KH Martin

I'm guessing s35 or straight 35, since he wanted a visual distinction with the RoboVision in anamorphic, regardless of how the rest of the pic was shot. He didn't shoot anamorphic on the ELITE SQUAD movies that brought this director/DP to prominence.

He shot the RoboVision POV stuff using Epics in anamorphic, to create a style difference from the regular part of the pic shot on Alexa in spherical (he had always wanted to shoot the POV stuff with Epic, but had intended to shoot film for the rest, but logistics made them go with Alexa, as they'd've had to ship the film away to get processed.) I've got an article on it for HD VIDEO PRO, but they haven't put it up online yet and I'm not sure when the print issues ships.

It's so damned hard to believe he hasn't won. I wrote pieces about O BROTHER and THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE and was sure he was going to win for both; I've talked to him since about how he advises for animation projects and then for SKYFALL, and it is just amazing he hasn't walked off with a couple just for the last decade. I do concur about GRAVITY; the vfx are entirely an extension of the DP's very specific vision, and he was on from the beginning, unlike, say AVATAR, where the DP came in something like a year after the start of what I guess you'd call principal photography.

I'll grudgingly concede the AC piece has got more tech info, in terms of what kinds of lights were used and such. Then again, the AC articles usually get more space too (when I wrote for them briefly many years back, I think the big features ran at least 3000 words, but the ICG pieces are usually 2000-2250.) I spend more time cutting the articles down to size than I do writing them, and GRAVITY was no exception.

There's a pretty solid piece on the VFX end of things at: www.fxguide.com/featured/gravity/ and I've got a general dp/vfx thing and a Cuaron interview at: www.icgmagazine.com/wordpress/2013/10/04/star-fall/ www.icgmagazine.com/wordpress/2013/10/04/exposure-alfonso-cuaron/ Also if you search on BOT AND DOLLY website you can see vids of their robots doing their stuff (and also some really amazing real-time mapping of graphics that has nothing to do with GRAVITY but is too cool not to mention.)

I think that was with respect to assets like the modelshop, which became Kerner Optical while continuing to inhabit the main old ILM building from before they moved to the Presidio as an all-digital operation. Kerner Optical fell prey to money/mgmt issues, and has resurfaced in large part as 32Ten Studios. They did the model crash in ELYSIUM and I think some of LONE RANGER, though NEW DEAL was also involved on that. As for ILM, it is absolutely Disney's now. Disney already shuttered the computer game end of Lucas and cancelled the games in development, but supposedly ILM is still being allowed to take outside work (in addition to being retained, one assumes, for STAR WARS - Chapter Lens Flare or whatever they call it.)

Tried reaching the sound guys through the show and through AMPAS, but got no responses, so no story. But I'm going to do a short feature on the cinematography of THE BRIDGE and just finished a couple good-sized pieces on GRAVITY, which is going to be awesome in all sorts of ways, including NO SOUND IN SPACE! (unless it is transmitted by vibration, like if the astronaut holds a drill tool.)

I think the reference is to Abrams' penchant for -- I'm being as polite as possible -- messing over the image. It's like he thinks he is Al Bean on Apollo 12, pointing the camera at the sun and frying it, only in this instance, it is my eyes that fry.

What is it Belloq tells Indiana Jones? After you've been buried for a thousand years, even YOU will be worth something!

That's like saying TITANIC and AVATAR are the greatest movies ever made ... your argument is for volume, not quality. I haven't eaten meat since 1987, but I can tell you that I was a ravenous meat-eater up till that point ... and yet I stopped going to McDonald's over a decade prior to that as a teen, just on the basis it didn't even seem to be food except technically. I'll stick with Harlan Ellison's descrip of McDonald's offerings being 'toadburgers' that probably cause brain damage. EDIT ADDON: sorry, only just read down to page 4, didn't realize I was talking to a ghost.

There's a site called shotonwhat.com that might be of use to you, if not of interest.

It's not just shooting film that is exciting. Physically cutting film has always been a huge part of the appeal for me too. I don't imagine there are all that many sculptors who do their work on the computer and then have a 3d printer carve the piece out afterward, at least not yet, and that's the process I would most closely relate cutting with.

Maybe for you, but all three of the GRAVITY segments that have turned up have utterly blown me away, and that is in spite of Bullock.

Breakeven would have been around 75 mil, maybe as much as 90. So yeah, it was an immense failure. Not PLUTO NASH level, but a b.o. loser. The 2.5 to 3x multiplier for breakeven is even lowballing it ... I've seen a Kubrick breakdown someplace that shows a film could easily make 8 times what it cost and still not be out of the red.

Not necessarily true. The rush to do everything CG didn't make ALL vfx better, and in a lot of cases made them worse, but it was the way things went even if it wasn't a good or beneficial thing (look at flicks from the late 90s that are hybrid model/CG shows and you'll see stuff that is often much better than what we've gotten in this century.) With all the datawrangling and workflow management issues on a wholly digital shoot, I'm not surprised when half the folks I interview say that the film shows don't cost any more than the digital ones. And that's not only on giant budget shows. FRUITVALE STATION originated wholly on S16 too. Sometimes I think 2K scanning was done to make film seem less wonderful by clipping out some of what made the image so dynamic and unique ... god knows, there are some movies where they shot miniatures but by the time they were scanned in and comped, the qualities that made the filmed model look great were lost, and the whole thing LOOKED like it was just mediocre CG (hanger shot in first X-MEN with MWD miniature comes to mind.)

The whole thing is like a zoom lens -- you don't overuse it or it just looks like amateur hour. DIE HARD really pushes the limit for me in terms of lens flare use, but they trot them out at just the right times, when the vault opens, when the tank/rv shows up, a few other instances -- but Abrams to me comes off like a 7 year old with a zoom lens in his MIS-use of the flares. Actually the way he uses flares is for me the exact equivalent to what we saw in the 70s when you were supposed to be in the realm of aliens on THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN ... time to run out the diffusion filter to make things look otherworldly ... instead it just looks like you're trying to cover up the fact there isn't anything special on screen. The fact Seth Rogen loves them and jumped on the flare bandwagon disappoints me, but not nearly as much as seeing SCOTT PILGRIM, where every time they went into some kind of heightened reality, they switched to 2.35 to get lens flares ... I think Edgar Wright is way too good of a director to have to hang on that kind of trick. I'd dislike the AbramsTreks just on the basis of the writing and other creative choices, but the flares alone would be enough to put me off it even if it wasn't TREK ... I'm just really glad I didn't see the first one in the theater, I'd've had to leave due to being driven crazy by them. It's too much like what I remember experiencing with too-dirty old 'hard' contact lenses back in the day. Add to that the just plain crazy lighting in control rooms ... you'd have to be wearing shades on that bridge to be able to read a display, since there are light bulbs aimed right at you any time you turn to look at a screen. Clearly Abrams didn't want any connection to reality (like keeping the light low when you are in a CIC type situation.)

Wish he'd do some interviews about the movie. We gave up on a whole vfx/cinematography/director article when he made it clear he wouldn't participate.

I agree with you about how the sound works on a lot of subtle levels. Am querying my editor about possibly doing a short piece about this, will let you know if anything comes of it.

I think maybe the Alexa at 120 sacrifices some picture quality; I thought it was only full-rez at about half that. I remember that SKYFALL shot their model stuff at between 40 & 60fps on Alexa, and before that HUGO did the train stuff around 40-50.

Maybe the 435 was a backup or used for highspeed? If it can overcrank x6, that's a lot better than Alexa thus far, which I think tops out at 60. I talked to Forster briefly last month and he didn't mention shooting on film at all.

I thought Ben and Tom Sigel both did the reshoots after Richardson handled the main shoot, which was problematic with respect to him, the line producer and other key personnel (main VFX supe John Nelson was let go in favor of Scott Farrar for example.) There's a VANITY FAIR story that touches on a lot of problems. Was going to do a story on this for HD VIDEO PRO, but it was made clear up front Richardson would not be doing any interviews for it, and that no other DP was going to be doing interviews about it. Tried to make it into a director and VFX piece, but they never put Farrar on the phone and decided to not make Forster available either (which seems funny, because a few weeks later Forster was available for me to interview him for another magazine, for ICG's July all-interview issue.)

Do the engineering uniforms have a patch above the elbow, like the shoulder ones? If so, maybe that is what it is. If you go back to Kirk's entrance in SanFran, I'm pretty sure there's part of a guy wearing a 70s-era jacket who shows up for about 2 frames at the end of the shot where he emerges from the tram before he starts walking with Sonak. Not anywhere near as objectionable as the painted bg figures in the tram master, which were just godawful distracting from day one, but something somebody caught on DVD 7 or 8 years back.

If you don't think the kind of sloppiness I mentioned is indicative of how inept the screenwriting is, fine, wallow in it. As for your other comments ... My wife is a Cumberbatch fan and has been ill, so to cheer her up I bit the bullet and took her to see it. Yes, I actually paid to see an Abrams film (the earlier one I only caught on dvd.) She actually hated STiD worse than I did (I'd give it a D+, which is WAY up from the last one) and she isn't even a fan, but went so far as to say, 'this is NOT Star Trek.' I rewatch TOS regularly, and the earlier films as well. I do so because I find them engaging and entertaining. Even the lousiest TOS episodes still have the remarkable chemistry of the three leads, something this thing can't even begin to approach, thought they do keep trying. But Bruce Greenwood and Cumberbatch, even with little screen time and very little in the way of decent material, absolutely wipe the floor with the rest of this cast. Chris Pine may have a fine career in light comedy (think of Redford before BUTCH, when he was doing BAREFOOT IN THE PARK), but his best game is not enough here, and it makes me think his Jack Ryan is going to be godawful. The fact that these things are treading over old ground in a new universe is indicative of creative backpedaling ... they wanted the freedom to begin anew, but instead play it safe, which in this verse with this cast seems kind of embarrassing, to say nothing of bone-stick stupid. That's not 'hating for hate's sake,' that's an observation, tinged with emotion over having my time wasted.

THE TERMINATOR was a breath of semi-fresh air, unpretentious and knowing where best to steal from ( THE OUTER LIMITS.) The Abrams things are just a kitbash, slapped together from other movies and recycling old Trek bits in the wrong context. For me, even a 'popcorn flick' should be able to accurately tell you how far away the moon is (which this film gets wrong, substituting kilometers for miles.) This plays so fast & loose with reason that it reminded me of MESSAGE FROM SPACE, japan's answer to STAR WARS, which had people walking around on the hull in deep space without spacesuits because the director wanted space to seem like a friendly place. in a review of WRATH OF KHAN, David Gerrold said that scientifically the movie was about as accurate as the 1803 Farmer's Almanac. That still puts it a ways ahead of this thing, plus it had real characterization -- from a filmmaker who was at that time at the top of his game on the writing side -- which plussed up what was already good movie, along with a memorable (if wholly derivative) score. If your idea of a popcorn movie is TRANSFORMERS, then I guess this is just fine ... I couldn't even get through the first one of those. If I want to see a dumb movie, I'll watch a movie that KNOWS it is bad and intentionally revels in it, like ACTION JACKSON. Am really hoping that the next restart of TREK will relegate the Abrams pics to the same niche we see the Joel Schumacher Batman films occupying ... the nether regions.

Since I haven't gotten an HD set yet, maybe that is why MAD MEN has, in my wife's words, been looking a lot more like Season 2 of THE KILLING ... which is kinda killing it for us (we really really liked all of THE KILLING, but MM is a whole other level.)