Saving Private Ryan

Kemalettin Sert · April 17, 2010

im wondering how these flame effects occures,special effects or lenses ? and which stocks used in this movie

Thanks

Kemalettin Sert · April 18, 2010

no idea ?

Brian Drysdale · April 18, 2010

From memory, they slightly mistimed the shutter during the film pull down, so that you got vertical smearing on the bright highlights.

April 18, 2010

Isn't this the technique Kaminski credits in the ASC mag interview to borrowing from Full Metal Jacket, where Douglas Milsome had the camera's shutter thrown out of synch?

Brian Drysdale · April 18, 2010

I believe so, there seemed to be a fashion for it around that time.

K Borowski · April 18, 2010

Only time I had it happen, it was an undesirable effect on my family home movies.

Very overused after "Ryan." IIRC, they were going for it because this was an undesired effect that combat cameramen had to deal with when their cameras got shell-shocked by near misses from explosives. Other movies were just trying to "cash in" on the same effect in an unmotivated manner. Same thing with all the romances set against historical events after "Titanic."

The film would also jump out of the gate when you had a bomb go off. Don't have a clip, but 4-12 frames the film would be misframed or streaking, then jump back.

Brian Drysdale · April 19, 2010

Only time I had it happen, it was an undesirable effect on my family home movies.

I've had the effect on my CP 16R when the bottom loop was too tight, after that the loop was made so that it just cleared the lower casing without touching.

K Borowski · April 20, 2010

I've had the effect on my CP 16R when the bottom loop was too tight, after that the loop was made so that it just cleared the lower casing without touching.

That's basically having an only partial intermittent movement, so the same effect, the film is moving slightly during exposure. I'm pretty sure, though, that this technique will damage the film for the part where the film isn't in a proper loop, causing scratching.

And, yeah, yeah, Tom, enough about Twitter. Are you going to post that in every thread? Don't bother, just twitter it so the "whole world" can hear your wise words. Keep in mind though, that you shouldn't be doing so much free advertising. All of the TV networks, websites, news anchors and celebrities that are constantly singing the praises Twitter are well compensated.

Brian Drysdale · April 20, 2010

That's basically having an only partial intermittent movement, so the same effect, the film is moving slightly during exposure. I'm pretty sure, though, that this technique will damage the film for the part where the film isn't in a proper loop, causing scratching.

It wasn't intentional, more a mistake in experimenting with the correct loop size at the time (the camera ran OK with this loop). I'd imagine it would increase the risk of damage and I'd expect the steadiness to be compromised.

Nicholas Shoemaker · May 1, 2010

It wasn't intentional, more a mistake in experimenting with the correct loop size at the time (the camera ran OK with this loop). I'd imagine it would increase the risk of damage and I'd expect the steadiness to be compromised.

The blurry kind of lens flare from the fire in that frame is not from the shutter angle or any fo that, it's from a certain type of lens. While Spielberg did say "... we shot the film with a 90 degree shutter, a lot of the war sequences are shot with 45 degree shutters," but it didn't really come from that.

As DP Janusz Kaminsky recants, the blurry, streaky image comes from a specialized process: ""... I asked Panavision to prepare a certain set of lenses for me... they extracted the protective coating inside the lens that prevents the light from bouncing all around. So the images become slightly more defused and prone to flares and the skys becomes burnt out, and the whole image becomes a little bit softer without being out of focus."

David Mullen ASC · May 1, 2010

The blurry kind of lens flare from the fire in that frame is not from the shutter angle or any fo that, it's from a certain type of lens. While Spielberg did say "... we shot the film with a 90 degree shutter, a lot of the war sequences are shot with 45 degree shutters," but it didn't really come from that.
As DP Janusz Kaminsky recants, the blurry, streaky image comes from a specialized process: ""... I asked Panavision to prepare a certain set of lenses for me... they extracted the protective coating inside the lens that prevents the light from bouncing all around. So the images become slightly more defused and prone to flares and the skys becomes burnt out, and the whole image becomes a little bit softer without being out of focus."

Yes, they used uncoated lenses for a more flared image, but that vertical streak from the fire, upwards from the point of origin, is due to an out-of-sync shutter. It's a classic example of that effect, and it was also used near the end of "Full Metal Jacket". The film starts to move in the gate before the shutter is completely closed, so the brightest points in the frame are blurred upwards (the film is pulled down but the image is upside down, so it becomes a streak that moves upwards when viewed right side up.)

Leo Anthony Vale · May 1, 2010

The film would also jump out of the gate when you had a bomb go off. Don't have a clip, but 4-12 frames the film would be misframed or streaking, then jump back.

There's some of those in John Ford's gem of a WWII propaganda short, 'the Battle of Midway'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi4HwxOZDJw

Pablo Villegas · May 12, 2010

im wondering how these flame effects occures,special effects or lenses ? and which stocks used in this movie

Thanks

Uncoated lenses and the ENR (skip bleach) process helps, at least from my experience, although when I shot a short with the skip bleach process and uncoated lenses those flares only appeared while projecting film, they were gone when transfered to video.

I just got the Saving Private Ryan Bluray, and I think it looks to "clean" much of the grittiness is gone, I remember it to be more monochromatic, and in BD has a lot of color, I think it lost some of the ENR look, and some grain, maybe it's just me. Did some else noticed this too?

Edited May 12, 2010 by Pablo Villegas