Heineken/Fincher Commercial

[Guest coolbreeze]

Anybody know what format the new David Fincher/Brad Pitt commercial was shot in? I see Claudio Miranda was the DP, so Claudio if you're still on the forum it would be great to hear from you about this beautifull looking commercial. Lots of anamorphic lens flares from the paparazzi but i suspect they were added in post?

 

Cheers,

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I think they were - it was shot on the Viper, I believe.

[Kevin Zanit]

According to his site (http://www.claudiomiranda.com/heineken.html), it was shot on the Viper.

 

Kevin Zanit

[drew_town]

Claudio's work looks absolutely amazing. I'd be blessed if I could light and compose half as well him. Okay back to my own projects... [sigh].

[Claudio Miranda ASC]

Thanks for the compliment. As Kevin stated, most of the info is on my site.

 

http://www.claudiomiranda.com

 

or you can go straight to

 

http://www.claudiomiranda.com/heineken.html

 

The lenses were not anamorphic. They were Zeiss Digi Primes and an Optimo 12-1. Most of the flashing was done in camera and some added later in post.

 

Read the info on the site. If you have any more questions, I will be happy to reply.

[Guest coolbreeze]

Thanks Guys, and thanks Claudio. Great looking website too!

Was there a particualr reason why you chose to shoot with the Viper instead of Super 35mm? Has Fincher become a HD convert or is he chosing the format on a per project basis?

How have you found the transition from shooting film to HD? Has your approach to evaluating a scenes exposure changed? Do you still use a meter or are you relying more on the HD monitor?

 

Sincerely,

 

steve

[Claudio Miranda ASC]

It was Finchers idea to shoot with the Viper to begin with. When we started using the Viper, we had numerous crashes. So in a way, I was glad it was not my idea. He now loves the camera, probably over 35mm. It is not cheaper. He likes the idea of seeing what he is getting. No unpleasant dailies surprises. He asks me "Don't you sleep better"? ... a little bit better. He probably will shoot his next movie with it.

 

My transition was pretty simple. You still light. I use my eye, monitor, scopes and light meter. The light meter is used much less. I hate when producers states it saves time in lighting. The 400asa Viper takes the same time to light a 500 asa film camera.

 

I saw the Heineken spot scanned onto film, then projected and it really looks great. I come from the film side and from that I see that the Viper is a great alternative and I can see it's advantages.

[Guest coolbreeze]

Thanks Claudio,

 

Steve.

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

Hi Claudio,

 

What was involved with getting the stills off the hard drive and onto a computer so you could do some color correction to get a look going? What kind of setup did you use to do that and have you used any of the on-set look manager programs yet?

[Keith Mottram]

Hi Claudio,

 

What was involved with getting the stills off the hard drive and onto a computer so you could do some color correction to get a look going?  What kind of setup did you use to do that and have you used any of the on-set look manager programs yet?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Cant speak for Claudio, but its really simple to get stills off an S2 unit, you can just hook a laptop up over ethernet and take a dpx file off. Then you open it up and play with it. Cant remember if photoshop open's up dpx files in native, when I worked with files from the S2 I opened them up straight in Shake. Hope that helps,

 

Keith

[Landon D. Parks]

You really think Fincher will shoot his next and possibly more films with the Viper? I noticed he has two films in the making now, Zodiak and Benjamin Button. Do you know if these are to be HD shoots?

 

Laterz!

[Wendell_Greene]

You can watch an excellent "Behind The Scenes" QT of "Heineken Beer Run" [as well as the "Nike Gamebreakers", Adidas -Mechanical Legs" and HP-"Constant Change" and several other amazing spots directed by David Fincher and other award winning directors like Lance Acord, Mark Romanek and Noam Murro] on the new Digital Domain website

 

As someone who aspires to direct spots I found the entire site very educational and Fincher's work in particular inspiring, even more so when I reflect on the fact that early in his career people didn't feel he was talented enough to work on commercials!

 

To offer an opinion in reference to Landon's question, I don't know if he will shoot his upcoming features with the Viper, [Given what I've read about what he intends to do on "Benjamin" with CGI, I would bet it's 99% certain he'll use the Viper, but to quote Miles Copeland "I'm just a peasant" so what do I know ? - :) ]

but you can be sure that if he does, it's a decision due in part to the fact that the camera can withstand the rigors of a long feature production schedule and meet, if not exceed, his high standards.

[Claudio Miranda ASC]

Zodiac is David's next movie and it will most likely be shot on Viper along with Benjamin Buttons. My camera assitant and gaffer shot tests for Benjamin on the Viper and it looks good.

 

As far as extracting files. The files I got were Cineon (or DPX) files . Steve transfered the files to a cd for me and I worked with it in Photoshop. At the time is was not that simple. I took almost an hour, after an already long night, to get the files. He has since wrote a programs that will make it much easier to extract the files off of the S2.