of course that depends on the amount of grain in the first place but you know grain will be exaggerated in anamorphic projection.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I like to shot fairly wide open and I hate having millions of filters in front of

the lens since they always induce problems (in fact, I'm not to fond of

matteboxes altogether). That means using the slowest filmstock possible

for any given situation. Frankly, I can't rememeber the last time I used

500ASA speed film because I had to for exposure. It's always too much, it

seems. So shooting exteriors, or even interiors, in natural light doesn't

seem like such a massive stretch to me.

 

I did a music video about 6 months ago which was entirely in an interior

hotel room and I used only natural light (except for the shots where she's

wearing a red dress, where I used one Kinoflo 4x4). We shot on Fuji 250D

and as I recalled, we averaged about T2.8-2 on her on a very overcast day.

You can check out the stills under the artist September on my site here if

you wish:

 

 

Adam's site

[John Pytlak RIP]

Exposing a film at its rated exposure index EI will give good results. Certainly, some overexposure of a color negative film (up to 1 stop) will give a "richer" negative with finer grain, more shadow detail, and slightly increased color saturation.

 

But extreme overexposure may place highlight information on the "shoulder" of the film's sensitometric characteristic, compressing (but usually not clipping) highlight information. And a very dense negative may require changes in printer setup, or have more electronic noise during telecine transfer.

 

Film tone reproduction:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/h1/structure.shtml

[Wendell_Greene]

Well all I have to say is the proof is in the final image. The Bourne Supremacy was a super 35m blow up, which at times had excessive grain, milky blacks, and soft focus.

FYI, The Bourne Supremacy wasn't an optical blowup, it underwent a DI which leads me to believe that the final look was the result of stylistic choices by the filmmakers rather than a result of lack of craft.

[Michael Nash]

Both surface areas are not the same in projection though.

If they're projected on the same size screen they are! ;) It's true that the blowup degrades the image, but I still don't agree that the surface area has that much to with it (the magnification is more like 1.6, not the full 2x). The optical step does affect the image quality though.

 

You may indeed be right that it's better to err on the side of extra density on the camera negative when doing a blowup, but I don't think that automatically means a Super-35 film needs to be shot at a different aperture than a 1.85:1 spherical film.

 

And I still can't agree that 1.85 hides soft focus any better. If the 1.85:1 screen is smaller then yes; but a wider aspect ratio doesn't always mean a bigger screen. One of the major shortcoming of Super35 blowups is the overall softening of the image, compared to contact printing. But again, I think both formats actually reveal soft focus just the same.

 

I guess most of the disagreements here come down to blanket statements and sematics. I can understand following certain rules of thumb for blowups and large screen projection, but I also think that there are exceptions and less-than ideal circumstances that you have to allow for as well. So I can't really support statements about focus and density needing to be any different between 1.85 and 2.35 spherical.

[Matt]

The frist thing i noticed when wathcing this film was the jumpy filming. It was a major distraction for me and my non-filmer friend. So that proves that it was not just us who did not like it. He leaned over and asked if it was supposed to be like that. Sadly, I had to say yes.

[Brad Grimmett]

I saw this film the other night and I really liked it. I have to agree with the other people that said that the handheld is too much though. In scenes where there was hardly any movement by the actors the camera was flailing all over the place. It was obviuously intentional, but it seems like they went a bit far with it. Also, what's up with the focus? I'm assuming the out of focus stuff was intentional, but I just don't get the point. Anyone have any theories about it?

[Matthew McDermott]

I don't know about the soft focus being intentional. If it was going out and then coming back in for emotional effect, maybe, but in the out of focus shots it just stayed soft. I think someone just blew it and didn't say anything or notice. If that's not what happened, it was a bad stylistic choice.

 

Although the handheld long lens stuff was really shaky it didn't detract from the film for me. It was pretty intense at times but it didn't intrude into my understanding of what was happening in the story. But then again, I didn't mind The Idiots either... :lol: