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Spectre mixing film and digital


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Anyone knows if there are any 35mm prints or better 70mm prints for this film? would love to see a Bond film shot on 35mm on the big screen on film. I mean they did a print for Sky Fall which screened at the Prince Charles Cinema a while ago and that was shot on Alexa...

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But don't focal reducers need a smaller focal flange as well? That's why they're mostly for mirrorless lens mounts.

Dunno. Though I don't see why you couldn't add optics to shift the flange depth out if there are already optics in the reducer. That's getting really complicated and expensive for seemingly not much benefit though. At that point, why not just rent the Vantage T1's or Panavision Hi Speed anamorphics as used in films like 'Heat?'

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Someone asked on there(Twitter link): "Why on earth to shoot 35mm and not show it in the very medium it was shot on"... I'm asking the same!

 

I mean, I don't have anything against 2K projection, there are even some things which are better when projecting 2K, but still, 5-10 prints are so hard to make?

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I think you're missing the fact that when you apply a focal reducer, the entire image circle gets reduced as well. So you'd basically just get the same effect putting on as a 25mm lens made for the 16mm format. Not terribly useful unless you are going for a peephole effect.

 

But isn't this where you would use a lens with a larger or double the originally intended focal length??

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What Satsuki is saying is that a focal reducer, while it concentrates the light coming through the lens, also reduces the image circle, so that 35mm format lens would no longer cover the 35mm image circle, making it useless. The only way around this would be to use lenses designed for a larger image circle, such as medium format lenses, but as they tend to be slower than Cine lenses the net gain in exposure would be minimal.

 

This is a solution in search of a problem.

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If you look at this chart:

https://matthewduclos.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/image-circle-database.pdf

 

You can see that going from, let's say, a 50mm to a 100mm, doesn't give you twice the diameter image circle, but using a 2X focal reducer would cut the image circle in half and therefore the lens would no longer fill the standard 35mm frame.

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Panavision Primo 70's would probably be the best candidate for the focal reducer treatment if you really wanted to pursue this, since they are T2 and basically cover 5-perf 65mm. Maybe if a big time ASC cinematographer shooting the next Star Wars film were to ask Dan Sasaki to cook something up in the lab, it could happen. Never understood why Kodak and Fuji didn't put any resources into developing a 2000ASA (or faster) color negative stock a decade ago, that probably would have staved off digital acquisition for at least a few more years.

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I think the logic from kodak is that you can, in principle, push '19 stock to 2000-- i believe it was even touted in their marketing materials. Also if memory serves, the 800T they used to make didn't do so well as it was, well, grainier than a salt mine.

Still, these days, who knows what they could cook up if there was the will, but I don't think there honestly is the gusto to put much money into RnD these days at big K.

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Someone at Kodak or Fuji told me that they had run into a wall with color negative in terms of speed versus graininess, they basically couldn't double the speed without doubling the graininess even with T-grains. So they felt that a 1000 ASA stock would be considered unacceptably grainy to the majority of Hollywood productions.

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I don't understand the industries desire to shoot with low/no light. Digital with low-light looks like crap as well, it's not grainy, but the motion blur and highlight clipping make it look bad. Older movies figured this out and never had these problems, so why can't modern filmmakers figure it out? In my eyes, our modern filmmakers are more interested in pushing boundaries and experimenting with technology, rather then telling a story. 'Spectre' is a great example of this, see my other thread about that.

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The phrase "low light" can mean various things.

 

Often it's minced to mean shooting without proper lighting, which is not very sensible.

 

Where it can be a bit more sensible is where you're using smaller lights to the same effect as you might previously have used larger ones. I'm particularly thinking of big soft sources which often require large, powerful lights to drive them. If I can use a 2K where I would previously have needed a 6 to drive an 8x8 butterfly, well, I no longer need a generator, which is a massive saving.

 

P

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Phil is absolutely correct, although you can make movies with available light at night and they will look great too if you care enough to choose the right locations.

 

Maybe you should take a look at movies like Her, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, Drive, Prisoners, etc, etc; movies shot with low - light levels and amazingly photographed.

 

Have a good day.

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I think it has a lot more than wanting to shoot in the dark. Acting styles, storytelling styles - it's simply more fashionable now to make films that aren't as strictly structured in how they tell their story. Cinetape is ubiquitous. Steadicam is almost a given. It's allowed for a much more naturalistic approach which some might argue has been a good thing. Not that I agree with it, but given the context of film history and completely lack of precedent in what's being done today, it's not a surprise.

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care enough to choose the right locations.

 

...which tend to cost as much as the entire camera department put together, at least on the stuff I get involved with.

 

Lack of choice in locations is one of the main reasons lower-cost stuff looks so bad.

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...which tend to cost as much as the entire camera department put together, at least on the stuff I get involved with.

 

Lack of choice in locations is one of the main reasons lower-cost stuff looks so bad.

 

Obviously it depends on the script.

 

If you want to shoot a car chase sequence at night in the woods with no added lights, no frontal or back lights, no moon and in a pitch black place.. then the cinematographer's job is to say that it might not look like a James Bond car chasing at night if that's the style they are looking for :)

 

It is my opinion that people who want to make good movies and do not have a lot of budget care a lot about locations and they keep searching for the right ones :), however, if that person wants to be lazy and shoot in the first place that he / she finds, why would you want to work with that person?

 

 

I think it has a lot more than wanting to shoot in the dark. Acting styles, storytelling styles - it's simply more fashionable now to make films that aren't as strictly structured in how they tell their story. Cinetape is ubiquitous. Steadicam is almost a given. It's allowed for a much more naturalistic approach which some might argue has been a good thing. Not that I agree with it, but given the context of film history and completely lack of precedent in what's being done today, it's not a surprise.

 

 

If by shooting in the dark you meant shooting in the actual darkness, it has been done before with good results, take a look at "Buried" :) or some scenes of "Zodiac" for example.

Again, every HOD has to be smart enough to know how to do it!

 

Have a good day!

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I have just watched "Dirty Harry" again 40+ years old 100asa film Panavision anamorphic fantastic night scenes only the areas you need to see for the story are lit backgrounds still have practicals such as street lights Not like now where night scenes are so over lit sometimes it looks like a day shot .

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Maybe it would help to view some paintings. When I light a scene, I try to make it look like paintings I have seen before. For example, in an upcoming project, I have this in mind:

 

640px-Wright_of_Derby,_The_Orrery.jpg

Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Giving a Lecture at the Orrery (in which a lamp is put in place of the sun), c. 1763-65, oil on canvas

 

Except I don't see many modern film makers utilizing lighting in these ways. It's not natural, soft or any other qualifiers. It's a single fresnel in the center of a table to light the whole scene.

Maybe it's even an open face? "But that person in silhouette, we need to see there face" I hear the producers say... NO, its part of the mystery and magic.

"Turn up the ISO" says the DIT man; NO, that'll make everything look like crap even if your histogram is a 7-10 split.

 

Anyway, that may be a bit off topic. I'm gonna go watch some Fritz Lang and be in awe of two carbon arcs...

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The phrase "low light" can mean various things.

 

Often it's minced to mean shooting without proper lighting, which is not very sensible.

Yep, that's pretty much my problem.

 

I've done a lot of natural shooting at night, even with film cameras pushing the stock. It always comes out pretty cool and you don't need much extra light to hit an actors face. In my eyes, its about finding practical locations with decent lighting to begin with. The problem is, modern filmmakers don't augment those location lights with their own, they just assume location practicals are OK.

 

Look at how much Micheal Mann pushed his digital technology in 'Public Enemies'. Some of those pitch black night scenes worked fine. The motion blur and highlight clipping were horrid, but the darkness worked for that film. That kind of darkness may even work for James Bond. However, when you mix styles, dark one moment, bright the next and digital/film as well, it just doesn't work and it creates a very unbalanced film.

 

Stick with a style and go for it, don't change styles mid film.

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Is it really necessary that every filmmaker and cinematographer share the same technical and aesthetic priorities?

 

One person may always rate 500T stock at 320 ASA with plenty of light to shoot at the optimal f-stop of the lens, and end up with a negative that prints in the low 40's consistently on every shot, and another DP may work wide-open at the bleeding edge of visibility and exposure in some attempt to capture an elusive quality of existing light or to create a particular mood, and some DP's may not even be that technically consistent while being at the top of the game when it comes to lighting or composition or movement.

 

I generally prefer deep blacks in my image but one of my favorite cinematographers, Ozzie Morris, once said that he did not like the traditional "hard blacks" of studio cinematography, and other cinematographers that I respect a lot, like Harris Savides, were also not so fond of dense negatives that printed down with deep blacks.

 

I've really never understood this tendency to hold other artists' works to one's own artistic ideals rather than to be open to a variety of approaches to art. If anything, it is healthy to be confronted with artistic works that challenge your own notions of what is good or bad.

 

As far as balance goes, some cinematographers deliberately create imbalance and discontinuity, whether to match some emotional changes in the script or to simply "wake up" the viewer. For every cinematographer who used 500T film stock and a zoom lens for a whole movie because consistency mattered more than anything, there would be another who would use slow film in daytime and fast film in low-light and claim that the eye "expects" to see more clearly and cleanly in bright sunlight than in a dim situation.

 

And cinematographers have different technical priorities -- recently after watching some of Conrad Hall's and David Watkin's works on blu-ray, where you can see grain structure, I've come to realize that many times, both cinematographers shot near wide-open for maximum exposure for the stock, but that the light levels varied so that even wide-open, some shots were underexposed while others were very overexposed. It was a technique that they felt worked for them, get as much exposure on the negative as possible but don't necessarily run away from tricky low-light situations where some "magic" might happen even at the risk of a thin negative. The results were beautiful but not consistent from a density standpoint, unlike Gordon Willis' work where most everything could be printed at the same printer light throughout, and even he had the rare occasional shot that was darker than he intended and got printed up.

 

Some of my favorite cinematographers are very technically consistent and others, well, aren't... but the images they create are evocative enough that complaining about technical mismatches seems like nitpicking or missing the point. You don't enjoy what Chris Doyle did for Wong Kar Wai in those movies because of some sort of technical perfection in exposure or for perfect matching; you enjoy them for the mood, the textures, the energy of the shooting.

 

Creating a flawless movie with impeccable technical consistency is certainly an achievement, a hat trick of some sort, but it can be way down the list of a cinematographer's priorities when shooting.

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