Arthur Cravan

Hi, guys...

I watched The Veil (2015) by Phil Joanu with cinematography by Steeven Petitteville and I really enjoy their work.

It was a huge time I didn't see a mystery-horror film that could not bore.

I was impressed too by the Arri grading; really good look. Anyone knows the colorists?

I attach some pictures but not found enough pretty ones... I apologize.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOUHGzoP0fw

Yeah, I know this was a challenge to match some oil paintings by Turner and the muddy mood of whale's tales but to me the challenge is a failure.

I like a lot experimental grading and the work of Dod Mantle but this time it is a bummer.

Hi, everyone....

I was wondering if someone saw In the Heart of the Sea by Howard, with cinematography by Dod Mantle?

I was really shocked by the grading... it's freaking yellowish with those saturated green-saffron yellow hues and luminances...

To me it looks quiet a bit out of target... the Alexa stares at 'video' creepy outward look, while the stuff could be stunning...

What do you think about?

I apologize for the medium quality of the pics

Apocalypse Now

Don't Look Back by Roeg

Performance by Roeg

Nostra signora dei turchi

Dog Star Man

Solaris

Stalker

Antonio das mortes

Macunaima

Hitler ein film aus der Deutschland

Zabriskie Point

Blow Up

Aguirre by Herzog

General Line by Ejzenstejn

Satyricon by Fellini

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Easy rider

Days of Heaven

Altered States by Russell

The Deer Hunter by Cimino

Blade Runner

Well, Freya, there's probably a misunderstanding.

Reading this thread I was irritated a lot. This querelle between digital and film has slithered to a political and commercial side in my opinion: and it's something I hate because here we should speak of cinema tout court.

Personally I think the last digital cinema camera generation is a 'dream' that comes true, then someone can safely argue otherwise, but I challenge anyone to recognize a digital movie by a film movie, even those who support nostalgically and even with a hint of little 'naïveté that the film is' emotion'.

I prefer definitely the ARRI to RED; for the record.

About that ARRI yellowish hue, well, I think it is a choice in grading, since the ARRIRAW certainly has a lot of softness etc. That distinctive Alexa yellow is a ARRI prerogative but in this occurrence I guess it’s the result of a light mixing… I don’t know… maybe the open gate of the Alexa got to do something with that special lighting… In my opinion that Yellow is not certainly exciting, you're right about it; but in the rest of the film, there are glimpses of amazing colors.

In all likelihood that still was made for 'expressionist' and 'threatening' look in the economy of the narrative plot. The Alexa for sure can behave very well 'within the context of open flames'.

All in all I would not be so analytical. That look will be a zeitgeist for sure, as you pointed up!

We cannot know exactly how they shot some scenes, so to rely on individual frames in my opinion is quite misleading.

The Revenant works very well: rumours claim it was shot almost entirely with natural light and that in my unpretentious way of seeing is an extraordinary achievement for the digital (but I will not lapse back into that controversy).

Some pretext have branded the film to be 'flat' only because it is almost completely cloudy or overcast but I cannot really understand how one can argue this way.

I just meant 'drowned in the shadows': the lost of shadowy details may be a stylistic choice and personally I really love the dark and low key images. As indeed it seems to me that you too agree. I think many DOP do not appreciate this way of understanding the shadow, but it's their problem. Greetings.

 

I'm glad you can see where I am coming from Tyler. I suspect a lot of people can't see what I'm talking about.

 

I don't want to diss the Alexa too much because it is a great camera and really does manage to produce something that looks a bit cinematic on a regular basis.

It's no surprise it is so widely used. However I do think low light film tends to look better than low light video.

I would much rather have nice looking flames and deep blacks than be able to see into the shadows.

This is not a view that other people seem to share however.

Here we are: "to see into the shadows"... it's an artistic challenge, you will agree. Maybe for some reason you ignore there's someone who would like to hide what's drowned by the shade. I like the way low key match with digital and I guess I'm in good company about that taste... be aware i don't refuse film (it looks great) but this 'querelle': it's too factious and I'm really sick of that

 

Curious at to what you mean by creepy? Or is that something you just read somewhere and aren't sure what they are going on about? Sounds interesting.

 

What is interesting here, isn't that some lighting is horrible, or has awful colour timing, or nasty looking skin tones but that some people are saying that they don't like the look of the movie and others are saying they love it to bits! There is no consensus that the footage looks horrible, in fact quite the opposite. This is what interests me. If there is no consensus on this I don't think we can agree that it is horrible lighting or awful colour timing or whatever, it then becomes a subjective opinion.

 

In particular I posted some examples of low light footage, and I have stated why I don't like that footage as clearly as I can. Until now I have had angry comments for suggesting there is something wrong with that footage but no-one has come forward to say "I like that footage". This has made me sad as I really want to discuss this, or at least try and understand what it is about.

 

Now both David and Satsuki have come forward to say they like it! This is great and I'm really hoping they will elaborate further so I can at least try and get my head around what is going on here.

 

Freya

The stills you posted about The Revenant and its supposed creepy low lighting are the results of an aesthetic vision, probably based on the excessive glow of the fire. I believe that what you call cinematographic look is just a layering of mental habitus, openly standardized on the basis of a reception overall film years. Neither you explain why they should be considered 'ugly'. It is merely an aesthetic vision. For me, some cases of Technicolor are massively lower than the digital results and here we are again to digital vs. film debate, as it turned.

One of the reasons both Mad Max and The Revenant look "good" digitally is that NEITHER FILM uses the color spectrum in a "normal" way. They both are highly manipulated.

 

The Revenant is a completely flat movie, it lacks typical dynamic range due to the almost constant cloud cover during shooting. This means the technology doesn't have to work quite as hard to reproduce the image.

 

Mad Max on the other hand, is a "tinted" movie and it's been heavily modified in post to create again, a flat look, but more at the top of the luminance level. They also added fake grain to the entire show, which kinda washes out most of the issues you'd see.

 

In terms of digitally manipulating motion picture film... I'm absolutely in the camp of the DI process changing the integrity of the format. Personally, I think the profession of cinematography itself has been dragged down through these digital tools. Cinematographers can now be lazy and shoot whatever they want because they know in post, they can fix the problems. Plus, we've over-complicated post production in a huge way. Adding more "Artists" and all sorts of headaches/cost, that doesn't need to be there. Yet, everyone does DI because it makes your film "pop" and that's the look filmmakers assume the audience wants.

 

When you watch movies like "The Hateful Eight" on 70mm, you start to realize these digital tools are unnecessary. That film was done completely photochemically and looked perfect. Even if your not a fan of the lighting or even movie, it very much validates photochemical finish in a way that even Nolan couldn't achieve. We need more filmmakers making products using the old school method and possibly developing new technologies to integrate more digital technology into the photochemical world. For instance, I have a white paper for a photochemical film printer which can generate mattes and color film at high speeds. Thus, making it much easier to use digital tools for color correcting film.

This is absolutely wrong to me. Mad Max for example was a great collaboration between DP e colorist, To program a look as early as profilmic, from lighting, exposure, knowing the prerogatives of the LUT dynamics, the possibilities for stops and their manipulation in grading and post-production, well I think it's a good example of working for the cinema of the future.

Concerning The Revenant, I really cannot understand what do you mean about 'flat': that's a mood of the film... so you're criticizing a poetics and honestly this is out of topic to me.

The Hateful Eight for example to me is a bad, wrong, unacceptable film in a 'weltanschauung' point of view and this is not affected by the use of photochemical process (beyond the fact that I think Tarantino used the Panavision format for marketing reasons and for his citationist postmodern slant and not for real aesthetic needs).

I guess this 'angst' - 'cause it's just about that we're talkin' here -, this dreadful fear about the digital is really stupid, especially for those who should have the historical task of experiment and look for 'other', innovative ways.

Well I guess this debate is really embarrassing and obnoxious in a forum of this technique stature. The main reasons for this long-standing dispute I believe are now commercial and political order. The digital far from being a graph of perfect devices has now attained a standard way comparable to the film. I read that some feature and some trick in digital are creepy; right, but I can't enumerate how many horrible lighting and awful color timing or unwatchable flat skin tones I saw throughout the cinema years... This is a tapestry of bad faith lingering here and I think it's a shame. I would like to praise to stop with this anachronistic 'querelle' between film and digital cinema.

John Alcott

Emanuel Lubezky

Benoit Debie

Georgi Rerberg

Nestor Almendros

Nicolas Roeg

Aleksandr Knyazhinskij

Raoul Coutard

Anthony Dod Mantle

Sergej Urusevskij

Sven Nykvist