Deja Vu

[Brad Grimmett]

I saw Deja Vu tonight. It looked great (I love the use of cross processed reversal) overall, but the Genesis stuff was awful! Any schmo off the street could spot the Genesis footage because of the awful vertical lines from top to bottom. Maybe I just saw a bad print, and maybe this problem wasn't only with the Genesis stuff, but boy was it bad. Did anyone else notice this problem? This was not an issue of seeing an old print. Most of it looked great.

[Max Jacoby]

Do you mean vertical flares? Wasn't Panavision supposed to have gotten rid of this problem by now?

[James Compton]

I saw the film last week. They used VIPER cams for the TIME TRAVEL DEVICE CONTROL ROOM

and video feed scenes only. The rest was film. You can tell it was done purposely.

[Max Jacoby]

The ICG magazine says that night exteriors, night aerials and stuff in the time window were shot on the Genesis (with the pictures to prove it). They tested the Genesis against the Viper and 950 and found the picture to be better.

[Eugene Gekhter]

The ICG magazine says that night exteriors, night aerials and stuff in the time window were shot on the Genesis (with the pictures to prove it). They tested the Genesis against the Viper and 950 and found the picture to be better.

 

I don't know anything about the Viper or Genesis personally, but I did see those vertical lines which makes me thing it was a digital video transcoding problem. It was weird.

 

~Eugene

www.filmtransfer.com

[Guest Giles Sherwood]

Can this problem be seen in the trailer? I didn't see anything too weird in it... What do the vertical flares look like? Are they the same as the green lines that they had to correct in Superman?

[Cole Webley]

I noticed it as well, mostly only in the time window room with Kilmer, Goldberg, and the other cast members--Watch the Apacalypto trailer, I just don't like the way it captures fast motion.

[Brad Grimmett]

Do you mean vertical flares? Wasn't Panavision supposed to have gotten rid of this problem by now?

I wouldn't call them vertical flares. It looked similar to when you shoot a television on film and you can see the scan lines from the TV. Does that make sense? It wasn't only in the control room that I saw this problem. I saw the same thing on night ext's, especially the close ups.

I would figure Panavision would have taken care of this, but apparently not.

 

I saw the film last week. They used VIPER cams for the TIME TRAVEL DEVICE CONTROL ROOM

and video feed scenes only. The rest was film. You can tell it was done purposely.

No, this was most certainly not done purposely. And you can tell that it wasn't done purposely. I don't think you saw what I'm talking about.

Oh, and they didn't use the Viper at all.

 

Can this problem be seen in the trailer? I didn't see anything too weird in it

I just watched the trailer @ http://www.apple.com/trailers/touchstone/d...ical_large.html

and you can see the lines a little bit in the dirty over of Val Kilmer when he's talking to Denzel on the back of the ferry. They're hard to see at this small size, but obviously when blown up to 40 ft. they would be obvious. Have a look and see if you notice. If my memory serves me, that scene was the first time I noticed them when I saw the film.

[Boone Hudgins]

I saw what appeared to be a large grid over some shots that were shot on the Genesis. Some shots had that digital shutter smear, too. But I forgot about it after a while.

[Evan Winter]

Just saw this tonight.

 

Personally I noticed a faint grid like pattern over a night scene between Denzel and Val. It looked almost like somebody has thrown a translucent burlap bag over the lens. It was extremely strange.

 

I hadn't heard that any of the film had been shot digitally and when I saw this weird 'artifact' I thought something must have gone horribly wrong in either filming/processing/printing and that the end result was the best 'save' that could be done.

 

I was actually wondering whether they had seriously pushed the film (for lack of light as opposed to for effect) and then tried some strange post trickery to bring the image back to a 'normal' looking place. Whatever it was it was truly odd.

[David Mullen ASC]

I snuck into a theater and saw the first hour of the movie, and noticed that odd artifact with the Genesis footage, twice, this faint screen-door pattern over the image. Obviously something went wrong somewhere, probably in the original shooting (otherwise, they would have fixed it.) I'll have to ask Panavision what's up with that because I've never seen it before in Genesis material.

[Brad Grimmett]

this faint screen-door pattern over the image.

Yes, that's a great way to describe it. I don't think I was doing a very good job of giving a description...

Please post when you get an answer from Panavision David. I think you'll be able to get a straighter answer out of them than I will.

[Ignacio Aguilar]

I've seen the film today. I didn't find its visuals as inspired as "Man on Fire", but both the look and film are OK. Any info about which film stocks they used?

 

The digital vertical lines are pretty obvious on that night scene between Denzel and Val and on the time window scenes, but I think I've seen them too on daylight exteriors stuff, which is supposed to have been shot on film...

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

The only thing I ever noticed in that trailer is the huge growth on Val Kilmer's cheek. Is that makeup or does he need to see a doctor? :unsure:

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

At Apple.com's trailer site you can download a 1080i version of the trailer, if you're really curious to see what everyone's talking about.

 

I noticed some lack of quality in the out of focus areas of the frames, it just looks so different from film that I'm not too crazy about it yet.

[Tomas Koolhaas]

Hi,

I haven't seen the film in question but I have seen the "Screen door" effect on some footage before shot on the XL1 many years ago while I was in film school. When I asked a VFX friend of mine what he thought it might be he said something about the CCDs may have got overheated/overused or something, I cant remember his exact answer. I have seen it a couple times since in other people's DV projects but never any high end HD projects.

Does anyone know what exactly causes this effect? (I have hunch Phil Rhodes or Tim.J.Durham may know)

Cheers.

[Brad Grimmett]

The digital vertical lines are pretty obvious on that night scene between Denzel and Val and on the time window scenes, but I think I've seen them too on daylight exteriors stuff, which is supposed to have been shot on film...

Did you see them on exteriors on Deja Vu? I didn't notice any problems on any daylight scenes.

[Ignacio Aguilar]

Did you see them on exteriors on Deja Vu? I didn't notice any problems on any daylight scenes.

 

It was more apparent on the low-light scenes, but I believe that I saw it two or three times on daylight scenes which should have been originated on film. The effect was so weird that at first I thought that they'd used some diffusion filter with the lenses wide-open and I was seeing the filter pattern itself or something like that. I wasn't aware of the problem prior to watching the film (and thus I wasn't paying special attention to it), that's why when I read this post I was surprised because nobody mentions those bands on the non-genesis stuff. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I saw I assumed only some night shots and the "time-window" scenes were shot digitally, with the rest being originated in Super-35.

[Brad Grimmett]

that's why when I read this post I was surprised because nobody mentions those bands on the non-genesis stuff. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I saw I assumed only some night shots and the "time-window" scenes were shot digitally, with the rest being originated in Super-35.

From what I understand, you are correct about what scenes were shot digitally. I didn't notice anything in any of the daylight scenes, but if there are problems with the film originated material then maybe the problem isn't with the Genesis at all, but something to do with post. It shocks me that these problems have shown up at all. They're not exactly minor issues.

[Tim Tyler]

Since most of the screen door shots seemed to be CU's and ECU's, I was thinking they made some last minute post decisions to zoom in digitally and those lines were artifacts. The effect was such that it may have not been visible on anything except a large projected image and therefore nobody noticed it until it was too late. That's my guess.

[Tomas Koolhaas]

Hi,

I have seen that screen door effect before on mini-DV footage a couple of different times, I dont think it is a post issue, as it was explained to me (ages ago) it is something to do with the CCD affecting the image.

Has no-one else seen it on any other (aside from deja vu) footage before??

[Brad Grimmett]

Since most of the screen door shots seemed to be CU's and ECU's, I was thinking they made some last minute post decisions to zoom in digitally and those lines were artifacts. The effect was such that it may have not been visible on anything except a large projected image and therefore nobody noticed it until it was too late. That's my guess.

I see your point Tim, but you know this film was screened by (at the very least) the filmmakers on a large screen before it was sent out to be made into 5,000 prints. And I have to assume that if Paul Cameron or Tony Scott saw this they would do something about it. That's what's bugging me the most....I can't figure out how it was allowed to be released like this.

 

Hi,

I have seen that screen door effect before on mini-DV footage a couple of different times, I dont think it is a post issue, as it was explained to me (ages ago) it is something to do with the CCD affecting the image.

Has no-one else seen it on any other (aside from deja vu) footage before??

I've never seen it before. Also, we're not talking about mini-DV, and I'm not sure if the same problems that can occur with mini-DV can occur with the Genesis. I'm not saying they can't....I just don't know.

[David Mullen ASC]

And I have to assume that if Paul Cameron or Tony Scott saw this they would do something about it. That's what's bugging me the most....I can't figure out how it was allowed to be released like this.

 

Well, technical mistakes in movies happen all the time, only now there are digital mistake to add to the list. When they stay in a movie, it's generally because they don't have much choice -- either the mistake is not fixable, or they can't afford to fix it, and they can't reshoot it, and they can't cut the scene without it. So it stays in.

 

I'm sure the mistake (screen door artifact) must be baked into the original photography.

[David Sweetman]

Maybe it's the Tiffen 1/2 Screen Door

[Brad Grimmett]

Well, technical mistakes in movies happen all the time, only now there are digital mistake to add to the list. When they stay in a movie, it's generally because they don't have much choice -- either the mistake is not fixable, or they can't afford to fix it, and they can't reshoot it, and they can't cut the scene without it. So it stays in.

I completely understand that, but these types of things happen much less often on studio films because they generally DO have the budget to fix the problem and often CAN reshoot it. Obviously, this wasn't the case on Deja Vu.

Also, technical mistakes are often much less glaringly obvious than in this instance, and may only be noticed by folks like us that are actively looking for this type of thing.

I'm still interested in what the actual problem is/was...