Public Enemies (Michael Mann & Dante Spinotti)

[David Mullen ASC]

There have always been two conflicting viewpoints on shooting period subjects -- one is that it should feel slightly dated in some way (as Gordon Willis said about the look he gave "The Godfather", that it shouldn't look like a snapshot that just came back from Fotomat) and the opposite is that it shouldn't feel dated at all, but immediate and new, just set in the past. Shooting sharp HD for period subjects falls into the second attitude, and I don't think it's a right or wrong thing.

 

Look at "Saving Private Ryan" versus "The Thin Red Line" -- the first has a desaturated grainy look that feels a little like period combat photography, and the second has a sharp, saturated, modern widescreen look. Both approaches are different ways of treating a period subject matter, and both draw you into the experience of battle -- one by reminding you of newsreels and documentary combat photography and the other by creating a sharp immersive color image.

 

Of course, when you throw electronic cameras into the mix, the effect is even more jarring, but you can argue that the immediacy of digital works to take the aged patina off of the setting and story and make it seem less dated for the audience -- as if it were happening "now" instead of "then". You could say that "Apocalypto" took the same approach, avoiding any period feeling in the photography.

 

Of course, the difference there is that anything after the mid 1800's exists in the age of photography, when we have memories that are tied up with how they were photographed, hence why the grainy b&w texture of parts of "Elephant Man" reinforce the Victorian age industrial revolution settings.

[Chris D Walker]

I watched it last night from Apple Trailers at 480p, even then I didn't like what I could see. What I deem as the worst looking elements from the trailer include a close-up shot of Marion Cotillard and extracts from the bank holdup that both have that distinctive video motion; I also had issues with and a wide angle of a car crash and several shots in the woods that had extreme noise issues.

 

This is how I see it. If I do go to watch this film I feel I wouldn't be able to watch it without being distracted by how Mann and his DP chose to use the camera. How is it this film is so blatant in it's video origin when others such as Zodiac look near seamless when compared to a film shot on a Kodak or Fuji stock?

 

When experimenting you want the viewer to be aware of the aesthetic and the medium itself. Experimenting the technology available in a narrative film such as this would seem to be conflicting as to where the viewer should be directing their attention, to the medium or to the story. I foresee getting heat for this remark.

[georg lamshöft]

Whether you use the best equipment you can handle/afford to "hide" the technology as good as possible or you're trying to achieve a certain look that corresponds somehow with the storytelling.

Using "old"/ less technical advanced technology to show the audience you're telling a story from the past is quite common as we know but what Mann does here is something entirely different to my eyes:

He "gloats over" technical shortcomings of his equipment (instead of hiding it like Fincher and being satisfied with looking halfway like film - not my cup of tea, either) which gives the audience the feeling of a reality-show from our decade.

That's like a sci-fi-movie filmed in the 1970s using high-speed film stocks and fast lenses, while knowing that the technical shortcomings of this time will be even further accentuated. 30 years later, you have a sci-fi-movie which plays in the year 2000 but looks even more 70s as other movies of that time... :blink:

 

I fear that it will look "outdated" pretty quickly, like 80s-synth-pop...

 

I'll hope you understand what I'm trying to say? :rolleyes:

[F Bulgarelli]

By now we should be use to MIchael Mann's unpredictable format choices.

Weather the movie is good or bad remains to be seen, can't judge a movie by the trailer.

Format is irrelevant, it might work for what they are trying to achieve.

I just saw Rachel Getting Married, shot on the f900, great film and the format served perfectly for the that particular film, on the other hand, I saw "Taken" and was bothered by the digital looking action sequences.

I think Mann was after a contemporary looking period piece.

[Satsuki Murashige]

That's like a sci-fi-movie filmed in the 1970s using high-speed film stocks and fast lenses, while knowing that the technical shortcomings of this time will be even further accentuated. 30 years later, you have a sci-fi-movie which plays in the year 2000 but looks even more 70s as other movies of that time... :blink:

Hey Georg,

 

I like your analogy! I think you're right, future audiences will probably look at this film and think "this looks SO 2009." I don't think that's a good thing, but if the film itself is good then they may be able to overlook it. I mean, I still love "A Clockwork Orange" despite it looking SO late 60's/early 70's. :)

[Serge Teulon]

....... I still love "A Clockwork Orange" despite it looking SO late 60's/early 70's. :)

 

I just watched Angel Heart again and it screamed of 80's in New Orleans. And it sill looks great!

 

Just to pick up on Chris' comment about the format distracting you from the action.....I completely agree. As soon as I saw the images my imagination was not impulsed to remove itself from reality and engross itself into the film.

I know it sounds harsh as it's only a trailer but that's their chance to pitch the film to everybody out there!

All I can say is that I'm certainly not sold the slightest......

Edited March 6, 2009 by Serge Teulon

[Joe Giambrone]

Two possibly unexplored avenues:

 

1) The video look is blatantly intentional so as to give the characters and period a completely different psychological impact to the modern viewers. People in grainy black and white footage feel quite different than people on evening news video footage.

 

2) The most egregious pushing of the image, past "acceptable" or "professional" levels could be Mann's vision. Does he have eyesight issues? As in, can he see that well, physically? If he literally can't see the problems, that would explain a lot.

[fabio pirovano]

I loved the Trailer ,but is just a trailer and I don't feel to add other judgments..As somebody else wrote One of most intresting point is show 30's on HD

About F23 I wrote a short article taking info around net and really seem be a great camera free from aberrationsMy Wordpress about PUBLIC ENEMIES ,also I loved the F23 on Bovillain's Cloverfield....

 

For what I saw from Public Enemies trailer ,despite Collateral and Miami Vice where practical lights been great part of lighting's installations or benchmark,this time seem that the work about lightings been more complex,as they were shoot on Film...

I notice some other angles and camera movments that are Michael Mann trademarks and back to me to The Insider ,Ali (Frazier Lenses),Miami Vice(T-Rex)

 

That's just a feeling I could be wrong,& sorry for my english....

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

Saw this trailer today just before Watchmen. The film's story and performances look like they'll be great, and it'll be fine film. But really, all I could think of while watching was how much it looked like video. Flat, boring, with all the bad things that come from it.

 

Anyone know about the technical specs of shooting? Did they shoot at 60i on Standard gamma or something?

[fabio pirovano]

Two possibly unexplored avenues:

 

1) The video look is blatantly intentional so as to give the characters and period a completely different psychological impact to the modern viewers. People in grainy black and white footage feel quite different than people on evening news video footage.

 

2) The most egregious pushing of the image, past "acceptable" or "professional" levels could be Mann's vision. Does he have eyesight issues? As in, can he see that well, physically? If he literally can't see the problems, that would explain a lot.

 

Probably F23 skills is the main reason that permit to be more Filmic than other times

 

On Miami Vice or Collataral I were able to see difference between material shot on Sony and Viper

 

You should watch Brad Anderson's Session 9 for understand or learning the eyesight issue...

[Guest Giles Sherwood]

I really loved the look of Miami Vice (and I think it's also his best film after Heat!), and though I'm usually pretty chill about movies being shot digitally, I have to admit I'm skeptical about this film's aesthetic choices based on the trailer. It seems like it hasn't been graded yet or something.

 

I could see this look working if the narrative structure or, at the least, the editing style was also sort of out-there and Brechtian. The interplay of the video, editing, and acting in Miami Vice created a really fantastic, unified energy I hadnt seen before.

 

But right now I'm getting flashbacks to Benjamin Button, which I thought had a lot of problems that popped up when hard sources and tungsten colors were used. Have to wait and see if the look is truly motivated or not. Impossible to tell from a trailer.

 

I'm actually a little stunned that the looks of the latest Fincher and Mann digital films seem worse than the efforts directly preceeding them. Again, I thought Zodiac and Miami Vice were both gorgeous examples of two very different directions one could push the same camera.

[xavier rodriguez]

I agree with you almost totally. And I also wonder if this new Michael Mann is going to be as good as the Dillinger from John Milius. Especially in 30 years from now.

Edited March 7, 2009 by xavier rodriguez

[Guest Tim Partridge]

I just watched Angel Heart again and it screamed of 80's in New Orleans. And it sill looks great!

 

 

SID AND NANCY, shot on 35mm by Roger Deakins in 1985, is probably the most anachronistic period movie I have ever seen, and it's only set in 1978/9!! Nancy Spundgen seems to be dressing like Cyndi Lauper, with a very 1984 frizzy hair style, the soundtrack is full of digital synthesizers and drum machines (not very punk), there are toned down hammer and sickle references to the costumes instead of punk imagery and the photography is slick, fine grained, full of colourful, sourcey florescent practicals. The latter factor doesn't exactly evoke the grainy newsreel imagery of the Pistols playing live, the Julien Temple mockumentaries or the hotel report of Nancy Spundgen's death, either.

[K Borowski]

WHy is it that everyone is turning this into a fiml/digital debate?

 

You can make film look like poop too, just underexpose it two stops. One can argue that "Eyes Wide Shut" must have been deemed ugly by the studio execs, as they de-grained it for the transfer. And EWS was pushed!

 

I don't accept the notion that all film looks good and all digital looks bad. Seems like whenever someone says "Wow this movie looks BAD" and it's HD the rallying cry comes that these allegations would've been raised were it a film production.

 

I've seen plenty of 35- and 16mm movies that I though wee excessively grainy. Name escapes me at the moment, but the European film about the Jewish counterfitters in WWII I feel got so grainy as to be distracting.

 

Other "Bolyn Girl" was pretty good, "Collateral" I thought was great, innovative even. "Manure" looks like it is going to be gorgeous from what I've seen. . .

 

As to this perceived barrier that digital is going to break. . . dream on. Did it change music, still photography?

 

Last post of the thread though. I still have a headache from having to defend myself for saying that "Slumdog Millionaire" won for best Cinematography. Instead of sitting around on the internet, waiting for magical technology to make this cut-throat field easy to break into, maybe you should realize that it will always be hard to break in no matter what, so you can devote your productive time to trying to break in.

 

I only hope that next year an ugly low budget 16mm film, that is conveniently appealing to a recession-conscious academy, also wins so I can tear it apart too.

 

Funny though, I looked through the entire list of films made up to this point, and everyone I have seen, except Slumdog, I thought was gorgeous, and I have probably seen at least 60 out of the 82. Should I just chalk that up to my "film-ego" and confirmation bias? I don't think any of you should.

[georg lamshöft]

I think that's because most of us like the work of Michael Mann (and Spinotti) or the look his movies had when they were filmed on 35mm. But that has changed since he is using HD - in this particular way.

His choice of technology simply doesn't seem to improve his work and yes, I think here technology does matter indeed - that's my point of view.

[Daniel Porto]

The only thing I disliked about the Public Enemies trailer were the long shutters, not the fact that it was shot on digital. However it is because of digital that most of these long shutters are possible

[Trevor Masid]

Had those films been re-done shot by shot, substituting film....would they be as "disgusting?" This strikes me as a hatred of the medium and not the cinematography. If the medium itself made the cinematographer, a porn shot on 35 would be higher art than Benjamin button or Slumdog or any other digitally acquired film. And camera choice really would be the only thing holding backyard filmmakers from hollywood...(meaning RED's marketing campaign would be true).

 

This actually brings up a very interesting and timely debate about cinematography. With Slumdog winning the Oscar, there's been a lot of discussion here about how it didn't deserve to win because some shots were grainy or obviously lifted in post. Many people on this forum felt that Dark Night was more technically perfect and more technically daring, and therefore deserved to win. To justify the merits of either film, I think we need to really think about the definition of cinematography. For some people, it's art. For others, its craft. And for others still, it's a craft that in collaboration with other talented craftspeople and artists can help to raise the project as a whole to an art. And unfortunately, for some, the entirety of cinematography comes down to capture medium alone.

 

These discussions that demerit certain films based on the medium are kind of ridiculous. Some of us may hate the look of digital thus far, and others may love it. Regardless, at that budget and talent level, it is clearly a purposeful choice. Would you whip-pan during a love scene? Probably not. But if you did, it would certainly stand out and make people say "why the hell did they just whip pan in a love scene?" It would be a very visible choice, perhaps more visible than film stock choices or gamma curves.

 

There are so many conventions in filmmaking that we follow or respect because "that's how it's done." Why is night blue? Have you ever seen a blue night? Why do we match on action? Why do we do many of the things that we do in cinema? Because they are conventions developed to help the audience understand the story on screen. Especially now that literally everyone and their mother has seen enough movies in their lifetimes to just go along with these conventions, breaking the rules has a marked effect on the audience. Someone here said (and I'll paraphrase), "digital for a period piece doesn't fit." Maybe it doesn't fit the conventions we are used to but that doesn't make it wrong, unwatchable or even less artistic. We like to see old things look old, but realistically when living in a "period," everything looks new! For whatever reason, the film was shot digitally, so we'll have to watch it to see if that choice served the story. On Miami Vice, the digital capture didn't look like the show, but it was VERY much in the spirit of the original - innovative. At the time, Miami Vice was hot, new and pushed boundaries using pop music, wild colors, crazy locations, and styles than most shows. Digital served the story, whether it was clean enough for most peoples' liking or not.

 

Without asking him personally or being him, I can't tell you why Mann chose the camera systems he did on that film or Public Enemies. I can tell you the trailer looks fun and involving and that while certainly different, the cinematography is well-done.

 

 

It's definitely not me hating on the medium.. seeing as how I thought benjamin button should've won the oscar for best cinematography. Fincher has shot his last couple of projects digitally, and they have come out absolutely beautifully. I have nothing against shooting digital, as I have shot digitally myself a few times. It's just mann's choices of going nuts on the gamma, especially on a period piece like this.. I believe personally, that it just kind of takes you out of the moment when it looks "digital".. A modern piece would not be as distracting, but for some reason to me, it just takes me out of the believability of the movie as a whole.

[Gautam Valluri]

I believe Miami Vice was shot on a Viper. I definitely agree on the fact that the digital medium adds a lot of tension to the action shots, but the rest of the film might end up looking like Ellie Parker (which given its subject, is a great film in itself. Shot on mini DV).

 

But in the end it's Mann's artistic choice. I appreciate the fact that he is experimenting with an unconventional medium for a period piece at that level, it is equivalent to Baz Luhrmann dressing up Romeo in Jeans and T-shirt but keeping the dialogue in classical shakespearean language.

[Guest Matti Poutanen]

New trailer hits the internet:

 

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-GB&...ef-fea6d0c5d449

 

Low quality, but I like this a lot more than the first trailer. It also showcases Spinotti´s compositions better than the first one. HD or whatever, but I´m liking what I´m seeing!

[Tom Lowe]

I saw the trailer at the theater and thought it looked very "video-ish".

 

Not impressed.

[Marcus Joseph]

I saw the trailer at the theater and thought it looked very "video-ish".

 

Not impressed.

Saw it at the theatre the other day too, I personally thought it looks like a solid flick as far as plot and acting go and from what I can see, I liked the choice to go digital. I didn't see much of a difference from any of the the other digitally shot movies I've seen, but maybe this is just my young inexperienced perspective on digital & film. But I'm quite certain that Mann and Spinotti made the choices with perfect knowledge of what they wanted to achieve.

 

I just think it's a little harsh to judge an entire movie's cinematography based on only two minute's worth of footage. Maybe more credibility will be added to discussion like these after it's actually been released.

[Tom Lowe]

The movie and the plot look great to me. I was only commenting on the several very obvious "video moments" in the trailer.

[K Borowski]

Why are so many professional productions using consumer crap to shoot these days?

 

I mean, what's the point in trying to make your film bad when so many movies look bad UNintentionally? :rolleyes:

[Tom Lowe]

In all fairness, though, I remember that Apocalypto had several very videoish moments that actually turned out to be 16mm "action" running shots. So I guess if you need a tiny cam, either way, the footage is going to stand out against 35mm.

[Keith Mottram]

In all fairness, though, I remember that Apocalypto had several very videoish moments that actually turned out to be 16mm "action" running shots. So I guess if you need a tiny cam, either way, the footage is going to stand out against 35mm.

 

You sure your not getting the formats muddled up? The aaton a-minima was clear as it was obviosly grainy, whereas the video looking stuff was a genesis with open shutter- hardly a tiny camera. Either way if were talking small cams an SI2k mini would be a better choice than a prosumer in a production like this if you were looking for something less 'videoish'.