The Dark Knight

[Krystian Ramlogan]

I saw The Dark Knight late Friday night.

 

It was an excellent film, with hardly anything to take you out of the immersive world Messrs Nolan and Pfister created. Much improved all-around over the first one.

 

The cinematography: lighting, colors, textures, framing, angles and motion, was totally integrated into the story and helped move things along in a much more effective way than the first film (although that was a good film also). It also supported the editing and pacing of the film almost perfectly I felt.

 

There were a couple times I felt - rather than "saw" - a hard/jarring transition and only a couple seconds after it happened, at which point the film had grabbed me again. Nothing to complain about really, the film was very smooth.

 

I was impressed at the overall quality of the film and the superb consistency of the cinematography throughout, especially the night sequences. There were moments when I barely had time to reflect on what a great "shot" I'd just seen, because the film really grabs you and never lets you go.

 

The middle did slow down a tad, and allowed you some space to breathe (perhaps a lilttle too much, though again I'm not complaining), but the climax really left you wanting more in a positive way: nothing anti-climactic or deflating, just...damn that was so good I want more.

 

On a sad note, I was left with a sense of loss at the end because I forgot for a brief moment, the run of the movie, that Heath Ledger was gone. This film was a testament to his rising ability and huge potential. He outshone everyone, easily, and became such a force of nature in his interpretation as the Joker that it was hard to accept he would never be on screen again. May he rest in peace.

 

I'll be going to see The Dark Knight again, and soon, for many reasons. One being to celebrate his performance for the breathtaking experience it was for me.

 

K.

[John Hoffler]

i saw it in both IMAX and 35mm. I will say that the IMAX sequences in the 35mm print had a much more pronounced level of detail and that the 35mm portions matched very well.

 

I was curious how the two formats would mix on the IMAX screen and it was hardly noticeable to the untrained eye. My friends said they didn't really notice the screen size change for most of it.

[David Mullen ASC]

This was one of the best crime movies I've seen in a long time, more on the level of "Heat", than any comic book action movie, though there is a lot of action too. Wally Pfister's work is great. It's epic in the best sense -- big themes, larger-than-life characters, big emotions.

[Paul Bruening]

i saw it in both IMAX and 35mm. I will say that the IMAX sequences in the 35mm print had a much more pronounced level of detail and that the 35mm portions matched very well.

 

I was curious how the two formats would mix on the IMAX screen and it was hardly noticeable to the untrained eye. My friends said they didn't really notice the screen size change for most of it.

 

Does this mean that 8K 35mm anamorphic holds up well in IMAX resolution? Could there be a reasonable case for working in 8K 35mm? The drives and render farms could handle it, even though it is still a lot of data. What is everyone seeing on the screen?

[David Mullen ASC]

If 35mm didn't hold up in an IMAX DMR blow-up, then we wouldn't have had a dozen or so releases of 35mm movies in IMAX, would we?

 

Sure, it holds up on an IMAX screen, but obviously the bigger the negative, the better it will blow up. I don't think anyone's seriously thinking that 35mm can replace 15-perf 65mm for IMAX-quality photography. If it did, Nolan wouldn't have bothered to shoot those select scenes in IMAX.

[Tom Lowe]

I saw this on IMAX. The lines for every show were stretching a half mile down the street. The IMAX line was like Phantom Menace opening night. I believe that this will be a wake up call to studios to shoot more stuff in IMAX, whose brand name is definitely on the rise.

 

The movie was fantastic. All my fears about aspect ratio jumps were unfounded. Actually, the jumps from 35mm to IMAX were almost subliminal. It was like, all of a sudden you see the screen fill up, and your mind is thinking "something cool is about to happen."

 

The real reason this movie works, though, is very simple: A GOOD VILLAIN. The last 10 superhero movies I have seen all had crap villains. Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, etc, all had random villains who were tacked on just to create a WWE-style fight at the end. Even James Bond's villains have all been extremely week in the last several movies. Superman Returns gave us Lex Luthor, once again. And while Spacey was praised, I was not impressed. Compare Spacey's villain in Superman Returns to what Ledger did in Dark Knight. It's not even worth comparing.

 

People love a good villian. Just think of Darth Vader. Why Hollywood keeps giving us crappy villains is a mystery to me.

[John Hoffler]

TDK has taken the record for opening weekend sales ALREADY!

 

Beats out Spidey 3's $155 million on Fri and Sat alone!

 

WOW! :blink:

[Max Jacoby]

155M is for the whole weekend, including Sunday.

[Tom Lowe]

I wonder what % of that was IMAX?

[Evan Winter]

Imax sales this weekend were approx. 6.5million.

 

Evan

[John Hoffler]

155M is for the whole weekend, including Sunday.

 

 

right. i read it wrong! :P

[Paul Bruening]

If 35mm didn't hold up in an IMAX DMR blow-up, then we wouldn't have had a dozen or so releases of 35mm movies in IMAX, would we?

 

Sure, it holds up on an IMAX screen, but obviously the bigger the negative, the better it will blow up. I don't think anyone's seriously thinking that 35mm can replace 15-perf 65mm for IMAX-quality photography. If it did, Nolan wouldn't have bothered to shoot those select scenes in IMAX.

 

The reason I asked is because of the process. 35mm all-optical degrades by the time it gets to projection. One report I read proposed a drop to the equivalent of .750K. I was wondering how 35mm, 8K DI, jumping up to IMAX held up. Assuming the negative was well resolved, wouldn't the 8K plus up-jump to IMAX keep a much greater portion of the negative resolution intact? It seemed that this movie would allow for a little more objective and comparative observations. That's all.

[Tom Lowe]

Paul, just to be clear, there is no evidence I am aware of or have seen posted and confirmed here that the 35mm film shot for Dark Knight was scanned at 8K for the DMR.

 

What we have seen is that the 15-perf IMAX shots were scanned at 8K for a DI that reworked them into the standard movie screen format.

 

Someone correct me if I am wrong about this.

[Jason Debus]

Saw this on IMAX tonight. The IMAX sequences were simply jaw dropping. There was a collective 'oooooh' in the theater when the first shot came up. I'm glad they also used it for a quiet scene tword the end. Felt very 65mm-ish.

 

One thing is obvious on a screen this size is the focus. When it drifted it was quite obvious (more noticeable in the 35mm anamorphic sequences), I wondered why they didn't choose some higher stops.

 

The film has some great moments and some great imagery. I enjoyed it but felt the pacing & tone wasn't as finely tuned as in some of Nolan's other work. Sequences work in of themselves, carried by great performances, but when viewed as a whole it feels a little like a stew with too many ingredients.

[Michel Hafner]

Paul, just to be clear, there is no evidence I am aware of or have seen posted and confirmed here that the 35mm film shot for Dark Knight was scanned at 8K for the DMR.

What we have seen is that the 15-perf IMAX shots were scanned at 8K for a DI that reworked them into the standard movie screen format.

The 35mm parts on IMAX prints are 4K scans from the 35mm IP (!), degrained and sharpened. The IMAX sourced sections are 8K scans for sfx work and the rest contact printed. So the highest and lowest resolution is second generation IMAX versus second generation 35mm with digital processing. The difference can't be subtle at all.

[Paul Bruening]

So, this thread is unresolved?

 

http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...=Dark+Knight+8K

 

Is the 35mm scan resolution not certain?

 

One of the reasons I have interest in this is due to the work I have been doing on my own scanner. I have been comparing scans at native 4K, RAW interpolated 6K and up-res'd 8K. While 8K seems to be overkill for 35mm's resolution, there are benefits to doing digital math on a higher pixel-to-grain-site ratio (dye-site would probably be a more accurate term). Just about every Adobe filter behaves differently on the higher pixel count, most often, in favorable ways (especially, sharpening filters). I'm assuming that native 8K scans would deliver even better results than I am getting. I guess you have to spend a little bit of time sitting like a lump at the computer working with way-too-big res'd files before you get excited about something like this.

[Tom Lowe]

Paul, that post by Satsuki Murashige is unconfirmed.

 

I read the Dark Knight AC article last night, and it said that the 35mm stuff was scanned at 4K. The article mentions that Nolan tried 35mm scanning and DMRing at 4K and 6K, but it sounds like they decided to go with 4K.

[Paul Bruening]

Paul, that post by Satsuki Murashige is unconfirmed.

 

I read the Dark Knight AC article last night, and it said that the 35mm stuff was scanned at 4K. The article mentions that Nolan tried 35mm scanning and DMRing at 4K and 6K, but it sounds like they decided to go with 4K.

 

Darn. I'd like to see how 35mm-8K-35mm looks. Maybe, if I can dig myself out of my financial hole, I'll run some tests at 2-perf-6K>8K-35mm.

 

I had an idea to fire up the old Lasergraphics and see if it can still crank out some 8K film-out.

 

I still have to test my DG5 film-out. I was thinking of doing separate RGBK passes on each negative frame to trick the image into a higher res appearance.

 

I also want to try bracketing the scans. I'm thinking that with film's dynamic range a three stop difference could be bracketed with two exposures of each frame. Then, tone mapping could be applied to some possibly beautiful results. It's more stuff rattling around in my nugget.

[georg lamshöft]

I've tried scanning 35mm-Slides with 4000, 6300 and 8000ppi (~4/6/8k) and yes, scanning above 4000ppi actually makes sense. You have to scan the grain itself to reproduce the information, ortherwise effects like "grain-alaising" will destroy or create false information even if the actual resolution within the image is much lower. It's a bit like using a magnifing glass when working on a painting, you use filters etc. on a higher magnification level and the artifacts caused by the filters will appear smaller in the final image!? Does that make sense?

 

I think that's the linear CCD-Sensor used in the Northlight and the Imacon-Scanners, so using the Imacons you can propably get an idea what a >4k-DI could do:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/business/IS...l?pq-path=12272

[Scott Marks]

Hi,

 

I am going to be an upcoming film student at a community college...i am very interested in the topic..but i dont know much about it yet so if you could help a little more for me to understand that would be great =]

 

 

Sincerely,

Scott Marks

[Michael Lehnert]

Hi Scott, and welcome to cinematography.com :) !

 

One of the best things here is that if you ask a question while providing as much background to it as possible, you will get the best expert advice (for free) you can hope for; often beating film school ;) .

 

So in light of that:

What topic do you exactly mean? The lingering controversy if scanning 35 @ 8K is worthwhile, or do you enquire about digital postchains in general; or IMAX, or how a specific scene in "Dark Knight" was shot; or do you mean filmmaking or cinematography in general?

[Paul Bruening]

I think that's the linear CCD-Sensor used in the Northlight and the Imacon-Scanners, so using the Imacons you can propably get an idea what a >4k-DI could do:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/business/IS...l?pq-path=12272

 

I followed your link. It's been about two years since I was there before. Shame to see that Kodak is getting out of the CMOS business. Or, at least, that's the appearance. Before I settled on a DSLR for my scan rig, I researched the possibility of going with 3 22MP, monochrome, RGB filtered via prism for a high res capture device. I couldn't solve the frame buffering step with suitable off-the-shelf solutions. So, I abandoned the project.

 

CCD linear is a great scan head. I like the one you linked to. They're driven by itsy-bitsy linear steppers. Their principle shortcoming is that they're slowish on data acquisition times. Given how cheap it is to mass manufacture this stuff, you'd think someone like Epson would come out with an 8P35/S35/S16/S8 long (1000 ft) roll scanner. Indie producers are scan-time-tolerant if the unit could be delivered at a low enough price.

 

Kodak would be in the best position to deliver this kind of machine. But, they straddle that fence where they don't want to piss off their lab and post house consumers in favor of independent producers. At the same time, they want to sell more film and a low cost, mass produced scanner would definitely do that.

 

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/06/canons_50_megap.html

[K Borowski]

This thread has gotten totally off topic. Remember guys, paraphrasing from "Mad Men", "The technology is definitely part of the fun [. . . ]" but it's secondary to the story and the image on the screen.

 

I ended up driving 2 1/4 hrs. to Tarentum PA to see it this past Sunday. Really cool to see a theatre that also had an IMAX screen. To keep up with tradition, I arrived fashionably late, like 25 minutes in, which was a bummer (damned MapQuest!), and my buddy and I 0had to sit on the floor it was so crowded. One of the guys there had seen it three times, but was humbled when I said "Oh yeah, well I'm from Cleveland." :P

 

Anyway, it looked amazing! The 4K or 6K or whatever-the-hell-K 35mm DNR was gorgeous, although a bit soft at times. It was sort of hard to see what was in sharp focus at times, as if they missed, but focus was slightly bothersome with the IMAX , more on that later. I would've preferred they just left the grain in and shot on slower stocks, personally, but it was a very minor degree of softness that I only noticed in a few sharps. It was TOO sharp sometimes, revealing wrinkles on poor Maggie Gylenhall's Rachel character.

 

I was impressed in that I didn't notice ANY CGI, save in the spot where the hospital burns down and collapses with the fire.

 

Model work was very impressive, and the IMAX totally blew me away. No bother at all from the change in aspect. It was actually hard to notice at times in the dark theatre what was what the 4K 35mm looked so good. The overhead aerial shots were breath-taking. I remember being awed by the shot of all the people running around down on the street around their cars trying to flee Gotham and being able to see each individual person in crystal-clear clarity, like actually being there.

 

Same with IMAX action sequences. They were so crystal-clear and sharp that it was sort of like what I've heard people refer to as the "hyper-realism" of Pulp Fiction's 35mm anamorphic photography. The clarity makes the violence and action sequences that much more dramatic. Kudos to the crew for using models. That bat-mobile/bat-bike on 18-wheeler tires look so real, even the models used for stunts/explosions.

 

I was similarly happy with the use of IMAX not just for action sequences but with the sequence at the end of the movie with Morgan Freeman's character in the control room surrounded by monitors. THIS is what the larger-than-life movies we've been without for so long are all about!

 

Focus was a problem with the IMAX at times. They seemingly disregarded any attempts at keeping it consistent when cutting from 35mm to IMAX cameras. Whenever I photograph with still RBs (almost identical image size to IMAX) and mix it with 35mm, I usually shoot the RB's 2 1/4 x 2 3/4" negative with the lens stopped down two stops from the 35mm camera to maintain comparable depth-of-field. Sure, this is an artistic decision, one way or the other, but such shallow focus didn't seem to fulfill any purpose, and was somewhat distracting from the story.

 

Heath Ledger was brilliant as the joker. It is a true shame that someone else will have to reprise this role, as I assume they'll be making more in this excellent series. I really wish now that I had had an opportunity to see the prequel to this film during its theatrical run. Guess I'll have to go rob a movie vault to make that happen though ;)

 

Likewise with the rest of the cast. This story was epic, compelling, and thought provoking. The Joker is our generation's Khan, or better :blink: Batman was great, Two-face was great, and criticisms of Rachel character are unfounded IMHO. I am SO EXCITED too to see other people sitting in aisles to see this movie and being so excited to go and see it, even to see it multiple times. I'm definitely seeing this film, hopefully in IMAX again, at least once more on the big screen. I'll see if I can see it in 35mm just for comparison, and maybe even digitally, but I think it is safe to say that this film is truly worth the slight extra cost of IMAX. It is a brilliant, groundbreaking, pivotal film in the rebirth of the 21st Century Theatrical Experience.

 

A tip of my hat to the team that made this film what it was, writers, actors, director, cinematographer, and crew.

[Guest Tim Partridge]

To be honest I didn't care for this. The script needed a massive doctoring and everything else felt like a poor man's HEAT that a painfully over-rationalised and unromantic interpretation of Batman has been forced through. The whole ferry thing felt like something out of a Raimi SPIDER-MAN movie too, sadly (and with equally cringeworthy performances). :(

 

I really didn't dig the cinematography this time. All of that graceful channeling of Jordan Cronenwerth on BATMAN BEGINS, the elegant camera movement, artful composition and warm hues are absent. Instead we get lots of Yourne Supremacy/Greengrassitis, lots of hard to follow, wide open shallow focus handheld shots, NO compositions or blocking ("compensated" by all editing dependent handheld with lots of delayed soft shots where the poor focus puller is playing catch up). How many times can we watch a tightly framed close up of the back of someone's head bob about, barely in focus, while the rest of the image is totally racked out, while it's hanheld down a toplit corridor? Makes you wonder why bother shooting anamorphic, let alone IMAX in places?? About 80% of the film is close ups with annoying camera movement. There's one shot where we see the Joker at a desk, almost a throwback to peak era Seventies Hollywood cinematography (Roizman, Willis, Surtees jnr etc), and it's just so refreshing to have a locked off composition in the movie. Finally a moment to linger on an interesting visual. Oh, and desaturation overload.

 

Aaron Eckhart was by far the best thing about the movie, although the best shot was easily the "one-er" involving drag, a hospital and the overenthusiasm of team Corbould! Whatever problems I had with THE DARK KNIGHT, if the whole movie had been on the level of that one sequence, it might have been a great film in it's own right and an outstanding comic book movie.

 

Suddenly, I really appreciate the equally poorly written Burton movies.

[K Borowski]

I really didn't dig the cinematography this time. All of that graceful channeling of Jordan Cronenwerth on BATMAN BEGINS, the elegant camera movement, artful composition and warm hues are absent. Instead we get lots of Yourne Supremacy/Greengrassitis, lots of hard to follow, wide open shallow focus handheld shots, NO compositions or blocking ("compensated" by all editing dependent handheld with lots of delayed soft shots where the poor focus puller is playing catch up). How many times can we watch a tightly framed close up of the back of someone's head bob about, barely in focus, while the rest of the image is totally racked out, while it's hanheld down a toplit corridor?

 

Tim, while I disagree with your assessment of the movie as a whole, I see that you noticed the awkward pulling too. Glad I wasn't just imagining it.

 

Besides the difficulty and waste of shooting with such shallow focus, do you think that perhaps the focus puller on this film had a hard time with an image area almost 10x the size of 35mm anamorphic when it came to dealing with such a shallow depth of field that you get with an IMAX lens wide open?

 

It's very hard to pull focus for stills with a negative this big :blink: