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Indiana Jones and Crystal Skull etc.


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I just got back from seeing it . Fun good movie just as its meant to be , but let down by the Cinematography . Lots of scenes [ mostly exteriors but not all] are overlit much to much diffusion and a DI which mucks up flesh tones most of the time . Complete waste of time shooting Anamorphic i saw a film print good projection but images are so soft its mad to have done this and not a photo/chem finish .

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I like how one critic sums it up, "It should have been called, "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Exposition."

 

This movie brings back memories of 'The Lost World' Some nostalgia but overall an ehhh what were you thinking mentality.

 

All the cgi and different cinematography really ticked me off.

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Uh Oh... that's not great to hear, John. I hope I won't have to agree with Karl's statement re. Lucas, because although I grew up with Han Solo and Kenner's action figures, Darth Lucas recent practices on every level have eaten up all credit gained during my childhood. I sometimes wish he would return doing what he did from the mid-1980s to late 1990s... nothing.

 

Thanks for sensitising me for some aspects of the finish and cinematographic minutiae. I will pay attention if I notice those as clearly as others have, plus the CGi integration which bothered me a bit in the trailers (but those split-seconds shouldn't bias me). As I feel a bit too pre-informed now to just follow the film, I will leave my partner unaware of that (I guess she took too much interest in Aatons, latitude and Dedolights, lately, too... bad influence from me...) and have her focus the plot, and then, we will put our two impressions together over a Starbuck half-skinny semi-decaf latte afterwards... or "hot water" as we call it!

 

Thanks for the first impressions, guys.

 

-Michael

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If you get past all of the flaws it was entertaining, sort of funny and probably will still make more than enough money to pay back all the extra money spent on CGI. My major problems were the monkeys and the waterfall, and the fact that Indiana Jones did not get abducted

 

The lighting style was sort of strange in the exteriors at times, the background would look perfectly normal but the characters were lit in such a way that made them feel much to separated from the environment.

 

Where did I park my car :unsure: "It has gone to the space between space." :blink:

 

Jason Anderson

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Can't replicate the look of carbon arcs. Kaminski did his thing....I mean replicating a film look from almost thirty years ago..with todays equiptment? Wish it did look better, but it was good fun and further, I hope they make another. Although I did get a crappy seat (waayyy up front) the film did look muddy and there were too many halo effects around the people, just diffused to hell in some parts for my taste. But, again, the overall film/viewing experience was a treat.

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One more note....

 

The sound in the opening scene was atrocious....the dialogue sounded as if it was over-dubbed with cassette tape from 1980. I actually was thinking, "Is this Harrison Fords voice?" Took me out of the film before it even started, really.

 

But on the look , I'll go see it again (mainly for a better seat!) and give my final opinion.

 

-Jonnie

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Overall, I thought the cinematography was terrible, or at least, not at all suited to my taste.

 

The opening scene alone is brutal. Unmotivated lighting, obvious reflector fill lighting, and Kaminski's net-diffusion look from Munich, in my opinion, look terrible here. Other notable scenes that sucked, in my opinion, were the diner (where Shia talks to Harrison for the first time) where again, brutally unmotivated lighting was in full force, and almost every dark interior in the film -- the warehouse, the graveyard, the ending, etc.

 

Essentially, a guy walks into a pitch black cave with a yellow torch. Once inside, we see lights coming from all over the place -- red, yellow, blue, net-diffused highlights, rim lights, fill. I couldn't help but think "they're doing everything they can possibly do to take me out of this film and crush my suspension of disbelief."

 

Mix that with obvious CG elements, compositions and lighting that emphasize the limitations and edges of the set (as opposed to hiding them) and I left very angry at Kaminski. This looks nothing like previous Indy's, not even The Last Crusade, and it's obvious to me they didn't even try.

 

Not that they had to, of course, but for my taste -- someone who, like a lot of us, grew up with the previous films -- I was entirely unable to suspend my disbelief at what Kaminisk was try to do here.

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Ironic considering Douglas Slocombe never once used a light meter on the original trilogy...

 

That is quite a feat, though surely his gaffer used one or he asked for x footcandles and got it. Care to explain more?

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I shot a fun bit for G4 TV at the Fox in Westwood last night. Interviews like the 1st person in line to see the movie, the last person, etc. Turns out the 1st person in line was a producer for "Hitman".

 

Anyway look for it tonight and/or tomorrow on "Attack of the Show".

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Guest Glen Alexander

this was pilfered from yahoo, what is wrong with this picture? or what do you like? lighting? composition? etc?

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Indiana Jones is highlighted in next months AC, should be interesting to hear the justification for what went on.

There is a shot article in this month's ICG magazine that does not go into much detail at all. They quote Kaminski as using 5274, but then there is a picture with a camera that is labeled as being loaded with 5217.

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There is a shot article in this month's ICG magazine that does not go into much detail at all. They quote Kaminski as using 5274, but then there is a picture with a camera that is labeled as being loaded with 5217.

 

Probably an efx shot.

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In my get home seen it hated cinematography post for people who yet to have the pleasure look for the HMi on the ground behind a jeep thing on a fast tracking shot where the ants are doing their bit its supposed to be the sun but we see the real sun at end of shot ! And at the screening there was a trailer for "Get Smart" which was shot on the Genesis which looked 100% better than Indy and that was just a trailer !!!

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I'm just thinking that efx shots are usually shot on wider lenses, so that you can actually composite something into it. Obviously one can do them on the 180mm as well. I'm just in general a bit vary of the information dispensed in AC and ICG.

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Guest Stephen Murphy

Just came back from seeing it and i actually liked how it was shot for the most part. Too much diffusion in places but on the whole not bad. No where near the level of Slocombes work (and i agree Phil Mehuex would have been a better choice to try and replicate Slocombe's style) but it was an interesting interpretation none the less. Really poorly staged though.

The movie on the other hand was terrible. Loved the first 20 min's after that it all went down hill. And what the hell happened to the "we're doing it all for real" approach that Lucas, Spielberg etc were talking about? There's as much CG (bad CG too) in this movie as in most of the recent summer blockbusters.

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Saw it today, digitally projected at 2K. The film is fun, but the script is very poor and neither Spielberg nor the cast can save it. Surpringsly (at least for me), Harrison Ford is still in good shape to play Indy and gives a decent performance.

 

Regarding the cinematography, I agree with Tim. However, I still can't believe how is it possible that this mess comes from an award-winning cinematographer like Janusz Kaminski. The look is so INCONSISTENT in terms of sharpness, contrast, use of nets and color saturation that it could have been shot by two or three different cinematographers and I wouldn't be surprised (I felt the same with "Die Another Day", shot by George Lucas regular DP). Some scenes clearly show halos and effects created by nets, while others look clean, colorful and sharper, some scenes are hard lit, sometimes the light is much softer and natural looking, etc, so Kaminski has broken most of Slocombe's rules. For instance, Slocombe exposed his scenes to achieve a good reproduction of the skies and backgrounds, so he had to use arcs to fill the actors (remember the opening jungle scene of "Raiders"?). But Kaminski, while still using fill light, has overexposed every background and his skies look very washed out (and I don't want to talk about the effects shots!). If he wanted to follow Slocombe's steps, he has failed. Using lots of backlights and hard fill doesn't bring you automatically the classic "Indy" look. And if he wanted to use his usual style & tricks, it would have been better to forget about imitating Slocombe. But, in my opinion, it's just that he wasn't the right man for this job and Spielberg should have known it.

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Guest Stephen Murphy

Does anybody have an online link or a PDF of the AC articles about the original trilogy's photography. I'd be curious to know what stocks Last Crusade used.

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I don't have the original article, but they most probably used the same stocks from "Temple of Doom": 5247 (125T) and 5294 (400T).

 

Kodak introduced 5296 (500T) in 1989, but "Last Crusade" was shot during the summer of 1988. Perhaps ILM also used 5295, which was a 500T designed for efx shots.

 

"Raiders" was shot on standard 5247, partly because neither Fuji or Kodak had yet introduced their first 250 ASA stocks (ironically, the german film "Das Boot", which used the submarine model and some locations from "Raiders" just after they wrapped, was shot on the first Fuji high-speed stock. DP Jost Vacano was nominated for an Academy Award in 1981, as was Slocombe for "Raiders").

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