Collateral

[Guest]

I just finished watching Collateral, good grief what an awful looking "video" image. Too bad it wasn't 35mm, because the script and acting where really first rate.

 

Any one know exactly what camera system this was shot on?

 

Zodiac was shot on the Viper correct? Zodiac actually looked pretty good in the low light night shots. Can't say the same for Collateral.

 

R,

[Alex Worster]

Viper, F900, and film says this article... http://www.cinematographers.nl/THEDoPH4.htm

[Carl Brighton]

I just finished watching Collateral, good grief what an awful looking "video" image. Too bad it wasn't 35mm, because the script and acting where really first rate.

 

Any one know exactly what camera system this was shot on?

 

Zodiac was shot on the Viper correct? Zodiac actually looked pretty good in the low light night shots. Can't say the same for Collateral.

 

R,

Collateral was a mixture of Viper and 35mm film (about 80:20). The odd thing was, they mostly used film for the night shots, where a video camera should have a clear advantage.

Frankly I didn't like the movie OR the cinematography, and the same for Miami Vice.

[Guest Stephen Murphy]

Collateral was a mixture of Viper and 35mm film (about 80:20). The odd thing was, they mostly used film for the night shots, where a video camera should have a clear advantage.

Frankly I didn't like the movie OR the cinematography, and the same for Miami Vice.

 

Funnily enough i happen to really like the photography in this movie. I know it looks smeary and video ish but it suits this particular project. It has a lovely colour pallete and i love the orange glow of LA skyline at night. Not what id like every night exterior movie to look like but perfect for this.

Film was only used for a few night interiors like the nightclub - they night exteriors were mostly if not all HD.

[Walter Graff]

Like all movies, the film looks incredibly different on DVD than it did in a theater. I saw it on both mediums. To try to judge the quality of a film shot for projection on a DVD playback is often misleading and not possible.

[K Borowski]

Whoever said that film was used mostly for nights is wrong. It was used for the daytime shots.

 

It is ironic that I am going to take this stance, seeing as I am a hardcore film-shooter, but I thought Collateral was one of the best-looking, best-used examples of digital cinematography I have seen thusfar.

 

I saw it in theatres, and have it on tape (VHS, long story).

 

What is great about this film is that they used digital's strengths not its weaknesses in a vain effort to make it look like 16- or 35mm.

 

What wonderful use of big DOF at night, lengthened simulated shutter exposures, and boosted gain to do something that it would have been impossible to actually do with film without supplemental lighting.

 

In my opinion this movie was a groundbreaking showcase of *real* nighttime cinematography. It shows us something that would have been impossible to show with film, except in a highly stylized, artificially-lighted way. Granted this movie wasn't all available light, but a great deal of it was shot with only minimal supplemental lighting, and of course, bounce cards.

 

While, sure, skintones aren't pleasing under uncorrected fluorescent lights on a digital sensor chip, they wouldn't have been pleasing on film either, if film could have recorded them (which it couldn't have without having turned into a big, grainy mess)!

 

It has been three years since I saw this film in theatres, so I forget favorite shots, but there were some gorgeous, not classically so, but still gorgeous city shots at night that were really breathtaking, because in part of the great DOF.

 

Haven't seen Zodiac on film or on DVD, but it's easy to make improvements to something that has already been done. Collateral was, to my knowledge, one of the first of its kind.

Edited August 23, 2008 by Karl Borowski