Alex Lindblom

Okay a lot of interesting points here, so lets get right to it. 1. The Swedish/Nordic issue... - Max, I have to support Adam here he is absolutely right in every point he makes. State funding has completely destroyed Nordic cinema, period. Personally I am a Trier fan ( at least as long as he used sets.) But the percentage of good movies that has come out of these systems are about 2% to 98%. And then I am probably nice. But even if the numbers would be reversed there is something very, very, very disturbing with a Country deciding what kind of art that gets produced, and in that also directly which artist are allowed to live on there craft. You see, this leads to that one side always will starve, depending on which side that governs the country at the moment left or right. And this is as the British puts it -- Are you joking, this is appalling and totally unacceptable. I am well aware that you could argue that "but you are not free in the Hollywood system either you are bound by the money." That is true but the fact remains, capital doesn't care what color it has or where it came from, in that way is great "democratizer". There is always some way to access it. But you can never argue with an ideology, if it not the same as yours, you are simply poop out of luck. 2. European film/Production... Back to main question of the topic. I think we need to split this in two category's. 1. European filmmakers. 2. Productions shot in Europe. Because here in lays a wonderful paradox. European directors are doing very well in the USA. Nolan, Harlin, Emmerich, Scott, Hallstrom, Leterrier and the list can go on and on... Al of the above directors makes movies that people would call American typical Hollywood fare. I mean for Christ sake Emmerich (German) did ID4 and more American film then that, it will be very hard to find. And why are these people "forced" to states. Well I will go out on a limb here and say it's because of the state funding, of films in Europe, have made it impossible to make the kind of movies they want to make with European money. ( Expect maybe the case of Hallstrom his Swedish movies are very similar to his US productions.) A prime example of a so called Hollywood movie is The Exorcist The beginning: Harlin directed (Finland) two leading actors Skarsgard and Scorupco both Swedish, Cinematography by Storaro and all shot in Cinecitta in Rome. This leads us in to point... ... 2. Productions shot in Europe. There are quit a lot of Hollywood productions that shots in Europe. Hellboy 2 - Hungary Ninja Assassin - Germany Harry potter and Bond - UK And of Course Millennium films that bought Blugaria's flag ship studio Boyana Studios, and are building new sets there to shoot Rambo 5 as rumor has it. Well now I ma just rambling, what I want to say is that things are more complex then it seems but on the whole, I think ther is a very bright future ahead for "European cinema". Ah heck lets call it what it is World cinema -- bright future -- end of ramble...

The great Jan Troell. I would even argue that he is too good of a cinematographer, leaving his direction, a bit lacking sometimes. Personal favorite -- Eng title: The Flight of the Eagle. A fantastic film on every level.

Thanks for the Info Dominic. Just one follow up question does anybody know what the price for print stock is? Why did Kodak drop there online price list, they used to have one a couple of years ago if I remember right. I know you can call them, but after all this is 2008. They should at least have a list price on there site, this goes for Fuji as well.

I went through some old stuff today and stumbled on a piece of an old work print of mine. And that raised the question... What stock does labs normally use for dailies -- is it 2395 / 3395 or is it something else? When you cheek there home pages, they list prices and but nothing else so grateful for answer.

Bloody Brilliant.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, was shoot in Ultra Panavision which has an 1.25:1 anamorphic compression. Lawrence of Arabia, was shoot in Super Panavision which uses spehrical lenses. Both these films where 65mm five-perf. If you haven't seen widescreenmuseum, yet, check it out it's a fantastic web site.

The Dark Knight, 4 scenes in IMAX, this certainly sounds intresting, check out the Link.

The Cineon system was introduced around 1993, I believe. And back then 10 bit was big thing. Correct me if I am wrong, but if understand it correct, all high end DI's use this file system, right? If so, why not use a high color bit depth, is it simply to little improvement to be worth bothering with?

Michael Bay I come to your defense. As we all know, all film criticism is highly subjective, and everybody is entitled to to there opinion. But one can never ignore good craft mans ship, and to claim that Bay knows squat about film making is just plain ridicules. ( even though if Pearl Harbor was the only film of his, you have ever seen, one may come to that conclusion ). The Rock is a very fine example of what Hitchcock called "pure cinema", a story mainly told through the medium of film through cuts thats just creates forward movement for over 2 hours and that is extremely hard to do, so it doesn't seem convulted or dull. And just to make sure nobody ever takes me seriously again on these forums, I will go out thin and I mean really thin ice, and state that there is only action movie the last 15 years that does this better then the rock, drum roll... The long kiss goodnight. Yes go Renny. Yes I am Finnish but purely an objective observation promise : )

I ran a cross this http://www.jemof.com/epfp.html and I wanted to share it with you guys... So let the discussions begin...

HA ha ha aha ha aha ha... Keneu that's just hysterically funny, you should be a screenwriter.

OK I finally saw the film on the big screen -- almost. To my horror it turned out to be a digital screening. I never in my whole life sen such a bad presentation. Just to compare, when I came home I took a look at Miami Vice on my CRT and oh my god how much better it looked, and we all know how that one looked in the theater. Now back to IE, when I finally came to grips with the projection and DV look, my biggest surprise was that you get used to the technically aspect of it, but what did not work here was the actual cinematography, the compositions. I mean there are a lot of extreme close up on faces in this movie many with very wide lenses, and the composition almost always with the face in dead center of the frame, with a little bit of hand held shake, and when the film is 3 hours it can get quiet unnerving. As I said before I love Lynch and his work, but the visuals are so different in this film ( once again composition not tech aspect of it ) that you are sometimes doubting yourself -- can this be the same person that gave us masterpieces like Mulholland Dr. On a final note on the visual when I went to the WC after the screening one of the other spectators says to me "I can not believe how bad that digital looked", remember this was just an average Joe. The actual film itself... Its not such a mind fu** as I heard from other viewers, I fells like quiet a straight story just told in an nonlinear fashion. There are of course certain thing that make no sense but this is lynch after all. The movie was absolutely worth seeing even though its probably one of his weaker works, but you cant always be on top. Laura Dern is great and so is, as always Harry Dean Stanton, and for a 3h movie it goes past very fast. All and all it was fun to see Lynch back at work and I am very eager to see what comes next.

Hi Phil. I am just curios do you know or do you want to speculate if it would be possible to hook this camera into an SRW1. I mean the connections are there SDI and Sony states it can record "In standard configuration, the SRW-1 can record in 4:2:2 720/59.94P format". It seems plausible but maybe I am missing something. Alex

Hi first of all you probably should post this in the first time filmmaker section. But here we go... There is no visual difference between the cameras. If you are using the same lens and filmstock, there is no difference in the final look, no matter which camera you use even an Arri IIc.

This is a really interesting tread not only for the UK but for the whole of Europe. Since almost every production in Europe goes through some government aid in which ever from it takes place in the different countries, we have a lot of producer who are great at making money for them self in there secured habitats. But this hinders "real film production" and development of producers that can stand on there own legs, on only commercial grounds. I have tried to produce through government funding my self in Sweden, the project was called Trustor, for all the none Nordics on this board it is about one of the biggest economic scams in Sweden ever. Of course since I was not one of the "inner circle" there was no help at all, not not even moral support. I don't mind some sort of start up support for new producers, but what I would like to see is that these decision are made from a commercial point of view, like slate financing 5-10 and much shorter development time, and realize that is not the masterpieces that keeps the industry going its the films in between. I really hope we can get a European film industry going again, like when the Italians did 500 films a year.

Great news -- Keep up the good work.

Great work and big congratulation's to Guillermo Navarro for picking up the Oscar. It was well deserved. But I have to agree with David, my personal favorite as well this year was the Prestige. It was also of course nice to finally see Martin Scorsese, get his Oscar at last. Alex

John with all due respect I sincerely agree to disagree with you on this matter. I would claim the complete opposite, he is one of the most underrated filmmakers working today. There is really a shame that his films after Dune never has gotten a fair theatrical reales, when I say fair I mean opening on 2000-3000 screens. No wonder that his films losses money when they open on 200 screens and then just vanishes. I would also be really hard to deny that Twin Peaks really changed, what you could do with TV drama, Mark Frost was of course also a big part of its successes. Regards Alex

I must say I think It looked fantastic, with blacks that where black, nice costumes and so on. Quiet interesting for a period piece was that the movie was largely hand held, which I though worked fine. And about the movie itself I think it was almost my favorite Nolan movie, even though I like Batman begins a lot as well. Overall great work and I hope more people goes and see it.

I have been digging around the forums and the net, for and answer but I have not find it. So what I am asking is... Does a Master prime or Hawk anamorphic, if you want to go for a ridiculous 3:1 aspect ratio for that matter, cover the Vistavision frame? Or do I need a still camera lens, the Vistavision cameras I have come across all seem to come with Lecia mount?

Thanks for that answer Stephen. I have indeed read the previous 750 vs 900 topics. A little strange that they did not budget for the digiprimes though, oh well you seemed happy enough with the canon lenses. You said that he movie was a largely hand held, roughly how many set ups did you manage each day?

Sounds very interesting, I am planing to use the Sony 750 for a shoot In January, could you please list some pros and cons with the camera, and how did you like the Canon lens? Bye the way did you shot it in the UK or Ireland?

Best wishes to you John, get better and keep on fighting. Alex Lindblom

Hi I was going through my blogs as usually and came across this... Blogmavrick Its Mark Cubans web blog, and he apparently like Akeelah very much -- $100.000 in movie tickets not bad. Thought it would be interesting for David and the rest of you, to know.

Yes... But an anamorphic DVD in 1.78:1 still uses the full resolution of 720x576/480 and no scaling is used with a normal widescreen CRT TV, it?s not much different from using an anamorphic lenses in theatres to un squeeze the image ( the principal not the quality ).