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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Author
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Topic: Interstellar
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-22-2014 10:18 AM
quote: Mark Ogden
There’s something else to be said about Interstellar. For all of Nolan’s furious “I shoot FILM” chest-pounding, it’s not that good looking a picture. Some of the IMAX footage is very well done, but frankly the 35mm photography ranges from OK to horrible. I saw the 70mm print that is playing the Ziegfeld in New York City, and I saw most of the film again in a pristine 4K DCP at a suburban multiplex. Both times I noticed very dense blacks with little to no shadow detail in some scenes, optical enlargements with huge grain, considerable scene-to-scene variations in sharpness, and a couple of shots that were demonstrably out of focus (the reverse shot of Ellen Burstyn on the hospital bed being one of them). THIS is what he considers so superior to digital?
Bad cinematography is just bad cinematography. It doesn't matter if it's shot on film or video. But I'm sure some of the fans of digital will be blaming film rather than the questionable artistic & technical choices made in shooting Interstellar.
I've seen 70mm look absolutely fantastic and far better than any digital show I've seen, both in 5/70mm and 15/70mm. But that 70mm footage had things that really let 70mm show off its capabilities. Interstellar didn't do that. And I'm afraid Quentin Tarantino's upcoming 70mm extravagazna isn't going to show off the best capabilities of 70mm either.
To provide a digital example of bad cinematography, I thought the cinematography in X-Men: Days of Future Past was pretty bad. Some of the imagery suffered from the same problems I saw with Interstellar (Bad lighting, soft imagery, missed focus, etc). I've seen a lot movies made using the Arri Alexa, but this was one of the worst examples. I don't know what they did between lens choices, camera settings and work done in "film look" processing and color grading. Whatever it was it didn't work well. The camera's video DNA was screaming out VIDEO just as badly as some early digital productions. I was surprised to see that going on in 2014.
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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 11-22-2014 01:54 PM
I'm not really taking about the relative merits of this film or others, cinematography-wise, be they film or digital. I'm talking about Nolan's arrogance.
I don't follow the X-Men films, so I'll take your word that the last one looked bad. But I thought Guardians of The Galaxy looked terrific, as did Rise of The Planet of The Apes. I thought Gone Girl looked great too, but truth be told that is an example of a movie that I felt would have worked better had it been shot on film. As far as 35mm goes, I thought that Interstellar was unimpressive, but that The Grand Budapest Hotel was beautifully shot.
There are a number of recent movies that originated on 35mm, among them: Tammy, Edge of Tomorrow, Magic in The Moonlight, Foxcatcher, St. Vincent, Booyhood, The Hundred-Foot Journey, Snowpiercer, Dracula Untold, The Judge, and many others. I don't recall the directors of those films making the kind of sweeping, grandiose statements about shooting film that Nolan does, the pompous, this-is-what-the-cool-guys-do elitism. It's nauseating, really. And then after all that, he comes up with this mediocre looking picture and insists on 70mm distribution for it. In one fell swoop, he not only manages to make himself look like a fool, but he also weakens his own position on the subject and diminishes the craft of film cinematography as a whole (and let's be clear: hitting focus is pretty goddamned elementary). Possibly this was all the fault of his cinematographer, but his statements about film being superior to digital are his and he must now account for what he has wrought.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 11-22-2014 02:59 PM
quote: Mark Ogden
I don't recall the directors of those films making the kind of sweeping, grandiose statements about shooting film that Nolan does, the pompous, this-is-what-the-cool-guys-do elitism. It's nauseating, really. And then after all that, he comes up with this mediocre looking picture and insists on 70mm distribution for it.
I do understand what you are saying and I too was a little underwhelmed at the IMAX presentation after there was all this hype about the movie being filmed and presented the way Nolan intended it to be. I know a few people who went to see the movie in 15/70 (and it was their first IMAX movie) and they were left a little underwhelmed. But I also think that over time people will come to appreciate this movie for what it is, I am starting to feel this way myself and I think (and hope) there will be a longer directors version on DVD and Bluray, I think this movie warrants it. I also think the movie will play in the museums IMAX locations for a long while, perhaps it will become standard fare.
I don't think the cinematography was bad or poor in any way. I think we might just see a nomination for cinematography when the Oscar season comes along. I think the expectation of some super incredible high resolution picture blurs things a little.
For the other movies you mentioned, Christopher Nolan is really the only director that has been able to create a loyal following with his "film elitism" push. But one has to remember that his appeal (and box office numbers) are far wider than some of the other movies you mentioned, I cannot even tell you who directed those movies. Nolan often talks about how he uses film, shoots special effects scenes within the camera, uses real props and sets etc etc. He uses all this including his "I don't have an email" thing to create his following, and overall he has a huge following.
Overall the general public seem to be liking this movie. The movie is doing record numbers in IMAX locations and the movie is tracking ahead of Inception and Gravity for worldwide box office numbers. The domestic numbers are where the movie is lagging, I still think there is some backlash to the whole (see it in 70mm/35mm) in that people just will not want to see it in digital, the 70mm 5perf numbers are not encouraging and I wonder why some even bothered. The movie should finish somewhere near $600 million worldwide which is not bad considering it a sci-fi movie that is not a sequel.
Finally, the fact that everyone is still talking about the movie makes me think that this movie is doing what is was intended to do.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-22-2014 03:17 PM
quote: Mark Ogden
I'm not really taking about the relative merits of this film or others, cinematography-wise, be they film or digital. I'm talking about Nolan's arrogance.
The term "arrogance" might be a bit much in describing Nolan's attitude with using an all film work flow. At the very least he has put a certain amount of hubris and bluster behind the effort. Other movies are still being shot on film. But hardly any of them are using an old-school film-in/film-out work flow. They're scanning film elements and then processing them in digital intermediate. And then some of those movies shot on film aren't being output on film at all (unless you count a safety 35mm archival print).
Obviously some of that film first attitude was needed in order to convince Warner Bros. and Paramount to order an inventory of 4/35mm, 5/70mm and 15/70mm film prints -particularly after Paramount had previously ended 35mm film print orders on its movie releases. If I'm correct, I think this is the only feature film to support 4/35, 5/70 and 15/70 in its original release. I don't think any movie has ever done that before. The movie distributors weren't going to order those prints without some vocal theatrics on the part of Nolan. Shooting in real IMAX film format would have been an absolute waste of time and money if Interstellar had been distributed only in digital format.
Unfortunately with all the hype built up around the film-based DNA of Interstellar it raised expectations for those of us who give a damn about film and its potential. Many of us, myself included, were disappointed. The production crew should have done a much better job lighting and shooting this movie.
I still wonder if the film crew had its hands tied in some respects to how much lighting they could use on set, or even how sharp they could shoot an image. In a conversation with an experienced ASC-member DP on Facebook I learned there is a certain amount of pressure from actors to not light sets so bright. If the camera can shoot in dimmer conditions then by all means let's light the set less. Let's see if we can shoot by candlelight just like in Barry Lyndon!. And then there's also the fact that actors are age conscious. The star of Interstellar is in his 40's. I wonder if he and other actors pushed for softer focus. Even with shots missing focus I could see that dude is developing some serious "turkey neck."
quote: Mark Ogden
I don't follow the X-Men films, so I'll take your word that the last one looked bad. But I thought Guardians of The Galaxy looked terrific, as did Rise of The Planet of The Apes. I thought Gone Girl looked great too, but truth be told that is an example of a movie that I felt would have worked better had it been shot on film.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier was the Marvel movie that directly preceded X-Men: Days of Future Past. Both movies were shot with the Alexa, but the Captain America movie looked a whole lot better, and that's even despite the use of anamorphic lenses. If anything I would have expected the X-Men movie to look sharper and have better depth of field. There was a lot of instances where the X-Men movie looked like it had been shot with a cheap video camera. The footage had me thinking about old analog tube-based cameras.
Gone Girl might have been better shot on film, but its imagery (shot in 6K with the Red Epic Dragon) was heavily processed in post production. I watched a couple featurettes produced by Adobe about the post production of Gone Girl. One thing the crew did frequently was compose loosely shooting in 6K and then crop inward where they wanted before down-sampling to 4K. Obviously they wanted a lot of flexibility in tweaking shots in post production. They might not have had so much flexibility if dealing with film-based sources. However, 5/65mm can provide one hell of a high quality source.
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
I don't think the cinematography was bad or poor in any way. I think we might just see a nomination for cinematography when the Oscar season comes along.
IIRC The Dark Knight didn't get any Oscar nominations for cinematography. And it looked quite a bit better in every respect than Interstellar. Both the 35mm 'scope footage and IMAX 15/65mm footage in TDK was shot better.
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Bill Brandenstein
Master Film Handler
Posts: 413
From: Santa Clarita, CA
Registered: Jul 2013
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posted 11-22-2014 03:38 PM
quote: Mark Ogden
There are a number of recent movies that originated on 35mm, among them: Tammy, Edge of Tomorrow, Magic in The Moonlight, Foxcatcher, St. Vincent, Booyhood, The Hundred-Foot Journey, Snowpiercer, Dracula Untold, The Judge, and many others.
quote: Bobby Henderson
Other movies are still being shot on film. But hardly any of them are using an old-school film-in/film-out work flow. They're scanning film elements and then processing them in digital intermediate.
If "Hundred-Foot" is any measure of the state of affairs, it's a sad one. I thought the look of the movie was ruined by too much contrast and color palette enhancement, presumably with post-production to blame, and was rather detail-dull. Soft and unnatural. Tell me if you saw otherwise, but if that's the best we can get for shooting on film, we're in trouble. Fact is, we all know it doesn't have to be that way. At least Nolan gets credit for preserving an all-analog image workflow whenever possible.
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Bill Brandenstein
Master Film Handler
Posts: 413
From: Santa Clarita, CA
Registered: Jul 2013
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posted 12-01-2014 08:01 PM
Interstellar screening, Black Friday, Nov. 28, 2014 (3:20pm)
Location: UA Colorado Center 9, Denver
Format paid for via online ticketing: 15/70 film
Actual screening format: 2K LieMax
Seats: row 6, center (just perfect). Sold-out show, quiet and good audience (except for the guy in front of my nephew who clearly smelled in need of a shower)
Distance driven with relatives to see this show: 150 miles
Auditorium grade: A
Audio grade: A
Picture grade: A- (relative to digital projection), due to hot-spotting
C+ (relative to ultimate potential)
First off, I must compliment the manager on duty, Leonard Gomez, who was working as hard or harder than any of his employees in many capacities while handling large crowds. Then, in hearing our plight, he offered to refund our ticket price if we didn't like the show AND give passes. All things considered, the obvious pixelization on the screen and silver-screen hotspot didn't wreck the experience. In order of priority you need it 1) big with 2) loud and clean audio and 3) Imax film. As much as I hate to admit it, 2 out of 3 still works, though my relatives had little idea what they were missing by not seeing the film version.
Anyway, we liked the show well enough, and the manager gave us passes anyway. He also expressed his frustration with Imax Corporation technical support, explaining that the sound "computer" (that's what he called it) wouldn't track with the film and was the reason for switching to digital, a situation that had been unresolved for days. He also mentioned how tough it had been to get film equipment running that's been sitting around for years unused, and I thanked him for making the effort.
As for the show, the aisle lights were extremely dim, the popping noises were gone, the image was acceptably bright, and the sound was awesomely powerful and extremely clean, plus the room is unusually dead and well-baffled. Seldom have I heard anything played that loud and not be strident, and it wasn't. The bass was in the range of 110dB at peaks and never felt strained - that's impressive. Now, there were two places in the movie where what was spoken wasn't intelligible to my ears (but younger ears could've coped fine, I think), and so it was no great loss.
Was it a good movie? Well, I can't add anything to what's already been said, but it was an experience everyone in my party was glad to have had, and the presentation was effective and free of significant distractions.
One final comment, concerning origination on 35mm anamorphic film: even in only 2K, the difference between fuzzy cornfields and full-frame 15/70 capture wasn't subtle. That's just wrong. Those cornfields shouldn't have ever looked fuzzy, as some of you've already noted.
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