Why transfer DV video to film? (24p)
doug lauber
the desire to reach that audience, but isn't the resulting visual quality,
really really bad ? I mean, DV resolution doesn't come close to
35mm film. To approximate 35mm film resolution, you'd
probably need about 5 megapixels or more, per frame of video.
Is that right?
I feel that my DV productions look okay on a TV, but I cringe
at the thought of what it might look like, after a transfer to
film, and its subsequent projection onto the silver screen.
What are your thoughts on the subject? I pose this question
with the upcoming introduction of the Panasonic 24p in mind. -doug
David Mullen
>I understand the need for the movie theatre venue, and
>the desire to reach that audience, but isn't the resulting visual quality,
>really really bad ?
How many DV-to-35mm films have you seen in the theater? Surely you've seen
enough to form your own opinion?
By the way, check out "24 Hour Party People" right now, mostly shot on PAL
DV with some Super-8 mixed in (looks like Super-8 to me.) There's also
"Tadpole" out in the theaters right now, another DV production. And "Fast
Runner". And "Full Frontal."
Good DV-to-35mm compares favorably to a 16mm blow-up in overall perception
of quality, with more of a video look obviously (generally less grainy than
a 16mm blow-up, but also less color information and a lot of video
artifacts). Of course, some of these DV productions aren't particularly
exceptional in terms of technical execution (and some of that roughness is
intentional).
No one's going to be fooled into thinking that they are watching something
shot in 35mm.
David Mullen
David McCall
"David Mullen" <dav...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:rZO79.10911$LO1.8...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
>
> No one's going to be fooled into thinking that they are watching something
> shot in 35mm.
>
the most of the audience won't even care. Chances are, that
most DV productions don't have the best crews and equipment
that money can buy. Likely, even the catering sucked.
David
doug lauber
When you say audiences won't care about the cruddy visual
quality, is that wishful thinking, or are you basing it on a
survey, or...?
Personally, I hate movies that have an element that is
sub-par, like if the sound stinks, or scenes are poorly lit,
or the grain is so obvious that it reminds me that I'm
watching a movie rather than experiencing something real.
I don't understand artists who want to lower their standards.
Isn't art about high standards, making something the best it
can be? Shouldn't all of the elements be top notch?
A good story with a good visual presentation will be much
more powerful than a bad story with a good visual, or
a good story with a bad visual aspect. A movie is only as
good as its worst element. -doug
David McCall
"doug lauber" <dugs...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:3D5FD1CA...@earthlink.net...
I said that if the execution was good. That would include
the lighting, costumes, audio, etc., etc.. DV, as a medium,
has enough quality to tell a story. I didn't say that you could
go out with your palmcorder handheld, with available light, or
a light mounted to the top of the camera, and make a feature
film. You still have to do everything right to get an acceptable
end result.
I went on to say that most DV productions probably lack a
crew with adequate expertise and equipment to get the most
out of the medium. Chances are, if there was budget for a
top rate crew and trucks full of equipment, you wouldn't be
shooting DV. I personally think anything under 65mm is shit ;-)
Just kidding.
I just went to see a "Bye Bye Birdie" in a summer stock theater.
It was literally a Barn (but it has been used as a theater for 31
years, so it doesn't smell like cows anymore :-). They were
working with very limited resources, but they put on a nice show.
I didn't hear anybody complaining about the simple sets or the
uninspired lighting. It worked. They had fun, we had fun,
everybody went home happy.
DV is more than adequate for many people's needs.
Far more people than have any business shooting
16mm, much less 65mm. No, it doesn't look like 35, but
it can look OK, if you use it right.
David
David Mullen
>Isn't art about high standards, making something the best it
>can be? Shouldn't all of the elements be top notch?
Actually, no -- that's not the point of art.
The point is to use craft and technology to express a creative idea and to
tell a story. That does not mean that the highest technical quality is the
best method of expressing that idea. Take a look at "24 Hour Party People",
a tale about the early days of the punk rock movement in England -- it's
shot in a horribly rough manner using DV and Super-8 or 16mm (looks grainy
enough to be Super-8) but it perfectly suits its subject matter. If it had
the gloss and sharpness of "2001" or "Lawrence of Arabia" it would have been
at odds with its punk sensibilities. The look of "The Celebration", shot
with a single-chip DV camcorder, looks like a home video camera happened to
record this horrible weekend event at this house -- again, it works as an
approach; it has a reason for the way it looks and the way it was shot.
On the other hand, a comedy like "Tadpole" has no real reason to be shot
badly on DV other than time & money pressures, but even that isn't much
excuse.
But, no, I don't believe having the highest technical standards is a
requirement for being an artist. Executing an artistic concept in the most
appropriate manner is, and what's appropriate for the subject or emotion
effect may not be the most technically polished. Should "Saving Private
Ryan" been shot in a very sharp & fine-grained manner, with very smooth
camera moves?
David Mullen
Gary Pollard
> > True enough, but, if the execution and story are good, then
> > the most of the audience won't even care. Chances are, that
> > most DV productions don't have the best crews and equipment
> > that money can buy. Likely, even the catering sucked.
> >
> > David
>
> When you say audiences won't care about the cruddy visual
> quality, is that wishful thinking, or are you basing it on a
> survey, or...?
Based on "ordinary joes" I talk to, rather than those of us connected with
the industry or too enamoured of production value over content, most people
don't give a crap. Many are even surprised when I point out a given movie or
sequence is shot on DV.
> Personally, I hate movies that have an element that is
> sub-par, like if the sound stinks, or scenes are poorly lit,
> or the grain is so obvious that it reminds me that I'm
> watching a movie rather than experiencing something real.
I'd say most of the gloss of Hollywood is far from "real". There will always
be some of us for hwom that gloss is the cardinal reminder that this is not
"real"
Gary
doug lauber
Okay, okay. I'll eat a little crow.
I just saw 'Tadpole' and I'd call it a 'good' movie.
The DV looked acceptable when the camera was on a
foreground object, like actors. Big landscapes looked pretty bad, though,
especially busy lines, like trees. The movie looked muddy.
The movie IS good because the other elements are
excellent, from the script to the cast's performances.
The cinematography was also good. -doug
doug lauber
I understand. Some of my favorite art photos have tons
of grain. The choppiness of Private Ryan was great.
And it I find it intriguing that Tadpole was bought for
5 million. Sign me up!
I guess that I'm just saying that DV is very limiting for
ME, in terms of the abstractions and story ideas that I'd
like to communicate. I'll use DV, but I hope to someday
use 35mm as a medium. It can be manipulated to look
grainy and dirty, but DV can't be made to look sharp and clean.
With DV, I'm interested in experimenting with various filters.
BTW, although I may criticize DV to film transfer, I do still
love the DV medium, and editing with a computer, and
working with actors, etc. -doug
doug lauber
I like realism. Melodrama. I don't like the glossy films.
In my opinion, 35mm can be used to create the illusion of
realism, more so than DV. -doug
Gary Pollard
> > > Personally, I hate movies that have an element that is
> > > sub-par, like if the sound stinks, or scenes are poorly lit,
> > > or the grain is so obvious that it reminds me that I'm
> > > watching a movie rather than experiencing something real.
> >
> > I'd say most of the gloss of Hollywood is far from "real". There will
always
> > be some of us for hwom that gloss is the cardinal reminder that this is
not
> > "real"
> I like realism. Melodrama. I don't like the glossy films.
> In my opinion, 35mm can be used to create the illusion of
> realism, more so than DV.
For me, standard Hollywood lighting is already taking things far from
"realism". When it takes fifty to a hundred lights to light two people
walking down a corridor, something is falsified. I don't have anything
against it in a glossy escapist movie, but that last thing I'd call it is
"realistic".
The issue with 35 mm versus DV for me is not solely a technical one. Once
you get into a certain scale of production with 35mm, you start to bring in
an art director who glosses up reality, a make-up person who glosses up
reality, a lighting man who glosses it up still more. The illusion of
realism with uniformly stunning lighting, uniformly peach smooth skins, and
oh-so-tasteful art direction to me just ain't no realism at all. This isn't,
by the way, any justification for technical sloppiness, but using DV in
itself is no technical sloppiness.
I'll take movies as they come and judge each on its own merits. I'm
certainly not about to dismiss 16mm, DV, or even 8mm as a tool for
film-makers to use and make great and powerful film. I'm more interested in
the chocolates than the chocolate box. Hollywood overwhelmingly makes shit,
but well packaged shit. And it worries me when audiences confuse the
packaging with the content. Interestingly though, I still think industry
people often do this more than audiences. No one I knew outside of the
industry gave a damn that "Dancing in the Dark" was shot on DV. They just
enjoyed it.
Gary
David Mullen
>"realism". When it takes fifty to a hundred lights to light two people
>walking down a corridor, something is falsified.
It doesn't take "fifty to a hundred lights" to light two people walking down
a corridor in 35mm.
What is "standard Hollywood lighting" anyway? "Road to Perdition" and
"Austin Powers in Goldmember" are both Hollywood films -- are they lit that
similarly? There are shots in mainstream Hollywood films that are lit with
incredibly low levels of light. Even back in the early 1980's, the DP of
"48 Hours" mentioned shooting one night scene with only a single 40 watt
lightbulb. We've seen Hollywood movies where low-light scenes are lit with
just candles or just flashlights, where the average light level is under ten
footcandles.
The reason it can be argued that 35mm might be more "immersive" than DV,
pull you into the picture more, is that it has enough resolution, enough
clarity, for the image to seem more like a window on "reality". It has
enough detail and texture that you can get a sense of the location, the
leaves in the jungle, the sweat on the faces, the grain in the wood -- it's
tactile. A low-resolution format like DV is much more two-dimensional -- it
has a flatness to the image. You are much more aware you are watching a
two-dimension image than a window onto reality, so it has more difficultly
creating an immersive, "you are there" feeling. Imagine if "Apocalypse Now"
or "The Thin Red Line" had been shot in DV instead of 35mm anamorphic --
half of the atmosphere of the location would have been lost.
Most Hollywood films are lit in a fairly low-key naturalistic style using
softer lights suggesting natural sources like windows and lamps. When they
are "overlit" it's generally in the lighting of the lead actors, particular
female leads, in order to glamorize them. While I think that's a boring
approach, there is some rationale behind it (the audience wants them to look
good, if they look bad it might be distracting for the viewer, the story
requires that they be stunningly beautiful, etc.)
Generally the Hollywood approach is not strict documentary realism (i.e. no
artificial light) but even that technique is just as artificial or
unrealistic as the more "lit" mainstream approach. Because using a
no-lighting documentary approach only mimics or reproduces the way a camera
and film stock (or a CCD) respond to light -- not the way the human eye
does. Windows do not burn out to white in a daytime room to our eyes but
when it happens with a no-light documentary approach, we call that being
more realistic. We do not see lens flares with our eyes. We do not see
clipping. We do not see grain or noise. What it really is doing is
mimicing an artifact of documentary photography, which we associate with
realism because we know it not to be artificially enhanced to look better.
It's more of a visual clue that this is "really happening".
When a DV movie goes out into a dark, unlit alleyway at night and it's
incredibly noisy from the boost in gain, that might seem "realistic" because
the noise is a visual clue that the scene is probably being shot in
available light, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the
way the alley would look to our eyes, and it's very likely that the noise
will be attention-getting and therefore point out the fact that the scene is
being filmed by a device. Yet it might happen that if the alley had been
LIT carefully with an eye to recreating or suggesting practical sources at
night, then the noise could have been kept down and the audience could
concentrate on the scene and not the technique.
The truth is that a well-lit movie (not an overlit movie) not only creates
the proper mood for the story but it can actually be LESS distracting that a
no-light documentary approach, which can create unnatural contrasts and
technical mistakes that give the illusion or "realism" but have little to do
with how our eyes see, plus these artifacts can call attention to themselves
, whereas if some careful and naturalistic lighting had been employed, the
audience might be watching the actors and the story and not the artifacts
that come from documentary photography.
In other words, "documentary realism" in lighting is just another form of
style, of artifice, a filmmaker might employ to tell a story. Anyway, I'm
not even sure what movies have to do with reality anyway; certainly I don't
feel that they become more real when they are shot without lighting -- they
just resemble unlit documentaries but with actors performing fictional
situations. The key is to stop worry about what's realistic (an idea which
changes with each generation) and worry more about what's APPROPRIATE, what
conveys the mood of the script, what best directs the eyes of the viewer to
what's important, what best supports what the actors are doing. And that
doesn't always mean using a no-lighting documentary style.
David Mullen
David Mullen
>realism with uniformly stunning lighting, uniformly peach smooth skins, and
>oh-so-tasteful art direction to me just ain't no realism at all.
Do you think your average Hollywood romantic comedy would be better with
ugly lighting, blotchy skintones, and tacky art direction? In general, when
this sort of gloss is applied, it's applied to glossy script material. You
can't really blame the cinematographer, make-up person, and art director for
using the script as a guide to best approach the story. Blame the scripts
that get made, not the people who attempt to bring life to them in the
manner dictated by the nature of the material. If you really think "Scooby
Doo" is going to be a better movie by being shot in DV with available light,
then you're barking up the wrong tree.
As a cinematographer myself, I apply what approach best tells the story. If
it means making the lead actress look like something in a Marlene Deitrich
movie, I do that. If it means making it look like I dug up some fifty-year
old film emulsion, I do that. If it means doing nothing but use existing
practical illumination, I do that. I'm not going to lose sleep about
whether you think what I'm doing is "realistic" or not; I'm just trying to
tell a story visually in the manner that the script seems to indicate. If
that means a lot of gloss, then I pull out every trick in the bag.
Anyway, why the implication that the best movies are the most realistic? No
room in your heart for the artifice of a "Casablanca" or a "Singin in the
Rain"? "The Red Shoes"? "Sunrise"? Do you like only documentary
photography and photo-realist painting? What can't some good movies be the
equivalent of a VanGogh painting instead of a Robert Capa photo?
David Mullen
Gary Pollard
> >For me, standard Hollywood lighting is already taking things far from
> >"realism". When it takes fifty to a hundred lights to light two people
> >walking down a corridor, something is falsified.
>
> It doesn't take "fifty to a hundred lights" to light two people walking
down
> a corridor in 35mm.
You obviously haven't seen some of the lighting grids and plans I have,
including those sometimes printed in "American Cinematographer". The point
is that many in the industry DO go way into overkill when lighting. In this,
the British cinematographers' style of lighting often seems very different
from that of many in Hollywood. Sydney Pollack, for one, commented on this
during the making of "Out of Africa" (and specifically in an article in
"American Cinematographer"). He was talking about David Watkin, who is a
master of conservative lighting, and he said very specifically that Watkins
used one light where the Hollywood cinematogrpahers he was used to working
with used dozens. Look at the recent "American Cinematographer" with
lighting plans for "The West Wing".
Do you HAVE to use so much lighting? No, you don't. You can even shoot 35mm
with natural light. But there's a tradition that uses way too many lights to
do pretty simple jobs, even when - as Pollack said about Watkins' work -
considerably fewer lights can be just as beautiful. And, personally I don't
doubt that sometimes other, non-creative, factors, such as justifying the
number of people on the payroll, play a part in this.
> The reason it can be argued that 35mm might be more "immersive" than DV,
> pull you into the picture more, is that it has enough resolution, enough
> clarity, for the image to seem more like a window on "reality". It has
> enough detail and texture that you can get a sense of the location, the
> leaves in the jungle, the sweat on the faces, the grain in the wood --
it's
> tactile. A low-resolution format like DV is much more two-dimensional --
it
> has a flatness to the image. You are much more aware you are watching a
> two-dimension image than a window onto reality, so it has more difficultly
> creating an immersive, "you are there" feeling
That's a fine opinion David, but it IS an opinion. It could equally be
argued that every time you are thinking "Wow, what a stunning Super 70mm"
image, you are far from immersed in the experience. One tends to the grungy;
the other easily tends to chocolate box. I wouldn't knock "Lawrence of
Arabia" but I'd certainly argue you are too often wowed by the images for it
to be an "immersive" experience where you forget this is a film.
> Imagine if "Apocalypse Now"
> or "The Thin Red Line" had been shot in DV instead of 35mm anamorphic --
> half of the atmosphere of the location would have been lost.
I don't argue with that. What I AM arguing is that it's a case of horses for
courses and that it's rather silly to disparage the ability of DV to handle
certain courses exceptionally well. There are other projects for which the
"sub-standard" formats could work extremely well.
And, as you raise the question of "Apocalypse Now" and "The Thin Red Line"
I'd say that I have no doubt equally powerful and devastating pieces of work
about men in war COULD be made on DV. I really have no doubt a good "movie"
even about the "Titanic" could be made on DV. I think that you'd achieve it
by focussing on personality and story instead of spectacle, and that it
would not be the slightest bit less powerful for it. Of course they wouldn't
BE "Apocalypse Now" or "The Thin Red Line", but I'd argue that counter to
your argument up above, they might well draw people in even more effectively
than those did. (I love Terrence Malick, but I didn't think the "spot the
guest movie star" aspect of "The Thin Red Line" actually helped to draw
anyone in. And that brings me back to one of my original points, that
sometimes the COST of having those glossy images fucks up other things
because there's a whole bunch of other baggage that comes with it.)
> Most Hollywood films are lit in a fairly low-key naturalistic style using
> softer lights suggesting natural sources like windows and lamps. When they
> are "overlit" it's generally in the lighting of the lead actors,
particular
> female leads, in order to glamorize them. While I think that's a boring
> approach, there is some rationale behind it (the audience wants them to
look
> good, if they look bad it might be distracting for the viewer, the story
> requires that they be stunningly beautiful, etc.)
Didn't you just ask me what standard Hollywood lighting was? You've just
answered your own question. And I'd agree with your definition, with certain
provisos. I don't really agree that that naturalistic style holds as much
sway as you appear to think. There's still a constant division between those
cinematographers who think most light should be justified by being part of a
believable light source, and those who say this is completely unecessary.
The Coen brothers, particularly in movies like "Blood Simple" are among
those who most prominently deny that it's even necessary to have "justified"
naturalistic lighting in this way. There are many others. Often they're
just opportunists who say, "We can't justify this light source anyway, but
it looks cool". Robby Muller's use of available light frequently looks no
less beautiful than the scenes of other cinematographers that have taken
half a day to light. In fact, I'd argue that "Paris, Texas" is a stunningly
beautiful film despite/because of minimal lighting.
> Generally the Hollywood approach is not strict documentary realism (i.e.
no
> artificial light) but even that technique is just as artificial or
> unrealistic as the more "lit" mainstream approach. Because using a
> no-lighting documentary approach only mimics or reproduces the way a
camera
> and film stock (or a CCD) respond to light -- not the way the human eye
> does. Windows do not burn out to white in a daytime room to our eyes but
> when it happens with a no-light documentary approach, we call that being
> more realistic. We do not see lens flares with our eyes. We do not see
> clipping. We do not see grain or noise. What it really is doing is
> mimicing an artifact of documentary photography, which we associate with
> realism because we know it not to be artificially enhanced to look better.
> It's more of a visual clue that this is "really happening".
Again, nothing that I've said contradicts this. And in your comment about
people thinking burn out is somehow more realistic you are simply putting
words into my mouth. You're arguing (and rather condescendingly in invoking
"Film and video characteristics 101") with a position no-one has taken.
My main argument is with people confusing production value for content, not
only in terms of such things as lighting, but even in terms of whether it's
shot on 70mm,
> When a DV movie goes out into a dark, unlit alleyway at night and it's
> incredibly noisy from the boost in gain, that might seem "realistic"
because
> the noise is a visual clue that the scene is probably being shot in
> available light, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the
> way the alley would look to our eyes, and it's very likely that the noise
> will be attention-getting and therefore point out the fact that the scene
is
> being filmed by a device. Yet it might happen that if the alley had been
> LIT carefully with an eye to recreating or suggesting practical sources at
> night, then the noise could have been kept down and the audience could
> concentrate on the scene and not the technique.
You apparently missed the point in my original post where I said: "This
isn't, by the way, any justification for technical sloppiness, but using DV
in itself is no technical sloppiness."
I am a firm believer in lighting to approximate what the eye sees, and
particularly by augmenting natural sources in the location or set. But there
are those of us to whom the lighting of, say "The X-Files", or "E.T" (I'm
sick of Zsigmond's coloured lights through steam) is no less alienating than
the underexposed DV of which you write. And there is NO reason why DV has to
be under-exposed and grainy, as I would hope you'd agree.
> The truth is that a well-lit movie (not an overlit movie) not only creates
> the proper mood for the story but it can actually be LESS distracting that
a
> no-light documentary approach, which can create unnatural contrasts and
> technical mistakes that give the illusion or "realism" but have little to
do
> with how our eyes see
All film IS illusion. If the low light approach and those artifacts give the
illusion of realism that's no different from the highly lit movie giving us
the illusions it promotes. "Attack of ther Clones" is illusion from
beginning to end. When, in a fight in some movies, blood splashes on the
camera lens, this too is an illusion that does not approximate the human
eye, but it can be a powerful device. But I simply don't agree with you that
we are not just as aware that watching a 35mm movie is a mediated experience
as watching a DV production.
> plus these artifacts can call attention to themselves
> , whereas if some careful and naturalistic lighting had been employed, the
> audience might be watching the actors and the story and not the artifacts
> that come from documentary photography.
Maybe I see better DV films than you do. But in my experience the people
watching the artifacts rather than the actors and story, in say "The
Anniversary Party" or "Dancer in the Dark" tended to be those of us in, or
connected to, the industry. Other people I know watched the stories and the
actors.
> And that
> doesn't always mean using a no-lighting documentary style.
Read my post again and you'll find it hard to find anywhere where I said it
did. In a nutshell my position is that we have come to accept certain
artifacts of 35mm Hollywood style production as natural. That doesn't mean
they are. Compare a "naturalistic" movie from the seventies and one from
today if you doubt it. Some are blind to those artifacts and only too aware
of the artifacts of DV (or even Hi Def in "Star Wars"). Some of us see the
artifacts and artificiality in both. My memories of 'The Idiots" really are
not of the DV, but of the performances - which I'd argue were achievable
largely BECAUSE of the format used to shoot it. And in the end, that's the
best argument for DV converted to film. No one's going to shoot "Apocalypse
Now" on it. But no one's going to shoot "The Idiots" on 70mm either,
particularly with all the trimmings of the standard Hollywood production.
Horses for courses, it's as simple as that. And it works as long as people
can tell the difference between production value and story content. The ones
who can't will always like "Batman and Robin" over 'The Idiots" or "The
Celebration" and they are welcome to. There's more than one aesthetic at
work.
Gary
Gary Pollard
> I'll use DV, but I hope to someday
> use 35mm as a medium. It can be manipulated to look
> grainy and dirty, but DV can't be made to look sharp and clean.
> With DV, I'm interested in experimenting with various filters.
> BTW, although I may criticize DV to film transfer, I do still
> love the DV medium, and editing with a computer, and
> working with actors, etc. -doug
If you're interested in filters and DV you might want to take a look - if
you haven't already - at Hal Hartley's "Book of Life". I thought he
over-filtered it, with the kind of attitude: "This is DV so I'll make it
look like crap as a stylistic device" but it shows some of the strength and
weaknesses of this approach.
Gary
Unknown
Texas Instruments/NEC/DLP and Kodak/JVC are experiencing right now
with digital cinemaprojectors. They are using micromirror IC's for
creating an image with at least 4096x2048 pixels, enough for a better
resolution on the theater screen then 35 mm. There ar already numerous
DLP teaters around the world. Check
http://www.dlp.com/dlp_cinema/dlp_cinema_theater_search.asp
The days of the celluloid are counting. Who needs transforming to 35mm
or a Panasonic 24p camera?
MikeA
David Mullen
>including those sometimes printed in "American Cinematographer".
You're smart enough to realize WHY the lighting plan for "West Wing" is so
complicated -- they have large sets with a lot of actor movement through
them, and rather than go for some sort of simple, flatter overhead softlight
approach, ala fluorescents, they decided to go for that "hot pools of light"
look, similar to what would happen in track lighting with MR16 bulbs --
which inherently means lots of lights to cover a lot of area. Considering
this is a set instead of a real location, you'd have to ask yourself if the
real lighting plan for a large office building with a lot of stylish
architectural lighting is similarly complicated in real life if it was
designed for lots of pools of light instead of a big bank of fluorescents.
This is the difference between shooting on a set instead of a location where
you can add a few lights and shoot -- on a set, everything has to be
provided. Also, the look they are going for is fairly low-key and moody,
which implies again lots of smaller sources instead of a few big ones.
David Watkin is one of my favorite DP's and I understand full well about his
"light the room, not the actors" style that comes out of a European attitude
that I like. However, he could use a lot of lights too -- if there were a
lot of windows in a room. His favorite light was the carbon arc for daytime
scenes. And I wouldn't say that his photographic approach isn't so opposite
to many Hollywood cinematographers, which was low-key naturalism using
mainly soft light. The main difference between him and many Hollywood
cinematographers was the DEGREE to which he kept to a single-source look,
not changing it for close-ups or for new angles (so if the camera came to an
angle where the source was flat as a pancake, he'd let the lighting be
flat) -- and his dislike of "showing off" with the lighting (the most
extreme example would be a music video style) -- which is basically a
"mature" attitude that tends to come over older DP's with nothing to prove
anymore. However, I wouldn't hire Watkin if I wanted a "fim noir" style
movie -- his approach works for some projects but not others. I can't say
that his naturalistic tendencies were all that helpful in full-blown fantasy
films like "Return to Oz."
I also think his soft light & low-contrast film stock approach got too soft,
too flat, in his last few films like "Gloria" (which I saw only because he
shot it) and "Tea with Mussolini" -- it starts to go back from looking
natural into looking lit because it is more low in contrast than would
happen in real life.
David Mullen
David Mullen
for
>courses and that it's rather silly to disparage the ability of DV to handle
>certain courses exceptionally well. There are other projects for which the
>"sub-standard" formats could work extremely well.
I've made the same argument in the past of DV, HD, Super-16, etc. I was
only arguing the notion that DV somehow had more "realism" than 35mm -- it
depends on how you define realism.
I was only pointing out ONE argument, the notion that a more clear,
detailed, and sharp image is more like a three-dimensional window on reality
that allows the viewer to feel they are IN that world, not watching that
world from a distance. Lower resolution images are inherently more
two-dimensional, you are more aware of the surface of the screen. Saying
this does not imply I am anti-DV -- I'm just pointing a general observation.
And I'm not suggesting that a low-resolution format cannot create an
emotionally involving experience. It's just that every format does some
things better than others, and a high-resolution format can capture more
details and textures in a location in wider framing and put that up on a
very large screen. For some stories like "Lawrence of Arabia" that fact can
be used by the storyteller for dramatic effect. For someone making a film
of the script to "Clerks", it would matter less to use a high-resolution
format to capture the heart of that screenplay.
I'll repeat my answer just a few posts back in this thread. You tell me if
this is the argument of someone who thinks everything should be shot in 35mm
in a technically slick style:
>I don't understand artists who want to lower their standards.
>Isn't art about high standards, making something the best it
>can be? Shouldn't all of the elements be top notch?
Actually, no -- that's not the point of art.
The point is to use craft and technology to express a creative idea and to
tell a story. That does not mean that the highest technical quality is the
best method of expressing that idea. Take a look at "24 Hour Party People",
a tale about the early days of the punk rock movement in England -- it's
shot in a horribly rough manner using DV and Super-8 or 16mm (looks grainy
enough to be Super-8) but it perfectly suits its subject matter. If it had
the gloss and sharpness of "2001" or "Lawrence of Arabia" it would have been
at odds with its punk sensibilities. The look of "The Celebration", shot
with a single-chip DV camcorder, looks like a home video camera happened to
record this horrible weekend event at this house -- again, it works as an
approach; it has a reason for the way it looks and the way it was shot.
But, no, I don't believe having the highest technical standards is a
David Mullen
>You're smart enough to realize WHY the lighting plan for "West Wing" is so
>complicated -- they have large sets with a lot of actor movement through
>them
Oh, I would also add that often film sets are wired for more lights than are
actually turned on for every set-up.
David Mullen
doug lauber
Gary,
We're mainly on the same page here. There are many new
Hollywood features that exaggerate the 'dazzle' and incorporate
one special effect after another. The weakest link is often
character development and in the worst cases, a weak story.
Where I disagree, is in the subjective versus objective view.
I don't have a problem with 'artificial' lighting, like saturated
blue light when the bedroom light is turned off.
It's about illusions, unless you're doing a documentary.
for me, it's also about heightened emotions, a subjective view,
and abstract elements. For each memeber of the audience,
the movie should be a personal subjective experience, rather
than an outside objective view. It should feel 'real' in order
to involve the viewer. -doug
doug lauber
were lighted in a natural way, in my opinion.
Off the top of my head, Road to Perdition and
The Verdict. There was a lot of natural lighting in
Full Frontal, yet the massive grain yelled out,
'This is a movie creation.' The portion of the
movie that represented the sub-movie, looked
like a more 'real' 35mm. -doug
doug lauber
DV is technically sloppy, if you want to shoot a clean image
of relatively distant skyscrapers that have sharp gridlike patterns. -doug
doug lauber
>
> I've made the same argument in the past of DV, HD, Super-16, etc. I was
> only arguing the notion that DV somehow had more "realism" than 35mm -- it
> depends on how you define realism.
>
> I was only pointing out ONE argument, the notion that a more clear,
> detailed, and sharp image is more like a three-dimensional window on reality
> that allows the viewer to feel they are IN that world, not watching that
> world from a distance. Lower resolution images are inherently more
> two-dimensional, you are more aware of the surface of the screen. Saying
> this does not imply I am anti-DV -- I'm just pointing a general observation.
SNIP
This section of David's post, says it all for me. It's my point. -doug
doug lauber
You're right. The digital revolution is still marching forward.
But, remember the topic is about transfering DV (720x480) to film.
That's the topic because many of us here can afford, and use, the
miniDV format. Now, tell me when 4096x2048 per frame, will
be affordable. (!!!) -doug
Seattle Eric
> True enough, but, if the execution and story are good, then
> the most of the audience won't even care. Chances are, that
> most DV productions don't have the best crews and equipment
> that money can buy. Likely, even the catering sucked.
>
> David
LOL! Good one!
--
***************************************************
** Look! There's ARAT in the middle of "separate"!
****************************************************
Gary Pollard
> You're smart enough to realize WHY the lighting plan for "West Wing" is so
> complicated -- they have large sets with a lot of actor movement through
> them, and rather than go for some sort of simple, flatter overhead
softlight
> approach, ala fluorescents, they decided to go for that "hot pools of
light"
> look, similar to what would happen in track lighting with MR16 bulbs --
> which inherently means lots of lights to cover a lot of area.
Sure, but it's not just sets. I've seen another situation where two people
were walking down a corridor with paintings on the walls, sculptures on
plinths, and doors along both sides that were open. Not only was every work
of art in the hall individually lit, sometimes with more than one light, but
every room also required lighting, again, more than one in some cases. There
was also general light of the corridor. AND there was also specific three
point lighting for the two actors at various points of the corridor in order
to flatter them, particularly when they stopped at a door and were about to
turn into a room. In that kind of situation it is easy to use at least fifty
lights. I'd still prefer to shoot low light with fast film. I'd even prefer
the look of lower light with fast film (or DV).
> David Watkin is one of my favorite DP's and I understand full well about
his
> "light the room, not the actors" style that comes out of a European
attitude
> that I like. However, he could use a lot of lights too -- if there were a
> lot of windows in a room. His favorite light was the carbon arc for
daytime
> scenes.
In the TV dramas I've directed we tend to use an HMI, either bounced off the
ceiling or off a reflector for general purpose daylight. Usually we'd use
one in a room, and one outside the window. Because that can get a bit
boring, I often sets cenes at night with lots of practicals in the set. It's
nice to be able to control the pools of light in a room.
> I also think his soft light & low-contrast film stock approach got too
soft,
> too flat, in his last few films like "Gloria" (which I saw only because he
> shot it) and "Tea with Mussolini" -- it starts to go back from looking
> natural into looking lit because it is more low in contrast than would
> happen in real life.
Personally, that doesn't worry me so much. These days I am very much
enamoured of Japanese movie lighting, which is even softer. They tend not to
use hard light at all, and use a lot of silks and filters. Unless it's film
noir, I like soft lighting a lot.
Gary
Gary Pollard
> I've made the same argument in the past of DV, HD, Super-16, etc. I was
> only arguing the notion that DV somehow had more "realism" than 35mm -- it
> depends on how you define realism.
I'd argue that it has neither more nor less, AS A FORMAT. The difference is
in how "manufactured" you make the reality you are filming. I'm not
necessarily advocating a "no-lights" style, although it can work fine. I
personally like a kind of cheating "Dogme" approach. Just take what's there,
and augment it to the minimum.
> I was only pointing out ONE argument, the notion that a more clear,
> detailed, and sharp image is more like a three-dimensional window on
reality
> that allows the viewer to feel they are IN that world, not watching that
> world from a distance. Lower resolution images are inherently more
> two-dimensional, you are more aware of the surface of the screen.
Well, as I said before, to me it doesn't work like that. I find that general
audiences get immersed in the film to the extent the film is involving. It
tends to be people like us who even notice what format it's shot on. There
are so many things to stop us feeling we're in that world, from the over
artificial lighting I was complaining about, to the editing of any two
shots, to camera movement. I've always found the zoom in-track out that
Spielberg pinched from Hitchcock and a lot of others copied a particularly
alienating device - in fact I find any zoom alienating. As with the
difference between video and film, sometimes it's a matter of what you can
accept. "Lawrence of Arabia" is a beautiful film, but I still maintain you
find yourself standing back from those stunning images as surely as you do
from any DV production. As you do even with "Citizen Kane".
> I'll repeat my answer just a few posts back in this thread. You tell me
if
> this is the argument of someone who thinks everything should be shot in
35mm
> in a technically slick style:
I remember that post and very much agree with it, which is why I was a
little surprised you took such issue with my general point.
Gary
Gary Pollard
> Oh yeah, by the way, there are Hollywood movies that
> were lighted in a natural way, in my opinion.
Yes there are, and I pointed to Watkin as one example of a cameraman who
specialises in this.
Gary
Gary Pollard
> But Gary,
> DV is technically sloppy, if you want to shoot a clean image
> of relatively distant skyscrapers that have sharp gridlike
Personally, I find that meaningless. EVERY format has its strengths and
weaknesses. Some of the most beautiful and stunning movies are shot in black
and white. Few would argue that black and white is technically sloppy. DV
tends to be good when you are concentrating on people, the humans at the
centre of the story. That's the kind of movie I like. For that kind of movie
70mm has more aesthetic disadvantages.
Gary
David Mullen
>Well, as I said before, to me it doesn't work like that. I find that
general
>audiences get immersed in the film to the extent the film is involving.
I think we're arguing only because I define "immersive" as a physical
experience while you are defining it as an emotional experience.
With immersion as a physical phemenon, the larger and sharper the image is,
the more it feels that "you are there" -- hence why if you were going to try
to recreate the physical sensations of flight, you would use something like
IMAX or in the past, Cinerama. 35mm is not as immersive as those formats,
but it is more so than a low resolution format like 16mm or DV. Again, I'm
talking about a physical reaction, not an emotional reaction.
What you are calling "immersive" I would call "emotionally involving", which
is a different phenomenon and NOT connected to the format. What I'm talking
about is the sense of immersion, that you no longer feel you are sitting in
the theater but are standing in another location that envelopes you on a
huge screen. 35mm can barely do that (it helps to shoot in anamorphic on
fine-grained film stocks and use wide-angle lenses) but DV, 16mm, etc. can
barely create that physical, sometimes stomach-dropping effect. And some
stories can use that immersive quality of a large, sharp image for effect.
Since DV lacks the ability to envelope the viewer with tiny details on a
huge screen, a director has to employ other techniques to direct the eye and
engage the viewer. The same is true when shooting 16mm for blow-up to 35mm.
The sharper and more detailed the image is on the big screen, the more that
subtle details can stand out to your eye, while in a lower resolution image,
you have to use light & composition more forcefully to direct the eye. It's
the same reason why lighting for b&w photography tends to be more contrasty
and directional, because without color information to create separation of
objects, you have to use light & contrast to sculpt the image and lead the
eye to what's important.
While any story could be told on any format, some formats do some things
better than others. If a director said to me (as the DP) that he wanted to
shoot in the jungle and see every drop of sweat, every ant on the trees,
every rotting leaf, to surround the viewer with the textures of the jungle,
and I had a choice between shooting in 35mm or DV, I'd pick 35mm to create
that effect. Now if 35mm wasn't an option, I'd figure out a way for DV to
give those impressions (probably a LOT more close-ups) but I be trying to
work around the inherently low resolution of the format when what I really
needed was a high resolution format.
I'm not talking about which format would involve the audience in a story
emotionally, I'm simply saying that a large, clear image on a big screen has
a more "immersive" quality than a soft, fuzzy one (which DV tends to look on
a big theatrical screen.) Sure you can engage a viewer in the story using
any format, it's just that some formats are better at "showing off" a
location and establishing its textures. "Lawrence of Arabia" used the 65mm
format and its stunning landscape photography to help you understand
Lawrence's fascination with the desert without resorting to dialogue; if the
movie had been shot in 16mm, you would have had to use other cinematic
techniques to suggest his romantic view of the desert and the audience would
have to accept it as a story point -- but they might not physically FEEL it
viscerally in the same way that a huge 70mm image can do for them.
David Mullen
Gary Pollard
>
> >Well, as I said before, to me it doesn't work like that. I find that
> general
> >audiences get immersed in the film to the extent the film is involving.
>
> I think we're arguing only because I define "immersive" as a physical
> experience while you are defining it as an emotional experience.
Not entirely. I'm arguing that the necessary artifice of ANY format works
against such immersion. Or perhaps it's a question of what we're used to.
It's likely if we'd all grown up on DV that the 35mm would be the one to
shock us. I love film, and of course it is in many circumstances more
beautiful than video, but I don't find any one format more immersive than
any other. I am ALWAYS conscious of the medium, unlike others in the
audience who seem NEVER conscious of the medium.
> With immersion as a physical phemenon, the larger and sharper the image
is,
> the more it feels that "you are there" -- hence why if you were going to
try
> to recreate the physical sensations of flight, you would use something
like
> IMAX or in the past, Cinerama.
But by this point, in my view, you are talking about the cinema as roller
coaster ride. And the next step becomes 3D movies. Is a greater reality the
be all and end all of ANY art form? If it were, photography would be a
greater art than oil painting. In my view, even these formats, like
Trumbull's higher frame rate movies, work better in long uninterrupted
shots, partly because as soon as you introduce a cut that sense of reality
is broken. And on a human face, which is to me THE subject of film-making,
they are overkill. Sometimes, in fact, I think the smaller formats capture
the physical sensations of light better. In some of Australian film-maker
Paul Cox's films he uses 8mm for some sequences. That footage glows. You
tend to look at the light because you are not distracted by the surfaces.
> What you are calling "immersive" I would call "emotionally involving",
which
> is a different phenomenon and NOT connected to the format. What I'm
talking
> about is the sense of immersion, that you no longer feel you are sitting
in
> the theater but are standing in another location that envelopes you on a
> huge screen.
Well, we clearly have different views on this. But I'd say that this is a
very small part of the experience as soon as you introduce a cut, an actor
we know in reality to be a rich fat cat, or a piece of soundtrack music. In
fact, many of the film-makers we consider the greatest are those who stamp
each frame so individually with a personality that it's practically
impossible to feel we're watching an unmediated image. "Vertigo" is a great
example of this. I don't care what format it was shot on. You see the images
AS images.
And I'd also suggest that VERY often the attempt to be "immersive" in the
sense you use it works in total contradiction to the desire to be
emotionally involving. If I can see every bug on every leaf, why am I even
looking at the actors who are the emotional core of the story? Again, I
don't want it to look as if I am against the big formats. I am not. I just
feel that some of the justifications people use for why smaller formats
"don't work" are pretty much subjective.
> The sharper and more detailed the image is on the big screen, the more
that
> subtle details can stand out to your eye
But how many directors honestly want the audience to be looking everywhere
but at the actors? At least in the majority of shots? Directing where the
audience looks is a large part of what I want to do. How often do either
directors or DPs actually want focus and detail from here to infinity? When
you do, those formats are valuable, but I personally rarely shoot anything
without trying to get the background a little soft. In fact, here in Hong
Kong the banes of my existence are too small apartments, so limited depth of
field is hard to achieve, and too much light, which has the same effect..
You spoke earlier about how lighting replicates the way the eye sees,
correcting for the characteristics of film or video. By the same token, I
feel that when I'm looking at someone talking I am mostly certainly NOT
focussed from here to infinity. If I'm bored with them it's a different
story. Even in a bright light situation my eye and brain separates them from
the background and renders the background less than detail clear. AND the
more emotionally invested I am in the situation, the less I see those
details. That's something I like to replicate in directng, and it's
something DV can do fine. For similar reasons, in my view, the less "true"
or "immersive" black and white is sometimes more emotionally involving than
colour. (I still think it's the ultimate choice for horror movies, and not
just because the old ones were shot like that but because, to me, colour
more easily captures surface where black and white captures psychology. It's
quite amazing watching the colour and black and white versions of "The Man
Who Wasn't There" for an example of this.)
> While any story could be told on any format, some formats do some things
> better than others. If a director said to me (as the DP) that he wanted
to
> shoot in the jungle and see every drop of sweat, every ant on the trees,
> every rotting leaf, to surround the viewer with the textures of the
jungle,
> and I had a choice between shooting in 35mm or DV, I'd pick 35mm to create
> that effect. Now if 35mm wasn't an option, I'd figure out a way for DV to
> give those impressions (probably a LOT more close-ups) but I be trying to
> work around the inherently low resolution of the format when what I really
> needed was a high resolution format.
Of course, and I'd never say that I wanted, "Days of Heaven" say, to be shot
on DV. But again, that's an example of a film where you are as wowed by the
beauty of the shots as by what's happening in the middle of it. To me, one
strong point of DV is that it works better when you concentrate on
performance and face. If those are your MAIN preoccupations, and
particularly on a low budget, it's going to be an attractive format. Of
course, if you could give me 35mm resolution, with cameras as small, in
which I could piss away tons of film going for performance as I can with DV,
then I probably wouldn't shake my head at it. What I'm trying to say is the
format is more than the format. It's also a bunch of stuff, including a
mind-set, that come with it. "The Idiots" would have been a different film
on ANY other format. And not necessarily a better one. I'm not in favour of
people using DV to replicate Hollywood spectacle or to make girls, guns, and
explosions movies. I am in favour of it when you want to concentrate on
people.
> "Lawrence of Arabia" used the 65mm
> format and its stunning landscape photography to help you understand
> Lawrence's fascination with the desert without resorting to dialogue
For me, there is a weakness in that film, which is that you tend to remember
the images and the landscapes more than the people, the dialogue, or even
the story. I like it a lot, but not because I felt close to the characters,
and that's why I'd often trade seeing every bug on every leaf for closer
identification with the characters. I'd say "2001" was another example,
except that there, it actually helped Kubrick's cold look at things.
In the end, maybe it's just a question of wanting to achieve different
things.
Gary
David Mullen
Arabia", or "The Idiots", I'd have to admit that I'd go for the first two,
those being some of my favorite films of all time (along with "Seven
Samurai" and "Dr. Strangelove".)
But that's just me.
If your priorities as a director are telling intimate, actor-driven
contemporary stories, then obviously having a "big movie look" is not much
of a priority, if not even something to be avoided. Personally I'm too much
of a movie fan to be limited to just intimate, naturalistic character
stories -- for example, I'm a big fan of Michael Powell's oddball
Technicolor movies like "Black Narcissus" or "The Red Shoes", and I love MGM
musicals. I love Kurosawa's b&w widescreen movies like "Red Beard" and
"High & Low". I love John Ford westerns. And I'm a HUGE fan of Buster
Keaton's films. And I love "Vertigo". Compared to those films, something
like "The Idiots" (which I saw in a theater) is a mild diversion at best.
It's not the reason I got into moviemaking. Seeing "2001" was.
Right now I've been doing a lot of research for an upcoming feature project
that has to replicate the look of 1950's Technicolor / Cinemascope movies,
and reading a lot of "American Cinematographers" from that time, so when
someone criticizes contemporary Hollywood cinematography as being overlit
and unrealistic, I just have to laugh since it is SO much more naturalistic
than it has ever been in its history, with only a few exceptions. "The West
Wing" is rough documentary realism compared to a Douglas Sirk melodrama of
the late 1950's.
I think cinema has to be more than merely recording a performance, which too
many DV movies seem reduced to, the "just follow the actors around with a
camera" style of directing. It doesn't excite my imagination the way that a
movie that combines the art of lighting, composition, music, editing, art
direction with a good script and good performances can. Too many young
directors seem to feel that good performance is ALL a movie needs to have.
To me, that only works with certain scripts, but many others need more of a
visual design to effectively convey all the depths of the story. What makes
a movie like "Vertigo" great is how incredibly well thought-out the whole
production is in support of its ideas and emotions.
David Mullen
Gary Pollard
> Given the choice of being known as the guy who made "2001", "Lawrence of
> Arabia", or "The Idiots", I'd have to admit that I'd go for the first two,
I wouldn't knock any of those options. But the point is that to a
considerable degree in Hollywood, production value triumphs over content.
And one area in which the low budget movie-maker, possibly working on DV, is
never going to compete is in terms of production value. So he shouldn't try
to. Nor should he be expected to try to. I submit we need both kinds of film
making, and claiming one particular format as being somehow inferior because
it can do Job A better than Job B isn't helpful to that, which takes me full
circle to my original posts in this thread.
> Personally I'm too much
> of a movie fan to be limited to just intimate, naturalistic character
> stories -- for example, I'm a big fan of Michael Powell's oddball
> Technicolor movies like "Black Narcissus" or "The Red Shoes", and I love
MGM
> musicals. I love Kurosawa's b&w widescreen movies like "Red Beard" and
> "High & Low". I love John Ford westerns. And I'm a HUGE fan of Buster
> Keaton's films. And I love "Vertigo". Compared to those films, something
> like "The Idiots" (which I saw in a theater) is a mild diversion at best.
> It's not the reason I got into moviemaking. Seeing "2001" was.
Well that's fine. I like most of the films you mention too, particularly
Powell and Pressburger. I love "El Cid" and "2001" too. But not every film
has to be that, and I really don't think "The Idiots" is worse than some of
those movies. It's just a different focus. "Dancing in the Dark" is more gut
wrenching than some of those more spectacular movies. When Ford was good he
was very good, but he CERTAINLY made films that were worse than "The
Idiots", if one is judging by anything other than format. Some of the
greatest movies I've seen are those of Andrei Tarkovski and Kieslowski, both
made on fairly crappy stock in comparison with much Western film. Both way
ahead of 90% of what I see in cinemas EVERY week.
> Right now I've been doing a lot of research for an upcoming feature
project
> that has to replicate the look of 1950's Technicolor / Cinemascope movies,
> and reading a lot of "American Cinematographers" from that time, so when
> someone criticizes contemporary Hollywood cinematography as being overlit
> and unrealistic, I just have to laugh since it is SO much more
naturalistic
> than it has ever been in its history, with only a few exceptions.
Yes, the old studio lighting techniques are more extreme than those usually
used now. I'm a big fan of Douglas Sirk's movies from that period. But that
doesn't mean that cinematographers now do not often light the crap out of
something. They do. To be more naturalistic than the extremes of the heyday
of the studio system is no big trick.
> I think cinema has to be more than merely recording a performance, which
too
> many DV movies seem reduced to, the "just follow the actors around with a
> camera" style of directing.
Personally, I don't think it's that at all. I think that what characterises
some of these movies at their best is the intimacy they achieve. The
nakedness of emotion. Just as Cassavetes achieved it and Hitchcock didn't.
Bergman managed to even on 35mm, but he's pretty exceptional. I don't think
it's merely a question of getting "good" performances. I think at its best
it makes getting soul-searing performances somewhat more likely. It can give
you more room for exploration, particularly on a small budget. And yes, for
many people characters and story ARE the centre of film, no matter how much
we dress it up. I think the bottom line is that if you can't wow an audience
with one thing, you have to reach them with another. Whether 35mm or 70mm or
DV, the work needs something special that that format CAN handle. That's why
I think the Tarantino wannabes shooting DV are wrong headed. That's not what
it does best.
> It doesn't excite my imagination the way that a
> movie that combines the art of lighting, composition, music, editing, art
> direction with a good script and good performances can. Too many young
> directors seem to feel that good performance is ALL a movie needs to have.
Hmm, at fifty on my next birthday I can hardly be identified as one of those
young directors, although I'd be flattered to be. I'd argue that without a
good script and good performances the rest is wasted. Whereas WITH them, you
can still have a good film. Not that I personally liked "Clerks", but those
that did didn't give a damn that it looked like hell. "Night of the Living
Dead" looked pretty crappy too in purely technical terms, but it worked MUCH
better than the all colour remake. Production value and bigger format isn't
a good substitute for content in every film. And you CAN use lighting,
composition, music, editing and art directing on DV too. It's a rather weird
mindset that some poeple have to think you can't.
I just think it should not be brought to a level where the craftspeople
control the movie and actually bland it out because the machine knows how to
operate even without a director or a unifying vision. I'd guess most
directors have had the experience of thinking if they are not careful the
tail is going to wag the dog. I fight hard to give my actors at least as
much time as production value. A lot of directors don't. It's amazing how
often a team will take two hours or a morning to set up a shot, and then be
pissed off if you actually let the actors - who the audience usually care
MOST about - work in it for longer than twenty minutes.
Frankly I'd trade the austerity of a Bresson or Rohmer movie for the vast
majority of Tinseltown product any day. And I don't believe for the smallest
fraction of a second that their films are any less great works of art than
"Attack of the Clones", "Titanic", or any other movie that may have had a
lot of money thrown at it. Nor are the relatively simple "Ten Commandments"
of Kieslowski.
Too often these things are slick craft, and not art, and not used
effectively in the service of producing art (and - yes - in invoking them,
we ARE speaking of art). All these factors CAN contribute to a good movie,
but the problem comes when they are introduced or valued for their own sake,
and with little regard for any kind of central vision or purpose. A few
year's ago I saw someone describe a movie as "well-carpeted" because of the
way these things were used. That doesn't mean they are used to the maximum -
it just means they are used slickly. I'd hate someone to say that about a
piece of work because it's worst than damning with faint praise. A movie can
be slick and glossy but merely workmanlike. And a gold plated turd is still
a turd.
> To me, that only works with certain scripts, but many others need more of
a
> visual design to effectively convey all the depths of the story. What
makes
> a movie like "Vertigo" great is how incredibly well thought-out the whole
> production is in support of its ideas and emotions.
No disagreement.
Gary
doug lauber
I guess what I'm trying to say, is that with 35mm, you are afforded the
option of presenting an image, like a background skyscraper, with its
details intact, or by using a narrow depth of field, you can create a pleasant blur.
On the other hand, with DV, there are many types of shots that one is forced to
avoid, because the result is distracting elements, -lines that are scruffy and
work against the tone created by the actors and story.
With DV, you have to compensate for the medium by limiting the way
that the story is told, and characters presented. (and I'm up to that
challenge) The analogy about b&w doesn't work for me, because
doing away with color does NOT result in the creation of distracting
visual elements. For me, DV does introduce distracting elements.
Yes, these elements can be minimized, and that's part of our artistry.
Is the 35mm medium capable of producing:
jagged scruffy blur?
Yes.
smooth detailed images?
Yes.
Is the DV medium capable of producing:
jagged scruffy blur?
Yes.
smooth detailed images?
*No*
Tadpole should be re-done, using 35mm.
Full Frontal shouldn't. Soderberg went with the lo-res
quality of DV.
Tadpole had the stronger story, better character design.
(just my opinion) -doug
Gary Pollard
> On the other hand, with DV, there are many types of shots that one is
forced to
> avoid, because the result is distracting elements, - lines that are
scruffy and
> work against the tone created by the actors and story.
Just as - in my view - with larger formats there are shots you are less
likely to get for purely physical/budgetary/infrastructural reasons on the
location.
But I'd still say that, while some of us here were busy looking for digital
artifacts even in "Attack of the Clones" and -certainly - in "Dancing in the
Dark", 90% of viewers did not look for them, did not care, and watched the
movie as a movie. The bottom line is they distract you because they distract
YOU. I see absolutely no evidence that they distract 90% of viewers.
> The analogy about b&w doesn't work for me, because
> doing away with color does NOT result in the creation of distracting
> visual elements.
Unless you are accepting it merely because you are used to it, the lack of
colour IS a distracting visual element. One reason so few black and white
features are made these days is that audiences, and thus producers, are
pretty resistant to them. Currently more movies are being made and
distributed on DV than in black and white.
> Is the 35mm medium capable of producing:
> jagged scruffy blur?
> Yes.
> smooth detailed images?
> Yes.
>
> Is the DV medium capable of producing:
> jagged scruffy blur?
> Yes.
> smooth detailed images?
> *No*
You might add: is DV capable of producing films that could not work the same
way, or might not even get made in 35mm? Yes. And that is the biggest
argument for them.
Gary
Gary Pollard
> >The illusion of
> >realism with uniformly stunning lighting, uniformly peach smooth skins,
and
> >oh-so-tasteful art direction to me just ain't no realism at all.
>
> Do you think your average Hollywood romantic comedy would be better with
> ugly lighting, blotchy skintones, and tacky art direction?
Do you think a good romantic comedy can't be made on DV? I'd bet you're
wrong on that. Whether something is funny and/or romantic is not, for me, a
function of how glossy it is? Personally I can't stand the cinematography of
"What's Up Doc" but it still works as a romantic comedy.
> In general, when
> this sort of gloss is applied, it's applied to glossy script material.
You
> can't really blame the cinematographer, make-up person, and art director
for
> using the script as a guide to best approach the story.
No, but I can disagree with the standardised approach they take to do it.
And with the choice of the material in the first place. What's the point of
liking "2001" when you are working with a format that comes with so much
baggage, and at such expense, you spend most of your life shooting bad
B-movie scripts? And that's a situation many find themselves in. Would I
rather shoot a Cassavettes style work on DV than "Scooby Doo" on 35 mm. You
bet your life.
> Blame the scripts
> that get made, not the people who attempt to bring life to them in the
> manner dictated by the nature of the material.
I don't agree that it is necessarily dictated only by the nature of the
material. But yes, I do blame the scripts. Week after week, the lousiest
thing in most Hollywood movies is the script. It's so often so bad that not
only the critics, but even the dumbest of the audience, are aware of the
stupidities. But this is not separate from the budgetary and structural
restrictions involved in the format. Would I rather see an intelligent DV
movie that wouldn't have got made on any other format than a dumb 35mm one?
Unlike you apparently I would.
> If you really think "Scooby
> Doo" is going to be a better movie by being shot in DV with available
light,
> then you're barking up the wrong tree.
I don't think "Scooby Doo" should have been made at all. But it's a prime
example of shit dressed up with production value. And if you have been
reading the posts you answered you would not raise the "available light" red
herring".
> Anyway, why the implication that the best movies are the most realistic?
No
> room in your heart for the artifice of a "Casablanca" or a "Singin in the
> Rain"? "The Red Shoes"? "Sunrise"? Do you like only documentary
> photography and photo-realist painting?
We've already discussed this. I'm not the one taking an exclusionary view
here. Those closed to the possibilities and individual characteristics of DV
are. Unlike you I don't think "Casablanca" would have been unwatchable on
DV. Enough people have been happy to watch it on VHS and low bandwidth
broadcast TV. When the content's there, it's a good movie. Is the
"colorised" version of "Casablanca" better because it's more "immersive" for
some out there? Not for me?
> What can't some good movies be the
> equivalent of a VanGogh painting instead of a Robert Capa photo?
YOU are the one preferring the "immersive" quality of what you view as the
more transparent formats. I'd argue that Van Gogh certainly does not make
the medium in any way invisible or immersive. In my view the DV is closer to
Van Gogh than the Capa photo.
Gary
David McCall
and feed (making it affordable to people that might otherwise
not be able to afford to shoot anything but pool). It can look
pretty good, for video. It's so cheap that you can aford to
shoot with multiple cameras. There is a full range of cameras
from fairly impressive looking profesional cameras to prosumer
cameras like the VX-2000, all the way down to tiny consumer
cameras that can be sliped into places you would never get into
with an IMAX camera. It can be edited on incredibly cheap
computers. They are all self blimped and crystal locked. Etc.,etc..
Are they the way to make the very highest quality cinema? Of
course not. Most of them have focus/iris controls from hell. They
can't handle haigh contrast hard edges. They have squat for lattitude
requireing that you get you iris settings right to the !'8th stop, unlike
film where you can be off by a couple stops and still get away with it.
Most of them are so flimsey (compared to a Mitchel BNC) that it's
a good thing that they are nearly disposables. The compression is
very high causing serious artifacts.
So if the any of the good things from paragraph A are important
enough to let you overlook the bad stuff from paragraph B. Then
DV is the format for you. However, if you have the budget and
backing for a full crew with equipment, and no need for the
stealthiness of a small camera, then why shoot DV? I think it
is a hard question.
The best part is that it allows people that might not otherwise be
able to aford to tell their story, a chance to tell it. It is also a
fantastic tool for the student. It allows them to produce material
that actually looks decent (assumeing the light it right, etc.).
David
David Mullen
the technical quality of the format. Imagine your unhappiness if you were
passionate about something less affordable and accessible!
I'm a little more ambivalent about it, that's all. I do think the image
quality of DV is low enough to make it a factor in deciding how to best use
it, unless you are in a budgetary situation that precludes any other options
anyway. In that case, it's a waste of time and energy to beat yourself up
about not being able to shoot in 35mm and you should do your best with what
you've got.
In the case where the budget allows you to have other format options
(Super-16, 24P HD, etc.) then I see nothing wrong with having a firm
understanding of each format's strengths and weaknesses and picking the one
that serves your needs best. And I can imagine projects where DV would
STILL be a good idea even with higher budgets, where its unique qualities
would serve the director's vision or method of working well.
You are such an advocate of the DV format that you seem to think there is
nothing it cannot do, no script it can't do justice to. I disagree.
>Do you think a good romantic comedy can't be made on DV? I'd bet you're
>wrong on that. Whether something is funny and/or romantic is not, for me, a
>function of how glossy it is?
Of course romantic comedies could be shot in DV. It's just that some
benefit from more visual beauty to enrapture the viewer -- I don't believe
that audiences aren't emotionally affected by the visuals in a movie, and I
don't believe that any visual that can be accomplished well in 35mm and also
be done in DV with equal impact.
Look at some of the reviews of "Tadpole" -- a number remarked on how
unforgiving the DV photography was on the middle-aged actresses in the film.
Does it serve the story to allow edge enhancement artifacts to prematurely
age some actresses? The edge enhancement artifacts in "Tortilla Soup" was
bad enough to make a 20 year old actress in one scene look like she was 40!
How is that helping the story? Of course, if the acting and writing are
good enough, the audience can get beyond those distracting visual problems,
but that's hardly a ringing endorsement for a format that gives you problems
that you then have to work to distract the audience from!
There are all types of movies for all types of people. Obviously you like
character-driven, "raw" emotional, contemporary stories that don't benefit
from "gloss" or any technical virtuosity -- but don't assume that everyone
does. Some people LIKED "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and might have
liked it LESS had it been shot in a low-resolution video format. Some
people LIKED the way that "What's Up Doc" looked. Some people LIKE the way
the "The West Wing" looks now. You make an argument that any great movie
could have been shot in DV and it would have been just as good, just
different, and just as involving for the audience -- I don't believe that at
all. It might be possible in SOME cases with SOME scripts, but there's a
difference between what is possible and what is probable. I don't think it
is probable that someone could have made "2001" in DV and generated the same
impact on the culture the way that the original did. In fact, the film DOES
need its big-screen resolution to generate some of its effect on the
viewer -- it really does not work on TV. It reminds me of an old essay by
Pauline Kael about how the old movies that work best on TV are the
dialogue-driven ones, not the visual ones. And that doesn't mean that
therefore the dialogue-driven ones are inherently better, just they don't
get their impact from their visuals as much as some other films.
If I didn't believe that cinematography was an art form that matters, and
that the choices I make as an artist matter, including what technology to
use and how to use it, I wouldn't have gotten into this line of work. It's
my job to understand the strengths and weaknesses of formats so I can help
the director make informed decisions.
I never, never said that all movies should be shot in a sharp, clean,
big-screen "immersive" style at all! I don't know how many times and how
many ways I've said the OPPOSITE over the years and supported the use of
alternate formats and other ways of creating images. I shot the first 24P
HD feature to get a U.S. theatrical release. But as soon as I even begin to
defend the 35mm format for what it does well, you label me some sort of
anti-DV type! It's like you can't stand to hear ANY criticisms of the DV
format. An alarm goes off in your head as soon as someone even hints that
DV might have some weaknesses as a medium and you jump in to defend it tooth
and nail.
I am arguing for recognizing that some formats do some things better than
others. I am arguing for having a VARIETY -- small, intimate DV pictures,
big 70mm spectacles, b&w movies, color movies, fantasy, drama.
In your passion to promote DV you feel the need not only to promote the
virtures of the format and the types of movies you can make with it --
which I agree with you about!!! -- but you feel the need to take cheap
potshots at mainstream cinematography and good-looking movies and formats
like 35mm in some belief that by knocking them down you will make yourself
look better for shooting in DV. I feel it is unnecessary to attack other
people's work in an attempt to promote your own way of working. I don't
have to put down Hollywood filmmaking techniques just to support those who
do things differently. I think there is room for both types of moviemaking.
David Mullen
Gary Pollard
> It's good that you're such a passionate advocate of DV and are happy with
> the technical quality of the format. Imagine your unhappiness if you were
> passionate about something less affordable and accessible!
I'm passionate about all modes of movie making. But DV is enabling stuff
that was not enabled before, and I'm especially passionate about that. It's
not as if my criticisms of big movies are going to give Spielberg a single
sleepless second, or threaten the mainstream industry in even the slightest
way.
> In the case where the budget allows you to have other format options
> (Super-16, 24P HD, etc.) then I see nothing wrong with having a firm
> understanding of each format's strengths and weaknesses and picking the
one
> that serves your needs best. And I can imagine projects where DV would
> STILL be a good idea even with higher budgets, where its unique qualities
> would serve the director's vision or method of working well.
We are agreed on this.
> You are such an advocate of the DV format that you seem to think there is
> nothing it cannot do, no script it can't do justice to. I disagree.
It really is not necessary to caricature the stance of the person you are
discussing the subject with. In fact, I've clearly said the opposite. But
what I have also said is that there I don't think there is any human
situation it cannot cover. You can shoot men in war with it. You wouldn't
shoot "Apocalypse Now" with it.
> Look at some of the reviews of "Tadpole" -- a number remarked on how
> unforgiving the DV photography was on the middle-aged actresses in the
film.
Do you honestly think that's a function of the format? I don't. I think it's
a function of how it is shot. But apart from that, I really don't have a
problem with cinematography that does not glamorise.
> Does it serve the story to allow edge enhancement artifacts to prematurely
> age some actresses? The edge enhancement artifacts in "Tortilla Soup" was
> bad enough to make a 20 year old actress in one scene look like she was
40!
Again, I have shot a lot of people on DV without "edge enhancements" making
them look twice their age. I would imagine and hope that you, as a working
cameraman, could do so too. The actresses in "The Anniversary Party" looked
fine, so it obviously ain't a format issue.
> How is that helping the story? Of course, if the acting and writing are
> good enough, the audience can get beyond those distracting visual
problems,
> but that's hardly a ringing endorsement for a format that gives you
problems
> that you then have to work to distract the audience from!
The fact that YOU need distracting doesn't mean that everyone needs
distracting. That's one of the problems that those of us in the industry
face. We need to be aware of technical excellence, but sometimes we get so
hung up on technical things that we dismiss other creative possibilities or
downplay them FAR MORE than the average Joe. Most people who saw it did not
give a crap that "Dancer in the Dark" was shot on DV. Many walked out of the
cinema without knowing it AND without complaining about those artifacts you
find so alarming.
> There are all types of movies for all types of people. Obviously you like
> character-driven, "raw" emotional, contemporary stories that don't benefit
> from "gloss" or any technical virtuosity -- but don't assume that everyone
> does.
Again, if you actually read my posts you'd see I like a LOT of different
movies, so you are descending into needless caricature again. But what is
lacking in the cinema at the moment is certainly NOT the glossy vapid stuff.
What I like is film-makers having a possible way to redress the balance. As
William Goldman famously said, mainstream Hollywood is usually about
confirming people's prejudices. If that is NOT what you are interested in
doing, then I can only welcome a format that encourages an alternative
voice.
> Some people LIKE the way
> the "The West Wing" looks now. You make an argument that any great movie
> could have been shot in DV and it would have been just as good, just
> different, and just as involving for the audience -- I don't believe that
at
> all. It might be possible in SOME cases with SOME scripts, but there's a
> difference between what is possible and what is probable. I don't think
it
> is probable that someone could have made "2001" in DV and generated the
same
> impact on the culture the way that the original did.
Again, you are mischaracterising my position. I think "The West Wing" looks
fine. If you were not so interested to take things out of context you'd
acknowledge that I didn't introduce that as an example of ugliness, but as
an example of a set that involved considerable lighting. Also, I have at no
point said or even suggested you could make "2001" on DV. But I really don't
doubt that Kubrick might well have been interested in seeing what the medium
COULD do, as Wim Wenders and dozens of others worthwhile film-makers
currently are. Could you deal with the "subject" of "2001" on DV. Perhaps
you could. I liked "2001" but I found "Solaris", which had much grungier
cinematography, a far more thought-provoking film. I don't think the format
limits the subjects you can handle, it just changes how you handle them.
> But as soon as I even begin to
> defend the 35mm format for what it does well, you label me some sort of
> anti-DV type! It's like you can't stand to hear ANY criticisms of the DV
> format. An alarm goes off in your head as soon as someone even hints that
> DV might have some weaknesses as a medium and you jump in to defend it
tooth
> and nail.
I don't know who you are arguing with David, because you certainly do not
seem to be arguing with positions I have actually taken. I have clearly
pointed out that DV has different features from 35mm, and again from 70mm,
and that you need to cut the suit to fit the cloth. My disagreement with you
is the extent to which those different features are "weaknesses". My
contention remains that the format is not JUST the format, particularly as
long as it's always easier to get financing for a crap B movie on 35mm than
a more thoughtful one. I've had half a life of dealing with the compromises
that involves, and with producers wanting formulaic stuff before they'll
shell out a cent. If I have to choose whether to compromise content, which
is why I want to make the film or TV drama, or cinematography, then you can
bet I'll settle for less spectacular cinematography. Better the diamond in
the rough than the gold-plated turd. But hey, that just MY aesthetic. And
sure, good movies do get made even in 70mm.
I don't know what you have shot, but for many camera-men if they take a look
at the differences between the movies they love and the stuff they shoot for
most of their career, particularly in terms of CONTENT, they are quite
likely to end up weeping.
> In your passion to promote DV you feel the need not only to promote the
> virtures of the format and the types of movies you can make with it --
> which I agree with you about!!! -- but you feel the need to take cheap
> potshots at mainstream cinematography and good-looking movies and formats
> like 35mm
I certainly don't think my criticisms of certain approaches to 35mm are any
"cheaper" than the criticisms you - and others even more so - make of DV.
We're just pointing to different characteristics, "weaknesses", "strengths".
Your characterising of disagreements with you on those elements as "cheap"
is indicative only of your preference.
> in some belief that by knocking them down you will make yourself
> look better for shooting in DV.
I have worked on a number of formats and in a number of mediums. I've shot
dramas on 16mm reversal, Beta, and Digibeta, I've written a 35mm feature and
been a contributor and/or script doctor on others. I'm currently working on
a new one. I liked the 16mm reversal a lot, and fought for it for my
projects because I thought it was better than video, but the lesson is you
can't separate format from means of production and the compromises they
entail. I've walked away from 35mm projects because they were getting
compromised into shit. DV represents a new freedom that I welcome.
> I don't
> have to put down Hollywood filmmaking techniques just to support those who
> do things differently.
We're all allowed preferences David, even on Usenet. And if you wish to
refuse to acknowledge or recognize the problems and compromises of
mainstream Hollywood production that is your prerogative. I know damn well
I'm not the only one who sees them.
Gary
doug lauber
Ah yes. I will soon have a miniDV camcorder, to go with FCP3 and my Mac.
That is a bottom line. A big argument for DV!
This combo can produce the kind of imagery, I have never seen before.
Some beautiful images, especially for TV, rather than film transfer.
I'll have fun with it. I'm looking forward to it.
...now if I can just complete this script! -doug
doug lauber
> "David Mullen" <dav...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:d%%79.12202$LO1.9...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> > >The illusion of
> > >realism with uniformly stunning lighting, uniformly peach smooth skins,
> and
> > >oh-so-tasteful art direction to me just ain't no realism at all.
> >
> > Do you think your average Hollywood romantic comedy would be better with
> > ugly lighting, blotchy skintones, and tacky art direction?
>
> Do you think a good romantic comedy can't be made on DV? I'd bet you're
> wrong on that. Whether something is funny and/or romantic is not, for me, a
> function of how glossy it is? Personally I can't stand the cinematography of
> "What's Up Doc" but it still works as a romantic comedy.
I liked Tadpole and apparently the audience with me also liked it.
But, I can't help but think that it would've been better in 35mm. -doug
David McCall
"doug lauber" <dugs...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:3D63F33E...@earthlink.net...
>
> I liked Tadpole and apparently the audience with me also liked it.
> But, I can't help but think that it would've been better in 35mm. -doug
>
wait until they could afford to do it in 35.
The economy ofDV may be the best part about DV. Before DV
you had to use BetaCam SP, or better, to produce something
the "broadcasters" would consider to be a serious work. More
and more, DV is being accepted as a "professional" format/ Not
the best format, but at least it is a player. Hi-8 & Super-VHS
never attained the level of acceptance that DV has. 3/4 was a
consumer format too, and it did get quite a lot of broadcast level
acceptance, but many feel that DV looks better than 3/4 ever did.
As for blowing it up to 35? Might as well, if there is an audience
that would watch it if you can deliver in that format. It can be very
expensive, so there have to be a lot of people that can only see
it if it is in that format. It is likely that a lot of people will be able
to tell that it is "just video" anyway, so you might as well display
it as video if that is an option.
David
Gary Pollard
news:3D63F33E...@earthlink.net...
> > Do you think a good romantic comedy can't be made on DV? I'd bet you're
> > wrong on that. Whether something is funny and/or romantic is not, for
me, a
> > function of how glossy it is? Personally I can't stand the
cinematography of
> > "What's Up Doc" but it still works as a romantic comedy.
>
> I liked Tadpole and apparently the audience with me also liked it.
> But, I can't help but think that it would've been better in 35mm. -doug
It might. But would it have even got made on 35mm?
Gary
>
Gary Pollard
news:94W89.239742$uj.3...@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net...
> As for blowing it up to 35? Might as well, if there is an audience
> that would watch it if you can deliver in that format. It can be very
> expensive, so there have to be a lot of people that can only see
> it if it is in that format. It is likely that a lot of people will be able
> to tell that it is "just video" anyway, so you might as well display
> it as video if that is an option.
Of course, when (and not if) Digital projection hits the cinemas, that could
be less of an issue. I've seen my DV work projected straight from DV onto a
full size conference hall screen. It was a pretty overwhelming experience.
It looked a LOT better than even I had expected. In fact, one cinema here
ONLY shows DV projected from the original format - mostly low budget horror
films. Most of them are awful, but the format isnt the problem.
Gary
doug lauber
You're right. I assume it wouldn't have. -doug
David Mullen
I once shot an 18-day feature in 35mm with a budget of $100,000 (an indie
comedy), so I assume anything with Sigorney Weaver and Bebe Neuwirth in the
cast could raise enough to shoot in 35mm IF it were important to them to do
so. There are straight-to-video crap features with smaller name actors (ex
TV actors) than those two that manage to raise around $500,000 routinely
from investors or thru pre-sales. Obviously "Tadpole" didn't want to go
through the hassle & time of using their cast to leverage more money.
And while their transfer costs from DV-to-35mm would have cost almost enough
to just have shot in 35mm to begin with (if they used a laser recorder,
often $70,000 for a feature), obviously the advantage to DV is that there is
more money for actual production as long as you are willing to wait to find
the money to transfer it to film later. Sort of the argument for shooting
in Super-16 for many years or even 24P HD now -- it is more of a cash-flow
advantage (more up front at the start of production, or less to get the
production going) than it always is a cash SAVINGS advantage once you factor
in the costs of a video-to-film transfer (unless you use one of the cheaper
methods of transferring, like at 4MC.)
Of course on any movie (even big ones) you divide up the budget pie
according to your priorities. But there is obviously a budget level where
you have more options to explore different formats. Despite what the makers
of "Anniversary Party" say, the fact that they had a budget of 3.5 million
dollars clearly meant that they could have shot in 35mm and paid themselves
a little less. Hell, I've shot almost twenty 35mm features so far and none
have yet had a budget of 3.5 million dollars! Most were in the half-million
to one million dollar budget range. As for what the magic number is where
you can afford to shoot in film, it's hard to say because it depends on what
your other production needs are (location fees, actors salaries, art
direction, etc.)
I don't really subscribe to the oft-quoted logic that you get more
production value by using your budget for other things than shooting on
film -- to me, that can be part of the "production value" for certain
projects, just like an experienced crew can be part of the production value
(that other bit of mislogic of "I'd rather put the money into the film than
into the crew" -- well, some types of projects really need good, trained
crew people to be able to pull of the director's vision, so their salaries
should be considered as part of the cost of getting a certain type of
"production value.") Or at least, those other items that you've spent so
much money on might benefit from then being shot in a better format. It's
what Kurosawa said was his basic rule to directing: "You make sure that what
is happening in front of the camera is as good as possible, then you shoot
it in the best manner possible."
Look at "George Washington", a small indie feature shot in 35mm 2.35
anamorphic for about $150,000 I think -- the filmmakers clearly felt that
the atmosphere it was trying to create needed to be shot in that format to
be conveyed with the most impact. Some might disagree with them, I don't
know.
Now when you're talking about having less than $40,000, let's say, to make a
feature on, your options narrow way down and DV becomes a logical choice.
Or, as in "Dancing in the Dark", you want to run 100 cameras on a musical
number... Or you need handheld takes that run longer than 10 minutes... Or
you need to shoot the equivalent of a million feet of film...
David Mullen
doug lauber
Just curious, -do you know of any scenario, where a DV
feature was produced, impressed the right people(festival?), and then
totally re-done with 35mm? Was the same director used?
Same actors? A friend of mine seems to think that a completed
DV feature, with a good story, can serve as a calling card
for the screenwriter? Can it? -doug
Loren Amelang
wrote:
Sundance Channel's "Anatomy of a Scene" did the table scene from Tadpole
last night. Everyone involved, including the actors, commented on how the use
of tiny DV cameras contributed to allowing that scene to work. The ability to
shoot simultaneously with multiple cameras in the tiny restaurant, and cut
between different views of the exact same take. The tendency of the cameras
to disappear from the talent's awareness, allowing them to focus on their
interaction.
Maybe they were just being positive for the Sundance people, but they made it
clear Tadpole would have been very different in 35mm. Looks like last night
was the only current showing - hope some of you saw it.
Loren
doug lauber
SNIP
> Again, if you actually read my posts you'd see I like a LOT of different
> movies, so you are descending into needless caricature again. But what is
> lacking in the cinema at the moment is certainly NOT the glossy vapid stuff.
> What I like is film-makers having a possible way to redress the balance. As
> William Goldman famously said, mainstream Hollywood is usually about
> confirming people's prejudices. If that is NOT what you are interested in
> doing, then I can only welcome a format that encourages an alternative
> voice.
SNIP
In my opinion, what is lacking in today's cinema has nothing to do
with 'gloss'. Gloss or beautiful imagery can actually be used, as the
better way to tell a story that has social commentary or psychological themes.
Any story can attack the 'superficial' in life, and doing it in glossy way
is often the best technique for accomplishing it, with irony. (Eyes Wide Shut)
The medium itself never takes precedent over the writer's story or the
director's vision. Strongly associating 35mm polished productions
with Hollywood superficiality is a big mistake. It's throwing the baby
out with the bath water. If you want to produce a film that does not
confirm prejudices, then simply direct a film(any format) and write a story
that doesn't do that. It's that simple.
Something that bugs me about Hollywood, is the focus on superficial
delights, -purely sensory elements, at the expense of character
development, social commentary, psychological themes, and
sometimes story. The problem here, is the psychological mindset
of the people producing the films, especially the directors and
writers, who are swayed by producer's surveys, etc.
The Hollywood problem has nothing to do with fine grained
film! It has to do with individuals who choose to use up screen time
for new enticing visuals, mucho explosions, and car chases that are
15 minutes too long. It's bad creative choices, not wrong format.
As an independent, the best you can do is to hope to find an
audience that wants something deeper than shallow eye candy.
As long as the public keeps on paying money for special effects,
and stories that are just like amusement park rides, then we'll
continue to see them, from Hollywood and elsewhere.
It's also a problem of 'balance'.
'2001' certainly had its eye candy, but the visual elements
worked in tandem with all of the other elements.
It might be a mistake, to make the creative decision to
throw out beautiful imagery. To do so, would be to trash
an element of reality, an aspect of everyday life. Removing
beautiful visual experiences would be as unreal as
removing all ugliness from a film.
When I get into producing DV, I'll consider it a challenge,
to create beautiful imagery. Ugliness won't be a problem. ;-) -doug
MPM
Perhaps here in Europe we have more experience with movies shot on
video, since we don't have a Hollywood-like industry at all overhere.
There is a totally new digital video movie culture emerging. Like, for
example, the Scandinavian school of moviemakers 'Dogma '95' that
abandoned modern techniques of moviemaking totally, except of shooting
on DV. Apart from that, artificial lightning, effects, even artificial
scenery were prohibited. They made great movies that became popular in
movie theatres all over Europe, like the movie 'Festen' (The
Celebration). I believe now distributed in the US. I saw the movie,
couldn't tell it was shot on DV.
check out http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/c/celebration.html
Gary Pollard
> Just curious, -do you know of any scenario, where a DV
> feature was produced, impressed the right people(festival?), and then
> totally re-done with 35mm? Was the same director used?
> Same actors? A friend of mine seems to think that a completed
> DV feature, with a good story, can serve as a calling card
> for the screenwriter? Can it? -doug
I think it's early days for DV yet, but a less than technically first-rate
low budget movie can act as a calling card, and then get reshot. One of the
best examples of this is Sam Raimi, whose first "Evil Dead" was pretty
powerful even if very rough-edged. "Evil Dead 2" WAS exactly the same film,
with some of the same cast and crew, remade with more money. And it had the
distribution system more firmly behind it than the first one ever did.
Gary
Gary Pollard
> >You're right. I assume it wouldn't have. -doug
>
> I once shot an 18-day feature in 35mm with a budget of $100,000 (an indie
> comedy), so I assume anything with Sigorney Weaver and Bebe Neuwirth in
the
> cast could raise enough to shoot in 35mm IF it were important to them to
do
> so. There are straight-to-video crap features with smaller name actors
(ex
> TV actors) than those two that manage to raise around $500,000 routinely
> from investors or thru pre-sales. Obviously "Tadpole" didn't want to go
> through the hassle & time of using their cast to leverage more money.
Anyone who is interested, you can find out more about the reasons for, and
advantages of, shooting "Tadpole" on DV here. Also about the budget.
http://www.indiewire.com/film/interviews/int_Winick_Gary_020731.html
Gary
David Mullen
>last night. Everyone involved, including the actors, commented on how the
use
>of tiny DV cameras contributed to allowing that scene to work. The ability
to
>shoot simultaneously with multiple cameras in the tiny restaurant, and cut
>between different views of the exact same take.
Gee, that's never been done in film before...
Really, this is nothing new other than it is more affordable to do in video
than in film, so low-budget filmmakers now can do what big-budget shoots
could do before. It's one way of making a movie (multiple cameras) -- the
real master of that was Kurosawa, who routinely used three cameras on
scenes.
Of course, the size of a 35mm camera is another issue in terms of
"invisibility" although most actors who have done multi-camera 35mm shoots
using long lenses often don't feel the camera's presence either. I was just
talking to an actor who was in "Crimson Tide" and he said there were so many
cameras shooting from a distance with long lenses that he never really knew
when he was being filmed. "Gosford Park" was shot in a similar style -- not
so much that the cameras were small but the whole scenes plus coverage were
captured at once with an array of cameras, so everyone had to always be
performing.
The other advantage to video is the longer takes allowed without
interuption.
David Mullen
David Mullen
>feature was produced, impressed the right people(festival?), and then
>totally re-done with 35mm? Was the same director used?
>Same actors? A friend of mine seems to think that a completed
>DV feature, with a good story, can serve as a calling card
>for the screenwriter? Can it? -doug
Sure, a good feature is always a good calling card, but if a DV feature
turned out well and impressed people, there would be little reason to remake
it in film -- it already "works" so to speak. If you can release a DV
feature that looks like "The Chateau" then any picture quality is acceptable
these days, at least to arthouse audiences.
Now it's possible that someone might make a SHORT in DV that could become
the basis for a bigger feature (that happened to "Bottle Rocket" although it
was shot in film both times.) And some pilots for TV series have been shot
for less money than the final series. The pilot to "West Wing" for example
was shot in Super-16 but the series switched to 35mm after that.
By the way, after seeing "Lovely & Amazing" today (24P HD) I snuck in to see
a few minutes of "Full Frontal" and I can see what people are talking
about -- Soderberg really degraded the look of the DV material.
David Mullen
Gary Pollard
> Of course, the size of a 35mm camera is another issue in terms of
> "invisibility" although most actors who have done multi-camera 35mm shoots
> using long lenses often don't feel the camera's presence either.
The problem with this though, in my view, is that long lenses don't have the
same intimacy as a close lens on a wider angle. So you either have to bring
your 35mm in and lose intimacy because the actors have a huge machine in
front of their face, or settle for the distancing effect of telephoto. If
your aesthetic is to use a focal length that approximates the human eye, DV
is a pretty good compromise.
Gary
David Mullen
the
>same intimacy as a close lens on a wider angle.
There are some directors who feel the opposite is true, that the shallower
focus of longer lenses can isolate a figure in the frame better, reducing
visual distractions and allowing the eye to concentrate on the face of the
actor.
I don't really have an opinion on this -- my favorite director, Kurosawa,
was a big believer in long lenses. In "Red Beard" he often shot his wide
master shots with a 500mm lens for the compression of perspective, creating
a flattened sort of look like Japanese panel paintings (he also lit the
shots to an f/22 to keep a deep-focus look even on a telephoto lens). On
the other hand, many of my other favorite directors -- Welles, Polanski,
Kubrick -- favored wide-angle lenses. And then there was Ozu and Hitchcock,
who both favored the 50mm lens for the most "normal" perspective. I sort of
choose focal lengths by what feels right for the story at that moment.
Sometimes longer lenses feel more intimate and other times, wide-angles do.
Sometimes wide-angle lenses can be distancing too, especially because of the
way they stretch space, making objects seem farther apart.
It's certainly true that you sense the nearness of the camera to the actor
when shooting up close with a wide angle lens, which creates a certain
psychological effect -- "intimacy" as you call it. On the other hand, it's
also not the most flattering way to shoot a human face and with DV, you have
the added issue of the increased depth-of-field -- which is great when you
want to create these complex compositions like Welles with multiple actors
and objects all in focus, but it makes it harder to isolate the face against
the background, which is often too much in-focus with wide-angle lenses. In
other words, when you want multiple planes to be in focus, DV is great, but
when you want a shallow-focus effect on medium to wide-angle lenses, it gets
difficult to throw an unimportant background out-of-focus.
>So you either have to bring
>your 35mm in and lose intimacy because the actors have a huge machine in
>front of their face, or settle for the distancing effect of telephoto.
You make it sound like 35mm is a no-win scenario for getting intimate
performances from actors, which is nonsense. "Persona" and "Cries and
Whispers" were shot in 35mm and feel pretty intimate. There are plenty of
movies with good performances from actors shot close with wide-angle lenses
in 35mm, and there are plenty of intimate dramas shot on long lenses. It
just depends on the actor and how well they deal with the mechanics of
shooting a movie.
And Polanski felt that the closeness of a large camera created an
uncomfortable quality in some actor's performance because it was a little
intimidating. He used this for effect in many of his movies ("Replusion"
being an obvious example).
>If your aesthetic is to use a focal length that approximates the human eye,
DV
>is a pretty good compromise.
To me, the lens that best replicates human vision is the 50mm anamorphic
lens in 35mm 2.35 : 1 -- it has the vertical perspective of a 50mm lens but
the horizontal view of a 25mm lens (of course, you could recreate this in DV
by cropping a wide-angle lens image vertically and showing it on a large,
wide screen -- you'd just have the lower resolution to deal with).
Polanski used a 40mm anamorphic for almost all of "Chinatown" for similar
reasons.
Anyway, I don't feel that a director who wishes to shoot his performances up
close with a wider-angle lens cannot get great performances using 35mm.
It's true, however, that the small size of DV cameras allows them to take up
less space in a room and thus have a lower "profile" -- obviously. However,
professional actors have managed to deal with larger cameras filming them in
the past (in fact, 35mm cameras are smaller and quieter than they've ever
been -- the physical size of a Moviecam SL with a 400' mag isn't that
different than a betacam). But I suppose if you're working with
non-professional actors, I can see why it might be a good idea to sort of
"hide" the cameras from their view. I'm not saying that some professional
actors wouldn't enjoy being shot with smaller cameras that are less
distracting -- I'm just saying that most manage to forget the mechanics of
the filmmaking process once everything is rolling. And even if you shrink
the size of the camera, the size of the operator holding it doesn't shrink
too.
Someday we'll have digital cameras the size of DV camcorders but with the
quality of 35mm and we'll get the best of everything.
David Mullen
Gary Pollard
> >The problem with this though, in my view, is that long lenses don't have
> the
> >same intimacy as a close lens on a wider angle.
>
> There are some directors who feel the opposite is true, that the shallower
> focus of longer lenses can isolate a figure in the frame better, reducing
> visual distractions and allowing the eye to concentrate on the face of the
> actor.
In terms of focus that might be the case. In terms of perspective it
certainly is not.
> It's certainly true that you sense the nearness of the camera to the actor
> when shooting up close with a wide angle lens, which creates a certain
> psychological effect -- "intimacy" as you call it.
I'm not talking about a wide angle lens, but about essentially a "normal"
lens. Or at most a slightly longer than focal length normal lens, maybe a
75mm to 80mm (the equivalent of a good still camera "portrait" lens).
Personally I don't like to go longer than that UNLESS I am going for a
flatter stylised pictorial effect, as in say, "Death in Venice". But then
I'd argue that false perspective works against the immersion you value so
much. (For a similar reason, I NEVER have on camera zooms in my work. When
my eye knows how to zoom I'll change my mind.)
> You have
> the added issue of the increased depth-of-field -- which is great when you
> want to create these complex compositions like Welles with multiple actors
> and objects all in focus,
Yea, the depth of field can be a bitch, particularly if you work in tight
locations as I often have to, but that's what ND filters are for.
> >So you either have to bring
> >your 35mm in and lose intimacy because the actors have a huge machine in
> >front of their face, or settle for the distancing effect of telephoto.
>
> You make it sound like 35mm is a no-win scenario for getting intimate
> performances from actors, which is nonsense. "Persona" and "Cries and
> Whispers" were shot in 35mm and feel pretty intimate.
What I'm talking about is an intimacy on the set as much as in the finished
project. And it's something many actors I've worked with feel. (It's why
many hate three-camera TV drama even more.) I've already mentioned Bergman,
but the searing closeness he and his actors achieve is almost unique. And I
think it's achieved because Bergman and his actors OVERCOME that piece of
machinery, not because it helps them in any way. Even many of the actors who
have worked on DV projects in the USA say exactly the same thing.
> >If your aesthetic is to use a focal length that approximates the human
eye,
> DV
> >is a pretty good compromise.
>
> To me, the lens that best replicates human vision is the 50mm anamorphic
> lens in 35mm 2.35 : 1 -- it has the vertical perspective of a 50mm lens
but
> the horizontal view of a 25mm lens (of course, you could recreate this in
DV
> by cropping a wide-angle lens image vertically and showing it on a large,
> wide screen -- you'd just have the lower resolution to deal with).
I like the 2.35:1 format a lot, but I wonder if it really does approximate
to the eye. The classical artists, and some physiologists I've read,
believed the Golden Mean, pretty close to the standard screen dimensions,
approximated human vision better. But I nevertheless share your preference
for wide screen.
> I'm not saying that some professional
> actors wouldn't enjoy being shot with smaller cameras that are less
> distracting -- I'm just saying that most manage to forget the mechanics of
> the filmmaking process once everything is rolling. And even if you shrink
> the size of the camera, the size of the operator holding it doesn't shrink
> too.
I've seen great intimate documentaries of families shot on DV, and even on
video. They've been achieved only because the family has essentially
forgotten that the camera and the camera-men are there. A good camera
operatonr can become invisible. I'm not so sure a 35mm, or even larger,
set-up can. One example was a series we did on "Happiness". In one episode
the director was in the bedroom of a six year old girl, just chatting with
her as she played, and asking her what made her happy. He was shooting on a
PD100. The naturalness of the footage he got would have been unachievable
even with Betacam SP, and impossible with 35mm (particularly with a crew).
Sure, you'd have got something, but it wouldn't have been that. That wasn't
the only time in the series it worked.
In drama, many actors have said that they find the technology disappearing
into the background instead of ruling the set or location liberating. As a
director, so do I. I don't like performance taking second place to
technology, and I find it's one of the main things that pisses actors off.
In other cases I've known actors, rock-singers, and camera-men who don't
think it's real shooting unless there's a bloody BIG camera on the
location - the size DOES matter, philosophy.
In many ways. you and I are not in serious disagreement, but I still feel
that DV works to good advantage in a great many more situations than you
seem willing to acknowledge. Of course 35mm can work too. But it's not as
simple as 35mm being the all purpose work horse and DV being a poor relation
you should use only when you have no money, which is the impression I
sometimes get that some working in the system have.
It's more of a question of swings and roundabouts. We gain something in both
formats. We lose other things. Perhaps you tend to minimise what you lose in
35mm (and I certainly believe that imtimacy is part of it); and perhaps I
tend to minimise what you lose in DV. Or maybe we just want to make
different movies. But I think these are all factors to be considered. I
certainly believe that the cost of 35mm image quality, apart from financial,
is often a mechanisation or industrialisation of the set, and exactly the
lack of intimacy that some complain of. The means of production is not
transparent, and the bigger the format, the less transparent, I believe, it
becomes. Not only on the set, but even in terms of what gets financed in the
first place.
Gary
David McCall
"Gary Pollard" <gpol...@allivigator.com> wrote in message news:ak4mt4$2n...@imsp212.netvigator.com...
>
> I'd argue that false perspective works against the immersion you value so
> much. (For a similar reason, I NEVER have on camera zooms in my work. When
> my eye knows how to zoom I'll change my mind.)
>
a fan of zooms, but it isn't because my ey is unable to go
between concentrating on a small portion of the view in
front of me, and then adjust to take in the whole view. It
isn't an optical zoom, it's more like a DVE effect in our mind :-)
Optics play a very small roll in our vision. The eye mearely
gathers data about shapes and color, and then builds a
virtual 3D model in our head. It is this model that we look at.
When you make a movie you are just gathering information
that will be displayed before an audiance. Each member of
the audiance will have a diferent interpretation of what they
have just seen.
That's why the tradition is to provide an establishing shot,
so people can figure out where they are, and then get much
closer so we can take in the details of the faces, so we can
know what the character's are (this is especially important in
video due to the lower resolution). Once that process is out
of the way, you can shoot it any way you want, because
you are now just adding to that little 3D model that got created
in everybody's mind.
David
Gary Pollard
>
> "Gary Pollard" <gpol...@allivigator.com> wrote in message
news:ak4mt4$2n...@imsp212.netvigator.com...
> >
> > I'd argue that false perspective works against the immersion you value
so
> > much. (For a similar reason, I NEVER have on camera zooms in my work.
When
> > my eye knows how to zoom I'll change my mind.)
> >
> Hmm, does your eye do cuts and dissolves?
Flick your eye from point A to point B, and effectively you have a cut. Your
brain registers it more instantaneously than a zip pan. WITHIN a sequence
cuts are still the predominant way of getting from A to B. Dissolves are
rarely used within a sequence, but between them, when they are effectively a
paragraph end. The eye can't dissolve, but as you're jumping perhaps from an
interior to a beach you are doing something that goes beyond vision anyway.
That doesn't change the fact that within a sequence, in traditional
narrative, most of us are less distanced by a cut. I've seen neophyte studio
directors who thought that it might be cool in a three camera- two person
interview, to dissolve between interviewer, interviewee, and wide shot as
they talked in real time. It looks like shit, distances you like crazy, and
those are reasons you almost never see it except as a bridge.
> Not that I am
> a fan of zooms, but it isn't because my ey is unable to go
> between concentrating on a small portion of the view in
> front of me, and then adjust to take in the whole view. It
> isn't an optical zoom, it's more like a DVE effect in our mind :-)
Well, this may be one of the varying mileage things, but it seems to me that
if you give me a wide shot and my eye hunts around in it, THEN the film is
inspiring a physiologically more true response. Even a cut to a closer shot
is closer to what the brain and the eye will do than a zoom. The eye never
does a slow zoom, and a fast zoom - so popular when those lenses first
appeared - looks like cheap crap. A detail of a scene may catch your
attention, but I don't think you are zooming in to it, whether fast or slow.
I HATE zooms, although I'll accept them for shooting stills in a documentary
situation. In a drama I might cheat by disguising them in a track (we can
after all move closer to subjects), but unless I'm going for a Jansco or
Visconti kind of "wandering around a tableau" effect, which draws attention
to its own artificiality, I will absolutely never use them. Zooms are Satan.
;-)
> That's why the tradition is to provide an establishing shot,
This is more of a Hollywood tradition than a necessity. The situation is
very different in much international cinema. Here in Hong Kong, to take the
closest example to me, movies - and even TV - rarely work on that basis. The
same for Japan and many other countries. In fact, one of the things that
first drew my interest in Asian cinema is that they don't DO that standard
wide master shot, cut in for closer shots thing, which historically was
devised not for elevated reasons like allowing people to build up 3D mind
pictures, but to allow producers to get enough material to recut the movie
any way they wanted and maintain control, (precisely why John Ford, for one,
refused to do it.) Here, a new shot tends to be a new setup for maximum
impact or clarity, and that's a major part of the dynamism of films from
this part of the world. It's one of the good things I have absorbed from
working here, and it's a way I always work. Not that you never start a scene
with a wide shot, but often it really destroy the dynamism of the situation.
Gary
Steven J. Weller
"Gary Pollard" <gpol...@allivigator.com> writes:
For what it's worth, the 'first' version of Evil Dead was actually the
second version of Evil Dead. Evil Dead was originally shot in Super-8,
and ran about 45 minutes. It was this version, carted around to
businesses and homes along with a projector and a roll-up screen, that
was used to raise the financing for the 35mm version that saw
theatrical release. This was before home video (practically speaking,
at least) but the same thing could work today, with DV...
...except that it's been tried, and tried, and tried. There was even a
company here in LA some years ago (saw their booth at ShowBiz Expo)
that did nothing but make short, cheap versions of proposed features,
to show to potential investors.
It's not the technology that's changed so much as it is the
marketplace. I'm hired on to a feature right now that's shooting a
trailer to pre-sell some foreign (they already have their production
budget for 35mm); they're shooting DV. What they don't necessarily
understand (and this comes from my POV as a production designer) is
that what's going to sell a foreign market isn't just the novelty of
moving pictures; it's the overall production value. Rough lighting,
mediocre locations, and little or no art direction aren't going to
impress anybody with money to spend. A 'roll your own' sample, unless
it's incredibly well-produced, can do you more harm than good in the
long run.
--
Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary
Steven
Gary Pollard
news:ak7rjb$2r8a$1...@zook.lafn.org...
> In article <ak3u8c$3d...@imsp212.netvigator.com>
> "Gary Pollard" <gpol...@allivigator.com> writes:
>
> > I think it's early days for DV yet, but a less than technically
first-rate
> > low budget movie can act as a calling card, and then get reshot. One of
the
> > best examples of this is Sam Raimi, whose first "Evil Dead" was pretty
> > powerful even if very rough-edged. "Evil Dead 2" WAS exactly the same
film,
> > with some of the same cast and crew, remade with more money. And it had
the
> > distribution system more firmly behind it than the first one ever did.
>
> For what it's worth, the 'first' version of Evil Dead was actually the
> second version of Evil Dead. Evil Dead was originally shot in Super-8,
> and ran about 45 minutes. It was this version, carted around to
> businesses and homes along with a projector and a roll-up screen, that
> was used to raise the financing for the 35mm version that saw
> theatrical release. This was before home video (practically speaking,
> at least) but the same thing could work today, with DV...
In case we're confusing people here, it's true: ultimately there were what
you might call three versions of "Evil Dead". The first was "Within the
Woods", a 32 minute Super 8 sampler that Raimi showed to dentists, doctors,
small businessmen, etc., to raise money to make the first FULL version in
35mm, which is the one I was referring to as "The Evil Dead".
That first 35mm version was the one that became his Hollywood calling card.
What I refer to as the second one was the remake of the first 35mm version -
"Evil Dead 2 - Dead by Dawn". Some refer to it as a sequel, but if you watch
them both you'll see it's much closer to a slicker remake than a sequel.
Gary
Steven J. Weller
"Gary Pollard" <gpol...@allivigator.com> writes:
> In case we're confusing people here, it's true: ultimately there were what
> you might call three versions of "Evil Dead". The first was "Within the
> Woods", a 32 minute Super 8 sampler that Raimi showed to dentists, doctors,
> small businessmen, etc., to raise money to make the first FULL version in
> 35mm, which is the one I was referring to as "The Evil Dead".
>
> That first 35mm version was the one that became his Hollywood calling card.
> What I refer to as the second one was the remake of the first 35mm version -
> "Evil Dead 2 - Dead by Dawn". Some refer to it as a sequel, but if you watch
> them both you'll see it's much closer to a slicker remake than a sequel.
In the context of the original question, I'd say that Within the Woods
is closer to what he was asking about that Evil Dead. ED1 was a 35mm
feature, which was bought and theatrically distributed by (IIRC) DEG.
It costs tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of 1970s
dollars to make; low budget by feature standards, to be sure, but miles
and away more than the average roll-your-own, credit-card-financed DV
feature.
A better example to the original question's point might be the
ubiquitous El Mariachi. Made for around $7K, cut on 3/4" u-matic video
at a public access TV station video, and intended for the lowest of
low-budget DTV distribution, it served as RR's calling card in H'wood.
The finished (or rather, re-finished) product got some theatrical
distribution, but not all that much. It was mostly a festival and PR
thing, and was later remade, almost shot-for-shot, as Desperado. Evil
Dead II is very similar to Evil Dead, but both went out to the same
general market and in the same general way. El Mariachi and Desperado
were basically the same film, but went out in very different ways, to
different audiences.
Gary Pollard
> In article <ak9ap3$lf...@imsp212.netvigator.com>
> In the context of the original question, I'd say that Within the Woods
> is closer to what he was asking about that Evil Dead. ED1 was a 35mm
> feature, which was bought and theatrically distributed by (IIRC) DEG.
> It costs tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of 1970s
> dollars to make; low budget by feature standards, to be sure, but miles
> and away more than the average roll-your-own, credit-card-financed DV
> feature.
However, AFAIK "Within the Woods" was never shown to Hollywood execs as a
calling card.
Gary
Steven J. Weller
"Gary Pollard" <gpol...@allivigator.com> writes:
Not to H'wood, but to investors who went on to invest... none of them
are perfect analogies; I just think that the 35mm Evil Dead is a fairly
far cry away from someone's $2500 DV epic.
To me, that comparison is where the danger lies. A lot of folks are
out there with $500 1-chippers and a bundled copy of iMovie, thinking
that they're going to make a movie so wonderful that H'wood's going to
shower them with money to re-mmake it in 35mm and release it on 3000
screens. Is that possible? Sure. Someone wins the lottery, too.
Doesn't make buying tickets a good investment strategy, and there are
200-300 people every year in the US who win multi-million dollar
jackpots.
One of the downsides to the DV revolution is that it becomes an
extension of the "screenplay = lottery" mentality. Everybody thinks
they're about to strike it rich without any real investment in time or
money, because there's a magic box that replaces things like skill,
training, talent, experience, money, etc. Has the scenario originally
suggested - a no-budget DV feature being bought and remade as a
theatrical release film - actually happened yet? Not that I know of.
The closest examples to that are something like Within the Woods, which
was remade and sold, but not with H'wood money, and El Mariachi, which
was sold, re-posted, and then later remade as Desperado.
One thing that both of those films have in common is that the makers
(Rami and Rodriguez) had been successfully making films since childhood
- Rodriguez's BedHead had won awards and received nation-wide air play
before anyone ever heard of EM, and Rami's S-8 films had screened
locally, to paying audiences, before ED was even just a gleam in his
eye.
Another thing both films have in common were very modest expectations;
both are genre films intended for the lowest of entry-level markets.
When I first saw ED it was literally at a drive-in, paired with some
grade-z programmer for a summer double feature. EM was originally
posted on 3/4" video, and that was the format of the master that was to
be delivered to a Mexican DTV distributor. Nobody was trying to
'strike it rich' with these projects; they were labors of love and
attempts to get a toe in the door.
Tony Mueller
:
: Of course, when (and not if) Digital projection hits the cinemas, that
could
: be less of an issue. I've seen my DV work projected straight from DV onto
a
: full size conference hall screen. It was a pretty overwhelming experience.
: It looked a LOT better than even I had expected. In fact, one cinema here
: ONLY shows DV projected from the original format - mostly low budget
horror
: films. Most of them are awful, but the format isnt the problem.
:
: Gary
:
I've also seen my work projected on the big screen, straight from DV(The
Tivoli Theater, St. Louis). The director of the film festival asked the
director of the movie if it was shot on 16MM ... he said it looked better at
that size than Clerks did on the same screen when it was in theaters.
I was really surprised because I shot it with a Canon ZR10 in black and
white with crappy lighting (although really bright, I used a single 1K with
a ton of diffusion).
Tony
Bob & Kay Harding
> Gary Pollard wrote:
>
> > "doug lauber" <dugs...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> > news:3D63F33E...@earthlink.net...
> >
> > > > Do you think a good romantic comedy can't be made on DV? I'd bet
you're
> > > > wrong on that. Whether something is funny and/or romantic is not,
for
> > me, a
> > > > function of how glossy it is? Personally I can't stand the
> > cinematography of
> > > > "What's Up Doc" but it still works as a romantic comedy.
> > >
> > > I liked Tadpole and apparently the audience with me also liked it.
> > > But, I can't help but think that it would've been better in
Brent Geery
> A better example to the original question's point might be the
> ubiquitous El Mariachi. Made for around $7K, cut on 3/4" u-matic video
> at a public access TV station video, and intended for the lowest of
> low-budget DTV distribution, it served as RR's calling card in H'wood.
> The finished (or rather, re-finished) product got some theatrical
> distribution, but not all that much. It was mostly a festival and PR
> thing, and was later remade, almost shot-for-shot, as Desperado.
Have you watched both movies? They barely resemble one another, much
less being the same film remade!
--
BRENT - The Usenet typo king. :)
Fast Times At Ridgemont High Info http://www.FastTimesAtRidgemontHigh.org
Voted #87 - American Film Institute's Top 100 Funniest American Films
Gary Pollard
news:v4hkmukkoumosejjq...@4ax.com...
> > The finished (or rather, re-finished) product got some theatrical
> > distribution, but not all that much. It was mostly a festival and PR
> > thing, and was later remade, almost shot-for-shot, as Desperado.
>
> Have you watched both movies? They barely resemble one another, much
> less being the same film remade!
That was my impression.
Gary