Soderberg and the iPhone

[Robin R Probyn]

Yes for stills I think they are fine..I use mine all the time.. rather than lumping a DSLR around.. I have a 6.. but the 10 is alot better Im sure.. great just whip it out and shoot ..and there are a few good apps too.. but video for work.. its tough.. but I,d rather share a small motel room with the Donald ..

[Michael LaVoie]

Watching that trailer it makes even less sense to me. It looks like most of Unsane is shot in controlled locations. Like they had a crew, production staff, locked off areas and rights to use the spaces they were in. All of which costs a considerable amount of money no matter what you shoot on.

 

Tangerine was shot on the streets and there was a practical reason to use the phone cause they had no permits or money to pay the locations. Conditions seem to be night and day from each other.

 

It seems that Unsane could have been shot with any camera and it wouldn't change the shooting conditions much.

[Matt Thomas]

Some might say his decision to use the iPhone was...








unsane.

[Ravi Kiran]

Watching that trailer it makes even less sense to me. It looks like most of Unsane is shot in controlled locations. Like they had a crew, production staff, locked off areas and rights to use the spaces they were in. All of which costs a considerable amount of money no matter what you shoot on.

 

Tangerine was shot on the streets and there was a practical reason to use the phone cause they had no permits or money to pay the locations. Conditions seem to be night and day from each other.

 

It seems that Unsane could have been shot with any camera and it wouldn't change the shooting conditions much.

 

The only benefits I see are that a deeper depth-of-field and maybe getting certain shots in tight spaces are easier to achieve on an iPhone. But other than that there doesn't seem to be an aesthetic, budgetary, or logistical justification for shooting this on an iPhone instead of a proper camera. Perhaps Soderbergh did to see if he could do it, and what the results would look like.

Edited January 30, 2018 by Ravi Kiran

[David Mullen ASC]

Its an experiment and theres nothing wrong with it.

[Jon O'Brien]

All of that expensive gear needed to shoot a feature, commercial or whatever. Yet cameras/lenses etc getting so small and affordable such that a tiny phone is now a potentially a rival (and likely to become more so in the future as the lens options etc improve). Very nice photos David Mullen. Nice texture too, like film.

 

But what about rock steady stabilization - an iPhone on an Arri geared head and massive tripod? that would look interesting.

[David Mullen ASC]

I dont think of an iPhone as a serious rival to high end cameras for movies with a budget... I dont think the next Marvel movie is going to be shot on one. But its another choice for whoever might find it useful.

[Adrian Sierkowski]

I don't think phones will ever becomes a major rival to cinema cameras, or even a minor one. You eventually but up against the laws of physics with small sensors, not to mention the need for heat dissipation. It's an experiment, sure, I guess, though it reminds me of a college professor asking, whenever we turned in an experimental film, what exactly IS the experiment? If it's JUST to use a small camera, that's not nearly as interesting as using a small camera to push the boundaries of what cinema can do (as Tangerine and to a certain extent, I think , under the skin, with it's van scenes tried to do).

And too a certain point, I think it's all rather silly. Again, if you're working with a competent crew and equipment, it isn't hard to make ANY camera producer acceptable images.

[Jon O'Brien]

Does anyone foresee a time when cinema glass will become more affordable to rent for 'no budget' filmmakers (eg. the director funds the whole thing from his own wallet)? With so many new lenses being made, and potential future camera designs changing to smaller size? Or is this just a pipe dream? (sound of scottish pipes humming in the distance. that type of pipe. just to be different you know).

[Adrian Sierkowski]

I mean they already are, basically. The Rokinon Xeen, Cine DS, Tonika, and Sigmas are all remarkably affordable. And with the Atlas Anamorphics (and SLR Magic Anamorphics) and Veydras, there's a HUGE supply of lenses. We literally just rented an FS7 with a full set of Tonika Cine Zooms via sharegrid for $500/wk

[Michael LaVoie]

Anyone remember Mike FIggis's experimental film Hotel? Where all the actors wore body cams? Or his earlier feature Timecode. A quad screen one take experiment? Both of these looked like casting auditions for the movies he intended to make someday. Unlike his best film Leaving Las Vegas which was gorgeous and a great simple story shot on film.

 

Shooting on phones is no different. Any "technique" that draws attention from the story does a disservice. Unless it's supposed to be found footage. Like the horror anthology VHS which has phenomenal effects and cinematography inside a found footage aesthetic. Brilliant and with a purpose. They use Go pro's, spycams and security cameras and it's all with a point and part of the story.

 

The best shots in that trailer are when you can't tell it's a phone. So, yeah, what's the point again?

Edited January 30, 2018 by Michael LaVoie

[David Mullen ASC]

 

The best shots in that trailer are when you can't tell it's a phone. So, yeah, what's the point again?

 

 

Didn't you just make his point for him? You just said that there are shots where you can't even tell that it was shot with a phone. That seems fairly significant.

 

And possibly another of his reasons is exactly what we are doing now, to get people to talk about it.

 

Sometimes I think of the old American Cinematographer editorial from the mid-1930's that said that color was a distraction from storytelling while in the same breadth condemning a film that used color with such subtlety that you didn't think about the color, asking then what's the point of using color if you don't notice it?

[Robin R Probyn]

 

 

Didn't you just make his point for him? You just said that there are shots where you can't even tell that it was shot with a phone. That seems fairly significant.

 

And possibly another of his reasons is exactly what we are doing now, to get people to talk about it.

 

But surely its harder to work with an iPhone than a "normal" camera.. for a million reasons.. and if they are going to look the same.. then the argument is equally ..why do it in the first place.. except for generating a buzz.. but if you have a great film why would you need to do that.. ?.. I could go to work on a skateboard with all my gear balanced on my head.. but why if I have a perfectly good car to use..

[David Mullen ASC]

Artists pick tools for all sorts of reasons, sometimes logic or convenience isn't one of them. You could ask why shoot "Dunkirk" in IMAX, if it were great film it could just be shot on a camcorder.

 

There are plenty of movies that make safe, conventional choices so why are people so upset about the rare film that does something unconventional?

[Robin R Probyn]

Yes fair enough.. I wouldn't think anything about someone choosing IMAX over Super 35mm or Alexa etc.. they are all professional standard cameras.. with work flows in place.. that are made with the express use of making moving pictures .. but to shoot a feature film, in way that doesn't seem to be adding anything by being shot with a consumer electronic product.. that happens to have a pretty low quality camera..compared to professional ones for film production.. would just surely make life alot harder during the process. of making that film... of course no bearing on my life and Im not really up set by it..I think he makes very good films.. but purely as a talking point it seems well...nuts.. but yes maybe thats the trick.. it is a talking point .. but then it seems a bit of a gimmick to flog a film.. which isn't usually his thing..

 

PS Personally I dont think Dunkirk is good film.. and it relies hugely on the visual and audio aspects ..what else actually is there.. and being seen on a big screen.. if it were shot on a camcorder I doubt it would have ever seen the light of day .. :)

[David Mullen ASC]

Keep in mind that I wouldn't necessarily make the same choice that Soderbergh is making, but I've sort of reached the point in life where I recognize that other talented people can have radically different tastes and viewpoints than me, so there is less of an impulse to say "I would have done it this way" as if I know better than they do (I didn't say there was NO impulse however!)

 

Also, I haven't seen the movie yet so it is hard to comment whether it works overall, but sometimes I have a knee-jerk reaction against pre-judging some approach. If life has taught me anything, it's that I can be wrong.

 

Some movies are technical experiments -- look at Hitchcock when he tried to make "Rope" look like it was mainly uncut, or shot a whole movie in a lifeboat or in an apartment looking out into a courtyard. You could call them "gimmicks", particularly with "Rope", but I don't fault the guy for trying new things.

[Samuel Berger]

look at Hitchcock when he tried to make "Rope" look like it was mainly uncut, or shot a whole movie in a lifeboat or in an apartment looking out into a courtyard. You could call them "gimmicks", particularly with "Rope", but I don't fault the guy for trying new things.

Highly money-saving, cost-cutting things. ;-)

[Robin R Probyn]

haha yes totally agree .. esp maybe camera people.. we all think we know the best way to do everything. I think thats why DP,s rarely seem to make good directors..and get divorced alot .. :) Im all for experimentation .. but then they usually have a distinctive look as you say..there is a reason for the choice.. one cut.. one location.. all POV.. all hand held..all steadicam..all blue.. all wide angle.. .. but just to shoot "conventionally " with an iPhone.. I don't see the experiment really.. of course its do able .. so is swimming through treacle ..but most pools have water because its easier if the point is to swim.. unless Apple was going to give me alot of money for my troubles .. :)

 

Its not a criticism of his film making.. I think he has made some really great films.. just general thoughts on a sunny day off .. from an old fart..

[David Hessel]

If it is not a distraction from the story the what difference does it make? If I can sit down and be engaged, connect and enjoy what I am watching then it makes no difference what it was shot with. It is interesting the varied places where this same old discussion pops up whether its film v digital or Alexa v iPhone the same rules apply. All I care about is the artistry of film making, the creative choices made to bring the story to life. It doesn't matter what the capture device was as long as it serves the overall narrative, but hey that is just my opinion.

[David Mullen ASC]

Even "distractions" are somewhat subjective, some viewers are more sensitive to technical issues than others.

[Robin R Probyn]

If it is not a distraction from the story the what difference does it make? If I can sit down and be engaged, connect and enjoy what I am watching then it makes no difference what it was shot with. It is interesting the varied places where this same old discussion pops up whether its film v digital or Alexa v iPhone the same rules apply. All I care about is the artistry of film making, the creative choices made to bring the story to life. It doesn't matter what the capture device was as long as it serves the overall narrative, but hey that is just my opinion.

 

 

Yes of course .. I thought Tangerine was abetter film than Dunkirk.. what Im talking about and others I think.. is the actual making of the film.. the nuts and bolts.. the post workflow.. the codec.. the lens choice.. or lack there of.. the lack of TC .. how to achieve moves.. the lack of DR.. for lighting etc. IF the look is not intentionally of being shot on a phone.. even if it were to be there are better ways of doing it..from the production point of view..

 

Thats the point.. if its not a distraction .. ie it looks exactly the same as shot with a designated digital moving image camera.. then why do it ,as its obviously not a great choice for practical reasons

[Tyler Purcell]

That is a nice idea, but 5/70 is not common, nor has it ever been.

Ehh... 5/70 was pretty common for a long time. One thing to note, it's not an acquisition format, it's a theatrical format only. Most films are blown up from 35mm to 5/70 for theatrical due to the discrete soundtrack, long before optical dolby stereo and surround existed. Most of the big releases were on 70mm for quite sometime before dolby surround. I saw dozens of them as a kid and yes, my dad was a big film nut so the "70mm prestentation" was an important aspect of our saturday afternoon theater run.

 

When DTS and Dolby Digital came out (nearly the same time mind you), that made things a lot cheaper and the results were theaters running less and less 5/70 content.

 

Today 5/70 is coming back, not just as an acquisition format, but because the prints can be played for many more cycles with little degradation. Plus, 5/70 as a format has less registration issues (more stable image) and doesn't require special lenses to present widescreen images, so the image can be crisper then an anamorphic 35mm print for instance. In 2016 and 2017, there were a dozen 5/70 movies released in New York and Los Angeles + some movies like Dunkirk, released nationally.

 

The 65 and to a greater extent, IMAX film format, is huge, requires bulky cameras, and is expensive.

Most of the IMAX 15/70 prints are made from digital masters today or in the past optically blown up. Remember, IMAX laser is 4k but decent 6k scan of 35mm and a 6k laser out to IMAX film, will garnish a really good image. The problem is, most movies are still finished at 2k, so how many 15/70 releases have been really 4k or higher in recent years outside of Nolan films, which look amazing. The problem is that IMAX laser looks so good because we have nothing to compare it to. Nobody but Christopher Nolen is doing an A/B with laser and film, it just doesn't happen anymore. So we got what we got, period.

 

So as nice as 500 5/70 screens would be, there would be little financial incentive to make that happen, as there just isn't enough content to make it feasible. It's like suggesting theaters should upgrade to 8k projectors - why? there is no content.

So far, the 5/70 prints have made the studio's more money per screen, than the digital release per screen. So that's why they're making them. Also, it's a drop in the bucket to spend what, maybe a million dollars on a 150+ million dollar movie on making some prints, to maybe get more profit on the back end? Yea, the studio's are biting!

 

The reason 65/70 formats are only concentrated in metro areas is because the vast majority of people don't care about 65/70 vs 35.

The reason 70mm formats are concentrated in the metro areas is that smaller theaters can't afford the equipment. There is a lot of tuning necessary to run both 35mm and 70mm, it's not flip a switch even if your projector is both formats. So why would a small theater in the middle of nowhere pay to have that installed when reality is, they won't have a capable person to run it, especially today. Also, prints are more money, so you gotta fill the seats to really get your monies worth. So it doesn't make sense for small theaters to run anything but the cheapest of the cheap. Since over 500 screens shuttered during the film to digital conversion, a lot of those small town theaters don't even exist anymore anyway.

 

BTW... there were 3 theaters in the greater Boston metro area where I grew up, that ran 70mm releases. Today... there are 2 theaters that run 70mm, one of them closed in 2006 sadly. A few closed in NYC as well, which does hurt the list of total 5/70 theaters which is too bad. Here in Los Angeles, we have 5 theaters that run 1st run 70mm content and 3 that run older movies on 70, so any day of the week, you can usually find a 70mm film of one kind or another, which is pretty sweet. Rhode Island and NYC have the last two North East 15/70 flat-screen IMAX theaters left, both still run film on occasion. The other 15/70 theaters are domed science museum theaters.

 

I saw the Hateful 8 in 70mm in Cleveland, and honestly didn't find it that impressive. The mystic around the format and the 'road tour' was what attracted most of the people I saw it with, not the format itself. If 70 became standard, it would quickly loose its cool factor.

Well, you're really a fan of digital technology and don't shoot film on a regular basis, so the differences to you are going to be annoyance of dirt/scratches and registration, which are all detractors. For the record, due to the anamorphic lens issues that faced more then half of the Hateful Eight theaters, I was very unimpressed with the release as well. It was flat-out stupid to shoot it in 2.75:1 aspect ratio and expect the lens manufacturers could deliver working glass. Nearly all of the lenses fell apart during the run and even though they were given replacements, even those had elements come undone inside. So Hateful Eight was a disaster all the way around and it tarnished the 5/70 movement. Luckily there have been A LOT of 5/70 movies released since then, but only Dunkirk was shot on 65mm and released photochemically on film. The rest were either shot 35mm or lasered out from digital to film like Murder on the Orient, which was shot on 5/70 as well.

 

Funny enough, shooting 5/65 for a multi-million dollar production, ain't that much more and it does resolve 8k no problem at all. There is such a demand for 5/65 sync sound cameras today, there is an all-new camera being developed right now that will help ease the stress on Panavision (who have 2) and Arri (who have 2). So there are basically 4 sync sound 5/65 cameras in the world, which makes it a tiny bit tough to shoot big movies like Murder on the Orient.

 

IMAX 15/65 is a different world and honestly, the biggest problem with it isn't cost, it's just the physical size, weight and sound level of the cameras. There is also A LOT of downtime between takes compared to 5/65, which means your production runs a lot slower and you have to be very selective with how you shoot things. So where I do understand the reluctance to use that format, there are SO MANY OTHER formats that work fine. 5/65 is one of them, the other is 8/35 and the less known 6/65 which there are a few cameras made, but is a more square format that would blow up to 15/70 pretty well.

 

 

 

And 3D TV sales and 3D movie tickets were also all the rage, for a couple of years until people realized it was a fad.

 

The only reason its still around is because the studio's can charge more for the tickets and idiots will still pay them. 3D is a total scam because MOST movies are shot 2D and converted. If 3D movies were all shot in 3D, then that would be a different story and it would be more than just a novelty. Here in Hollywood, most theaters still play 3D movies in the main/big theaters and the main IMAX theater and even the cinerama dome, they rarely play 2D content anymore, which sucks.

 

 

 

I also can find no evidence that in 2015, record players were the number one selling home electronic item. Am I led to believe that record players outsold TVs? DVD players? Hell, I'd be really shocked is record players outsold Bluray players. I'd love to see the evidence of that.

 

It was a select area of home electronics, it may have been a category of "stereo" equipment, I can't remember.

[Max Field]

I just watched the trailer and there was some ugly highlight clipping in wider shots. The only shots that retained a professional feeling to me were close-ups.

 

With that being said, true filmmakers will make films even for the sake of technological experimentation. Trying to innovate any way they can.

 

However him talking up the iPhone in that fashion makes it sounds like there's an iCheck in his pocket.

[Robin R Probyn]

"It was a select area of home electronics, it may have been a category of "stereo" equipment, I can't remember. "

 

​So actually to your own knowledge record players were not the highest selling home electronic item of 2015.. maybe it was the category of "record players" for that year :) .. and maybe it was tiny.. compared to ever other home electrical item sold in 2015.. cant just keep making these wild claims man.. you do the same about cameras and god know what else ..

[Michael LaVoie]

 

 

Didn't you just make his point for him? You just said that there are shots where you can't even tell that it was shot with a phone. That seems fairly significant.

 

And possibly another of his reasons is exactly what we are doing now, to get people to talk about it.

 

Sometimes I think of the old American Cinematographer editorial from the mid-1930's that said that color was a distraction from storytelling while in the same breadth condemning a film that used color with such subtlety that you didn't think about the color, asking then what's the point of using color if you don't notice it?

The number of shots where it looks like a phone outnumber those shots where it doesn't. My bad. I wasn't clear about my point. But that's what my example was about. Hotel and Timecode have no shots that look like movies. Both of those films were also experiments and it's impossible to enjoy the story because of that. For me anyway. Box office and reviews on those were definitely not great. So I'm not alone.

 

I think the issue is the unnaturally wide angle. That was the case in nearly all three films. It's not like it resembles a Kubrick film either. I don't know how you'd fix that? Some kind of post correction? To make it at least closer to a Terry Gilliam, Eyes Wide Shut kind of look? Depending on the story it may work or not.