Tyler Purcell

Sorry... I was more referring to the MI6 destroyed building. Bond walking through the basement covered in wires and pictures of the bad guys from the last few films. Not only a ridiculous concept, but way over-lit. There was no motivation for the lighting and worst of all, every square inch was perfectly lit like it was a sound stage. Had it just been lit with his flashlight, that would have at least been better. The helicopter crash was bogus, but it was lit fine.

'Skyfall' had such amazing "motivated" lighting with contrast, deep blacks and beautiful highlights. My favorite is the post-house fire at the end, using the fire itself as the only light source. It wasn't just a genius stroke by Deakin's, but it was required to make the ending dark and mysterious. 'Spectre's' dark and mysterious ending was over-lit, had no sense of contrast and neither did the actors or script. Mind you, Deakin's is my favorite DP working today.

I personally feel the James Bond franchise is as far away from "art" as a filmmaker can get. If this were a P.T. Anderson or Wes Anderson film, I'd be accepting of their artistic decisions and embrace/learn from them. These are two directors who make films specifically for the art genera and likewise, as audiences we relish in every frame. However, the vast majority of the cinema audiences could care less about these two filmmakers, yet there are thousands of them all around the world creating wonderful product that mass audiences will never see. I personally think it's healthy to disagree with a filmmakers decision-making process, especially if their are blatant non-artistic issues. Most of the films problems aren't artistic decisions, but choices probably based on time, budget and the script which was very, very, very poor.

Interested to hear what you think! :~)

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.

And to clarify, I think his other work is spot-on. This film just doesn't come close for whatever reason.

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.

Yep, that was one problem. The scene with Bond and Money Penny in his apartment was a great example, clearly it was WAY under lit on her angle, but his angle was fine. You could tell the digital stuff right away when it comes to bright objects like over-exposure especially reflections, like the few scenes with water. Heck even the snow stuff seemed over-exposed in a lot of places, just down-right flat and that was all 35mm. Even the 35mm stuff was colored very flat, without a lot of dynamic range. There was no depth to the images either, they seemed so static and as I said earlier, uninteresting. Re-watch 'Skyfall' and you'll notice that every single shot has lots of dynamic range, every shot was interesting to watch as well. A lot of that is blocking, shot composition and lighting, which you could say is Hoyte's job, but maybe due to the speed of production and all the toys they had to play with, clearly someone was more interested in messing around then simply shooting a movie. This is the problem with new technology, everyone wants to play in the sand box and comes up with all sorts of excuses why they need to. Yet, 35mm still looks better... none of those "video" looking over-exposed areas, which I was SHOCKED about as I expected the Alexa 65 to look A LOT BETTER. Also... digital motion blur vs film motion blur. Digital looks fine in bright situations, but the moment you use it's sensitivity at night for instance, the motion blur is so frustratingly horrid. It's like that in every movie and the moment you mix film motion blur in one shot with digital motion blur a few shots later, you notice right away how HORRIBLE the digital motion blur looks. In my eyes, it looks like 29.97 broadcast television, all of the "cinematic" look goes away and with the very flat colored image, it just looks like an HBO movie seen on a CRT television 20 years ago. I assume not, they're too busy making $5000 a week doing nothing but staring at a histogram/waveform monitor and telling the cinematographer they're over or under. They literally have more power on a digital movie then the cinematographer AND director combined. Just watch and listen to the making of most recent Mad Max movie. They're probably pissed most of the movie was shot in film because they don't have work on those days. Digital is easy to light because you've got an LCD monitor showing you exactly what it's going to look like. The DIT tell's the cinematographer what they can and can't do on a set with a digital camera. So instead of entrusting the exposure with the professional who in this case, has shot some amazing films, they trust some 20 year old, who's never shot anything in their entire life, to make critical decisions about the exposure of each shot. Plus as I said earlier, I think Hoyte was experimenting with the new Alexa 65 because there wasn't a single scene in the movie that "required" an ultra sensitive camera. In fact, the film was so stupid, they could have very easily pushed all the dark shots into light and nobody would have been the wiser. In an effort to make things easier? Maybe an effort to make things more realistic? They decided to under-light and use the sensitivity of the camera, which in my view is bogus. When watching this poop, I kept saying to myself... I can't believe I'm still sitting here watching this crap. For me to say that about a Bond film, neigh a film shot on 35mm, neigh a film shot by the very cinematographer who made 'Interstellar' so flat-out amazing... I was shocked. 'Spectre' was beyond disappointing, technically, story, acting, location's, everything was flat, pandering to the lowest common denominator and uninteresting. Just when you expected it to turn around, you got more lowest common denominator crap. :sigh: If this is the future of digital technology, I have no interest in being involved. If filmmakers wanna make stuff that looks like 29.97 broadcast on a CRT monitor, they can go ahead and do that. I don't want to be apart of that movement.

WOW what a horrible movie! I hate to say it, but I was dismayed with everything about this film. Technically it was unimpressive, from the extremely flat coloring and DCP presentation, to the horrible green screen shots and even things like background music (on camera), score and sound mix. Either they were shooting so fast, they didn't have time to make it look good OR they just ran out of money. The end result is so unsatisfying in story and technical ability, it leaves the audience checking their watches and not even a single clap was heard after the movie, opening night at a packed theater. I think Hoyte Van Hoytema is a pretty decent cinematographer. No disrespect, but he ain't no Roger Deakin's. When you watch 'Skyfall' you're seeing a master cinematographer, every little detail is perfect. 'Spectre' on the other hand is very messy, the look is all over the place. Some scenes are well lit, well shot and colored properly. However, the vast majority of the film is uninteresting visually. A lot of that is the coloring and digital projection which had very little dynamics in contrast/brightness or color. Some scenes were downright flat, as if they were shooting digitally and didn't bother making any corrections. Nothing "popped" on screen, nothing to make you go "wow, great shot" like in 'Skyfall'. I thought 'The Fighter' and 'Interstellar' were "masterfully" shot however, two of my favorite Hoyte films. However, both films were done photochemically and projected on film. So perhaps Hoyte's problem is NOT his shooting, but whoever is helping him with the color in this digital age. I also feel following in the footsteps of Deakin's and 'Skyfall' may have been a bit much. Over-all, it's unfortunate for us "film" guys, that 'Spectre' isn't a good representation of what film can do. It will come and go very fast due to how poor of a movie it is. I think a lot of people who aren't even educated in filmmaking will comment on the look of the film, which is sad. I expect more from Hoyte, 35mm, Sam Mendes and the James Bond Franchise. Where 'Spectre' isn't the worst of the franchise, it's pretty much at the bottom of the pile. Unless you've got money to blow and 2hrs 25min to waste, wait for video, it will probably look better and you can fast forward through the dialog.

I'd love to know where. So far I've not seen anyone screening 35mm.

I can't believe it's only been a month since I came up with this idea and in only a few weeks, I've been able to secure all the equipment necessary to start shooting. I'm feverishly working on securing more equipment, hoping to use my connections and get tax deductible donations. It's hard though because everyone wants to donate, but I don't have a charity as of yet. That paperwork takes a long time and costs a lot. So I'm scrambling to make something happen. I've got some meetings setup for next week, a great new powerpoint presentation and a budget. I'm also going to start shooting very soon. I've got some great little projects lined up from now until the end of the year, just waiting for some funding to arrive. I can't wait to do my "camera tests" though they'll be a bit on the creative side. :) More info coming in the near future!

Yea, I mean with low-grain stocks you can get away with no noise reduction. The only problem comes down to digital artifacts, but you can't help that with super 8. It's always going to look better projected then scanned unfortunately. Super 8 blow up to 35mm is so rare, I can't imagine anyone having that setup naturally and willing to strike a deal price wise. If your lab has a cinevator, that to me seems like the best option for super 8 because it can only resolve 2k anyway.

The perf's of our test material were all over the place. It was brand new vision 3 35mm camera negative. The scanner was constantly correcting and keeping the perfs stable, but the image lacked decent registration as a consequence. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't anywhere near what I expect from a motion picture film scanner. I do know the test material was shot with an Arri III and the lock-down shots moved quite a bit. This is why I assumed, it would be better to take registration marks from the actual frame lines, comparing one frame to the next, rather then ONLY the perf's.

Looks great! Loved it! ;)

Got ya. I don't know anything about the cinevator.

Well, nothing stops you from taking your cut negative and striking a print off it. The problem is, how many times do you want your original negative dragged through the printer? The purpose of the internegative is to be your final negative. You will do a scene by scene color correction from your camera negative to the internegative. You'll also put a sound track onto the internegative as that's where it resides. Basically, the internegative is your final print negative, it's where everything marries together. Most films will then create an IP off that IN. That IP is what they'll use for making prints. You can skip that process if you plan on only making a few prints. It's only there for protection of the IN, which should be saved because that's your "master". With DI, the grain structure is more highlighted and needs "calming" which leads to heavy noise reduction. This makes the image softer, which then is printed back onto film and can look strange. Prints struck off the IN look great, the grain structure is quite amazing because it's not only the camera original grain and color, but also the print grain and color. Every print stock has it's own inherent look, which a lot of people try to mimic in post.

I'm working with Blackmagic on this problem come the new year. I'll keep you in the loop.

I've already done a lot of work with it and have been impressed with pretty much everything. First off, it's super easy to use and very versatile. It scan's 2, 3, 4, perf 35mm, full frame and academy. The thunderbolt interface plugs into any machine with a thunderbolt port, though it does require high-speed thunderbolt storage, so a trashcan Mac Pro and raid is kind of a "must-have", which adds another $10 - $20k to the budget right off the top. The DaVinci interface is easy to use and it flat-out works. It allows for on the fly adjusting scene by scene or straight CinemaDNG or DPX raw capture to disk. Real-time support requires fast storage. It was able to do 15fps on our iMac using the internal SSD no problem. It currently captures at UHD resolution at any frame rate your computer can handle. The scanner does have a few minor hiccups. The big one is the registration, which comes from the perf. It's adjustable, but it's perf only, it really needs to be frame line based as well. I tried making that happen a few times during my few hours in front of the unit, but no matter what, it wanted the perf to get decent registration. At slower speeds, the registration appeared to be better. The other hiccup is the 16mm conversion, it's not very quick. They will have sound and keycode readers in the near future, the ports exist, it's just a matter of accessories hitting the market. Over-all the image is pretty good. I didn't have much to compare it with during my testing. It's far better then any real-time capture device I've ever seen. Yet, it doesn't have the refinement of some of the other high-end scanners I've seen images from. For a real-time scanner, it's by far the best product out there. For most applications, it will work perfectly. I'm not sure how it will look on the big screen, I will be doing further work with it come the new year. However, I have a feeling it won't beat the other top scanners out there, mostly due to the imager type and registration system. I maybe wrong, it's just a feeling I have. For the price however, it's a mighty good deal and I'm sure they'll sell very well.

That's true and the are a lot of excellent "creatives" who are just squeaking by financially. My earlier point is about the excess spent on our modern films. Everyone can get paid a reasonable rate and the movie can still be good.

You can produce the film for 3M and take 2M for pre-production, festivals, marketing and distribution expenses. Honestly, if you can't market a movie for 1M, you've done something terribly wrong. You don't NEED to be in every cinema, just in certain markets. Advertise directly to your audience, not to the masses. Honestly, I don't know. I've been told by a lot of experts that schedule F and a flat rate of $60k, is acceptable for most actors who like your project and have time to be a part of it.

Actually, neither product was shot on the blackmagic pocket camera entirely. The first one was shot mostly with the blackmagic cinema camera, some of the inserts are pocket. The second one was shot with the Sony F5, with some insert shots with the blackmagic pocket. The pocket camera has a softer image, you can tell right away what was shot with it. You can also tell most of those two video's were shot with larger imager cameras because of the depth of field and very much a global shutter. Here are some of my examples of stuff shot with the pocket camera. I actually don't do much post color work, I believe in showing native camera color and not messing too much with the result.

On mac's, simply enter full screen mode in quicktime. Then hit command + shift + 3 and it will screen capture (take a still image) of the quicktime frame. It puts the stills on the desktop and you can title them anything you want. Yes, they're pict files, but they're easy to batch convert to jpeg's using photoshop, graphic converter or any other automated batch converting product.

Even my little self-financed documentary has better IMDB reviews and has been seen around the world at festivals and has been picked up by Criterion for VOD/DVD release. Yet I don't come on here bragging; "I am the only forum member who has produced and sold movies entirely as an independent producer, and had all four titles placed in top distribution outlets, and sold globally." In my eyes, I'd rather have a really good product that very few people see, then a crappy product that very few people enjoy. It's great to have people on here like yourself with a lot of experience making films, I applaud your ability to put deals together and make a product. However, just because you've made a bunch of direct to VOD/DVD movies, doesn't make you the forum's only decent feature filmmaker.

I've never heard of your films.

I think it's too late to fix the system. - When an cinematography oscar is given to a movie shot on a green screen - When most movies are shot on 2D, yet the studio's spent millions doing crappy 3D conversions so they can charge more money at the box office. - When theaters charge minimal $14 for a mid-day showing. - When the price of marketing has sky-rocketed. - When actors salaries are off the chart - When studio's are only interested in making "safe" films. Unique stories are left for television. - When every single movie MUST have visual effects and a substantial post budget. - When union's are pushing to make crew millionaires. - When there are no tax shooting incentives. - When most films go directly to video and disappear forever. These are the indicators of a non-sustainable industry. The only way to fix it, is to find an investor willing to put in the money necessary. Start a new distribution company, produce extremely low-budget non-union shows with Sag schedule F. Tell interesting stories that top actors will be interested in being involved with. Use more target audience and cost effective marketing strategy instead of going after the broad audience. Focus on small numbers instead of big numbers. Don't shoot anything in Hollywood, tell stories from other places of the world. Keep the budgets under 5M and work out special deals with theaters chains directly for distribution, don't let the 300lb gorilla studio contracts boss you around. It's all doable and if you do it right, I think things could change.