Trevor Masid

I had the incredible fortune to see a 70mil print of baraka at the aero theatre a couple of months ago.. truly a life changing cinema experience, although I couldnt even imagine it being screened at the dome or even the Egyptian, where the screens are quite a bit bigger than the aeros.

Cuaron and Lubezki

seconded!

While on the subject of the green screen, one that thing that really disappointed me and took me out of the moment was the opening scene with leo and mark on the boat, with some extremely bad green screen behind them, much worse to me than the shots in the jeep driving up to the compound.

Film not looking like film anymore is just another idea that takes some getting used to. Once the mind gets conditioned or brain washed to the new paridigm then it becomes mainstream and it becomes what people expect. After consumers get conditioned by watching decades of 120 hertz television it will be tough for them to be able to go back to watching a movie at 24 frames per second without it looking odd. It would be just like us trying to watch an old movie that was handcranked at 18 frames per second.

sadly, you're part right about the new mainstream, but as much as I can help it, I absolutely REFUSE to accept with my tv sets, and I know there will be purists ((however few there may be)) that will be on my side. WE NEED TO BAND TOGETHER, haha.

and sorry to double post, but i'm trying to decipher all this information in my head:

can anyone tell me... is that disgusting "smooth motion" effect due to the refresh rate of the tv? or is it an option on the tv that can be selected and de-selected?

AH! Smooth motion, I'm so happy to hear someone besides me think that that is a really bad idea. I was watching a clip in a store of Pirates of the Caribbean, and thought at first it was a behind the scenes clip because of the tv frame rate look. I was very confused when I realized it was the actual movie because I know for certain it was shot at 24fps on film. Then I learned about the smooth motion. Not sure what the manufactures are trying to accomplish here. but I agree, it looks like watching regular TV but the motion is kind of weird on top of that, a bit nauseating actually, it kind of makes me seasick after a while when it's on a large screen.

anyway as far as I know you should definitely be able to disable the feature in one of the menus on most TV's. Ironic when low budget filmmakers are spending money to get 24p (me included) and then TV manufactures are trying to get rid of it! :).

I'm glad finally someone understands what I detest so much in those tvs! It tends to be exhausting trying to explain to someone who isnt "in the field//industry" that something about the picture on a tv with "smooth motion//120hz//whatever you wanna call it" is just not right. I tried watching Magnolia on one of those tvs and it completely ruined the movie. I honestly hope most tvs have an option to turn that off, because I know very little about HDTV's, I dont know if its on account of the refresh rate, or just other video option crap the manufacturers put on there.

This is a real can of worms.

There are a lot of people spouting complete nonsense about which technology is better.

The reality is, the source of a lot of the nonsense they spout largely comes down to a historical thing. That is, things that night have been true once, but the technology had moved on from there,

 

Ten years ago, if you wanted a big flat panel screen, Plasma was all there was.

Early Plasmas didn't give a particularly good picture, were horribly expensive, had a very short operational life, were extremely heavy, very fragile, had massive power consumption and were limited to about 1366 x 768 resolution. Even much cheaper CRT TVs generally gave a far better picture.

 

On the other hand, early large-screen LCDs generally gave a worse picture than Plasma screens, although they were somewhat cheaper.

 

However, by 2005 LCD screen technology had improved massively, to the point where for most people there was little perceivable difference between LCD and Plasma. (It's significant that at that point Sony stopped production of both Plasma and Trinitron CRT TVs). By 2006, full HD 1920 x 1080 LCD screens were coming onto the high-end market, and now I can buy 42" full HD LCD TVs for well under $A1,000. Five years ago an equivalent set without an HD tuner would have cost about $12,000!

 

Meanwhile, presumably because so much money had been invested in the Plasma panel factories, Plasma manufacturers went into R&D overdrive. Everything about Plasma screens suddenly got a whole lot better. Previously it hadn't been possible to make full-HD Plasma screens smaller than 50", now you can get full-HD 40" screens.

 

They've virtually ticked all the boxes, so now Plasmas are much cheaper, lighter, less fragile, with lower power consumption. As for lifespan, that's too early to call, but current indications are it's acceptable.

 

As for colour quality, well I spent over 20 years maintaining broadcast TV equipment, including responsible for maintaining the colour balance of studio monitors, so I think I have a fair idea what a TV screen should like, and in my experience, there is no specific rule as to which technology is "better". I now work in a compliance testing lab for a large retailer, so I get to inspect a lot of TVs and all I can tell you is that I've seen plenty of examples of great pictures, and crap pictures, from both technologies.

 

Quite a few manufacturers make almost identical sets in both Plasma and LCD, and put to the test, all of the "Plasma-is-better" know-it-alls I work with failed miserably in identifying what type of panel they were looking at.

 

Generally, there are only a few actual manufacturers of display panels (there are lots of factories with different names, but they all license their technology from these few), and the chips used in the peripheral circuitry are similarly produces by a small number of companies, so you're generally going to find that there's not a lot of difference in performance between different brands.

 

As for "300Hz", "600Hz", "3,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio" etc most of this stuff is meaningless technobabble pulled out of the arses of advertising copy writers.

thanks for the response! The only thing is with that whole "120 Hz!" or "600 Hz" crap is honestly, I absolutely HATE it. I can 100 percent tell the difference between a tv with a refresh rate of 60hz and one with double or triple that. The "smooth" motion makes a movie literally unwatchable for me. There will be about 15 frames that look normal, but anytime there's any sort of camera movement, or character movement within the film, it instantly looks like a reality tv show shot on HD.

Fincher personally supervised a HD transfer several years ago.

See

http://www.amazon.ca/Seven-Blu-ray-David-F.../dp/B001P42Y18/

(not the one to get...)

I highly doubt fincher approved//sat in on that process, considering it's a canadian HD-TV rip, basically.

"It appears to be a release, in the Canadian market, of a transfer originally made, one might guess, for HDTV pay per view, or some such thing. That said, contrary to what some disgruntled reviewers have written, the image is outstanding, within the limits mentioned above, with good luminance, which is very superior to the DVD version, excellent color and very sharp detail. The text of the opening credits have been repositioned to appear correctly in the reduced aspect ratio, which supports the idea that the transfer was originally made by the studio for HDTV."

so I've been looking into getting a new HD-TV, and seeing as how I trust fellow DP's opinions over anyone else's, I was curious if you guys had any suggestions//recommendations based on what you like or personally have! LCD? Plasma? Which is better?

I dont need anything bigger than 42 inches, but I obviously want 1080p.

thanks!

Does anyone know if the universal city imax screen is a "true" imax screen? As far as I could tell when seeing the dark knight there, it seems to be. Its a huge screen, more square than rectangular, and as far as I know, they do project 70 mil there. Does anyone know for certain?

absolutely beautiful work. What kind of frame rate were you shooting those at?

I personally cannot wait for a BR copy of saving private ryan. I think that and se7en are the two I'm most excited for. Hopefully, they'll get fincher to approve the process, because we all know with fincher, there's no way he's going to approve of a crappy, sup-par transfer like some of the other blu-rays I've seen.

Hi everyone, I recently had my first experience with the red camera while test shooting for a short I'm going to shoot in January. I just wanted to share with you guys a small clip of one of the test shots, and see what you guys think of it. After all I had heard and previously seen of the camera, I have to say.. I was pleasantly surprised with my results. Anyways, here's the link, and let me know what you think!

He should follow sofia's example and stick to film. However, the trailer is shot fantastically.. I just dont like the "digital" blown out highlight effect that usually is the dead giveaway for someone shooting digitally.

that specific shot is my favorite from the whole movie.. the way the sounds just fades out to him just naturally enjoying all the choas and anarchy he's brought on.. it's really beautiful. Not to mention the fact that it was shot on IMAX and it looks absolutely gorgeous.

Had those films been re-done shot by shot, substituting film....would they be as "disgusting?" This strikes me as a hatred of the medium and not the cinematography. If the medium itself made the cinematographer, a porn shot on 35 would be higher art than Benjamin button or Slumdog or any other digitally acquired film. And camera choice really would be the only thing holding backyard filmmakers from hollywood...(meaning RED's marketing campaign would be true).

 

This actually brings up a very interesting and timely debate about cinematography. With Slumdog winning the Oscar, there's been a lot of discussion here about how it didn't deserve to win because some shots were grainy or obviously lifted in post. Many people on this forum felt that Dark Night was more technically perfect and more technically daring, and therefore deserved to win. To justify the merits of either film, I think we need to really think about the definition of cinematography. For some people, it's art. For others, its craft. And for others still, it's a craft that in collaboration with other talented craftspeople and artists can help to raise the project as a whole to an art. And unfortunately, for some, the entirety of cinematography comes down to capture medium alone.

 

These discussions that demerit certain films based on the medium are kind of ridiculous. Some of us may hate the look of digital thus far, and others may love it. Regardless, at that budget and talent level, it is clearly a purposeful choice. Would you whip-pan during a love scene? Probably not. But if you did, it would certainly stand out and make people say "why the hell did they just whip pan in a love scene?" It would be a very visible choice, perhaps more visible than film stock choices or gamma curves.

 

There are so many conventions in filmmaking that we follow or respect because "that's how it's done." Why is night blue? Have you ever seen a blue night? Why do we match on action? Why do we do many of the things that we do in cinema? Because they are conventions developed to help the audience understand the story on screen. Especially now that literally everyone and their mother has seen enough movies in their lifetimes to just go along with these conventions, breaking the rules has a marked effect on the audience. Someone here said (and I'll paraphrase), "digital for a period piece doesn't fit." Maybe it doesn't fit the conventions we are used to but that doesn't make it wrong, unwatchable or even less artistic. We like to see old things look old, but realistically when living in a "period," everything looks new! For whatever reason, the film was shot digitally, so we'll have to watch it to see if that choice served the story. On Miami Vice, the digital capture didn't look like the show, but it was VERY much in the spirit of the original - innovative. At the time, Miami Vice was hot, new and pushed boundaries using pop music, wild colors, crazy locations, and styles than most shows. Digital served the story, whether it was clean enough for most peoples' liking or not.

 

Without asking him personally or being him, I can't tell you why Mann chose the camera systems he did on that film or Public Enemies. I can tell you the trailer looks fun and involving and that while certainly different, the cinematography is well-done.

It's definitely not me hating on the medium.. seeing as how I thought benjamin button should've won the oscar for best cinematography. Fincher has shot his last couple of projects digitally, and they have come out absolutely beautifully. I have nothing against shooting digital, as I have shot digitally myself a few times. It's just mann's choices of going nuts on the gamma, especially on a period piece like this.. I believe personally, that it just kind of takes you out of the moment when it looks "digital".. A modern piece would not be as distracting, but for some reason to me, it just takes me out of the believability of the movie as a whole.

Oceans 13 is one of the most poorly photographed films I've seen.

 

Appalling

Agreed. The skin tones alone are enough to make me wanna turn it off, even though I truly enjoyed the movie, everyone is so disgustingly orange, it makes everyone look horrible.

I'm so glad you guys agree, I was already super excited for this movie, but then I remembered that for some reason, Mann now chooses to shoot his movies digitally, and personally.. I think miami vice and collateral were two of the worst looking films I have ever seen. Absolutely disgusting. Going from how fantastically "heat" and ali were shot, to miami vice disgusting colors and video noise?

So disappointed right now.

I'm a graduate from the LAFS, ((april 2008)) and honestly.. it's such a horrible program now. They changed everything about their program that made it appeal to me when deciding to go there. My program was a year-long immersion, hands-on program.. now they ONLY offer a 2 year degree program.. which allows you to get your degree in "film and science" whatever the hell that means. You have to take math and science classes now, which is one of the reasons I wanted to go to lafs... If I wanted to study math and science, I would've gone to UCLA and taken their film course. All their classes from what I've heard are a lot shorter and less detailed. So honestly, I would recommend checking out somewhere else... or just check it out for yourself and find out all their information, but I'm just glad I graduated before all the changes. Hope this helps!

Sorry David, you're wrong. The film stock use was EPP . 100VS is the same as 5285. EPP doesn't crossprocess the same as 100VS. There's an article about the movie in American Cimeatographer.

It's in one of the fall 1999 issues. I have it somewhere around here.

man, I would love that issue. They dont have it on their online digital archive.

Hi guys, I recently got my L-75B light meter, and I was wanting to use it for both film and photo shoots, and I was wondering if any of you guys knew how to go into "photo" mode.. or wherever I can change the actually shutter speed, and not fps or shutter angle. Thanks!

Hi guys, I recently got my L-75B light meter, and I was wanting to use it for both film and photo shoots, and I was wondering if any of you guys knew how to go into "photo" mode.. or wherever I can change the actually shutter speed, and not fps or shutter angle. Thanks!

Awesome, thanks a lot guys! So I'm assuming that the fact that I'm not sigel basically means that I cant purchase any of that ekatchrome stock?

I was curious.. Does anyone know what stock Schindler's List or "3 Kings" was shot on? And does anyone know of any articles, whether it be A.C. or not about either movie?

Thanks!

Does anyone else have anything to say on the various editions of the manual?

 

 

Definetly go for the 9th?

 

(I'll be focusing on shooting 16mm)

 

 

 

Thanks-

nicholas

I was originally just going to get the black hard-back edition, I believe it's 8. It really looks like a bible, haha. 9 would definitely be your best bet, because with whatever additional processes//cameras// since edition 8 would be updated with 9.