Juno

[Paul Bruening]

Never forget the first rule of creativity- Love me. Hate me. Just don't ignore me.

[Max Jacoby]

Yep, nothing's worse than a film (or piece of art in general) that just leaves everyone indifferent.

[Hal Smith]

Thank you Georg!

Max is not the first person to have his criticisms and will certainly not be the last. One thing that has been strange to me about JUNO is that people either seem to really love it or fiercely hate it. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground.

Reviews work that way: If the reviews for a given film are all over the place, some loving it, some hating it but with all the reviews showing a strong emotional reaction to the film, I usually make a point of trying to see the movie. Something powerful's going on and it just may speak to me.

[Freya Black]

Thank you Georg!

 

Max is not the first person to have his criticisms and will certainly not be the last. One thing that has been strange to me about JUNO is that people either seem to really love it or fiercely hate it. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground.

 

:) I've noticed this too!

 

I had a few friends who went to see the film and loved it.

 

Another friend was saying how she felt sorry for Kimya Dawson, that her music was used in a tacky commercial film with nasty right wing overtones.

 

...and I understand that the socialist worker newspaper printed a very damning review of it, lumping it in with movies such as "knocked up" (oooh! Harsh!). I didn't get to read that review tho sadly as I'm not a regular reader of socialist worker (it's a bit too tabloidy for my liking).

 

So I've definitely come across the same effect. Most of the criticism I'm hearing is that the film idealises pregnancy in some way and is yet another contributing factor in the current trend for damaging and marginalising the situation of women in society and indeed the trend for very backward and nasty values that is really damaging our societies generally at the moment. I guess idealising pregnancy is also potentially just dodgy from an environmental viewpoint when we have such a seriously overpopulated planet already.

 

I've not seen the film for myself yet tho, and to be honest I'm quite scared to do so at this point in case I hate it.

 

Thankfully none of the criticisms I'm hearing are about the cinematography (phew! relief! etc) ;)

 

love

 

Freya

[Eric Steelberg ASC]

I've not seen the film for myself yet tho, and to be honest I'm quite scared to do so at this point in case I hate it.

 

Thankfully none of the criticisms I'm hearing are about the cinematography (phew! relief! etc) ;)

 

Yes, phew! Doesn't matter though, no one is more critical of my work than me. Watching my work is like listening to my own voice. It usualy takes me a year or two before I can watch something I did and feel "hey, that wasn't bad. I wonder how I did that?"I briefly had that last night. We were shooting on stage and I walked by the mixer and a couple grips watching the screener of JUNO on a computer and I stopped and looked for a minute and thought "hey she looks good there. What was that lighting..."

 

Regarding the hatred of the film...it just shows far it's penetrated society and how many people have seen it. Any kind of emotional response, good or bad, is interesting to see.

[Phil Rhodes]

I have no idea how people do that.

 

Personally, I've never undertaken any endeavour with which I was in any way satisfied - generally my own work is something to be regarded with the deepest rancour.

 

There is, of course, always someone better.

 

P

[Alex Haspel]

congratulations.

 

i must admit i havent seen the movie yet, but beiing an avid cinematography.com reader, i caught myself thinking "cool, i actually KNOW the guy that shot that movie!" as i skipped over the credits somewhere...

 

the internet is not so bad after all...

[Keith Walters]

I have no idea how people do that.

 

Personally, I've never undertaken any endeavour with which I was in any way satisfied - generally my own work is something to be regarded with the deepest rancour.

 

There is, of course, always someone better.

 

P

 

With editing (or writing for that matter) it's easy to obsess over some or several tiny details where, try as you might you can't iron out some awkwardness or defect. With editing it may occur because someone else didn't do their job properly, or with writing because adhering to the rules of grammar may make the meaning of a sentence ambiguous and so on.

 

If you keep looking at it or reading it over and over again, it's going to assume an importance to you, far in excess of its relevance to the overall end product. The vast majority of people who are going to view (or read) the end product are most likely only to spend a couple of milliseconds at the awkward points, probably never even notice them, and most likely never return.

 

The level of your concern should be related to the percentage of those who are better to those who are worse.

[Phil Rhodes]

> The level of your concern should be related to the percentage of those who are

> better to those who are worse.

 

Oh God....

 

Aaargh.

[Keith Walters]

> The level of your concern should be related to the percentage of those who are

> better to those who are worse.

 

Oh God....

 

Aaargh.

Hmmm. My assessment of the situation is obviously grotesquely incompetent :rolleyes:

 

You state "you have no idea how people do that". I offer an explanation and you invoke mythical deities and make gargling noises.

 

I don't get it and I am not sure I want to.

 

You appear to hate your own work, you probably don't get paid all that much for doing it, but you put enormous amounts of personal vitality into minutiae that most people would not appreciate anyway. For what?

 

It would be interesting to seen you, Jim Jannard and Jan von Krogh together in a pub after a few beers :lol:

[Brad Grimmett]

Another friend was saying how she felt sorry for Kimya Dawson, that her music was used in a tacky commercial film with nasty right wing overtones.

 

love

 

Freya

To me, the above comment is WAY off base and completely wrong, but I guess it's interesting that people have such different interpretations of the same thing. One man's trash is another's treasure I guess.

[Freya Black]

To me, the above comment is WAY off base and completely wrong, but I guess it's interesting that people have such different interpretations of the same thing. One man's trash is another's treasure I guess.

 

Yes it's all relative!

 

I guess what she meant is that it's a Hollywood movie thing but to be fair, within that context, it's probably quite classy. For myself it's the political aspect that's more of a problem for me than the Hollywood thing. Theres quite a few Hollywood films I really love in fact, "Freaks", "12 Angry Men", "Gattaca", "It's a Wonderful Life", all those David Lynch movies etc. Right wing political stuff however is likely to send me running for the hills, and having had some bad experiences lately I'm less forgiving on that score right now too.

 

She was quite angry about it too which will make someone more dissmissive but obviously commercial Hollywood fims have a bad reputation for a lot of reasons. Ironically I'm actually quite intrested in them exactly for many of the reasons they are hated, but I guess I'm not approaching them from the point of view of their entertainment value in that context. ;)

 

love

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

I don't know what I'm going to do once the pregnant teenager scripts dry up!

 

I thought you were joking about this at first and had a giggle till I looked at your website and saw you had worked on another feature with a pregnency theme! Maybe this is a big meme at the moment. It's all a bit odd.

 

I've heard before about people getting stereotyped for making certain kind of films and I think it's preety ridiculous if you run into this problem. I mean what is it that they think would make you a specialist in this kind of film? You are good at lighting bumps perhaps? I really hope you get many offers for a diversity of films to work on and people stop being silly.

 

love

 

Freya

[Brad Grimmett]

Right wing political stuff however is likely to send me running for the hills, and having had some bad experiences lately I'm less forgiving on that score right now too.

 

love

 

Freya

Well, what I found most ridiculous about what your friend said was, "film with nasty right wing overtones". I don't think there's anything right wing about the movie at all, and certainly not nasty. Actually, I think the film is pretty apolitical. The fact that someone finds it nasty and right wing is pretty funny to me. Of course, the right wingers have called the film leftist and liberal, and the left wingers have called the film just the opposite. This is just a case of people trying to support their own cause through pop culture. All that talk is pretty stupid I think to most people that have actually seen the movie.

[Freya Black]

Well, what I found most ridiculous about what your friend said was, "film with nasty right wing overtones". I don't think there's anything right wing about the movie at all, and certainly not nasty. Actually, I think the film is pretty apolitical. The fact that someone finds it nasty and right wing is pretty funny to me. Of course, the right wingers have called the film leftist and liberal, and the left wingers have called the film just the opposite. This is just a case of people trying to support their own cause through pop culture. All that talk is pretty stupid I think to most people that have actually seen the movie.

 

Intresting to hear that. I've only come across people who loved it or who said it was nasty right wing stuff so far, but then I recently had a lot of people cut out of my life so I'm mostly moving in certain circles these days and I'm aware that the views I now get to hear are probably more limited.

 

Well all this controversy certainly can't hurt the movie sales! :)

 

love

 

Freya

[Paul Bruening]

Gosh. It never occurred to me that this movie had any political associations. Maybe, it's because I'm a typical guy and just don't give proper notice to women's issues. Is there any chance that some people can attach political anger to any issue? I know quite a few of that kind of person here at the local university. I know a guy who thinks there's a political conspiracy against poets.

[Eric Steelberg ASC]

JUNO came out on DVD and Blu-ray last Tuesday. While I haven't seen the Blu-ray yet (player being fixed for 2nd time) they did a pretty good job on the standard dvd. One of thin things I'm most happy about is they kept it 1.85. Typically, a studio will just make a 1.85 film 16x9 in order for the film to perfectly fit HDTVs. The special features are pretty good as well including an insightful commentary by Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody as well as a bunch of deleted scenes, out takes, and a cast and crew "jam" (see if you can spot me). The transfer itself was made from the DI files at EFILM.

 

I can't believe the marketing machine behind this thing. Starbucks is selling it at their registers in their own packaging and colors (green stripes instead of orange).

[Peter Moretti]

Eric,

 

You should be (and I'm sure are) so proud of yourself. I just finished watching Juno. And IMHO, the best thing about the movie was the cinemtography and composition of the shots including things like color, wardrobe and setting.

 

Some shots are just so clever and beautiful, e.g. the nice house with footprints in the snow, the pushed (don't know if that's the proper term) reds in some shots like when the kids are running, the final scene where the camera is pulling back and the composition continues to work and even says more until the tree to right gives it an almost fairytale-like look. I also loved how you incorporated movement into the shots w/o being obvious. Some movies that it brought to mind were "Virgin Suicides" for movement, "Venus" for color, and "In the Bedroom" for intelligent composition of shots. I haven't done a serious side by side, so maybe I'm way off base, but those are what came to mind.

 

As for film, I would have liked to see more of her feelings for keeping the baby and the parents have less "McParents" reactions. But I did like the performances and LOVED the cinematography. I you did this film a GREAT service.

Edited May 7, 2008 by Peter Moretti

[Eric Steelberg ASC]

Thank you Peter. Very kind of you.

 

It's interesting you mentioned Virgin Suicides...that was a film Jason and I screened for camera movement and composition in house locations.

[Peter Moretti]

Eric,

 

I was substitute teaching an art class at Notre Dame HS the other day. It was the end of the year and some of the students were seniors, so a lot of minds were elsewhere. I really couldn't blame them. So I thought here's a chance to ask some "real" high school kids what they thought of "Juno."

 

I said, "I have a weird question for the entire class; how many of you have seen 'Juno'?" All their hands go up. "Did you like it?" "Yeah... LOVED IT... OMG it was amaaaazing!" "Okay, I agree, but did you think the kids sounded authentic?" They all look at me confusedly. "I mean do you think that's the way high school kids really speak?" They now look at me like I'm insulting their grandmothers. "No I really liked the film, I just thought that the dialogue seemed like it was made up by somebody my age. BTW, I really like the way it was filmed."

 

"Why are you asking about 'Juno,' did a friend of yours work on it?" "No, not at all. But I thought the cinematography was really good." "OH OH OH, I think we KNOW HIM." "Who?" "The cinematographer. He talked to us. What's his name?"

 

"Eric... um Eric... I'm sorry, I don't know him, but I did post a comment about his movie, and he seems very nice and obviously talented." "Steelberg, that's his name!" "Yeah, that sounds right. So what do you think of his talk?" "We REALLY LIKED HIM, but he said he tried not to make the shots too beautiful." "Well I think the shots were beautiful anyway, while never distracting from the film." "Yeah we really liked the way it looked."

 

So just thought I'd give you a shoutout from NDHS. :)

[Eric Steelberg ASC]

I had a great time visiting the students. They were very enthusiastic and had some smart questions, not what I expected from HS students. What a small world. I'm pleased to hear our visit was enjoyable for them.