Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Full Frontal

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Posted by Mike Schindler (Member # 1309) on 08-02-2002, 03:45 AM:

Boy. Ever since Soderbergh "reinvented" himself with SCHIZOPOLIS, he couldn't make a bad movie if he tried. FULL FRONTAL is no exception. This picture is a lot of fun if you're a movie-lover. It's really about why we love movies and why we become emotionally attached to them.

As for the whole miniDV thing, Soderbergh made the right choice. I cannot imagine the movie looking any other way. If it had been shot on film, it would have made no sense. At no point did I cringe and think, "Eww. That looks like shit." The look was always appropriate. The interview with Soderbergh in the new issue of RES hits the nail on the head when it comes to this subject, and I highly recommend reading it. I love how things shot with available light look. It's always amazing to me how naturally colorful light is. On top of all that, I don't see how he could have possibly worked out the logistics of shooting this thing on film. It seems like it would have been nearly impossible, given film's needs.

The editing in this picture is superb. Sarah Flack is my hero. Her work on THE LIMEY was truly amazing. The way that time was manipulated to convey the necessary information in the quickest, most simple and effective way is mind-blowing. FULL FRONTAL was shot and cut with this style in mind, only to a greater extent. I love how you only see what you need to see. Everything else is just thrown out. That's how all movies should be.

The fact that the last movie that this guy made was OCEAN'S ELEVEN is really damn cool. Soderbergh has become one of the most exciting filmmakers to watch, because you never know what he's gonna do next. All that you can be sure of is that it's not something that he's done before. I love that. Only 117 days to SOLARIS...

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 08-16-2002, 03:50 PM:

I should have stayed away from this 'can of worms' when I heard only bad things about it but Mike's favorable review made me want to see the movie so I took some time off the other day and saw it with about 5 people at the two hundred seat Varsity theatre in Honolulu . That was a very big mistake and a dreadful waste of almost two hours of my life! What really annoyed me about this move was the fact that it was created by a very talented film maker with a professional cast including an academy award winnning star, Julia Roberts. It even had Brad Pitt in a cameo role but that did not help. I do know that the film used a film within film concept with the use of beautiful 35mm footage to simulate the filmed segment and digital footage to convey actual life. The digital image shot with a lesser quality camera than the one Lucas used for "EP2" made me dislike digital cinema even more because the quality sucked big time! . Most of the footage was ok as far as exposure and how it was 'captured' but there were times when indoor night scenes was very red because the white balance was not corrected for the light that was used. There have been other times when the picture would have grain the size of basketballs that made the image look very ugly. I do know that Steven Solderberg was trying to make an artistic statement but when you defy even the simple rules of amateur videography, the results will wind up looking very horrid and it did! The movie's editing was very bad because the flow of the film was very fragmented. The script was equally bad because the words that came out of everyone's mouth was also confusing like the editing. The film was released in SRD, DTS and SDDS but like the films of Woody Allen, it was in big fat MONO!

Even with "STAR WARS - Episode 2" which was 'captured' with very high end digital video equipment and the theatrical film version looking flat with lack of contrast and pastel color, "FULL FRONTAL" made the mistake of using beautiful 35mm film footage along with bad digital captires to make eveyone aware of the fact that film is still much better than digital.

-Claude

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-17-2002, 06:52 PM:

I got to see about 5 minutes of this movie yesterday and I felt I needed to comment based upon what I saw.

This is the worst excuse for both "cinematography" and "artistic vision" I have ever seen! No other movie comes close. I've not even seen home 8mm film look this bad. Not even regular VHS videotape looks this bad. Yes that's right, nothing has EVER looked this bad...but part of the movie is "digital", so somehow that makes it perfect. Just keep that in mind should you decide to waste your money, and more importantly time out of your life to go see this. At least you will be virtually guaranteed of a "private screening" wherever and whenever you go. This movie is bombing something fierce here in Dallas.

As if that wasn't enough, the sound was "blah" and the acting on what I saw was poor. Direction? I don't think so. I could go on, but I'll spare Mike the anguish.

0 out of 5 stars.

I have no desire to see any more of this movie unless it is playing on a screen running right in front of a toilet and I've got business to take care of. Hopefully Sodaburger won't turn "Solaris" into a "Full Frontal".

Posted by Mike Schindler (Member # 1309) on 08-18-2002, 12:28 AM:

There's no anguish here, Brad. Varying opinions are what make the world so much fun.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 08-18-2002, 06:17 PM:

Was this movie an excuse for reverse product placement? I receive a lot of professional video publications at work, and for MONTHS now there have been ads with the director's face plastered on them about shooting the film with a Canon XL-1 and editing on Final Cut Pro. I wonder where some of this budget for the film came from.

To be fair, I haven't seen the film yet. I doubt it will come to town.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-18-2002, 10:39 PM:

Nine Inch Nails produced their concert video "And All That Could Have Been" using a bunch of Canon XL-1 and Sony TVR900 3CCD model MiniDV cameras. All of the video footage was edited using Apple's Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro software. The result is perfectly fine for what they intended: a guerilla style concert video with many angles and a rough video look. The DTS 5.1 track on the DVD ain't bad either.

But NIN had everything in perspective. They were producing something meant for video, not film.

With "Full Frontal," Steven Soderbergh is really pushing the "digital" thing a little too far in blowing up cheaply lit MiniDV to 35mm film. I don't think this would have looked great either projected in DLP format. A big movie screen requires high resolution film, even if the film itself has been bleach bypassed to total desaturation and screwed up to look grainy as hell.

I might be able to tolerate some video-sourced inserts in a movie to illustrate a certain dramatic effect. But having much of the film made that way is just too dreary a thing to subject to any paying movie-goer. And I'm going to know it came from video. It sure doesn't look like 35mm film, despite what Canon might want to say in their ads for the XL-1s. I laughed out loud at the videotape stock footage of firing battleship cannons used in "Windtalkers." TV wasn't around in World War II, especially color TV! Haw haw.

I really want to buy some video and sound gear to start producing industrial videos and such. The future of the Internet is going to be in video, not these static web pages everyone hacks together in Dreamweaver. If I'm able to get my hands on something like Canon's new GL-2 camera, a good tripod, light kit and a basic sound setup, I'm going to be good to go for video. But I'm damned sure not going to be entertaining thoughts about putting any footage I shoot with the gear onto 35mm film. Geez!

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 08-18-2002, 11:14 PM:

Well, over the weekend, about 10 people (of the 100) that actually showed up, requested refunds due to either 1) grainy image, or 2) lack of plot/quality of story.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 08-19-2002, 12:43 AM:

From Soderbergh's interview in DV Magazine:

I wanted the video portion of the film to feel like an episode of Cops, where you are chasing the characters around and it seems chaotic. That it seems like the movie could derail or fly off in any direction at any moment. But again, it's all false, because in our movie, everything is being performed.

And yet I do feel like you reach a certain point in the video section of the film, the run-and-gun DV stuff, that you sort of forget. You feel like you're just watching people. And every time you cut back to the film within a film, you're reminded it's a movie. It also reminds you how good film looks, because every time you come back to the film, you think, "Oh my God, it's so gorgeous." Although I love DV, we ended up degrading the DV footage on purpose.

Posted by Brad Haven (Member # 954) on 12-05-2002, 10:44 AM:

FULL FRONTAL was released last thursday on one screen in West Australia, about a half an hours drive from home.
I made the mistake of waiting one week as its now gone completely, while i didn't have my hopes up for a great film, i always enjoy seeing his films regardless, i guess i'll have to wait for video.