War Horse

[Markshaw]

I'm definitely going to view it with an open mind.

[Brian Hulnick]

Just hope it don't end up being a modern Black Beauty.

[Brian Drysdale]

Just hope it don't end up being a modern Black Beauty.

 

The original book is about the abuse of horses in Victorian England, unfortunately the film & TV versions are somewhat more sentmental.

[John Holland]

So nothing changed here apart from Horses in this country are having a nice life thanks to the Conservatives. Where as the so called "working class" pay for their protected nice life styles. Nothing changes. Very sad .

[Adam Frisch FSF]

As you know, I find Spielberg to be one of the greatest directors of our time, so his considerable talents and skills are not in question. However, I do feel he was really out of tune on this one. The main problem is the film's casting and his almost absurd loyalty to his collaborators.

 

First the acting. Jeremy Irvine lacks the skills to bring his character to life and we fail to see what motivates him. It could be a script problem, but nevertheless he doesn't work and we don't care for him. He's unfortunately cast for his sweet looks, when a boy we could actually relate to would have been much better. The German boy that later appears does a much better job in a shorter period - why couldn't they have found someone like that to play Albert? It goes on from there - many characters turn up but are miscast. There's a French farmer and his granddaughter where the granddaughter has one of the worst faux-French accents in cinema history and does a really bad job overall, I thought. Niels Arestrup, the veteran French character actor, who plays the grandfather does the best he can but his character is written very two dimensionally. Film is littered with badly written, badly cast characters. The horses completely outact the the talent and steal the show.

 

Who am I to criticise Janusz? Well, it's not like I'm going to be employed by either him or Spielberg, so I might as well say what's on my mind, a mere jobbing commercial DP as I am; Janusz Kaminski has over the years turned into a great over-lighter. There. He's a subtle as a clog on a stone floor. There are harsh rims and an artificial look to all of this when a dollop of naturalism would have probably worked better. Now, obviously this is all by design so there's an idea behind it and the idea is to firmly put it in the old school Hollywood vein. Partly. I also think Janusz has become bored with naturalism and has decided to shake things up a bit and adopt this new high key approach come hell or high water. I bet their next collaboration will look exactly the same as this one and Indiana Jones, so I don't think he's tailoring the cinematography to the story that much. And somehow it just doesn't work. He's just a little bit too heavy-handed with his mimicry of that old school style and it all feels like caricature. For me it was mainly the completely unrealistic rims and saccharine fills that drove me nuts. Raw HMI rims from the opposite side of the key or natural light just looks artificial. Color balance of the fill was almost always a bit too cold compared to the ambience - adding to the artificial raw HMI feel. Sometimes there are short moments of brilliance and I do have to say I admire his chutzpah at times, but most of it is much to over-wraught. The ending has a Gone With The Wind feel to it and I kind of found that quite interesting, but in the context of all the other crazy artificialness, it lost a bit of its power. I should in all fairness add that some of the battle stuff and some of the shots of the horses there, are very, very good, so credit where credit is due.

 

Finally, top this off with a terribly overworked John Williams score completely lacking in any subtlety, or worse - melody and theme - and you have a film than ends up being even less than its parts. Too bad, because in there somewhere is a great story.

 

I do feel that Spielberg's loyalties are becoming a problem these days. He needs to change the people he works with and mix it up, or else this is the result. He should get Michael Mann's casting agent (who is the master of casting smartly against type), Hans Zimmer (who's not afraid to take chances) to score and get a new DP in and we'd get a much better picture.

[David Rankenhohn]

Here's a short interview with Kaminski about War Horse, where he talks about lighting daytime exteriors.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/52397

[Brian Hulnick]

It does appear that the movie is receiving rather luke warm reviews. Pity.

[Jon Rosenbloom]

As you know, I find Spielberg to be one of the greatest directors of our time, so his considerable talents and skills are not in question. However, I do feel he was really out of tune on this one. The main problem is the film's casting and his almost absurd loyalty to his collaborators.

 

First the acting. Jeremy Irvine lacks the skills to bring his character to life and we fail to see what motivates him. It could be a script problem, but nevertheless he doesn't work and we don't care for him. He's unfortunately cast for his sweet looks, when a boy we could actually relate to would have been much better. The German boy that later appears does a much better job in a shorter period - why couldn't they have found someone like that to play Albert? It goes on from there - many characters turn up but are miscast. There's a French farmer and his granddaughter where the granddaughter has one of the worst faux-French accents in cinema history and does a really bad job overall, I thought. Niels Arestrup, the veteran French character actor, who plays the grandfather does the best he can but his character is written very two dimensionally. Film is littered with badly written, badly cast characters. The horses completely outact the the talent and steal the show.

 

Who am I to criticise Janusz? Well, it's not like I'm going to be employed by either him or Spielberg, so I might as well say what's on my mind, a mere jobbing commercial DP as I am; Janusz Kaminski has over the years turned into a great over-lighter. There. He's a subtle as a clog on a stone floor. There are harsh rims and an artificial look to all of this when a dollop of naturalism would have probably worked better. Now, obviously this is all by design so there's an idea behind it and the idea is to firmly put it in the old school Hollywood vein. Partly. I also think Janusz has become bored with naturalism and has decided to shake things up a bit and adopt this new high key approach come hell or high water. I bet their next collaboration will look exactly the same as this one and Indiana Jones, so I don't think he's tailoring the cinematography to the story that much. And somehow it just doesn't work. He's just a little bit too heavy-handed with his mimicry of that old school style and it all feels like caricature. For me it was mainly the completely unrealistic rims and saccharine fills that drove me nuts. Raw HMI rims from the opposite side of the key or natural light just looks artificial. Color balance of the fill was almost always a bit too cold compared to the ambience - adding to the artificial raw HMI feel. Sometimes there are short moments of brilliance and I do have to say I admire his chutzpah at times, but most of it is much to over-wraught. The ending has a Gone With The Wind feel to it and I kind of found that quite interesting, but in the context of all the other crazy artificialness, it lost a bit of its power. I should in all fairness add that some of the battle stuff and some of the shots of the horses there, are very, very good, so credit where credit is due.

 

Finally, top this off with a terribly overworked John Williams score completely lacking in any subtlety, or worse - melody and theme - and you have a film than ends up being even less than its parts. Too bad, because in there somewhere is a great story.

 

I do feel that Spielberg's loyalties are becoming a problem these days. He needs to change the people he works with and mix it up, or else this is the result. He should get Michael Mann's casting agent (who is the master of casting smartly against type), Hans Zimmer (who's not afraid to take chances) to score and get a new DP in and we'd get a much better picture.

 

Exactly. Of course Spielberg pulls off some insanely complex sequences with great ease, but overall it's overlit, with some blatant lighting mistakes, like they just said "let's get on with it." The french farmer and grand-daughter seems to come straight from the Monty Python school of making fun of the French. I thought the last scene is visually preposterous.

[Jon Rosenbloom]

I dont know if its a American thing but whats a bee-bee light ? I take its something very powerful ?

 

It's an array of 18 6K par hmi's on a truck. I think we had two on the second unit. Big movie. Haven't seen them since.

[Phil Jackson]

Finally, top this off with a terribly overworked John Williams score completely lacking in any subtlety, or worse - melody and theme - and you have a film than ends up being even less than its parts. Too bad, because in there somewhere is a great story.

 

I do feel that Spielberg's loyalties are becoming a problem these days. He needs to change the people he works with and mix it up, or else this is the result. He should get Michael Mann's casting agent (who is the master of casting smartly against type), Hans Zimmer (who's not afraid to take chances) to score and get a new DP in and we'd get a much better picture.

 

I actually am of the mind that a big part of what makes Spielberg "Spielberg" is his loyalty to his principals.

 

Hans Zimmer is a fine composer but he's no John Williams (and his style conflicts heavily with Spielberg's classicism). I hate to put it this way but Hans Zimmer is partially the blame for the lack of quality in Hollywood scores these ways (with at good third of Hollywood movies being scored by composers he produces in that same style). I actually would disagree with you about the score on this film. Obviously we're arguing tastes but it had been such a long time since I'd heard a Williams score I had forgotten just good of a composer he is relative to much of the rest of the electronic drivel that's out there. He runs circles around even good composers like Giacchino (Mike's work on Super 8 was great, but falls far short when you put it up against say E.T.). As far as active composers maybe only Joe Hisaishi and his Miyasaki work or perhaps some of James Horner's stuff really comes close.

 

With Janusz its a little bit tougher to tell because he only does Spielberg movies for the most part. The James Brooks and Judd Apatow movies he did recently weren't quite as over-wrought lighting wise as say Indy 4 and this film, so much of this I would attribute to Spielberg. Tin-Tin is lit (digitally) in much the same way. I would be interested to see what a Spielberg/Deakins collaboration might look like or a Spielberg/Richardson teaming (Bob Richardson is probably more in-line with Spielberg's sensibilities).

[Adam Frisch FSF]

John Williams is a fine composer, but lately I haven't heard much theme in any of his work. And Zimmer can easily fall into old electronica traps for sure, but ever so often he comes with a Sherlock Holmes or Dark Knight - pretty fearless work. He's not afraid to test new ideas, and I like that. John Williams can essentially only do one thing (albeit very well) - and that's a classic score.

[David Mullen ASC]

There's a lot I liked about the look of scenes, like that first battle in the tall golden grass, backlit with the "floaties" in the air. I also liked the Battle of the Somme and the use of Double Fog filters, it almost had a Geoffrey Unsworth look. And the night battle was stunning.

 

I guess I want to caution against the tendency to want the film to conform to what everyone expects a movie released in 2011 about WW1 to look like -- we can all imagine it... and I'm glad that the movie tried something different instead.

[K Borowski]

What does everyone expect a movie in 2011 about WWI to look like? :P

 

 

I'm sure there have been several since then, but the last big WWI movie I can think of is "Paths of Glory," well at least by name, there's that movie in the '60s with "Captain Picard's brother" playing one of the pilots too, think it's about the Red Baron? (Sorry, that's quite vague).

 

 

In seriousness, I had thought the genre had died out in the '60s. The WWII genre is tapering off as well. There's something blatant and commercial playing to anniversary dates. Now that all the veterans are dying off, there's no one to sell to.

 

 

I"m a big fan of military history, but boy there were a lot of seniors in the theatre!

 

 

 

I thought the movie was very gripping, so much so I didn't really pick apart any of the setups (frankly, a welcome relief from most movies that are so cookie-cutter my mind wanders to things like lighting setups, lenses, filtration, costumes, bloopers. . .) I'd probably be angered if I read the book upon which it's based or the stage play (boy, getting a horse that big on any stage outside of New York, Chicago, or the equivalent sounds precarious), but not having done so, and the implausibility aside, I thought it was a very gripping movie.

 

There were a couple of scenes that made me cringe, and to think, the movie did it without the prodigious amounts of blood and gore as in "Saving Private Ryan," is impressive. I bet the play and book wouldn't have had the "Hollywood ending" though.

 

Don't want to ruin it, I give it four frames of four-perf 35mm out of five ;-)

[Brian Drysdale]

One thing about major world events like WW1 & WW2 is the large number of stories that come out from them. Many will never be made into feature films or dramas, because the cost of making them is so large. One story from the period was the SS Ohio, an oil tanker, and operation Pedestal, which was attempt to resupply Malta. Important when the island had only 2 weeks of fuel left and it was key to intercepting Rommel's supply conveys.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Ohio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pedestal

 

If you'd written as a Hollywood war movie no one would believe it.

 

You can't make films just for veterans because you need to have a large audience to make a return on the investment.

[K Borowski]

You can't make films just for veterans because you need to have a large audience to make a return on the investment.

 

What I meant was the large numbers of films showing up on anniversaries playing to nostalgia. Of course not just hte veterans will go, but how many people here are sons, daughters, grandsons grandaughters, great-grandsons, great-grandaughters. . .

 

 

I'v e really noticed a tapering-off of WWII movies, though. It's surprising to see anything set in WWI. I think all the principals are now long dead. Maybe we'll see something at the 100-year mark (then again, maybe we're close enough now to fall into that category, this film being the beginning of a streak?)

[Brian Drysdale]

It's surprising to see anything set in WWI.

 

There hasn't been that many WW1 films made during any period, it never seems to have caught the film maker's imaginations in the same way as WW2. Perhaps it's also a world that modern audiences have much more difficulty in identifying with compared to WW2. There was a lot more of the "Hollywood" generation taking part and a feeling that WW2 was more of a war against evil compared to WW1, but some great films have been made about WW1.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_I_films

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_films

[David Mullen ASC]

"A Very Long Engagement" is an example of a more recent movie that recreates a battle in WW1. Another movie which I didn't see was "Passchendaele". "Flyboys" is technically a WW1 movie. I'm not saying that WW1 movies are commonplace, just that most of us know how a typical period drama set in the early 20th century would tend to be photographed these days.

[Guest Stephen Murphy]

"A Very Long Engagement" is an example of a more recent movie that recreates a battle in WW1. Another movie which I didn't see was "Passchendaele". "Flyboys" is technically a WW1 movie. I'm not saying that WW1 movies are commonplace, just that most of us know how a typical period drama set in the early 20th century would tend to be photographed these days.

 

 

I've just started prep on a WW1 short film:-) Primarily set on the front lines too and in chatting with the director about this project (over the past 18 months) we both wanted to photograph it in a more classical way. We've also been using references like John Ford and David Lean, which i note Kaminski and Spielberg were talking about too. At least we wont be using any handheld cameras:-)

[David Mullen ASC]

I've just started prep on a WW1 short film:-) Primarily set on the front lines too and in chatting with the director about this project (over the past 18 months) we both wanted to photograph it in a more classical way. We've also been using references like John Ford and David Lean, which i note Kaminski and Spielberg were talking about too. At least we wont be using any handheld cameras:-)

 

I guess you can say that both "Dr. Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia" touch indirectly on WW1 in their battle scenes...

 

Hard to do anything original with a war movie visually (maybe shoot a WW1 story with iPhones?) -- my instinct would be to embrace that b&w look, sharp & gritty, or go for some sort of early color process look like Autochromes or 2-strip Technicolor, but very faded, with uncoated lenses, etc. Or not stylize it photographically at all, go for a Terrence Malick modern naturalism, let the costumes and settings provide the desaturation.

[M Joel W]

How do you light day exteriors in these huge movies? For wide shots I imagine all you can do is "paint" from behind the camera or the side. For close ups are we talking enormous overheads of grid cloth (or solids) and then diffused light from the front, direct from the back, the idea being the background is far enough out of focus that you don't notice the difference in light's directionality relative to natural daylight? Or are these musco and bee bee lights big enough that they don't need to be diffused? Are some used for background lights when the sun falls behind a cloud?

 

The day exteriors in War Horse trailers that are clearly lit seem to follow two patterns: overcast days have an additional offside key meant to look like direct sunlight and sunny CUs are heavily backlit with an unnaturally bright fill that, based on reflections in eyes is quite soft. But for that latter look you could backlight with a medium/big HMI and use a breadboard for bounce--no need for bee bee lights (or whatever they are called, I have never seen one). And how do you move fast enough with this huge gear?

 

To me the trailer looks a bit over lit but in an intentional and controlled way (far more pleasing than Indy 4) and the photography overall looks stunning. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the movie itself.

Edited January 2, 2012 by M Joel Wauhkonen

[K Borowski]

"A Very Long Engagement" is an example of a more recent movie that recreates a battle in WW1. Another movie which I didn't see was "Passchendaele". "Flyboys" is technically a WW1 movie. I'm not saying that WW1 movies are commonplace, just that most of us know how a typical period drama set in the early 20th century would tend to be photographed these days.

 

Sorry, I was pulling you leg, not being serious. I assume(d) you were lumping both of the World Wars together. I can't see much of a difference between the styles used, say, in WWI versus WWII.

 

 

One other movie set during WWI was "A Little Princess" from 1995. There, the book was originally published before that time period, forget which war it was originally set in. Good to see a similar treatment not given to this movie, just so the lowest common denominator in the audience doesn't scratch his head.

 

 

 

@ Brian: I'm sure there aren't as many WWI movies as WWII, but WIkipedia? You know that if it isn't on the internet, it doesn't exist as far as that site is concerned, right? :P

 

Speaking of Wikipedia, the film I referred to earlier was "The Blue Max" with Jeremy Kemp, not "Captain Picard's Brother. . . " Thinking about it, we're coming up on the 100 Year Anniversary of WWI already, so maybe there will actually be an uptick in films. I think it's really cheesy releasing period content at evenly-spaced yearly intervals like this, but I enjoyed the content in this film, so I would like to see more. Maybe that's what you're involved in Stephen, a play for the 100 year mark.

 

 

 

 

As far as daylight exteriors, the only one that stuck out was the deliberate filtration (or digital tinkering) with the closing shots at the end of the film. Maybe I should have watched the movie upside-down, in reverse, and in slow motion to generate as many nitpicks of the photography. God, there must be ice water flowing through some of your veins! :D

 

Since the sun is the key light in most daylight photography, I find it quite difficult to pick it apart as compared with, say indoor or nighttime exterior shots. I can tell when there are multiple lights off of reflective objects, actors eyes, or when there's heavy-handed fill light, obvious stuff like in CSI Miami, but I'd have a really hard time calling out a specific light used for fill in a closeup.

[Brian Drysdale]

@ Brian: I'm sure there aren't as many WWI movies as WWII, but WIkipedia? You know that if it isn't on the internet, it doesn't exist as far as that site is concerned, right? :P

 

It's just an illustration (I expect some films are missing), but it does show the large difference in the number of films covering the two wars. Although, perhaps WW2 could be argued to be WW1 part 2.

[K Borowski]

You must have seen the little tongue-sticker-outer emoticon at the end; you quoted it!

 

 

I'm not trying to one-up, you, David, or anyone else who's posted here thusfar. I think some of the remarks so hypercritical about daylight exteriors are nitpicking.

 

Then again, maybe some of you really DO have that good an eye to tell what's used as a fill light by the out-of-focus specular highlights on a horse's face in a closeup. . .

 

 

 

What I WAS trying to say about WWI movies and Wikipedia is that a lot of them were silent, early sound, nitrate movies that aren't likely to be available on your nearest bit-torrent or other illegal movie piracy site (did I mention I threatened to hit a family member with a pipe for using one of said sites, knowing full well my own dependence on this industry for a portion of my livelihood?) As such, if they don't exist in compressed, easily ripped-off digital form, it's as if they never existed.

 

Want to say the movie is "All Quiet on the Western Front," the silent classic about trench warfare made almost concurrently to the First World War, maybe just a couple years after, this film was no doubt one of the best and most well remembered, of many other movies that have fallen by the wayside, deteriorated, self-combusted, or been used as fuel in a studio bonfire.

 

As such, I was playfully suggesting that Wikipedia may be ignorant of the high casualties, probably comparable to those suffered due to the passage of time on actual WWI veterans, of early-era B&W WWI movies.

 

 

 

At the same time, Brian, that was your THIRD Wiki quote in the thread. I tend to take threads on that site, outside of computer programming, science fiction movies & television, and current events with a grain of salt.

[Chris Millar]

As such, if they don't exist in compressed, easily ripped-off digital form, it's as if they never existed.

 

 

true...

 

 

I'd reason that finding your product on a torrent site a sign of success for most nowadays.

 

 

 

 

[Brian Drysdale]

What I WAS trying to say about WWI movies and Wikipedia is that a lot of them were silent, early sound, nitrate movies that aren't likely to be available on your nearest bit-torrent or other illegal movie piracy site (did I mention I threatened to hit a family member with a pipe for using one of said sites, knowing full well my own dependence on this industry for a portion of my livelihood?) As such, if they don't exist in compressed, easily ripped-off digital form, it's as if they never existed.

 

Want to say the movie is "All Quiet on the Western Front," the silent classic about trench warfare made almost concurrently to the First World War, maybe just a couple years after, this film was no doubt one of the best and most well remembered, of many other movies that have fallen by the wayside, deteriorated, self-combusted, or been used as fuel in a studio bonfire.

 

As such, I was playfully suggesting that Wikipedia may be ignorant of the high casualties, probably comparable to those suffered due to the passage of time on actual WWI veterans, of early-era B&W WWI movies.

 

 

"All Quiet on the Western Front" came out in 1930. There was a documentary made of the battle of the Somme that was shown in cinemas in 1916, the big silent films were "The Big Parade", "Wings" etc which were mid/late 1920s. "The Lost Battalion" 1919 seems to be one of the earlier ones and used some of the people involved. Rather interestingly, quite a good percentage of WW1 films seem to have been made in recent years.

 

No doubt there are films that have been lost and "The Big Parade" isn't on the Wikipedia WW1 film list (although it can be found as a subject in its own right), but you can never take any source as complete and accurate.