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Guest Tim Partridge

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Guest fstop

I don't know if youve seen this already, but check out the video diaries at http://www.kongisking.net/index.shtml to see the behind the shooting of Jackson's King Kong. I was very skeptical about this as I didn't like Lord of the Rings, IMO Peter Jackson's inability to tell a story or the lousy special effects, but this film seems to be something else in a different direction. I think it's safe to say New Zealand craftmanship has really proved itself now and it's fantastic to see a dominantly NZ crew in all the key crew positions with all of these physically constructed sets.

 

Personally, I think as passionate aspiring filmmakers we are ALL guilty to some degree of arrogance and naivety concerning the challenges we thrive on- however, looking at some of the sets and detail in the set decoration on the new Kong I must admit that even if I had distinguished 35mm experience and all that money and technology at my disposal I'd be TERRIFED being Andrew Lesnie. I think all of us, even the most experienced here like David would! I bet it's burdenous, horribly sobreing, nigh on impossiblly crushing pressure to not only tell Jackson's story but also get the value for money out of the art direction, finding that balance must be pushing that guy half way to a cardio arrest! At the same time though the shoot looks like a cinematographer's ultimate dream; a playset to paint with light and go crazy!

 

Anyway, do check the link out. We are all often frustrated by how we are ready to make the next level, how we deserve to graduate above all of the freebies and non-union wages- watch this stuff just to remind you there is a reason why it takes so long to break out! :)

 

cheers

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""I was very skeptical about this as I didn't like Lord of the Rings, IMO Peter Jackson's inability to tell a story or the lousy special effects""

 

So let me get this straight...

 

The behind-the-scenes footage of King Kong, cinematography-wise, does more for you than LOTR?

 

Ok. That's cool.

 

Have you even seen the special features "making of LOTR" DVD?

 

Why do you think the film won so many Oscars, recieved worldwide praise and banked MILLIONS?

 

It's a masterpiece of cinematography. It worked.

 

You don't have to be a fan of Peter Jackson or the LOTR books to realize that...

 

Pretty ignorant post.

 

Next.

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Why do you think the film won so many Oscars, recieved worldwide praise and banked MILLIONS?

 

It's a masterpiece of cinematography. It worked.

 

 

So that's your opinion.

 

I do not consider LOTR to be something special in terms of cinematography.

The only shots that did impress me were created in compositing, not through the DPs craft. Personally, I hate the color design, the abuse of camera movement and the weak direction. I found nothing epic in these films, only blatant miscasting, unnecessary changes in storyline and a weak music score. To make it worse, I saw Part 1 and 2 only in prints that should never have left the lab, with terrible color problems and unpleasant lack of sharpness.

 

Now that's my opinion.

 

Not worth a cent more than yours, ;) but that doesn't make f-stop's posting ignorant.

 

Millions of people liked a movie? That's nice, but what does it say about cinematography - we are talking about the technique and craft of film photography here, and there are many visual inferior movies that got Academy Awards AND did huge business.

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I do not consider LOTR to be something special in terms of cinematography.

The only shots that did impress me were created in compositing, not through the DPs craft. Personally, I hate the color design, the abuse of camera movement and the weak direction.

 

I second that. Especially in the first film there were many scenes where the shots and the way they were edited together just didn't make any sense.

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I didn't like any of the LOTR's either. They didn't really bring anything to the table but CG which will be shrugged at in two years because it'll look like junk. The cinematography seemed "safe" and the editing in the first movie worked around the cinematography problems. They just couldn't get the little people to look small. Where's Michel Gondry when you need him? Nevertheless I know a lot of people who like those things. So what you gonna do?

 

AT

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I loved the three movies and their cinematography, particularly the first one, which has the best fantasy film photography since "Excalibur" (although that's still better.) Photographically, the next two were less exciting, more straightforward (some people preferred that).

 

I think the trilogy was a tremendous achievement and clearly a labor of love on the director's, actors', and crew's part. I'm just amazed that people can be so dismissive of something that was clearly a major effort to pull off, two to four years of these people's lives. But hey, this is clearly an example of differences in taste.

 

Before I get too critical of a movie's cinematography, I have to first ask myself if I could have done better given the circumstances and what the director wanted to achieve, shot-wise. This did NOT look like an easy shoot.

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This did NOT look like an easy shoot.

 

I must confess that, having purchased all three Extended DVD sets, I've watched every last bit of the 'behind the scenes' material. Can't be helped; filmmaking fascinates me.

 

What's remarkable is that, during the last film, toward the end, when the team was really pressed for time, Peter Jackson had an A crew, a B crew, a C crew and a D crew running around New Zealand --- each crew with its own director and DP, of course. The effort required just to coordinate all those individuals, who each (naturally) wanted some artistic input to the process --- I am actually amazed they survived to tell the tale, let alone assemble a movie that looked, well, somewhat cohesive, in terms of cinematography. It reminded me of the stories about George Lucas' first Star Wars shoot, when the studio told him he had a week to wrap everything up and that was it. He had camera crews running almost around the clock. ("Hey you with the mop! You're a grip with 'C' Crew!") When the money runs out it can get a little chaotic, I guess.

 

As for the LOTR shoot; there was just so much of it that some of it was bound to be hard. In the second movie, the night battle sequence at Helm's Deep, during the rain --- that was tough on everyone. There was also an incident when they filmed some burning huts. The wind changed direction and strengthened, blowing right toward (you guessed it) the camera crew. As camera operators ran from their posts, nearly with their hair on fire, the cameras continued to roll and captured some good footage. Comment from the Safety Supervisor? "Everyone was safe as the buildings burned to the ground."

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Guest jeremy edge

I hate fantasy,not a tolkein fan and I hate all the stupid fictional words that go along with it.

 

But LOTR is sick. Groundbreaking. I was blown away. Its cheesy to give it up to something stupidly popular but the man gets it done.

 

I still hate d and d though.

 

You guys that arent impressed must have some impressive reels.

 

I always think people rip on things that get too big...just becuase theyre sick of hearing about it.Its like "enough already"! Ever hear anybody talk about titanic? Hell no, they ran that thing in to the ground and beat it to death with shiny awards and it makes you sick just to think of it.but you gotta admit the 1st time you saw it....it was a petty powerful and well made flick.A saw a lot of tough looking dudes walking out teary eyed.

 

Thats just my 2 cents.

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Hi,

 

> I hate fantasy,not a tolkein fan and I hate all the stupid fictional words that go along with it.

 

Couldn't agree more; I have this completely illogical fantasy block. You'd have thought that it would have applied to sci-fi as well, but for some reason it doesn't.

 

> You guys that arent impressed must have some impressive reels.

 

You don't have to be able to better something to criticise it meaningfully.

 

Phil

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Guest fstop

I think the scripts were the big problem with the LOTR movies, that and Jackson's vision. It doesn't matter how passionate everyone is if the foundation is weak- it's like building a golden palace on a swamp...

 

I actually agree with David on the first LOTR movie having beautiful photogrpahy- I was blown away by the supersaturated DI colours when I saw it at the cinema, made me very exicted about furthering pallettes in the future- however the second two LOTR movies looked like they were a series of dropped shots from the first movie badly regraded in monochrome. The model photogrtaphy particularly was horrendously sloppy, like bad outtakes- no idea how they made it into a £100M+ movie.

 

I think you guys should check out Andrew Lesnie's overall superior work on Babe and moreso it's sequel, Pig and The City. You'd have no idea this guy shot LOTR!! Such range.

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I had to pull out my LOTR set of DVD's and look for sloppiness in lighting and must have missed it yet again. I can't imagine what is so offensive in the quality. I must be losing it in my advancing years to have missed all the bad stuff. It still seems like wonderful work to me and confirms my respect for Mr. Lesnie who had me at Babe. Great job, IMHO. Just another 2 cents worth. I'd love to have that work on my reel. If I had shot those pictures that well I'd certainly be proud of them.

Edited by Leon Rodriguez
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I always feel the same way about Titanic. Nothing will kill your street cred faster than saying you like that movie. It is so often painted now as the cliche, safe, Hollywood movie that was driven to stardom by 14 year old girls. I remember 2 months before it came out everyone was talking about how it would tank. Cameron's Folly.

 

I will always remember how my friend's parents, who never saw a movie more than once because they didn't get to go that often saw Titanic 5 times in the theater. I saw it three and wish I could again at that size. It's formulaic, corny at time, but a very well told story and the detail and research were insane. I really enjoyed it, although the hype did become too much to bear.

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"I think the scripts were the big problem with the LOTR movies, that and Jackson's vision. It doesn't matter how passionate everyone is if the foundation is weak- it's like building a golden palace on a swamp..."

 

I think Jackson's vision was perfect (at least for #1) and I read somewhere that this was pretty much his dream project.

 

The script compared to the books is quite bland and "simple", but IMO Jackson

and the actors captured the characters' essence and felt the story throughout the making of all three films.

 

I remember watching the theatrical trailer of LOTR:FOTR for the first time and being absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the visuals and the music. Usually I'm like that with previews -- then somewhat dissapointed with the final product.

 

Not with these movies.

 

I can only learn from Jackson and his crew...

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@ David Mullen:

 

I have respect for Jackson and his team, and certainly this was a very difficult project.

But regarding cinematography, I feel that a film has to be judged only by the images that end up on the screen, not by the amount of work that went into creating the film and the problems that had to be solved.

 

What made the LOTR trilogy interesting to me was the seamless integration of CGI characters and live action cinematography, but I felt that for every brillant visual moment, other parts had to be done with less care, like the model and matte work or examples of "cheesy" CGI like has been mentioned by others here. Only in a perfect world, there's enough time and money to do every detail perfectly.

 

But as you said, it's the "oysters and snails" question à la SPARTACUS. :)

And our discussion proves again that there's more than one view on every piece of art.

Edited by Christian Appelt
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First of all, good to see that Peter Jackson has lost a lot of weight.

For health reasons, I mean. It would be a shame to lose him at a young age, like John Candy.

He almost looks like he did in Bad Taste.

(Anyone here seen it? It's inspiring, because it's soooooo bad!)

 

Anyway, wow, I can't believe all the criticism I'm hearing here!

I'm not even that much of a Tolkein fan, but I thought, considering the scope of these films, they were pulled off to an amazing degree.

These were HUGE films, kids!

It's amazing they got done!

And it would be difficult for anyone to put together a 6-8 hour chunk of films without there being something that someone could say wasn't perfect, but all in all, I think he did an amazing job. Just the logistics of it are mind-boggling.

 

The only real thing I could whine about, is that I would have wanted to see him use dwarfs for the hobbits.

Lord knows these people have a hard enough time as it is getting work.

Seems a bit silly hiring big people, then going through all that forced perspective & compositing to make them look smaller than the other actors in the scene (which was quite often not the same scale in different scenes!).

 

Matt Pacini

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New Line has picked up Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series (three books, three movies). I sincerely hope they turn out better than Lord of the Rings. I absolutly love the books, but there are some major technical challenges to transcend.

 

Here's to hoping.

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I'm tired of hearing how incredibly hard those films were to make-to you, yes. But to a few hundred professionals who have been in the business for many, many years and with 100 million dollar budgets?? Is it really that insane? It's not like they had a shortage of resources and qualified personel.

 

I've read all the books, in H.S, and I found this to be an extremely watered down version of the text. These films may satisfy the appetite of those average Joes who go to the movies to see big fireworks extravaganzas, but to people who eat, breath, sleep, poop, live cinema this is hardly a light snack.

 

IMO, of course ;)

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These films may satisfy the appetite of those average Joes who go to the movies to see big fireworks extravaganzas, but to people who eat, breath, sleep, poop, live cinema this is hardly a light snack.

 

IMO, of course ;)

 

I think I've mentioned this a few times before...

 

MOVIES AREN'T MADE FOR FILMMAKERS

They're made for the non filmmaking public

 

I think this is the main reason why filmmakers are never allowed

To be test audience members in preview screening of films

 

Filmmakers are just soo hard to please....

( If you don't believe this--try producing a small film

And see how many people will not complain about something--anything

At some point or another :) )

 

Films are made by Filmmakers but not for them

I guess we'll just have to get used to that...

But who has the time to watch movies when we're all busy making them anyways

 

 

PS I found LOTR to be amazing (all 3)

I still can't see the problems everyone is nitpicking about

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Let's stop discussing those LOTR movies, I think it has been done before - let's just agree to disagree on the subject. :rolleyes: But it certainly is NOT arrogant to say that - no matter for what reasons - one feels disappointment about the cinematographic aspects of LOTR.

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actually, i kind of dug the old school feeling of some of the model and matte shots. Overall, these films blow me a way. You could have all the crew and money in the world, but the task is still huge. At the center, there is still a story to be told and a ton of character arc's to nurture. Having a 100 people and a billion dollars doesn't ease that. Actually, I thought that the budge was fairly low compared to similar faire.

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Of course the films were watered down versions of the books. A normal-length film is usually the equivalent of a short story in terms of the amount of information. Tolkein's books are extraordinarily rich in detail, backstory etc.

 

I watched the first LOTR film (FOTR) around the time of the previous Star Wars film. Never mind cinematography or any of the other filmmaking techniques - the depth of storytelling present in LOTR, by comparison with SW was quite obvious. Is SW, if a character speaks in an aline tongue, they made up a few noises. In LOTR, when a character speaks in Elvish, you know that Tolkein invented a complete language and cultural history for that language that related credibly to the nature of the times and circumstances that the race had lived through.

 

I agree with the first post in this thread. Taking responsibility for 8 or 9 separate units shooting simultaneously all over NZ, some covering epic stagings, others doing pick-ups or backgrounds, but having to be sure that every unit DoP went for the same look - if it were me I would have called in sick on day 2 andevery day thereafter. Andrew did a stunning job AND supervised a lot of the DI work and colour grading - so whether you like the "look" or not, you can't say it wasn't down to the DoP.

 

As to dwarfs (dwarves?), I disagree. Hobbits must be identified as ordinary people like anyone in the audience - just smaller. Most people with dysplasia have disproportionate limbs or head: easily identified as "different" - (sometimes to their great misfortune in the real world).

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