Tyler Purcell

Well... it looks like my fears about Hateful Eight's projection were well founded: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/3y7a2b/post_hateful_eight_70mm_show_reports_here/ A lot of people are complaining about projection issues throughout the country, especially at theaters that don't normally run film anymore. The focus issues I experienced haven't been as wide spread as I predicted. However, I think most people just don't know what it's suppose to look like. Never the less, issues are wide spread from a projectionist loading the film backwards, to several audio out of sync issues, to the projector not having a frame matte, so the bottom and top frame edges were seen. It seems like most of the digital-only theaters, framed the film improperly on the standard 2.35:1 screen, so there was a big black bar at the top of the screen. Some of the comments led me to believe the theater owners were so scared of the film not working, they actually ran digital backup's in sync with the film. One theater go'er saw overlapping images because the projectionist forgot to turn the digital projector off. Another theater couldn't even make the film projector run, so a lot of people simply walked out. Obviously, the film has been running for one day, today is the 2nd day and I'm sure a lot of these bugs will be worked out. Funny enough, the Arclight Hollywood, Sherman Oaks and LaJolla have zero issues, the feedback has been stellar. So it CAN be done, it just requires a projectionist with half a brain!

Well, I mean the audience doesn't need to have stellar performances from the likes of the original cast. When they come on screen, we already know who they are ya know? So no matter how they act, they'll still be those characters. I don't really care much about the acting in a fantasy film unless it's atrocious.

Radiohead just released their Spectre theme song, the one that was suppose to be in the film. Pretty cool not to mention:

Well yea, I think this quote from Kenneth Turan from the LA Times, sums up his movies: "While Malick's great ability holds us for a time, it is finally not enough to compensate for a lack of dramatic involvement - those eschatological quandaries tend to overwhelm the story. The Tree of Life, its enormous advantages notwithstanding, ends up a film that demands to be admired but cannot be easily embraced." It's suppose to be entertainment after all!

No spoilers... but Carrie doesn't look good or sound good. She's not taken care of herself at all and it's very evident in the final product. Harrison Ford looks great, he talks the talk and walks the walk! I've spent quite a bit of time with Mark Hamill personally since he started working on the new franchise, he looks pretty good actually. He really loves being apart of the franchise and I think Carrie does as well. Harrison just doesn't seem too interested in being an action hero anymore. It's rumored that Spielberg and Lucas are prepping for Indy 5 right now and are going to still use Harrison. We can chat more about Star Wars once everyone has seen it. Unfortunately, it's one of those films that is chock full of important plots that shouldn't be spoiled.

Right, but MOST of those directors already had a career prior to making those bombs. My point is that, the audience does have a very discerning taste and it's important as a filmmaker to find what that is and focus on it. Making something that's safe, isn't a bad idea. On that list, there are two truly wonderful films... 'HUGO' and "John Carter'. Both have their minor flaws, but both are actually really good movies. I have no idea why 'Hugo' didn't do well, its a cinematic masterpiece with a great story. 'John Carter' was a bit too much for people. Campy sci-fi is not really a money maker, even though I'm a fan of that genera when done right. Funny enough, Renny Harlin is on that list twice... bad boy! LOL :)

Yep and there in lies the problem. I agree with you on the review as well. Upon finishing my much anticipated first screening, I was left dismayed. I haven't spoken about the story because I didn't want to post anything until the film had been out for a while. Plus, since it's a "who done it", not much of it can be talked about without spoiling the very little plot there is. So I'll write something more detailed next week once everyone has seen it. :)

After my 2nd screening tonight (it's 2am now) I understand more clearly why they made 'Force Awakens' this way. It was clearly that "bridge" movie between the old franchise and the new one. Similar to Star Trek 'Generations' where they past on the torch, it's the same concept here. It was never meant to be anything but a way to gauge/judge the current interest in Star Wars and in my book it worked well. You look at the story, you look at the characters and you say, "hey, this has been done before" and you'd be right. It's absolutely been done before and making things bigger and more menacing doesn't make it any different. However, one can't argue the simple fact, it's a "safe" movie in every sense of the word. The title in of itself is insinuating a new beginning. We're going to get two more movies in that time line, with that cast and two more films about the breakup of the empire before 2019, a total of 5 movies, two of which are already in production. I've been told by people who have read the next scripts that they are much darker and more interesting then 'Force Awakens'. So it will get a make-over for sure, it's just a question of the fan's will like them. Disney spent quite a bit on acquiring the franchise and it will require a lot of money to make their investment back. JJ did an outstanding job making a re-boot that works for people who haven't seen the other films and/or are die hard fans of the series. Now he's handing over the reigns and only time will tell how good the next one is, which incidentally comes out this time next year and is shot digitally.

Yep, on my short list to do this holiday season. Funny enough, the screening I saw tonight was not 3D after all. I'll do a write up in the right section later.

Nope, I saw bits of it, put me to sleep. Sure, but they're all a narrative of one kind or another. We all came from this planet, we all grow older, we are either male or female and our lives for better or for worse, all follow a "timeline" of some sort or another. This is what the narrative structure is all about, it's following that timeline. The idea of feeling/emotion presented on screen as a visual concept. I get it, but what do YOU get from it? How does it further your life? Do you learn something from it and pass that knowledge on to the rest of your life? I'm just wondering because I haven't even really tried to watch it. Mind you, I also couldn't get through 'Boyhood', which is supposedly considered one of the best films made in the history of filmmaking. Yet, I love so many unusual films, ones that our youth couldn't give two shits about. I guess it's all down to personal preference at one point or another. I'm just very much into the "cinematic" aspects of filmmaking because that's what the "cinema" is for in my opinion. Yep, it's true! If more filmmakers thought outside of the box, we'd have better movies for sure. I like experimental THEMES like 'Inception' and 'Momento' because they follow a narrative structure. Mostly all of my story ideas contain a single "experimental" type theme, but told in a narrative structure. I just wanna make standard ol' popcorn movies ya know? Entertain the audience for a few hours, get them away from their lives for a moment and into someone else's. Merry Christmas, off to see Star Wars in 3D... yuck.. :D

Yep, I agree. I just personally don't care for the experimental genera. There is some experimental art which is pretty to hang on a wall, but you aren't going to stare at it for 2+ hours. To me, I see experimental artists as lacking the skills normal artists strive for. Nothing wrong with that, most of my films are experimental in one way or another. But I always suck with standard narrative structure because it's not that difficult.

Great find. He's so amazing! :)

Ohh, you can't compare broadcast to the original media. They are two completely different animals.

You can tell buy the grain structure. It's all down to the scan and projection. I saw it on a small screen in 2k digital. The grain particulates were muted and soft, not crisp like the film is. That's a dead give away for noise reduction. It's just common place today to add noise reduction to anything shot on film. This is mostly because our highly compressed distribution methods can't deal with all those moving sliver elements. I bet the 35mm blow up looked amazing.

Life is a narrative, we as humans follow that narrative and we comprehend how that story telling structure works. The moment you go off structure, the moment you break from any direct narrative, you risk confusing the audience. For instance, documentaries spend most of their time building narrative structure, so people aren't confused. They too have to tell a story and generally the best way is using the narrative structure. So here we are with Malick and his uninteresting art nonsense. You can interpret his images a million different ways, but that doesn't mean you actually understand what he's getting on about. To me, the pure essence of cinema is visual story telling. If you aren't capable of telling a story, then what's the point? Malick is all about feeling and emotion, what it's like to exist, rather then why the character bothers to exist. As the audience, we can't really connect and for lack of a better word, his films are visual porn (your body doesn't know why it keeps staring at the screen). We as the audience are almost held in captivity, viewing the pretty images, constantly wondering what the interpretation is of what we're seeing on screen.

Ohh got ya, so it's not operational. Dang! I'm glad he was smart enough to buy it. Thanks for the update!

What a great cinematic experience 'Carol' is. I thought Lachman did a wonderful job, not only making a very simple story visually interesting, but also using the small format to his advantage. To me, he lit the film perfectly in every way. The lighting was always motivated and spot on during every single shot, which to me is pretty amazing. I think the locations were spot-on and truly helped the film maintain it's cinematic style throughout the piece. Where I wasn't initially in love with the composition, as the film moved on, I began to understand the meaning of what he was doing and agreed with much of it. Lachman's subtle use of the dolly and zoom lens was spot on. There were a few moments I would have reached for the dolly, but usually right when I thought that, he'd start moving the camera. Some of those shots looking into the car from outside whilst driving, those were just gorgeous and amazingly properly lit. Some of the interiors looking outwards were interesting, as he let the image over-expose instead of lighting to help smoothen that out. I thought that decision was spot on and looked great. In terms of the S16 look, I must admit it looked pretty darn good. It clearly went through heavy noise reduction as the image was a bit on the soft side, the grain wasn't so crisp. Yet, it didn't really bother me because it was so pretty anyway, it didn't matter. The exteriors were wonderful, clearly shot on fine grain 50D in most cases.The 500T was noticeable, especially in Carol's house at night when Therese was playing the piano. However, it didn't pull me away from the film in any way, 7219 is a great stock. In terms of the story, I thought it was a bit on the weak side. They could have added a bit more conflict, which would have made it more interesting. It was a bit too soft for my liking, which pained me because I flat-out loved the filmmaking, the pacing, the cast, everything on screen, but the core story. It makes me wonder how much hit the cutting room floor. In the end, 'Carol' is by far one of the best uses of modern motion picture film and a must see for any cinematographer. I truly hope Lachman gets some nods for his work and preservation of celluloid. An interesting side note, his last few films were all 16mm. He also used "Technicolor NY" for his processing, which was closed down 2 years ago. I heard a rumor he bought the lab and is using it for his own projects.

Yea, I'm not a Malick fan at all. I thought 'Days of Heaven' and 'The Thin Red Line' were entertaining, but his most recent films are a bore. As Bill pointed out, they're pretty much the same repetitive story over and over again. As a filmmaker, one of the things that bothers me about his movies is that he clearly makes them in post. He runs around, shoots way over the script and makes it work by constantly tweaking. On his last few films, he was cutting even during the theatrical release, shipping out updated DCP's to the theaters. So if you like that kind of story telling, one done completely in post, it maybe your kind of film. However, in my book, editing should be a "cleaning" of the story a "fine tuning" of what was on the written page. Yet, Malick's more recent films, its as if there wasn't any story and he's mixing stock footage together in order to tell something. Of course, his films look amazing, but that has nothing to do with him... only his wonderful DP, Emmanuel Lubezki. So if you're bored and wish to see pretty pictures... maybe he's the right director for you! :)

Yea, Jurassic World was very much over the top in it's coloring as well. Though I had very little complaints about the cinematography. It worked for that kind of film.

Happy Holidays! Looking to 2016! :)

Yea, I'd love to know more about the production. Always love learning! :)

Next year should be good! I'm very happy to be back shooting film again.

I liked quite a bunch of studio films from 2014/2015 actually: Interstellar Inherent Vice Grand Budapest Hotel Birdman Whiplash Nightcrawler Imitation Game How to Train Your Dragon II Edge of Tomorrow Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation Sicario The Force Awakens Ex Machina Inside Out The Revenant Bridge of Spies I'll reluctantly put Hateful Eight on this list as well. I clearly like it or I wouldn't be listening to the soundtrack over and over again. :shrug: Mind you, I still have yet to see a few films from 2015.

They shot ONE sequence using 15/70 IMAX cameras. So yes, there is some actual good'ol horizontal IMAX material somewhere in the film. The rest of the film was shot on 35mm anamorphic. So those scenes would have big bars at the top and the bottom of the screen. The reason filmmakers don't shoot entire films using IMAX 15/70 cameras isn't cost, it's really because the cameras are so big, unwieldy, loud and temperamental, it causes shoots to be a lot longer then they should be. Christopher Nolan has experimented with mixing IMAX and 35mm more then any other filmmaker and on Interstellar, the final film has 90 minutes of 15/70 material in it. However, it just makes the 35mm stuff look bad. Jurassic World took a different approach. They shot the VFX scenes in 65mm and the dialog scenes in 35mm, but full frame. Since the new digital IMAX format is 1.9:1 aspect ratio, it was very easy for them to make the 35mm material full screen on digital IMAX screens. Thus, an IMAX presentation that looked pretty darn good, without the bars at the top and the bottom.

Not a single shot was believable in any stretch of the word. The moment the whale came on for the first shot, it was an animated film with live action characters. Well, nothing of the background was real, not even the fence which was moving in the opposite direction of the camera in some shots. I mean really? You put a master tracker on the effect and it auto tracks with the camera move, yet those post guys somehow didn't catch the fence moving the opposite direction of the camera! The film was plagued with the same issues throughout. It was a mistake because nobody is going to see the film! So even if the filmmakers agreed on the look, it's still a mistake. They clearly wanted it to look like an oil painting, but they failed to understand if that look is what the audience wants to see. In my eyes, it looked like a bad TV movie. People don't want to see a bad TV movie at the theaters, they just don't. In my eyes, the filmmakers are disrespecting the audience. They just assume we're so dumb, we won't notice how poorly the film was made. This is a visual medium and if the visuals are so mushed together into unfollowable nonsense with multiple layers of CG on top of each other, all fighting for the same real estate, it's simply not watchable. Reminds me of the Marvel films, only done far worse. My respect for the filmmakers ended the moment I saw the whale for the first time. I saw 'Rush' in it's early, pre-released form and it didn't look bad. I worked on the BTS and trailers for the film and rather enjoyed it without the VFX. What ruined 'Rush' was the incessant use of VFX to cover up wonderful live-action shots in the final. For Howard, it was more important to see the eyes of the actors in the helmets, rather then show the audience an actual live-action event taking place that looked great and realistic. So he resorted to horrible visual effects, so unrealistic, so pandering to the lowest common denominator, it was sickening. Again, it's a visual medium and the moment you take beautiful realistic scenes and mix them with something clearly fake, it pulls people right out of the movie. That tactic is fine for horror, fantasy or sci-fi, but when you're trying to tell a biography of someone's life, it's extremely disheartening to see modern and unbelievable effects. You may notice, I didn't complain about the FX in 'Force Awakens' OR 'Revenant', because they don't pander to the lowest common denominator. Have you seen 'The Knick' at all? Period TV show, made in a very modern way and it looks fantastic. Like an oil painting. The book-end's didn't bother me really, I could live with that look, even though it's completely left field. The night stuff wasn't even really an issue throughout the film. It was the day stuff, it was the harsh lighting you mentioned earlier. It looked like a TV show, or as you put it a "hero" look. I also insist the composition was very strange as well, it was like watching a 2.35:1 movie with the sides cropped off to make it 1.85:1. It's one thing to tweak an image over-all, it's another thing to take specific sections of an image and tweak them incessantly until you've made it all fake, so it holds true to a certain "look", that wasn't on set. See, that's the problem. You think they were trying to avoid prettiness, I know for fact they were attempting to build something pretty from nothing. They wanted the film to look like a beautiful old oil painting. That's what they sought and that's why I call it a complete failure. It was a failed experiment and as you point out, not a worthwhile story either. There have been many films about that time period, all of which used practical effects and different looks. 'Sweeney Todd' being one that stands out, mostly because of how wonderful it was shot.