Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Informant over exposed?

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 09-18-2009, 03:53 AM:

I just watched The Informant and I felt like a significant portion of the movie was over exposed. There are many scenes where characters are standing in front of sunlight windows and they are being washed out by the light.

The reason I posted this here is to see if anyone else noticed this or if it might be the sign of a problem.

If this was intentional, I'm curious to know if anyone has any rational for why Soderbergh shot so many scenes that way.

Posted by Paavo Mardi (Member # 4962) on 09-18-2009, 08:14 AM:

I´ve also seen it on different optically made prints. Maybe labs are trying to gain picture contrast and color saturation? We had two prints of "Ice age 3" and both had overexposed Fox openings. One reel of our "Public enemies" had too saturated colors.

Posted by Karl Borowski (Member # 5424) on 09-18-2009, 08:32 AM:

Not that I have seen it myself, but, your description doesn't sound like over-exposure.

Most likely it is a bad step in the optical printing process. . .

Posted by Richard P. May (Member # 3598) on 09-18-2009, 09:57 AM:

I haven't seen it either (and after reading this morning's LA Times review, don't expect to), but this is typical Soderburg. He acts as his own cinematographer, and uses odd processes and lighting for effect. Remember THE GOOD GERMAN, where the publicity said it was made to look like B&W films of the forties, but it ended up looking like a bad print from a multi generation dupe?
The labs don't control how the prints look (on purpose, anyway). The filmmaker gives final approval and prints are supposed to duplicate that result.

DM

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 09-18-2009, 10:38 AM:

I was thinking the same thing when I screened it. The whole movie had a fogging appearance to it once it got past the opening WB logo. Since the entire feature appeared this way I chalked it up to stylization.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 09-18-2009, 01:34 PM:

It was probably shot on video and therefore the highs (brights) are clipped.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 09-18-2009, 01:56 PM:

It was shot on video with the REDone camera. Soderberg is Mr. Video.

Posted by Joe Elliott (Member # 4006) on 09-18-2009, 07:39 PM:

We had a similar print of up where the first two reels were too dark, and the last 3 were too bright. Also our print of the Ugly Truth is too bright also. The colors are nice and rich, but it seems like the contrast was turned way up when it was made. Each were noted on my film reports, but were not bad enough to request replacement reels. Both were TES, but I'm not sure which labs they may have been printed at. Might be worth looking into if it is happening more often.

Edit: Oh, but by the way, our print of Informant looks fine, so it is probably a lab issue.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-18-2009, 07:45 PM:

How bright are your screens, Joe? An underlit screen (like a drive-in) would probably look dandy on clipped highlights like is being discussed above.

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 09-18-2009, 08:11 PM:

The trailers to The Informant looked "overexposed" as well. I had just changed a xenon bulb in the big house, including the focus adjustments using the "Loony Toons" method. The first trailer to hit the screen was The Informant and I had thought I had the picture way too bright. As these are Rentecs, that's somewhat impossible to do. The following trailer pretty much conformed that the light was as bright as it's going to get...
I had read somewhere that Radio City Music Hall used to get prints that were intentionally printed to appear brighter on screen due to light issues.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 09-18-2009, 09:10 PM:

In addition to shooting on the RED One camera and serving as his own cinematographer, Soderbergh also has a tendancy to shoot available-light. I don't know about The Informant in particular, but this sort of thing is consistent with his past films.

--jhawk

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-18-2009, 11:19 PM:

That's because Sodaburger isn't a real filmmaker...on both accounts.

Posted by David Despain (Member # 5400) on 09-19-2009, 02:26 AM:

We had a customer complain tonight about the lighting in The Informant, so I watched it the last round, and it does look pretty bad.

Posted by Joe Elliott (Member # 4006) on 09-20-2009, 01:32 AM:

I don't remember on Up, I think it was just a high brightness, if it was, that would have looked ok on a drive-in screen, but Ugly Truth, it is more like the contrast is turned up. The dark areas would still be too dark, but the bright areas, were lacking a lot of detail. Drive-in prints are just an increase in overall brightness, and that's not what it looked like. This just looked like someone goofed, either filmmaker, or the lab.