Thom Stitt

Been a long time since I've been in the filmmaking saddle! A couple months ago I bought myself a T2i because it was high time I started shooting SOMETHING. The result has been a couple of short mini-docs, you can consider them "mood" documentaries. I've found myself passionately pursuing these lately, going out and seizing striking images and then discovering the themes and stories in the massive amounts of footage. Would love to get some fellow cinematographer eyes on these: "The Neon Bonfire" - a short film essentially chronicling the life story of Granville Street in Vancouver - birth, life, and death, over and over, every weekend. http://vimeo.com/19323054 "Snow Night" was my first exercise and attempt at doing something like this, a sort of mood doc with a personal voice. It was done within 24 hours - shot one night and edited the following day, and it's only 2 and a half minutes: http://vimeo.com/18774912 Hope you guys enjoy them (particularly Neon, as it's by far the more ambitious of the two). I'm still working on more of these, each one a unique theme, and I'm hoping to be able to put one out every couple of weeks and keep that up for a while until I have something like a mood-portrait of Vancouver.

In my experience, I've only informed actors with a rejection if they got a callback for a second or third reading. Otherwise, a single casting for even a short film might see hundreds of auditions, I just don't think it's really reasonable to send out rejection notes or phone calls to every single person who didn't make it. It's standard practice. But I consider it a common courtesy for actors who HAVE been called back for further readings. They deserve to be let off the hook I think, once a decision has been made.

Same here, but we couldn't flip. I've got a scene with one point of coverage on the wrong side of the line. Impossible to flip because of all the props and set dec that ends up on the wrong side. Strangely enough, because it's so close to axis, and because the character's face (and therefore eyes) aren't even onscreen (we cut him off at the neck), it's very hard to even notice. It doesn't jar you out of the scene at all. I've showed the scene to a number of experienced filmmakers, all intimately familiar with the "line", and not one of them noticed. I had to tell them, and only then did it become obvious. I'm assuming you got the shot you did because it seemed like the best shot at the time - that can't be for nothing. Obviously, having the angles be somewhat extreme helps a great deal. If it's one shot in a scene full of traditional coverage, then you might be in trouble.

If you want work - that is, WORK, paid work - as a director - And to confirm, this means directing things you may not be particularly passionate about, like shampoo commercials - Your best bet is probably to build up a reel of very professional-looking, slick work (music videos, spec ads) after graduating, and then using that reel to submit to talent agencies. Once you're represented, you might be able to pick up one or two rough gigs at the outset, and slowly build it from there. There are some production companies that build rosters of young filmmakers with "fresh" ideas, and they scout these guys and girls based on music videos and short films, and I imagine through agencies as well. as everyone else has mentioned, it's insanely difficult to get this gig, as the amount of competition compared to the number of jobs is outrageously askew.

I have seen a number of directors on set try to make technical suggestions to the DP that aren't always appropriate, it is good to respect his craft and give him the space to solve those problems. Believe me, you don't need to devour a manual on cinematography and learn all the tools and how to use them, the DP, as Adrian mentioned, is hired to be a problem-solver as much as a creative artist. Ultimately, you get to build a unique relationship with your cinematographer, and it may be totally different with someone else. And everything you learn from one relationship may end up going out the window when you work with someone new! The best piece of advice, I think, is just to be honest and open with your cinematographer - ask him what you just asked us! Build the relationship from the ground up.

It's going to be different with every DP. But a good DP, I think, more than technical details, wants to know the emotional details - If you can find a way to communicate the mood and emotion of the scenes, it's going to be a stronger collaboration. One great way that a lot of Directors and DPs do this is that, during prep, they look at art together and discuss mood and influence - Paintings, photographs. Edward Hopper comes up a lot. If there are any pieces of art, film, painting, photograph, music, or otherwise, I would share them with your cinematographer - the most crucial aspect that he needs to understand is the tone. Of course some technical knowledge helps, and naturally he needs to break down the specifics of time of day, etc with you. But for the most part, his job is going to be to translate your vision using his own techniques, so you don't need to really decide what exposure, film stock, or depth of field your film would look best in. Communicate tone, and mood, and just open up a discussion and be open to ideas, and I'm sure you'll enjoy the collaboration. The director-dp relationship is one of the most important (and rewarding) in filmmaking.

This is absolutely stunning, jaw dropping. I haven't been very regular here, but I do read far more than I post - and forgive me if all of this has been answered to death in the past, but I can't help but want to ask a thousand questions. Can you give any technical details on your equipment? Tripod, head, lenses? the time lapse dolly looks like a custom job, and man does it look like a cool toy. Did you design and build yourself? Also, how much do you research these locations, and what are your primary resources for determining where exactly the milky way is going to appear in the sky, etc? How much post processing do you do, and how do you go about adjusting exposure during longer time lapses? The footage is just gorgeous, I can't say it enough. I'll ask one (or three) more questions. Have you done much urban time lapse cinematography? the Ron Fricke influence is evident, and I'd love to see what you do in a big city. Another thing I'd love to see is this quality of time lapse in stormy weather. Thunderstorms, lightning, big swirling dark clouds. I did notice one incredible shot with distant rain showers, but was wondering if you had storm-chasing anywhere in your agenda. Thanks for sharing, and great work. EDIT: I just realized there's a Tom, a Thomas, and a Thom in this thread. That is all.

Wow, I have to say, it's refreshing as hell to see some people who really didn't like this movie. Here's one thing that really rang true with me: That's how I've felt since I saw this movie on opening night. I just didn't like it very much, and I felt like I saw a different movie than everyone else. Theater I saw was packed. People LOVED it. It shows some promise early on, but it's such a messy hodge-podge of styles, and is so inconsistent, that I just became kind of annoyed by it. It goes from satire to gross-out horror to michael bay action flick. It shifts from documentary to traditional narrative. And, most annoyingly of all, it goes from being progressive and original to completely predictable and cliched. Some spoilers ahead, by the way: I have to mention the set design for his wife's bedroom. Did anyone else notice it? Have you EVER seen a movie made more for BOYS than District 9? The one woman character's bedroom is all pink and filled with flowers and I'm pretty sure there was a Barbie Dream House in the corner of the room, because that's what GIRLS have in their bedrooms. Tee hee!! Girls!! Anyway, enough of that nonsense, where's my giant alien gun. No wait, there's a mech I can ride, even better! But first I want to vomit two dozen times on camera, cuz puke scenes are gross and funny. Uh, oh, here comes the BAD GUY!! I'd better have an easy time killing everyone else except him, so that he can keep hunting me down, and then at the very end get a special death scene all to himself.

Did anyone else have Miami Vice flashbacks when viewing this trailer? That was a wildly uneven movie visually. There were scenes that had such an intense video look that I just completely lost all immersion. I'm seeing some similar shots in this trailer. It stands out even more being a period story with huge setpieces. I don't know. I'll definitely be seeing this movie, but to be completely honest I did cringe a bit when I saw the trailer.

Took the liberty of copying some of James Cameron's thoughts on this topic: James Cameron: For three-fourths of a century of 2-D cinema, we have grown accustomed to the strobing effect produced by the 24 frame per second display rate. When we see the same thing in 3-D, it stands out more, not because it is intrinsically worse, but because all other things have gotten better. Suddenly the image looks so real it's like you're standing there in the room with the characters, but when the camera pans, there is this strange motion artifact. It's like you never saw it before, when in fact it's been hiding in plain sight the whole time. Some people call it judder, others strobing. I call it annoying. It's also easily fixed, because the stereo renaissance is enabled by digital cinema, and digital cinema supplies the answer to the strobing problem. The DLP chip in our current generation of digital projectors can currently run up to 144 frames per second, and they are still being improved. The maximum data rate currently supports stereo at 24 frames per second or 2-D at 48 frames per second. So right now, today, we could be shooting 2-D movies at 48 frames and running them at that speed. This alone would make 2-D movies look astonishingly clear and sharp, at very little extra cost, with equipment that's already installed or being installed. Increasing the data-handling capacity of the projectors and servers is not a big deal, if there is demand. I've run tests on 48 frame per second stereo and it is stunning. The cameras can do it, the projectors can (with a small modification) do it. So why aren't we doing it, as an industry? Because people have been asking the wrong question for years. They have been so focused on resolution, and counting pixels and lines, that they have forgotten about frame rate. Perceived resolution = pixels x replacement rate. A 2K image at 48 frames per second looks as sharp as a 4K image at 24 frames per second ... with one fundamental difference: the 4K/24 image will judder miserably during a panning shot, and the 2K/48 won't. Higher pixel counts only preserve motion artifacts like strobing with greater fidelity. They don't solve them at all. If every single digital theater was perceived by the audience as being equivalent to Imax or Showscan in image quality, which is readily achievable with off-the-shelf technology now, running at higher frame rates, then isn't that the same kind of marketing hook as 3-D itself? Something you can't get at home. An aspect of the film that you can't pirate. --------- Let's assume right now that this debate reasonably should be confined to digital filmmaking and projecting. It's been mentioned here several times that it makes very little sense to update the film standard with new framerates. I like that Cameron's getting at a theater-specific experience. If we eliminate what TVs can do at home, now or in the near future, if we concentrate only on what high end digital cinema projectors are capable of... What could/should we be seeing at the movies? And has anyone here seen a digital projection at high resolution and high framerate? Cameron seems to be absolutely sold on across-the-board faster framerates in digital cinemas. I haven't seen it myself. I don't know if many people have. The big debate these days with digital always seems to be resolution. The closest I've seen is an HD monitor on set displaying an overcranked slowmo image. To my eye, it was off-putting. Hyper video. At the very least, it would take some getting used to. But on a giant theatrical screen? I'm interested in the question of pure cinema experience - We're SO accustomed to 24fps when we go to the movies. It seems reasonable to me that a faster framerate at high resolution could result in a more "truthful" image.

I would love to see test footage of this. I'm assuming it would take a fairly intensive post process in order to get the information you want in the frames throughout your shots - Similar to Photoshop compositing for HDR photos? Would there be an entirely new process, like a DI, that involves choosing which exposures should be used in which parts of the frame?

Here's a question I've been pondering lately: Is it time for filmmakers to find a faster framerate for telling cinematic stories? We're all used to 24 and 25 fps having a "cinematic" quality. We're used to cringing if it moves at 30 or higher - it looks too much like "the news." This is what we're USED to. I got back from seeing Coraline in 3D recently. I understand that in order to get the 3D effect, the RealD setup is essentially duplicating frames 3 times per eye, and with the alternating L/R polarized angles onscreen, we're getting 144 frames being flashed in our face every second. But the movie is still shot in 24 fps. So anytime the camera pans, or tracks, or a character or object moves with any swiftness across the screen - It all turns into a shuttery, blurry, eyeball-piercing mess. It just felt like something was wrong. When we play videogames, it's misery to be stuck with a framerate anywhere near 24. We hope we're playing at closer to 60 fps, it's smooth, it's responsive, it feels real. Obviously this has to do with our input devices having a fluid translation to the screen, but nonetheless video games are becoming extremely cinematic these days, and they all look better at silky smooth framerates. Obviously our eyes see nothing close to 24fps, but this is kind of a "duh" point in the discussion. For me personally, when I shoot in slow mo, and watch the monitor while filming (at say 60 fps), it looks like such a hyper-real uber-video look it's off-putting. But I have a hard time reconciling this ingrained reaction with my experience noticing that we may be outgrowing the 24fps standard in certain contexts. With 3D becoming so widespread in the coming years, and certainly with all that James Cameron has had to say about it, is it time to start trying out faster framerate standards for films? We may have to re-train our eyes all over again, but perhaps CG and 3D films are the place to do this.

If it's such a small production, with you taking care of all the major creative work, there are few wrong ways to do things. Most of the big things have been mentioned here. I'll take you through a common practice in my experience doing short films with tiny crews. First I sit down with the script and the director and we break down the entire script visually. We discuss shot ideas, take lots of notes, and at the end of the meeting, we hopefully both imagine the same moving picture when we read the script (as well as a full shotlist on a good day!). In your case, directing and DPing, this should obviously be the easiest part. Next comes the scheduling. I actually prefer to work with one camera. multi-camera shoots, while they seem like they can speed things up, can be quite complicated. You're better off starting with just one camera. From there it's all about squeezing every strategy and ounce of common sense you have. You're going to have lights, you're going to have a scene to shoot, you're going to have to worry about a number of problems (like sunlight, scheduling issues, etc). Plan your shots in the most practical way possible. Someone mentioned shooting all your shots facing one direction - this is GREAT advice - it's easy to go down your shotlist and forget about a certain shot, and find yourself having to recreate a lighting setup looking back the OTHER direction (which you thought you had finished). So try and shoot looking one direction with one lighting setup, and then turn around, relight, and do the rest. Obviously, this is not always practical, particularly when it comes to actors. If it prevents compromising a performance, the extra work of relighting is always worth it in the end. The cinematography is there to SUPPORT the performance, so it won't pay off to say to your actors "can you just suck it up on this one? It's going to take forever to re-light..." One way to help plan this out is to do overheads. Draw an overhead schematic of your set, and draw in every single camera position (usually the camera is represented like a V, with the open part of the V being the lens). This gives you an at-a-glance look at every setup, what you'll be looking at, and what needs to be dressed and lit for each shot. And don't forget that being there in the space with the actors can change things (as mentioned numerous times already). The first thing you should do, before setting up the camera, before putting up your lights, is to run a blocking. Take the crew and the actors, and explain exactly what's going to happen in the scene. Let the actors go through all the motions (but make SURE they don't earnestly play the scene, they should not invest any emotion into performance on a blocking/rehearsal - just the positions for practical purposes). After that you can start putting up camera and lights for your first setup. Really, the list of things that can dictate the schedule of shots can be varied and different on each shoot. The main one that's always consistent is lighting setup. You don't want to have to re-do a lighting setup you've already done if you don't absolutely have to. But it does happen. Honestly, once you have a shot list and a schedule of scenes and days, it's a fairly easy process of breaking down each day one by one, and putting all your shots in a sensible shooting order. On set they'll change, but as a blueprint your shotlist will be a great guide.

This sounds like just an amazing opportunity for students and people early in their careers. My God, I can imagine it'd be crowded, with no tickets or reservations, just open doors and a casual atmosphere. So one would expect to see the likes of Roger Deakins and Wally Pfister (and David Mullen!) hanging around telling war stories to a bunch of young filmmakers-to-be with glistening eyes? It just seems utterly amazing to me that you can just... walk into the open house on Valentine's Day and enter a room full of world class cinematographers just hanging around. Really? I don't need to wear a mask and whisper "Fidelio" to a giant trenchcoated man standing at a gate? I'm going to have to drive down there next year. Would be great to check out the seminars and events too. I've always read my Cinematographer, and I read these forums on occasion, but clearly I'm a bit out of the loop with some of the industry traditions. Sounds like a great shindig.

Would love to attend one of these someday. I'm not based in LA, so who knows, but hopefully in an upcoming year soon. Can anyone give any insights into what to expect out of the experience of attending an ASC open house?

Thought I'd throw in a word here, as I've felt the exact same way. A union DP/Cinematographer on a major film with a long career, and a fresh-out-of-film-school DP on a no-budget indie both deserve their credit. But being closer to the latter, it can be easy to feel like you're some kind of imposter. Here's what I eventually realized: If it's what you do, then it's what you are. If you happen to be proud of your work, then all the better. I know that "imposter" feeling, because there was never a moment where someone grabbed my hand and said "welcome to the club, kid. Yer a CINEMATOGRAPHA now!" I can imagine how joining a society like the ASC could be a kind of magical career-defining moment, but most of us just keep doing our tiny little indies and shorts. there's no "landing". You just find yourself on set one day, wondering how in the hell you're going to hide lights to make this shot work, and you're a director of photography. I don't consider myself a DP anymore, I only consider myself one when I'm actually on set doing it (or in prep/post), because I do it so rarely these days. It's not my regular job. But cinematography will always be something of an obsession of mine. And I cherish the thought that even Roger Deakins has looked at a location and wondered "how the hell are we going to hide lights to make this shot work?". Between the 'imposters' and the masters, we are more in common than we are disparate.

Back the fall I DPed a short film shot up near Seattle on Whidbey Island. If anyone here remembers Snow Falling on Cedars, we used the exact same deadwood beach featured throughout that film. I watched those beach scenes about a million times. It's not everyday that you're going to shoot a location, wonder "what would Robert Richardson do here", and then actually be able to get (and watch) an answer. The story takes place in a pseudo-40s/50s alternate reality in which nuclear doomsday has arrived. It's a pre-apocalypse story, taking place mainly on a beach between two characters stationed at Victory Point, a remote listening outpost, during the hour that the bombs drop on distant cities. It's a quiet movie about 2 guys sitting at the edge of the world watching the sky fall. Shooting in the Pacific Northwest is interesting. Of course most people who come up here to Vancouver don't utilize what's here - muted grey, wet everything. A melancholy dampness and gloom everywhere. We were determined to use the strengths of the Northwest to the fullest. Naturally, that ended up meaning fighting the sun nearly every day on that beach. Unbelievable. The story is basically a one act play. We intricately planned out how to cover this long dialogue scene without repeating shots, and without shooting standard coverage. Keeping the blocking dynamic, keeping the shots changing. Quite the challenge, but I'm pretty happy with how we pulled it off. The thing's still in editing, but I saw a very promising rough cut recently. Some screenshots follow - I apologize for the compression, it's the only copy of the film I have available at the moment - As you can see, Whidbey Island is a gorgeous kind of gloomy. We shot on the HVX200, at 720p, with a redrock micro adapter and a kit of Nikon primes. As you can imagine, it was an incredibly low-budget situation. We had a chameleon dolly, a woefully tiny crew, and one 2-ton of gear. A handful of kinos, one 1.2K hmi, and no fresnels bigger than a 2K. I should say right now that shooting at 720p with an M2 adapter gives an INCREDIBLY soft image. I might suggest shooting at 1080 if anyone will be using the adapter, because it adds a LOT of softness to the image. That said, the softness works really well with the tone in this case - the Pacific Northwest is a ghostly place - fog banks and muted light, and endless blankets of grey. We had one interior location, a bunker. We ND gelled our windows, bounced light into the ceiling, and used a few 1Ks for rim lights and dressing. We always kept our keys soft and let the ambience do all the filling in. We had a couple of big dollies through the bunker, and used kino banks to fill everything in, with a couple of 650s and 1Ks through light diffusion to break things up a bit. We kept things from ever getting too warm - at the end of the film, when everything is empty and abandoned, there's a kind of magic hour light, but it's meant to be eerie - The sunrays and the shot of the empty, dark bunker here are from that sequence. On the beach it was all grip - Diffusion frames when it got sunny, bounce boards all over. It was mainly a battle with getting our camera setups just right, because some of them were right in amongst the giant piles of deadwood. A crane with a remote head would have been lovely in that location - alas. Snow Falling on Cedars is the tank to our wind-up toy. (note: I had to delete a few images as I was past my limit)

Hilarious - I know exactly what you mean. For the most part, color correcting and adjusting becomes kind of an intuitive process once you have some time with it. But muted browns! The earthiest and simplest of colors to understand, suddenly becomes some enigmatic, gloomy thing to properly achieve using primary and secondary colors. And staring at it for so long - I once DPed a short that had a warm, muted palette. I sat down and made mock-up adjustments, but when I revisited it later on, I realized that certain shots (mainly the last ones that I did) just looked YELLOW compared to the rest. My eyes had just adopted some kind of brown-resistance after a while. I can't even imagine doing a feature like that in a sitting. Very appropriate that the experience occurs on a film called Manure.

You have some great looking city shots, and the magic-hour bike ride is definitely my favorite bit. Some of the shots in sequence don't work for me - particularly when the angel falls. I mean, that's obviously an ambitious thing to attempt, but here it kind of shows that you guys were so limited - we see a white blur fall suddenly in the background behind our close-up protagonist, and then cut to the other side, his reaction turning around, looking down - then cut to the angel lying on her back, perfectly still and... well, angelic. Maybe it's that I'm expecting her to be crumpled in a little heap rather than being angelically displayed on the pavement... but she is an angel, on the other hand... Depending on how fake the dummy looked, it might have worked to stay on his close-up as he turned around. Tilt/jib a bit to catch the dummy hitting the pavement - just don't pull to the dummy - let it stay soft in the background, and keep a kind of 3/4s shot behind him as he looks down. Again. I can understand if this was out of the question - A dummy is a dummy. I actually think your bathroom shots look pretty nice. I think some of the trouble spots are the exteriors - especially the final park scene. the couple is underexposed, while the background is overexposed. But you're not quite getting a silhouette effect, so it comes across as a compromise - it's halfway this way, halfway that way. Some slightly diffused light through a bunch of branches would really help this one. If you couldn't put up lights, it might be better to just let them silhouette? Sounds like an interesting project. One of those ultra-amibitious, ultra-low-budget shorts. I've worked on those myself. I did a 40s period movie with no money. final product looked nice, but there's a bit of ikea furniture showing here and there. I think any really ambitious but no-budget short film will inevitably have that "ikea furniture" popping up as a reminder here and there. Always worth it to go for it though - and you definitely have some nice shots in there!

I couldn't HELP but enjoy this movie! It was impossible for me NOT to enjoy it. I agree with all of the statements about poor performances. My girlfriend told me after seeing it, "that was the first movie I think I've seen with terrible acting, but that I really liked." The whole thing was over-the-top. Most of the characters were caricatures more than real people - there were "bad guys" and "good guys". The movie becomes almost ridiculous at times, and there's a great sense of humor throughout. I had a hard time really caring about the people because of the bad acting, but nonetheless, the very weird sense of humor and tone kept me very entertained. It's such an Eastwood movie too - If it weren't for him, this thing would practically be senseless. But with Eastwood inhabiting it, it becomes this American story about... Clint Eastwood! And I don't think anyone's mentioned the song at the end. Just before the end credits. I don't want to say anymore, except that my jaw dropped and I stared at the screen in bewilderment through the entire end credits. That song may be one of the greatest payoffs I've seen in any movie in recent years. Thank you for that, Clint. You made my week.

What a great question. I never knew this either. A minute on google revealed this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/aug/22/drama Excerpt from article: (note that Jack Fisk was the production designer) But that impulsiveness came close to wrecking the film. "The shoot went on for ever because the crew kept quitting," Spacek told me in 1999. "They were completely brutalised. They'd be setting up one shot over here, then Terry would look over in the other direction where the moon was rising up and he'd go, 'Let's shoot over there!' I have these memories of everyone tearing off across the desert in pursuit of one sunset or another." Fisk was one of the few who didn't quit. "I had a vested interest. I'd fallen in love with Sissy, so that also kept me going." The couple married two years later. British cinematographer Brian Probyn established the dreamy texture of the picture before being taken ill, exhausted by the heat, the long hours and Malick's idiosyncrasies. "On several occasions," says Pressman, "I can recall Brian shooting with the slate upside down as a form of protest in a disagreement with Terry about methods of orthodox coverage and matching shots." Tak Fujimoto - who later became Jonathan Demme's regular cinematographer - took over after Probyn's depature, until a new director of photography, Steven Larner, was found. "Amazingly, despite the input of these different hands, the film looks remarkably seamless," says Pressman. "There were three cinematographers, lots of editors, sound men," said Fisk. "Except for the actors, the art department was the only one that completed the film. If the picture survived all those problems, it's because one thing was consistent: Terry Malick's vision."

Wow, that was incredibly gorgeous from beginning to end. I also thought of vaseline for the half-blurred effect - Dylan Macleod at the reduser forums suggested it might be waterglass (a sheet of rippled glass) used in front of a long lens. I'd love to get all the details though - camera, lenses, etc. Really a gorgeous little film - except for the cut-cut-cut-cut-cut that doesn't separate it much from every other spot for every other product in the world - and when "Luis Vuitton" appears onscreen at the end, it seems doubly ridiculous and absurd after all of the visual poetry that preceded it. It might be an example of making your spot TOO good!

This was exactly my thought when I heard Shane's reactions to Bale in the audio. I can only imagine the amount of internal static he was bearing during the tirade. What's amazing is that Bale got REALLY worked up when Shane began to suggest that by checking the light he was only trying to help Bale and everyone else on the film - Can you IMAGINE what would have happened if Shane raised his voice in any way in argument? My God. There's nothing else that could be done in this situation - you have to swallow your pride, bear the whole thing, not talk back, and then go about your business with the utmost care that no toe is stepped on. I've been on sets where the tension levels rise and by the end of the shoot everyone just wants to "get through". The spark is gone. That feeling of "we're all here making it happen together" that you get on the first few days just slips away and all you want to do is survive. I mean, work together with a crew for 15 hours a day for a month and you're pretty much fated to become a dysfunctional family at some point or another. What an awful shame though. This Christian Bale flare up and situations like it are always going to be an issue. We only hear about this one because the audio is leaked - but it's sure not unheard of. It's the nature of this unbelievably ridiculous business - by nature it will always have the potential to happen again.

I have to agree with this completely, but on a larger scale, i felt like the editing of this movie hindered it more than helped. I wasn't the biggest fan of the deathbed frame story - and obviously you have to find engaging ways to compress large amounts of time, but some of the time-passing "montages" looked beautiful and that was about it. It's funny that, having seen the movie, I can remember these shots from the trailer like the biking-in-the-storm profile tracking shot, the rocket launch - But I can't place them in any meaningful context! All I can really do is remember them from the trailer! In the movie, they're kind of thrown aside, they're just presented and then disposed of, like so many other tiny little montage-scenes scattered throughout. Pretty to look at and listen to, but often missing some fundamental substance. I also feel like a lot of the movie's visuals were just backdrops and set-pieces. Moreso than in actual visual film-language storytelling. A lot of it had this set-piece artificiality that was hard for me to get past. Sometimes it worked wonderfully, particularly in the beginning of the movie when you're just getting into what you know is about to be this epic contemporary fantasy tale. But by the end I found it mostly forgetful, with a few powerful moments here and there. I was also no fan of Blanchett or Brad Pitt here. Cate: This is my life! Brad: *grunts something raspily and then looks around like he's lost* Cate: Oh Benjamin! Brad: ....... *looks around again like he's lost* I did laugh way too hard at every single lightning-strike anecdote in the movie. My favorite parts by far.

I haven't come to these boards in forever for whatever reason (I revisited to read some cinematographers' thoughts on the recent Shane Hurlbut fiasco), hence my total confusion about what my freaking log-in is. Anyway - I'm really surprised there isn't more discussion about this movie! Just saw this last night. Definitely one of the most terrifying movies I've ever seen. A horror movie for anyone who thinks Suburbia is actually the boogie man. I was surprised at the restraint shown in the cinematography. Perdition was full of incredibly sophisticated visual storytelling, and I was expecting something similar. But they really pulled it back for this one and observed. I would have loved to work on this, to be in that house for the lighting and shooting. Aside from the scaffolds and the 12Ks encircling the house, this location shoot sounds exactly like the kind of no-budget indie that I've worked on a thousand times. To get Deakins and Mendes and those actors into that same space gets me excited in funny ways. The movie is so observational at times it's actually quite hard to handle - I'm pleading for compassion while locked in this house where it's draining out, more and more by the day. Not sure how this could have been handled, but there was such little stylistic flair compared to Perdition - For example, the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio RUNS - it really stood out because it had this flair that seemed to be restrained for most of the film. I thought it was incredible though, the sound was pulled out, the music brought up, and we moved - fast - we were with him, and it was powerful. A hard movie to watch though. I feel like too much was left out - why don't we get to know the kids? Isn't it crucial to? I haven't read Yates' novel, and I understand that Mendes wanted to emphasize and tell the story of the marriage, the relationship - but he also spends a lot of time on WORK, on DiCaprio's day job. We don't see Winslet much during the daytime, and we don't get to know the kids at ALL. For 90% of the movie, it's easy to forget they're even there. Is this movie an example of the subject being TOO focused? It's a story where the subtext of American Suburban repression is presented as TEXT, in the case of the Wheelers and their search for "truth". But there are a few little gems here and there where it's back to subtext, presented in a more common context - as when the neighbor asks his kids what they're watching. And of course, that incredible, quiet, final scene before the credits. Snapshots of the American Nightmare, up close. Great movie - I don't know if I ever want to watch it again.