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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: Bubble: the new Steve Soderbergh film theatrical and DVD release
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-28-2006 03:41 PM
I don't think Soderbergh's complaints let him off the hook. He's committing the same crime.
First of all, what's with the 'scope aspect ratio on this kind of a movie? It's a small drama about ordinary people. Artistically, he would have brought the point across a lot better if he had videotaped the show in 1.77:1 ratio, or even 4:3 on ordinary consumer camcorders. It is so pretentious as hell to shoot something that obviously looks like video, but crop it to a CinemaScope aspect ratio? Durp.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
And, yes, I'm going to keep beating the drum of just how shitty digital movies look when run through a film step. To any movie makers that might be reading this: hey, buddy, you're not fooling anyone -we know it's video! Stop fucking up the image quality by making it pretend to be something it is not! Any director of Soderbergh's stature is going to have little problem of getting enough funding to shoot a feature on film.
If the director is going to make a statement of how great digital video-making is (I refuse to call it "digital film making") then by all means stand behind the video look of that process. Seriously, HD quality video shot well really looks pretty great. What the hell is wrong with leaving the video looking like video? You can still use all sorts of dramatic lighting, atmospheric effects and then drop in lots of visual effects, colorizing effects and more in post.
Maybe some of the folks in the indie movie racket might pick up on this. Maybe they'll forego that pretentious chemical film-look step and leave the video image quality intact.
Little edited in addtion:
Sin City and SW: Episode III are notable exceptions of movies shot on video that look pretty good. But I suspect those movies were not put through some straight yet crude optical film print step to try to mimic the film look. They look as though some other computer-based (and likely more costly and time consuming) process was applied instead. Nevetheless, I think Sin City would have looked just as good, if not better, if the video look had been left intact.
Collateral deserves a somewhat honorable mention. However, it was pretty easy to tell apart the film-based elements from the stuff shot on video. And some of the video had some evidence of image smearing, likely the downside of shooting in some low light conditions. Camcorder CCDs, even the big expensive ones in those HD cameras, are going to perform only so well.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-29-2006 01:22 PM
Lots of stores put movies out on the shelves too early. Our Wal-Mart here had copies of "The Aristocrats" out a week early. I found that out the hard way by going to the Hastings store nearby to rent the thing, "It doesn't come out until next Tuesday."
quote: Jeremy Jorgenson
I actually agree with a lot of what you're saying, Bobby ... that part about aspect ratios & pretentiousness just bugged me. Then again, how often do you find artists that aren't pretentious to some degree?
Artists who are pretentious is another whole ball of wax. It reminds me of a comment made by a story board artist I know: "all actors are whores."
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Still, I contend shooting a movie on HD video tape, yet framing it at 2.39:1 is indeed a pretentious act. You have a entirely different video origination process trying to act like a film process. It is copying the CinemaScope aspect ratio, a film process. Then they throw the imagery through a photo-chemical step to try to remove the video-ish look many associate with the 6 O'Clock news or daytime soap operas. Again, this is at the height of pretentiousness.
The digital movie makers go on and on about how "digital" is so much better than film, but then they try to make their "digital" product look like film -and fail most of the time in doing so. In the end, they just wind up screwing up the look of their video to where it looks a lot worse in quality than what I see in videotaped news, sports or even soap opera programs.
Finally, you have a numbers issue. Cropping a 1080 HD video image to 2.39:1 throws away a lot of pixels. The cropping cuts that 1080 number down to around 800 vertical pixels. For the 'scope print, the existing pixels are magnified even further. The image quality would actually be better if the movie maker had left the entire 1.77:1 image intact and had it printed flat. Basically, it's like taking the very worst aspects of Super35 movie print making and stooping to a quality standard even lower.
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