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Cold Mountain


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I saw 'Cold Mountain' yesterday.

 

I am not really a big fan of John Seale's work and I feel that this film clearly showed that Super35 and 500T can be a bad combinaiton for daylight exterior scenes. Especially wide shots were annoyingly grainy. During the battle scene there was one shot that looked like a Super 8 blow-up!

 

Throw in a DI and you have a film that looks not just soft, but also very flat without real blacks and plasticy skintones.

 

Earlier I was at a lab where they showed me a reel from a Super16 feature cropped to 2.39 and blown up optically to 35 anamorphic. This film was shot on 200T and it looked less grainy than 'Cold Mountain'.

 

Max

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Just curious what lab this was.

 

The lab was Color-By-Dejonghe in Belgium. They went through an IP and IN (opical blow-up). Close-ups and medium shots looked very good, obviously when you had wider shots, there was a bit of grain and it wasn't quite as sharp as 35mm (optically printed, not digitally), but it still looked very good. I think the Dop had made an effort to get a very clean and sharp neg (200T and no diffusion) and the result shows.

 

The film also was printed on Agfa CP30, which is an excellent printing stock. I was there for the grading of my film and they printed us a comparison between the Agfa and the High-Con Fuji (3513). The Agfa beat the Fuji hands down: more neutral and deeper blacks, nicer colors and better skin tones.

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Hi,

 

> I was ALMOST impressed by some of the grad shots on zooms during the

> opening battle- then I found out they were accomplised entirely through DI.

 

No, they weren't. I've worked with original scans from that sequence and there's grads all over them. However, there was a very large amount of DI tweaking in that sequence. And it is grainy, but that's largely because the midtones are full of smoke. The most noticeable use of DI in the sequence is to completely flip the colour palette of some shots from a bluish early-morning-overcast to the smoky orange it is in the final, otherwise they enormously mismatch.

 

Phil

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Well, in some ways, the prints looked pretty good technically CONSIDERING the use of zooms combined with Super-35 combined with low-con 500 ASA 5284 combined with a 2K DI...

 

Plus you can justify a softer, grainier look as fitting a period war story.

 

But I preferred it when Seale was at least using the anamorphic format, which counteracted the grain from using fast stocks. Although it was a major pain for him to deal with slow anamorphic zooms I guess.

 

I like Seale philosophically because he doesn't push his cinematography up front and center -- he's all about giving the actors and director more time on the set by keeping his end simple. Sometimes he's given a project where he can really shine and other times, he stays in the background more. His lighting style is not strictly naturalistic -- he'll use hairlights, harder keys, etc. now and then to make actors look better.

 

You look at his period work like in "Cold Mountain" and candlelight and lantern-light scenes look a little more "lit" artificially because of the light levels he needs for the zoom lens plus a tendency to use blue "moonlight" in the backgrounds. Although Roger Deakins also does moonlight in a similar way -- but he works with primes at wider apertures and motivates the light more closely to the practical sources, exposing the practical sources hotter with more fall-off.

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I like Mr. John Seale's work, my favorite at this time is "The English Patient",

directed by Anthony Minghella. I'm sorry but I thought the story telling in

Cold Mountain was weak!(who am I?) I too was not excited about the light,

the mood. I liked the camera work,framing in the film. Music was good for

story and strong.

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While the T/2.8 11:1 Primo is pretty fast for a 35mm cine zoom, for candlelight scenes you need to be at T/2 or faster to really get the flames to do a lot of the lighting.

 

Remember that "Barry Lyndon" used 3-wick candles, 100 ASA film pushed to 200 ASA, with a f/0.7 lens -- to get that today, you'd have to use 800 ASA film at T/1.4.

 

Anyway, Seale's work rarely looks like it was shot in super low-light levels with a shallow focus look, so candlelight scenes tend to look "lit".

 

Most people these days would probably shoot a candlelight scene at wide-open on a Cooke S4, for example, so T/2.0. While the jump from T/2.8 to T/2.0 doesn't seem that much, it is twice as much exposure.

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Yes sir! Mr. Mullen,

I like idea of Cooke S4/T2.0. Have used Cooke lenses with 4X5,8X10 b&w.

Zone System with absolutely superb work print before any creative changes.

Pricey though! David I wore my spotmeter around my neck while shooting!

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Earlier I was at a lab where they showed me a reel from a Super16 feature cropped to 2.39 and blown up optically to 35 anamorphic. This film was shot on 200T and it looked less grainy than 'Cold Mountain'.

I am so jealous! I want go to a lab for my own film. For now I am stuck on GL2's and an XL1 on High School Films (or do I need to say videos?).

 

I wish I had the budget to let me shoot film but there is no chance I will be able to even try anytime soon.

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Never Quit! Never Quit! Never Quit!

Believe me I love cinematography(now days I don't sleep much) too busy

studying! That aside you have'nt lived until you've shot 8X10 sheet film

(Kodak of course) with a Cooke lens. Imagine 8X10 negative hanging in

holder in darkroom. I'm telling you that you can read the negative! Well

enough of that cause I'm a cinematographer now. Just one last thing, I love

John Seale's work but I'm sorry the light in "Cold Mountain" just did not move

me. Maybe its just me. I have the film "The English Patient" playing in the dvd

player right now on to Sony screen. I love this film,the story,and Mr. Seale has

told it well!

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"... a reel from a Super16 feature cropped to 2.39 and blown up optically to 35 anamorphic. This film was shot on 200T and it looked less grainy than 'Cold Mountain'.

 

Max

Well, that's why I love shooting 16mm.

If you're "really" careful, light well, use good glass and slow stock, you can make it look as good as "some" 35mm, namely stuff shot like you're talking about.

 

Matt Pacini

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