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Arcade Fire "Afterlife" Music Video, 65mm/35mm 5219, 5222


Evan Prosofsky

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Hi everybody!

 

Recently I had the great privelege of shooting a short film for Arcade Fire which we photographed on a mix of 65mm (intro scene, sleeping closeups, landscapes) and 35mm (5222,5219). To further enhance certain surreal moments, I shot with zeiss super speeds wide open to get halations around bright lights in the quarry. This was also a big reason I pushed to shoot on the 5222 -- because of the lack of the anti halation backing, I was able to get some really interesting effects in the highlights and flares. I felt that the 65mm would help isolate each character from "reality" as they experience their own dream world, so I opted to shoot all their closeups on 65 as well as the ocassional landscape and moment that I felt wanted that heightened reality and shallow DOF. This was obviously also time/budget dependent so it was difficult to shoot everything that way, unfortunately. We did a 4k scan for the 65mm at fotokem and a 2k scan for the 35mm at cinelicious. Both who I might add were incredibly helpful and accommodating!!!!

 

Just wanted to share it and see what you guys think! And also just wanted to hammer home the notion to any of you who may be interested in shooting more film that it is still ABSOLUTELY feasible and actually quite affordable :) Our budget was incredibly small, but by keeping a low shooting ratio (I'd guess we shot about 8000ft total) of 65mm/35mm purchase/process/transfer was possible.

 

 

Best,

 

Evan

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Amazing story and visuals. Very moving. I watched it the first time watching closely for 64mm vs 35mm, etc. Then slowly got sucked into the story. So, I watched it a second time and totally got lost in the images and story, forgetting the technical all together. That's the sign of a well shot film.

 

I think the only thing that technically throws me off is the diner scene at the beginning. Relative to the rest of the color shots, this is extra grainy and a bit distracting. Otherwise, amazing use of your medium!

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I saw this on FB yesterday, amazing! It's crazy to see that they are working with 65mm now, because back when they were first starting out I was in talks with their manager about filming one of their live shows on Super 8. They were looking to just have some kind of visual documentation of them playing at the time. Then their manager started getting paranoid about the legal aspects of the footage rights since i was going to produce it... even though I offered them the full rights and original footage. I just liked the band a lot and thought it would be a fun and worthy project. I was going to shoot it on 7217/18 and have it scanned on the Shadow. It's too bad because the other live stuff i did at the time came out amazing. Would have been a great archive of their early days,

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Great work! I'm a bit surprised though at all the gate flare, I didn't know that 65mm cameras had that problem.

Thanks so much David!

 

Just want to clear up that 65mm cams definitely don't have that problem. (Atleast this one in particular, the Panavision 65 HR). Whatever abberations you may be seeing are from the camera coming up to speed combined with a flashed mag.... ugh. Unfortunately we were SO budgetarily strapped that we just couldn't wait each take for the camera to ramp up to speed. Takes about 5 seconds to come up to 24fps. So I'd call action just before camera ramped up. Didn't realize it would be so noticeable. The mag that was flashed ended up being the one that contained most of the footage that made it into the final edit :(

 

The gate flare on the 35mm 5222 stuff can be fixed by painting the gate black, but I always like the effect :)

 

Thanks for all the kind words everybody

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  • 1 month later...

Truly amazing piece of storytelling that really restores my hope in filmmaking and I think reminds us all why we do it in the first place. So little/no dialogue is needed in this boundless medium to express so much, even in such little time. I can't imagine that the story and images (alongside the fantastic track) wouldn't resonate with any person, yet the film is clearly original, does not seek the lowest common denominator, does not pander, or force anything down one's throat. This really reminds me that the music video/musical collaborations are such a great channel for amazing work to be produced--work that you wouldn't find, and simply would not possible, in other filmmaking media. Direct, powerful, surreal, and self-contained. Cheers all around....

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