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Star Wars 9 to be shot on 65mm film


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We as lighting cameramen don't edit scripts and can only this much influence direction or acting. So the only place we add value to a movie is image. As to crap films rescued by film, I've no to list: excellent cinematography - and technically flawless image at that - hasn't saved any crap movie, at least for a general auditory. But it has happened otherwise, IMO, pretty much with every good film shot on video.

 

With all due respect to a master cinematographer. Deakins delivered excellent lighting and color choices which would have provided for an immersive "cinematic reality" image quality - if he had a tool with accurate-to eye color and highlight/shadow handling. These tools go by names like Eterna, Vision, etc... Shot on an Alexa, there are things that distract, me - consciously, the audience - not so consciously. The No1 thing is weird color, especially warm color, saturation, very visible on faces. Will that spoil the show for the audience? No way, But it sorta robs the movie of its visual beauty anyway.

His films shot on 35, to me at least, are noticeably better at creating realism than Alexa ones.

 

And I won't trust loading to virgins, they probably don't know what's 99 vs 9P or think it's something to do with 69...

 

 

Sicario wasn't real enough..? what does real mean.. you can have an incredibly sharp image on film.. or a very soft image on digital .. I mean really these days.. the old digital is too sharp.. lacks DR.. has been well and truly knocked out of the ball park.. in good hands anything shot on say an Alexa will look just as good as anything shot on film.. the script blah blah is way more important .. and the audience really don't care or know.. they do notice things like 48fps, they don't like it.. and I would agree with them.. a move towards high frame rate is alot more to be worried about than digital/film .. that would be a terrible future to behold..

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But, actually, doens't he? :) Of what I read, he chose Alexa for things other than image.

 

 

Yes I read he doesn't like watching rushes, and worries about the lab.. but its a very brave man who says on a pubic cinematographers website ,that Roger Deakins is screwing up films by shooting with an Alexa.. or at least post it under a made up name :)

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They just don't care, as long as the story is good they can hear and see it ...

I'm glad you crossed out "the story is good" because, hey, Michael Bay movies. :)

 

 

A painter often (but not always) cares what type of brush he/she uses. Down to the type of bristles.

There's a lot of truth to this. I dabble in painting and I definitely have my favorite brushes. I prefer oil on canvas when everybody wants to save $0.35 by using acrylic. Yes it's a tiny bit more expensive and takes a little longer, but it's also much more flexible and behaves the way I expect.

 

 

Agreed. Framing and lens selections need to be wider to encapsulate a whole scene rather then all the close up's we're use to in modern movies. The pacing also needs to be slower so the audience can absorb a given scene.

... and camera moves need to stay slow. A quick pan is no big deal when the screen is 30 degrees of your field of vision but when it's 60 degrees, the entire image can jump several feet from one frame to the next.

 

 

The last "science" film I saw that was entirely shot on 15/70 was The Rocky Mountain Express, which was awesome. Its was very immersive and powerful. I actually bought it on BluRay and even on my pretty decent home theater, it didn't hold a candle to the IMAX experience... to be expected of course.

The last authentic, made for IMAX film I saw was "Dinosaurs Alive"... what a disappointment that was! It started like a documentary and was interesting, used the 3D process well etc. but the rest of it was that stupid acid trip excuse to show off their CG. On the other hand, the first one I saw was "The Dream is Alive", which was perfect for me because I've always been big on space exploration. My college roomie had it on laserdisc, but I thought "what's the point?"

 

I just hope they do what I've been told they'll be doing. It will re-define them as a company and bring the name back to the forefront of cinemas around the world.

What are they doing? I know more stuff is being shot on film now and they are at least THINKING about bringing back Kodachrome (though I'm under the impression that all their manufacturing is outsourced).

 

 

Anyway, yea THX was a great idea but it was implemented incorrectly.

Well, I think it was an important step in the right direction and I still follow its standards for setting up my studio and home theater, for mixing etc. Any way, the audience seems to have thought it was just another sound format, like Dolby stereo. How were they supposed to know it was a quality control thing?

 

 

With audio, even a 16 bit CD can sound great with the right mastering and D/A conversion on the back end.

Agreed. Though modern mixing/mastering techniques are by far the most harmful aspect. Hyper-editing, pitch correction, sample replacement, hard limiters and clipping for the sake of "loud" have all been summed together to turn a decent medium into a wash of eye-watering noise. Sadly, Hollywood (both visually and sonically) has gone the same direction.

 

 

People look at the spec sheets and they're like, no way are LP's anywhere near the technical specs of digital audio. But it's not about that, it's about what ya don't hear, it's about the sound stage and what you feel when you listen to the medium. Lets face it, a well mastered LP with a decent needle and table, sound unbelievable.

Yeah, specs aren't everything. Even the first generation of digital recording systems were "better" on paper but are really hard on the ears. I did a series of blind tests where several dozen people listened to material I mastered. Everybody loved my 1/4" material, hated the digital U-Matic and the stuff I did at 24-bit 48K was somewhere in between. They were all the same masters, just captured via different media. One guy, who said 1/4" tape was "good enough in the 60s but doesn't cut it now" unwittingly chose my 1/4" master as his favorite.

Sadly, most vinyl these days is made from the same uber-crushed masters as the CDs, so I gave up on trying to find good vinyl.

 

 

To me the moment you take film and make it digital, you loose the essence of what film is. If you look at the exterior snow scenes in Hateful Eight on 70mm, they're just amazing. I had tears in my eyes first seeing the Sam Jackson shot where he said "need room for one more", because THATS what cinema is suppose to look like! ...The best thing about shooting and projecting the old fashion way is that it's something you can't take home,

Totally. That movie is still on my "to do" list though. Did you see it in 70mm? I agree that a lot is lost in conversion but there's still an advantage in color and motion with shooting and scanning film. What a lot of people fail to realize is that it's not just about resolution and dynamic range. There's also another set of optics that alter the image.

 

 

Yes I read he doesn't like watching rushes, and worries about the lab.. but its a very brave man who says on a pubic cinematographers website ,that Roger Deakins is screwing up films by shooting with an Alexa.. or at least post it under a made up name :)

On a related note; I publicly said that any mix engineer who throws away what the band sent him in order to use canned drum samples is a lazy jackass and has no respect for his clients. Somebody responded with something like "The greatest mix engineer, Chris Lord Alge is jackass?" I told him I don't care if it's common practice or if popular engineers do it, he isn't doing his job. He's supposed to MIX the band, not replace them just because he feels like it. It would be like an editor replacing a character of a movie with CG without any input from the director.

Any way, I actually appreciate the Alexa. It's the only video camera that can *almost* fool me. Still, I prefer 5213 or better yet, 5212 (discontinued :( ).

Edited by Stephen Baldassarre
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Sicario wasn't real enough..? what does real mean.. you can have an incredibly sharp image on film.. or a very soft image on digital .. I mean really these days.. the old digital is too sharp.. lacks DR.. has been well and truly knocked out of the ball park.. in good hands anything shot on say an Alexa will look just as good as anything shot on film.. the script blah blah is way more important .. and the audience really don't care or know.. they do notice things like 48fps, they don't like it.. and I would agree with them.. a move towards high frame rate is alot more to be worried about than digital/film .. that would be a terrible future to behold..

As good as film? No.

And it has nothing to do with sharpness. All modern stocks and video cameras have enough microcontrast to look sharp, and there are lenses and diffusion to control it, on both mediums.

Unless the movie is B&W the two things responsible for realism (and believability - of the image, not the whole film) are shadow/highlight handling and color. They're interconnected, which means both are flawed in video. Simply put, it has unrealistic color. And, please, don't start about scenes shot with strong color cast, green skies, etc... :) There's such thing as color accomodation of vision which makes us adjust to casts and hue shifts. Skin lit with blue light still looks "real" if it has all the hue range we're accustomed to seeing and colors saturate naturally depending on lightness. But if it turns into an almost flat color with little or no color contrast and oversaturates in highlights, it looks fake.

Alexa has those problems, F35 is worse, F23 - even worse, Reds - from bad to awfull depending on sensor. Fuji Eterna Vivid - 99,9% lifelike color response I'd say.

For example - video cameras don't "see" the red (the blood vessel color) in the skin correctly, they all color it too uniformly. To me it's a deal breaker. I even used to put a pink enchancer filter on the lens, use faint amber gels to get more red saturation for red to come out more in grading, but the thing is too complex to solve this way.

 

As to 48fps - as much as it sucks, one can always go back to 24. If the hucksters... pardon, producers, rip us of film, manufacturing will shut down and there's hardly any way back.

Edited by Michael Rodin
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Yes thats my point.. either can look anyway you want..

Shoot Raw color/grade it how ever you want..... DR is pretty much the same digital /film.. lets go and see Blade Runner and see if it looks bad.. and destroys the viewing experience ..

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You can't grade out what is not in the footage. If it doesn't distinguish enough yellow and red hues at -1,5/+2 stops around key to capture all the skin color pallette (no video does at this point), you won't be able to somehow magically create those hues in post. Color contrast is lost, digital waves goodbye and leaves you with plastic portraits. Shooting RAW doesn't mean you capture all the color that's in the scene.

For some it'll destroy the movie night. Déformation professionnelle, you see.

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... and camera moves need to stay slow. A quick pan is no big deal when the screen is 30 degrees of your field of vision but when it's 60 degrees, the entire image can jump several feet from one frame to the next.

It's why I'm concerned about Dunkrik being all hand held. I'm a dolly/jib guy myself, I think the smooth feeling really helps sell the cinematic nature of things.

 

The last authentic, made for IMAX film I saw was "Dinosaurs Alive"... what a disappointment that was! It started like a documentary and was interesting, used the 3D process well etc. but the rest of it was that stupid acid trip excuse to show off their CG. On the other hand, the first one I saw was "The Dream is Alive", which was perfect for me because I've always been big on space exploration. My college roomie had it on laserdisc, but I thought "what's the point?"

Anything with CG is no longer an IMAX movie in my book. That's why I was so happy with Rocky Mountain Express because it had a few graphics, but it was mostly live action filmmaking on 15/70.

 

Supposedly there is suppose to be a few more 15/70 science films headed our way soon. They just take along time to produce.

 

What are they doing? I know more stuff is being shot on film now and they are at least THINKING about bringing back Kodachrome (though I'm under the impression that all their manufacturing is outsourced).

I can't really give the details, but the result will be a consumer theatrical experience.

 

Totally. That movie is still on my "to do" list though. Did you see it in 70mm? I agree that a lot is lost in conversion but there's still an advantage in color and motion with shooting and scanning film. What a lot of people fail to realize is that it's not just about resolution and dynamic range. There's also another set of optics that alter the image.

I saw it 3 times on 70mm! The theatrical road show version only exists as a DCP backup incase the film were to break during projection... how lame is that? The studio was so scared about a medium that's worked for over 100 years, that they provided a digital backup? That just shows you how shitty our theaters are today and how a lot of projectionists don't give a poop.

 

Unfortunately I don't like the movie very much. I just enjoy photochemical movies and try to see them repeatedly because they are so rare these days. 7 hours from now I will be at the Cinerama Dome to see Dunkirk in 70mm. I'm pretty excited!

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It's why I'm concerned about Dunkrik being all hand held. I'm a dolly/jib guy myself, I think the smooth feeling really helps sell the cinematic nature of things.

I don't mind hand-held when it's done tastefully, though it totally bit me in the butt once. I shot a project (S-8, 16mm and some 35mm with standard def digital post) for TV a few years ago, but then it got played in a big theater and I felt sick. To add insult to injury, I think I was using a 90 degree shutter angle. It was also rather soft because I was shooting around F2. On a side note, I was using my trusty 7212 exposed as 50 ISO. It looked really cool on TV!

Had I known it would be on a 10M tall screen, I would have produced it with an entirely different style. For starters, I would have done it all on S16 and 35mm, used a 180 degree shutter angle and shot at F4. I would have stuck with my 28mm lens instead of using a zoom and also would have used a matte box to cut down lens flares. Most important, I would have put forth some kind of effort to keep the camera steady!

 

 

 

Supposedly there is suppose to be a few more 15/70 science films headed our way soon. They just take along time to produce.

 

Thank goodness; though the only IMAX theater here is running video now.

 

 

The studio was so scared about a medium that's worked for over 100 years, that they provided a digital backup?

 

Yeah, DCP's track record is nowhere near as good even over a 1-year span. When everything is a computer in disguise...

 

 

Unfortunately I don't like the movie very much. I just enjoy photochemical movies and try to see them repeatedly because they are so rare these days. 7 hours from now I will be at the Cinerama Dome to see Dunkirk in 70mm. I'm pretty excited!

NICE! I think the only way to see film in my area is at my house, but I sold most of my collection recently so it's slim pickings. I'm not a Tarantino fan in general, but I AM curious about that one.

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It's why I'm concerned about Dunkrik being all hand held. I'm a dolly/jib guy myself, I think the smooth feeling really helps sell the cinematic nature of things.

 

 

It isn't all handheld, just mostly handheld. They used Technocranes and other ways of moving the camera too. There is a tiny bit about this in my article on the subject here:

 

https://www.redsharknews.com/production/item/4729-shooting-christopher-nolan-s-dunkirk-in-65mm

 

Freya

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