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@Brian: :-D

 

 

So, wait, was "Western Front" a talkie?

 

Forgot about "Wings," the Howard Hughes film.

 

 

 

There's just a lot of people that look down their noses at B&W film, and if it don't have sound, fuggedaboutit :-/ (Idiots)

 

I was watching "Young Frankenstein" on Starz in HD the other day and it was 100 times better than the attempts I see made to "simulate" it today. This film, Schindler's List, and Ed Wood, probably all got hurt at the box office for it too.

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So, wait, was "Western Front" a talkie?

 

Forgot about "Wings," the Howard Hughes film.

 

 

'Wings' wasn't the Howard Hughes film. 'Hell's Angel's' was.

 

It started out as a silent, then switched to sound. So most of the dialogue scenes were were reshot by James Whale.

The zeppelin scene was post synced. The scene was quite spectacular.

There's also a 2-color Technicolor scene at fancy party.

 

post-7981-0-06856400-1325667570.jpg post-7981-0-30965000-1325667614.jpg

 

post-7981-0-66922600-1325667626.gif post-7981-0-26337000-1325667647.jpg

 

 

The 1930 Slim Summerville (who was in 'All Quiet... the same year) two reeler 'We! We! Marie!' was a trench warfare comedy,

the second reel of which was in wide screen. Or perhaps two versions were shot and only one version of each survived.

I set it up for printing at WRS. The wide screen system was masking the picture to Techniscope size in the camera.

 

& speaking of wide screen, 'The Blue Max' was actually shot in Franscope, but Fox was rather fond of their trade name CinemaScope. D.Slocombe also shot 'Fathom' in Franscope afterwards.

 

My favorite WWI trench warfare comedy is the series 'Blackadder goes Fourth'

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One thing about major world events like WW1 & WW2 is the large number of stories that come out from them. Many will never be made into feature films or dramas, because the cost of making them is so large. One story from the period was the SS Ohio, an oil tanker, and operation Pedestal, which was attempt to resupply Malta. Important when the island had only 2 weeks of fuel left and it was key to intercepting Rommel's supply conveys.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Ohio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pedestal

 

If you'd written as a Hollywood war movie no one would believe it.

 

You can't make films just for veterans because you need to have a large audience to make a return on the investment.

 

I think many stories from both great wars will eventually make it to screen. There are so many real life heroes (and villains) to be seen.

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My favorite WWI trench warfare comedy is the series 'Blackadder goes Fourth'

 

Yes, I was going to mention that one. Though I didn't realise WWI trench warfare comedy was actually a genre!

 

'Joyeux Noel' was another recent WWI movie that deserves a mention.

 

Australians have a particular fascination with WWI - apart from Peter Weir's classic 'Gallipoli' there have been several other Oz films or mini-series set in the trenches including the recent feature 'Under Hill 60'. We've probably covered WWI more than WWII.

 

Marching off to the far side of the earth to be cannon fodder for the British Empire is a great source of pride for many Australians, and our most sacred holiday is Anzac Day, commemorating a disastrous WWI defeat on the shores of Turkey. I suppose it was the first time we got to express ourselves on the world stage since we'd become a federated nation in 1901. We mocked the class-ridden Brits and refused to salute their officers, but went over the trench wall into the machine-guns anyway, and a strange sort of national identity myth was born.

 

We also have a disproportionate number of horse movies - 'Pharlap', 'Man From Snowy River', 'Silver Stallion', 'The Cup' etc - so I imagine a WWI horse movie should do quite well down here. :P

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How do you light day exteriors in these huge movies? For wide shots I imagine all you can do is "paint" from behind the camera or the side. For close ups are we talking enormous overheads of grid cloth (or solids) and then diffused light from the front, direct from the back, the idea being the background is far enough out of focus that you don't notice the difference in light's directionality relative to natural daylight? Or are these musco and bee bee lights big enough that they don't need to be diffused? Are some used for background lights when the sun falls behind a cloud?

 

The day exteriors in War Horse trailers that are clearly lit seem to follow two patterns: overcast days have an additional offside key meant to look like direct sunlight and sunny CUs are heavily backlit with an unnaturally bright fill that, based on reflections in eyes is quite soft. But for that latter look you could backlight with a medium/big HMI and use a breadboard for bounce--no need for bee bee lights (or whatever they are called, I have never seen one). And how do you move fast enough with this huge gear?

 

To me the trailer looks a bit over lit but in an intentional and controlled way (far more pleasing than Indy 4) and the photography overall looks stunning. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the movie itself.

 

For the wide shots you don't light so much, but a good team will try to stage things so shots are backlit by the sun. Closer shots might use big "fly-swatters:" either 40'x40' grids hanging from construction cranes, or 20'x20's off of condors, if you can get them close enough to the action. The only time I've seen the Bee-Bees used was on Indy 4, and it kind of seemed like maybe the DP and Gaffer said "We asked for 'em, so we better act like we need them." They are pretty.

 

Once you start lighting the closer shots, planning makes things go fast (like having a condor with a BFL waiting for the turn-around), but mainly it's having a really big crew. If you get 20 guys working hard you can probably bring in a couple of 18k's in the back, a 10'x20' bounce for fill and a 12'x12' solid for negative fill in about the same time my last crew set up ... Well, pretty fast, anyway.

 

That said, I saw War Horse and on the true exteriors it looked liked the clouds were moving too fast for even Spielberg's crew!

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We also have a disproportionate number of horse movies - 'Pharlap', 'Man From Snowy River', 'Silver Stallion', 'The Cup' etc - so I imagine a WWI horse movie should do quite well down here. :P

 

hah, I never realised that before.

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For the wide shots you don't light so much, but a good team will try to stage things so shots are backlit by the sun. Closer shots might use big "fly-swatters:" either 40'x40' grids hanging from construction cranes, or 20'x20's off of condors, if you can get them close enough to the action. The only time I've seen the Bee-Bees used was on Indy 4, and it kind of seemed like maybe the DP and Gaffer said "We asked for 'em, so we better act like we need them." They are pretty.

 

Once you start lighting the closer shots, planning makes things go fast (like having a condor with a BFL waiting for the turn-around), but mainly it's having a really big crew. If you get 20 guys working hard you can probably bring in a couple of 18k's in the back, a 10'x20' bounce for fill and a 12'x12' solid for negative fill in about the same time my last crew set up ... Well, pretty fast, anyway.

 

That said, I saw War Horse and on the true exteriors it looked liked the clouds were moving too fast for even Spielberg's crew!

 

 

Thanks, Jon, that makes sense. I'm surprised you can get away with doing 180º flip in terms of backlight direction for daytime shot/reverse, not due to continuity between shots, but because you'd assume the background would be lit totally differently from the foreground in terms of the direction of the sun for at least one side of shot/reverse. Did you ever find yourself lighting the background, too, when the sun went behind the clouds? And hiding the cut off point between real sun light and what's artificially lit under the grid cloth seems mighty tricky, too... I suppose shallow focus and careful composition helps, but big day interiors seem crazy to me.

 

I remember I worked on a short you shot in 2010, btw--didn't know you were on Indy 4 or I would have pestered you then since I was really obsessed with Kaminski at that time.

 

Also re-reading my post I'm endlessly frustrated by Apple's spell check changing kinoflo to "kinfolk" and beadboard to "breadboard."

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As you know, I find Spielberg to be one of the greatest directors of our time, so his considerable talents and skills are not in question. However, I do feel he was really out of tune on this one. The main problem is the film's casting and his almost absurd loyalty to his collaborators.

 

First the acting. Jeremy Irvine lacks the skills to bring his character to life and we fail to see what motivates him. It could be a script problem, but nevertheless he doesn't work and we don't care for him. He's unfortunately cast for his sweet looks, when a boy we could actually relate to would have been much better. The German boy that later appears does a much better job in a shorter period - why couldn't they have found someone like that to play Albert? It goes on from there - many characters turn up but are miscast. There's a French farmer and his granddaughter where the granddaughter has one of the worst faux-French accents in cinema history and does a really bad job overall, I thought. Niels Arestrup, the veteran French character actor, who plays the grandfather does the best he can but his character is written very two dimensionally. Film is littered with badly written, badly cast characters. The horses completely outact the the talent and steal the show.

 

Who am I to criticise Janusz? Well, it's not like I'm going to be employed by either him or Spielberg, so I might as well say what's on my mind, a mere jobbing commercial DP as I am; Janusz Kaminski has over the years turned into a great over-lighter. There. He's a subtle as a clog on a stone floor. There are harsh rims and an artificial look to all of this when a dollop of naturalism would have probably worked better. Now, obviously this is all by design so there's an idea behind it and the idea is to firmly put it in the old school Hollywood vein. Partly. I also think Janusz has become bored with naturalism and has decided to shake things up a bit and adopt this new high key approach come hell or high water. I bet their next collaboration will look exactly the same as this one and Indiana Jones, so I don't think he's tailoring the cinematography to the story that much. And somehow it just doesn't work. He's just a little bit too heavy-handed with his mimicry of that old school style and it all feels like caricature. For me it was mainly the completely unrealistic rims and saccharine fills that drove me nuts. Raw HMI rims from the opposite side of the key or natural light just looks artificial. Color balance of the fill was almost always a bit too cold compared to the ambience - adding to the artificial raw HMI feel. Sometimes there are short moments of brilliance and I do have to say I admire his chutzpah at times, but most of it is much to over-wraught. The ending has a Gone With The Wind feel to it and I kind of found that quite interesting, but in the context of all the other crazy artificialness, it lost a bit of its power. I should in all fairness add that some of the battle stuff and some of the shots of the horses there, are very, very good, so credit where credit is due.

 

Finally, top this off with a terribly overworked John Williams score completely lacking in any subtlety, or worse - melody and theme - and you have a film than ends up being even less than its parts. Too bad, because in there somewhere is a great story.

 

I do feel that Spielberg's loyalties are becoming a problem these days. He needs to change the people he works with and mix it up, or else this is the result. He should get Michael Mann's casting agent (who is the master of casting smartly against type), Hans Zimmer (who's not afraid to take chances) to score and get a new DP in and we'd get a much better picture.

 

 

I like where you're going with this Adam. After reading his posts for the last 6 years or so and getting to see his reasoning and thought processes for the choices he makes, I for one would love to see Mr. Mullen get the chance to shoot a western, a war film, something in black and white, and of course, a sci-fi film (on film!) with someone of Spielberg's caliber. There's your New Year's resolutions, David :)

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Thanks, Jon, that makes sense. I'm surprised you can get away with doing 180º flip in terms of backlight direction for daytime shot/reverse, not due to continuity between shots, but because you'd assume the background would be lit totally differently from the foreground in terms of the direction of the sun for at least one side of shot/reverse. Did you ever find yourself lighting the background, too, when the sun went behind the clouds? And hiding the cut off point between real sun light and what's artificially lit under the grid cloth seems mighty tricky, too... I suppose shallow focus and careful composition helps, but big day interiors seem crazy to me.

 

I remember I worked on a short you shot in 2010, btw--didn't know you were on Indy 4 or I would have pestered you then since I was really obsessed with Kaminski at that time.

 

Also re-reading my post I'm endlessly frustrated by Apple's spell check changing kinoflo to "kinfolk" and beadboard to "breadboard."

Ah, "Peasants." There' are a couple of rough shots, and a bunch of really good ones in that little film. Of course, the prettiest ones didn't make the cut!

 

I think you have to keep the same key, fill, back-light feel going for reverses even if it doesn't make geographic sense. It just doesn't work to have one person keyed with a passive bounce, and then cut to the complimentary shot in which the key is direct sun. Whatever is happening in the background is "background." As far as that transition in and out of the grid, you do your best to frame it out. I've also stuck branches around the edge of the frame, as well as taped on more grid or muslin to cover the gap between the frame and the pipe. Again, it helps to either build the frame that way from the start, or have lots of grips to add it at the last minute.

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Ah, "Peasants." There' are a couple of rough shots, and a bunch of really good ones in that little film. Of course, the prettiest ones didn't make the cut!

 

I think you have to keep the same key, fill, back-light feel going for reverses even if it doesn't make geographic sense. It just doesn't work to have one person keyed with a passive bounce, and then cut to the complimentary shot in which the key is direct sun. Whatever is happening in the background is "background." As far as that transition in and out of the grid, you do your best to frame it out. I've also stuck branches around the edge of the frame, as well as taped on more grid or muslin to cover the gap between the frame and the pipe. Again, it helps to either build the frame that way from the start, or have lots of grips to add it at the last minute.

 

From what I remember it looked good, though I saw it a while ago and don't remember specifics. It's hard to protect yourself as a DP, especially on smaller projects; directors almost always take performance over lighting/focus/composition, which I guess makes sense but I've suffered from that in the past, thankfully on movies no one will watch.

 

I suppose that makes sense, lighting for a consistent style in day exteriors rather than based on source, but it seems like a ridiculous amount of work to me. But I guess that's what differentiates the huge movies from smaller ones. Thanks for the insight!

Edited by M Joel Wauhkonen
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Guest Stephen Murphy

I saw Warhorse today and thought it looked wonderful! Loved the double fogs, the use of large sources for day exteriors and thought the last scene looked fantastic. Shame there was so much handheld work in it!

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I saw Warhorse today and thought it looked wonderful! Loved the double fogs, the use of large sources for day exteriors and thought the last scene looked fantastic. Shame there was so much handheld work in it!

 

 

Would you say its a movie worth seeing?

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  • 7 months later...

 

Who am I to criticise Janusz? Well, it's not like I'm going to be employed by either him or Spielberg, so I might as well say what's on my mind, a mere jobbing commercial DP as I am; Janusz Kaminski has over the years turned into a great over-lighter. There. He's a subtle as a clog on a stone floor. There are harsh rims and an artificial look to all of this when a dollop of naturalism would have probably worked better. Now, obviously this is all by design so there's an idea behind it and the idea is to firmly put it in the old school Hollywood vein. Partly. I also think Janusz has become bored with naturalism and has decided to shake things up a bit and adopt this new high key approach come hell or high water. I bet their next collaboration will look exactly the same as this one and Indiana Jones, so I don't think he's tailoring the cinematography to the story that much. And somehow it just doesn't work. He's just a little bit too heavy-handed with his mimicry of that old school style and it all feels like caricature. For me it was mainly the completely unrealistic rims and saccharine fills that drove me nuts. Raw HMI rims from the opposite side of the key or natural light just looks artificial. Color balance of the fill was almost always a bit too cold compared to the ambience - adding to the artificial raw HMI feel. Sometimes there are short moments of brilliance and I do have to say I admire his chutzpah at times, but most of it is much to over-wraught. The ending has a Gone With The Wind feel to it and I kind of found that quite interesting, but in the context of all the other crazy artificialness, it lost a bit of its power. I should in all fairness add that some of the battle stuff and some of the shots of the horses there, are very, very good, so credit where credit is due.

 

I was happy to read this because I have felt crazy and immodest criticizing, but had to turn War Horse off for this reason (something I never do). The over-apparent sources outdoors was distracting me to the point that I was not watching the film and I felt that each time an actor moved in the "wrong" way, the edges of that light were revealed. Of course, my brother and I have similar tastes minus the filmmaking background and he very much enjoyed the film in a theater so I may be focusing more than necessary.

 

I love many of their collaborations, but would love to see Spielberg try someone new. There is a moment in the new Lincoln trailer where he says "Now, now, now" and the shadow of his hand moves over his face. It feels like a "movie" shadow, not any type of practical source and reads more as self-conscious parody than homage. Of course there are many gorgeous shots, but also a stiffness as if this style would work better for stills than in moving cinema. It certainly seems intentional, but seems to be pushing to reveal the filmmaking process to a degree that does not make sense.

 

Spielberg often goes big and Williams often goes big. When the cinematography also goes this big, the combination feels too much and the film feels overwrought (to my tastes).

 

I say all of this with a great deal of modesty and am embarrassed to make the comment, but I've been confused by the decision.

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