Indiana Jones and Crystal Skull etc.

[Keith Walters]

I saw it last night, digitally projected at the new Reading Cinemas in the new Rouse Hill Shopping complex North West of Sydney.

 

Sydney residents might like to check out this venue; access is easy from most of Sydney via the M4/M2/M7 motorways (via Old Windsor Road), parking is really easy, (since they basically built a huge car park on a former golf course, then built an entire town centre/shopping complex over the top of it!). The cinemas are new, and admission is cheap! And there are lots of nice restaurants and cafes for before and after. (There are even new apartments for sale if you want to stay longer :lol:)

 

I don't know what sort of projector was used. I had no idea it was going to be digitally projected so I didn't ask beforehand, and there was nobody there who could give me any technical details afterwards at 10:30 on a Sunday night.

 

For the most part the projection was excellent. Even right up front I couldn't see any sign of pixel structure. There were some bleached highlights, but of course I have no way of knowing whether that is the fault of the projector or the source material. The film grain was jsut visible, and certainly not intrusive.

 

The biggest letdown was the darker scenes in the tunnels and so on, because the projector simply could not produce true blacks. As a result, at no time was the cinema ever in darkness; quite different from film projection.

 

Nonetheless, I seriously doubt that most people would ever notice any of this.

 

As for the movie itself, well it has the same problem most CGI heavy films have these days: if this film had come out 20 years ago, people would still be talking about it, but it's very much "more of the same". To me it looked more like a ILM showreel than a movie. For the most part, the lighting was very flat, like the sets were lit for video.

 

The story was pissweak, almost as though the writer got halfway through the script, then sent it off to a sweatshop in China to finish it <_< .

 

The atom bomb explosion sequence was visually impressive, but I don't see the relevance to the story. It almost looks like somebody offered them the sequence and they shoehorned it into the film script because it looked good.

 

And Indy can get up and walk after being blown a couple of miles out of a house by an atomic explosion, locked in a refrigerator?! A refrigerator in the basement, not going anywhere, I could buy. Just. And were there really lead-lined refrigerators in those days?

 

Someone should also tell George/Steven that there were no Red Led digital readouts in 1957!

 

And is gunpowder magnetic? Never heard of that before.

 

There were some major plot holes. The crystal skull is strongly magnetic, but it attracts gold as well?! So they cover this deficiency by having Mutt point out that "Gold isn't magnetic," but offer no other explanation. The two-vehicle chase through the Amazonian jungle has a certain kiddy appeal, but how come all of a sudden they can toss the crystal skull around like a football, without it latching itself immovably to the iron bodywork?! And everything else made of iron in the near vicinity.

 

The jungle ant sequence was too ridiculous for words. How could anything else live in that jungle?

 

The ending was a real letdown, almost like a Simpsons Halloween Special parody of an action movie :lol:

[Keith Walters]

"Though Frank Scully's 'Behind the Flying Saucers' 1950 told about UFO crashes with the dead saucermen taken to Wright-Patterson, there is no mention of Roswell. The principal crash was at Aztec NM. Scully's book was exposed as a hoax in 1952"

 

About 20 years ago I went to a public lecture run by the Australian Skeptics association to debunk the popular UFO culture.

 

As part of the slide show they showed a clipping from a brief 1947 newspaper article that reported the alleged UFO sighting, BEFORE the "Flying Saucer" craze.

In the article , the pilot was never quoted as using the term "Flying Saucer", he simply reported a "wedge-shaped object" skipping from cloud to cloud like "a saucer tossed across a lake". The fact that all of a sudden people dutifully started seeing "Flying Saucers" more or less proves that that whole thing was the product of people's over-active imaginations. Unfortunately, I've never been able to track down that article.

 

They also had a pictures of allegedly leaked Air Force documents, plus copies of real Air Force stationery, which needless to say, look nothing like the "leaked" documents. As one official said, all they had to do was write a letter to the Air Force and they could have copied from the letterhead of the reply; obviously they couldn't be bothered even doing that much!

[Leo Anthony Vale]

And is gunpowder magnetic? Never heard of that before.

 

When you're a kid what's more attractive than home made gun powder?

 

Fuses are a problem.

 

So many spoilers. Now I'll have to wait until the library gets the DVD and hope I'll have forgotten the spoilers by then.

[Arni Heimir]

When you're a kid what's more attractive than home made gun powder?

 

Fuses are a problem.

 

So many spoilers. Now I'll have to wait until the library gets the DVD and hope I'll have forgotten the spoilers by then.

 

I was under the impression that the crystal skull was magnetic and the metal in the gun powder would be drawn to it.

[Leo Anthony Vale]

I was under the impression that the crystal skull was magnetic and the metal in the gun powder would be drawn to it.

 

Saltpetre, often extracted from chicken poop or urine, sulpher and charcol. No metal involved.

[Matt Butler]

About 20 years ago I went to a public lecture run by the Australian Skeptics association to debunk the popular UFO culture.

 

"As part of the slide show they showed a clipping from a brief 1947 newspaper article that reported the alleged UFO sighting, BEFORE the "Flying Saucer" craze.

In the article , the pilot was never quoted as using the term "Flying Saucer", he simply reported a "wedge-shaped object" skipping from cloud to cloud like "a saucer tossed across a lake". The fact that all of a sudden people dutifully started seeing "Flying Saucers" more or less proves that that whole thing was the product of people's over-active imaginations. Unfortunately, I've never been able to track down that article."

 

Another version behind the "flying saucer" sightings coincided with early US military/ intelligence agencies releasing high altitude balloons carrying telemetric packages near the borders of the then USSR to track Soviet radar station reaction times in the late 1940's.

These would not necessarily land where they could be recovered discretely and so sightings were encouraged to be reported.

 

The Japanese had attempted to launch incendary devices attached to balloons against the US mainland during WW2 with little success.

 

Before the Americans perfected high altitude intelligence gathering flights - think CIA sponsored Lockheed aircraft designs etc. this simple balloon technology was employed.

As they descended and deflated the spherical shape of the silver balloon deformed into an elliptical shape hence the "saucer".

 

I've always been intrigued how the aliens seemed to have saucer designs that looked very much like 1950's terrestial retro styles!

[Keith Walters]

Saltpetre, often extracted from chicken poop or urine, sulpher and charcol. No metal involved.

This is actually something of a factoid.

 

Many novels have described people digging in manure piles for saltpetrre crystals, but the actual manufacture of saltpetre is quite an involved process, as a group of chemists recently discovered when they were challenged to see if they could manufacture some gunpowder from barnyard materials.

 

The basic procedure starts with the fermentation of nitrogenous waste such as manure, urine etc, which produces ammonium nitrate, which then has to be extracted by a lengthy (and malodorous) boiling and crystallizing process. The ammonium nitrate is then mixed with wood ash, which mostly consists of potassium carbonate. The two substances react to produce potassium nitrate, which then has to be purified by more laborious crystallizing and washing operations.

 

Proper gunpowder requires the charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur to be carefully melted and then ground to the desired granularity, an extremely hazardous process!

 

Early gunpowder had a fairly short shelf life, as impurities in the saltpetre make it tend to absorb water, making the gunpowder useless. The only safe way to recover is is to dissolve out the saltpetre with hot water and recrystallize it.

[John Holland]

Think we should get off the Aliens have landed stuff and back to this film ,like it should win the Golden Raspberry award for worst cinematography by a respected Oscar winning camerman whilst having sheds loads of money to spend to make it look good.!!!

[Keith Walters]

Think we should get off the Aliens have landed stuff and back to this film ,like it should win the Golden Raspberry award for worst cinematography by a respected Oscar winning camerman whilst having sheds loads of money to spend to make it look good.!!!

At least they had the decency to shoot on film! I mean, after the combined indignities of Jar Jar Binks and 1440 x 800 pixel videotape; will Star Wars ever again be able to show its face in polite cinematic society?

 

By the way, aside from Indy 4, has GL been responsible for anything else significant since SWIII?

[Arni Heimir]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. What is wrong with you people. The cinematography was great. The film was for most who saw it very entertaining.

[Ollie Bartlett]

By the way, aside from Indy 4, has GL been responsible for anything else significant since SWIII?

 

You mean aside from the systematic destruction of the good name of two of the greatest trilogies in film history? According to IMDB he's responsible for the lousy english summer we're having, high fuel prices, and all the pain and suffering in the world.

 

OK, maybe, just maybe this isnt true, but somehow Indy 4 became only the fifth film ever to make me leave the cinema genuinely angry (the others being Star wars 1, 2, 3 and the new Transformers. Seriously... stop abusing the films of my youth).

 

I didnt like the comedy CGI gophers or whatever they were. I wasnt sure why the nuke sequence was even there. I dont get why all the lights and metal things werent attracted to the alien in the first place, which would have made it much easier to find with all the hanging lamps pointing directly towards it. I didnt like the over the shoulder where Mutt clearly isnt talking.

 

However, on the plus, although the diffusion and overblown highlights on a lot of the sequences were excessive and out of place, especially when there was talk of being sensitive to the style of the original films, the very fact that you guys have been talking about the use of behind the lens nets has made me go and try it for myself, and I've now had very pleasent results using both black stockings of different weave aswell as a perforated plastic baguette wrapper (65 pence from Waitrose, with a free baguette inside. The tights werent available).

 

Dissapointed by the film, but then, could it ever going to live upto my expectations? Probably not... neither could Star Wars. Maybe its not Lucas thats ruined these things for me but my own expectations which were ultimately too high, but only so because i have been blown away by the work of these very same artists in the past.

 

It wasnt great, but it's inspired a lot of discussion which in turn has educated me on everything from lighting techniques to the manufacture of rudimentary gunpowder based on a derivative of chicken poop. These are valuable skills and gotta be worth something.

 

"Thats all i have to say about that" (Now that was a great film!)

Edited June 4, 2008 by Ollie Bartlett

[Mark Dunn]

For 20 years everyone wondered why GL didn't direct again after 'A New Hope'.

Then 'Phantom Menace' came out and we had our answer.

[John Holland]

Come on chaps this is Spielberg film shot by his long time Dop . And something went very wrong and i will keep saying this it looks like it was shot by my 17 year old son who doing film at college . My 19 year old daughter went to see it because i said its "Fun" which most of it is , she came back and said it was poop, can you pay for my ticket !!

[David Calson]

If somebody would be nice enough to tell me the film type, camera type, lens type of the past three films I'd surely appreciate it.

[John Holland]

Blade you can find this for yourself without to much effort !! All i will say is whatever the Kodak Stock at the time [ changed it all the time ] and have never got right since ECN1 5254 [5254 wasnt used on any off orginal 3] Same cameras Panaflex same Panavision Lenses maybe with a couple of newer versions. But looks awful .

[Ignacio Aguilar]

If somebody would be nice enough to tell me the film type, camera type, lens type of the past three films I'd surely appreciate it.

 

For the original Indy films, Douglas Slocombe used Panavision cameras and C-Series anamorphic lenses.

"Raiders" was all shot using Kodak 5247 (125T). The same stock was used for the latter films together with Kodak 5294 (400T) high-speed film stock for night and interiors.

[Max Jacoby]

Gosh, was this film boring...

[Mark Williams]

Gosh, was this film boring...

I'd agree to some extent. The reason the film got made according to steven spielberg was for the fans and I think some thanks are due to them for doing that. I just hope that the next film takes on board some of the criticisms. They can do it. They did it. All they need to do is drop any props they felt indy needed like a son to take over the mantle and let indy do what he does best. and get back to basics.

[John Holland]

Ok Max but what did you think of the lighting DI etc ? john.

[Max Jacoby]

I don't recall the original Indy films anymore (saw the last on in 89 or 90 in the cinema), so I cannot comment on how faithful the look is to the previous ones, but really, this one wasn't very subtle was it? Exteriors with HMIs bashing straight into people's faces. At times, when the natural light was failing, it looked like it was shot in a studio in front of a backdrop.

 

In general I really like flares, but in this film they were really annoying somehow. Much stronger and more obvious. I guess that comes with the territory of lighting everything to T8 or T11.

 

DI, well I've seen better from E Film, it's such a waste when anamorphic only gets a 2K DI.

[Michel Hafner]

Its much more a point of perspective. There is good and bad digital projection and 35mm prints.

Try projecting your home HD projector on to a 60 foot screen and it will look far worse than both.

It was not built for that so it can not do that. That's the whole point. Because it does not have to be a light cannon it can do a much better job with On-Off contrast. Image size is not everything.

[George Ebersole]

I saw it last night, digitally projected at the new Reading Cinemas in the new Rouse Hill Shopping complex North West of Sydney.

 

Sydney residents might like to check out this venue; access is easy from most of Sydney via the M4/M2/M7 motorways (via Old Windsor Road), parking is really easy, (since they basically built a huge car park on a former golf course, then built an entire town centre/shopping complex over the top of it!). The cinemas are new, and admission is cheap! And there are lots of nice restaurants and cafes for before and after. (There are even new apartments for sale if you want to stay longer :lol:)

 

I don't know what sort of projector was used. I had no idea it was going to be digitally projected so I didn't ask beforehand, and there was nobody there who could give me any technical details afterwards at 10:30 on a Sunday night.

 

For the most part the projection was excellent. Even right up front I couldn't see any sign of pixel structure. There were some bleached highlights, but of course I have no way of knowing whether that is the fault of the projector or the source material. The film grain was jsut visible, and certainly not intrusive.

 

The biggest letdown was the darker scenes in the tunnels and so on, because the projector simply could not produce true blacks. As a result, at no time was the cinema ever in darkness; quite different from film projection.

 

Nonetheless, I seriously doubt that most people would ever notice any of this.

 

As for the movie itself, well it has the same problem most CGI heavy films have these days: if this film had come out 20 years ago, people would still be talking about it, but it's very much "more of the same". To me it looked more like a ILM showreel than a movie. For the most part, the lighting was very flat, like the sets were lit for video.

 

The story was pissweak, almost as though the writer got halfway through the script, then sent it off to a sweatshop in China to finish it <_< .

 

The atom bomb explosion sequence was visually impressive, but I don't see the relevance to the story. It almost looks like somebody offered them the sequence and they shoehorned it into the film script because it looked good.

 

And Indy can get up and walk after being blown a couple of miles out of a house by an atomic explosion, locked in a refrigerator?! A refrigerator in the basement, not going anywhere, I could buy. Just. And were there really lead-lined refrigerators in those days?

 

Someone should also tell George/Steven that there were no Red Led digital readouts in 1957!

 

And is gunpowder magnetic? Never heard of that before.

 

There were some major plot holes. The crystal skull is strongly magnetic, but it attracts gold as well?! So they cover this deficiency by having Mutt point out that "Gold isn't magnetic," but offer no other explanation. The two-vehicle chase through the Amazonian jungle has a certain kiddy appeal, but how come all of a sudden they can toss the crystal skull around like a football, without it latching itself immovably to the iron bodywork?! And everything else made of iron in the near vicinity.

 

The jungle ant sequence was too ridiculous for words. How could anything else live in that jungle?

 

The ending was a real letdown, almost like a Simpsons Halloween Special parody of an action movie :lol:

When I saw Indy4 the other week only one thing really struck me, and that is all the use of digital effects. I don't neccesarily mean the CGI, but all the green-screen work to insert Harrison Ford into stunts that his contract wouldn't let him do "live", so to speak.

 

The Army-Ant sequence, as an example; there was a time when a film crew would have travelled down to South America to capture some footage of army ants, and then work it into the film. The idea here being to make the sequence look real as well as adventursome for the effect of the story. Instead the audience was given a lot of CGI that didn't look all that convincing.

 

Ditto with the stunts and digital extras. As an example, the motorcycle sequence; it looked fake in a digital sense. I wasn't sold that what I was seeing was "real" in the sense of the film's reality. Seeing Harrison Ford slide under library tables and so forth all looked really phoney to my eyes. There was a time when this kind of stunt would've been shot live with a stuntman, or Ford himself in a controlled environment.

 

I didn't mind all the comic-book story stuff. The aliens, the natives, even the ants, but like I said none of it seemed convincing in the least. I felt like I was watching a cartoon that was striving to be a good adventure film.

 

I could go on, but I'll hold there.

Edited June 16, 2008 by George Ebersole

[Max Jacoby]

I felt like I was watching a cartoon that was striving to be a good adventure film.

Sounds like George Lucas' 3 last Star Wars.

[Michael Lehnert]

Indeed!

 

If Spielberg really wanted INdy IV to look like he said during the run-up to the production which we discussed so intensively here on the two other Indy-themed threads - i.e. as integrated and consistent to the original trilogy look, feel, used tech/kit and technicalicities - then he failed, and frankly, his long time collaborators let him (and themselves) down in THAT respect (not saying that kaminksi is a diletante, but he did not achieve what they proclaimed they wanted to do at all -- if they really tried, which I increasingly doubt).

 

Kaminskis cinematography is unmotivated in its stylistics, and uninspired in respect to the Indy films and what they could have contained "naturally/practically" in a visually stunning way. It lead me to appreciate the cinematically less sophisticated, but visually more evoking and craftpersonship-wise more professional and utterly devoid of any hint of self-indulgence work of DOuglas Slocombe much more.

And John Williams seemed to have dialed-in the score after working on it over one week-end fiddling with GarageBand loops, not producing any memorable theme at all!

 

THis looks like a franchise being re-invigorated past its prime after the rights were purchased by a new producer, who shoehornes his own visual style and ideas into it by executive producing it - happens too often now, from Bionic women to Star Trek to other remakes for the screen. And when we paraphrase that, then I think that Lucas' style prevailed and either Spielberg didn't really care in respect to what he (and noone else in this industry) could have achieved with the properties of this series. This is why I say that this chance to make a good film was ruinded by self-indulgent people who have grown a bit too acustomed to each other to really stimule themselves to strive for the better. I think the past 15 years of Kaminski-Spielberg link-up have produced the least interesting work by this director, and Kaminksi became to me increasingly overrated as a DoP over that time period.

 

The best thing that came out of this is an anti-agism proclamation for both female and male leads, in person of Karen Allen and Harrison Ford. THat was overdue in times where Brosnan and Paltrow have to proclaim here in London that they can't find work because they are too old (other then producing for themselves, of course, which is increasingly difficult, of course).

 

I am sure with the new Indy trilogy taking shape (clearly marking George Lucas hold over the franchise and also settting up parallel history here to the Star Wars films <_< ), Indy' IV's style will make more sens vis-a-vis the next two films. But I am sure that they will not have the same impact in cine-history as the original trilogy did. Star WaRs history repeating itself here.

 

BTW, saw Indy IV a third time at a friends place on one of those media kit DVDs that get distributed for broadcaster's reviews. On a TV screen, it looked actually much better then on the screen. Sure, the anamorphic greatness suffers, but this seemed to have a better visual impact on a small screen that when projected. Suprirsed me to see that.

 

 

(sorry for the typos, I am writing from the field in a hurry on a laptop - sunlight not helping with the LCD screen here - what ever happend to sunlight-readable display technologoy anyway?! Do I have to buy an OLPC to get that?)

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

Hmm, I expected a production of this level to get a 4K DI\filmout...