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In the case of ‘The Company Men’, I would say the intended ‘look’ would have been between the two versions posted. The Blue Ray looks more natural but that may only be in comparison to the other, which looks lifeless. There may be a master of a film, whether from a DI or a tape transfer, but we all know every monitor is slightly different and every eye also.
Your opinion is as relevant as any other. As I said to the director, I would like to see a film that deals with the ‘between the wars’ period, after Versailles. War itself can be ‘entertaining’ on film (‘Top Gun’ and the rest) but is less interesting than the sociological reasons that lead up to it and the consequences that follow when the fighting stops.
Thanks to everyone who makes this site useful. And I for one would like to express a special thanks to James for both the site and the podcast. It obviously does not register with some people just how much work my wife puts into each.
Instead of criticizing James and myself for, supposedly, losing interest in the site perhaps you could save it for the person who hacked us. They are, after all, the reason the old posts no longer exist. If we had the technology and, quite frankly, the time to retrieve them we surely would.
Whether film or digital the resulting look depends on the eye behind the work. That is why the ‘film digital’ discussion seems so off the mark to me. If a film is well shot I can’t tell the difference though some, both small and big budget films, look fake to me and that is not a problem with the technology.
During prep I went to the rental house to see every LED fixture that was available. I don’t like carrying a large number of different fixtures and I was looking for a range of soft panel lamps, a Fresnel type of LED that would be an equivalent to a conventional 1K Fresnel or a Tweenie, and a range of tubes such as the Astera. The Arri SkyPanel is a great lamp but you can’t always get what you want as they are often in short supply. They are also relatively expensive and there are a range of options if you do not need their wide range of color control. Once finding what was available and within our budget I shot camera tests to check color and for any abnormality in their dimming etc.. A color meter is handy but the odd variations in color don’t always show up on a dial.
Most certainly! Exposure is obviously important, just as is knowing how depth of field works or the inverse square law, but is it really ‘fundamental’. When you ‘know’ all these techniques what is left? What makes an image resonate? What makes an image reveal more than a word on a page?
Maybe I have only see ‘Stalker’ 20 times. The most memorable screening I ever attended was in Brisbane where they showed a pristine new print struck off the original negative.
What Tarkovsky could do was create something that was more than the sum of it’s parts. ‘Stalker’ becomes a reflection, not to put too finer point on it, on human existence but, unlike most contemporary products, it is not manipulative or showy and it doesn’t shout out how clever it is or tell you exactly what to think. I don’t see the look of the film as either beautiful or as ugly. It just feels true, at one with all the other elements that combine to create the whole. A brilliant marvel of a film.
I don’t know if you have seen Tarkovsky’s first film, ‘Ivan’s Childhood’. That too is an exercise in ‘more than the sum of its parts’. In his book, ‘Sculpting in Time’, Tarkovsky talks about the scenes that he was advised to shoot in a certain way and that he, too late, considered a mistake. For him the scenes didn’t feel ‘true’. Watch it and see how much of a perfectionist he must have been!
I wonder what ‘the fundamentals of photography and lighting’ actually are? The more I do the less I seem to understand. I don’t mean technically, for that I can read a book or ask someone far more proficient than myself, but what really are ‘the fundamentals’?
In the past I have certainly pushed film to get more grain. I disagree that it is the imperfections that are missing in today’s work. To me there is a lack of risk taking and of pushing the possibilities of film (by which I mean film as opposed to film or digital capture).
For ‘1917’ we did shoot on a 40mm on the Alexa LF. To me this lens length was equivalent to between a 35mm and a 32mm on a standard format but that seems debatable. Some suggest that a 40mm is equivalent to a 27mm on an academy format. This doesn’t feel right to me and I only really am interested in what feels right. On ‘Empire of Light’ my favored range on lenses was between 32mm and 65mm but I sometimes shot much wider than that as well as longer. I was just judging by eye as I set a shot. Best not to get obsessed with numbers!
The scene in Wallace’s Office was lit in a quite different way to those shot for the far more red ‘Las Vegas’ sequences. For the former I was using direct sources both for the reflections off the water, which were achieved using 10K Fresnels, and the circular ‘chase’ of 300 watt Fresnel lamps that was lighting the characters. For this scene I wanted something a little more ‘golden’ and clean. For the Vegas sequences I was using a filter on the lens. This filter was specifically made by Tiffen for the shoot, a deep amber that was not available ‘off the shelf’.
The particular shot you refer to was made using swing and tilt lens. This was used a number of times for the montage shots and elsewhere, such as for the shots of the rocking chair.
The montage was mostly shot during pre production whilst others were made during the main body of the shoot when something interesting occurred to us.
This storage room was a small set and it was lit using a 4′ x 2 tube florescent overhead. I tried to control the spread of the light with silver wrap and I also used 2′ x 2′ silver stipple reflectors to get a little bit of light into Theo’s eyes on certain shots. There was no deliberate intent to change the color or the softness of the light from one scene to another. I think that was simply a case of returning to the same small set many weeks after our first visit.
