Miami Vice and Collateral
Lovers of digital or anything new, I urge you to relook at these movies and pay attention to the color of the sky. Is this what Michael Mann was after? Is this why he shot HD? To capture the color of the sky as it can be seen in these films. Los Angeles at night in Collateral...the you can see the sky, lit, basically by the city. You can see it when you go to the Cemetary screenings and you can see it when you drive past downtown, on the 110, late. What is that color? How does one describe it? Is it grey? It is not black - and you can see for miles that color, an impossible effect to achieve with film.
In Miami Vice, so many of the exteriors are shot at that time after magic hour. The time when it's gotten too dark to see an image on film, but our eyes can still see. I remember seeing takes from Phil's thesis after the sun had dipped below a certain point, film could no longer read....but HD, HD sees it, almost better than our own eyes. In Miami Vice it is also a grey, but with more blue.
I think this is what he was after, or at least what he got, the ability to see miles of colors that one hasn't been able to see before on the movie screen.
6 comments:
With all due respect to Greg's love of M. Mann -
I don't buy it! theres so much more. Film can capture luminance just as well as HD. The F-900 rates at 320ASA. With the gain up 6db we're talking about a rating of 1280ASA, two stops more. You can take ASA 500 film and push it even a stop and get to 1000ASA without any real degrading of the image.
Additionally, there's almost nothing HD can do that film with a DI (something Mann can easily afford) can't do. And certainly mimicing a particular color would be no problem.
No, i think Mann uses HD for much more comprehensive reasons. There's a look, native to HD, which film does not reproduce. A stark, exact look - which enhances realism and provides an immediacy difficult to reproduce in film.
Also - it's just simply a look audiences aren't quite used to...that's a great thing. Using the medium as a means of surprising the viewer, if even subconsciously.
We're all used to the softness of film emulsion and the grain that makes it so. A viewer might not walk out of a movie and say - "wow, that HD sure is tight...I really think the story benefited by using HD as opposed to the softer quality of film" but i think it plays.
Here are some great words of wisdom from on of the gurus of cinematography David Mullen, asc:
Maybe I'm just being perverse, but when I shoot a movie in HD, I don't spend more than five minutes thinking about how to make it match film. My feeling is that digital images have their own look and if I can't embrace that, I should be shooting film instead. When I ran the print of "Jackpot" at the lab, a lab person complimented me by saying "you lit it like film!" but the truth is that I don't know how to light any other way. You just light scenes for the mood you want to create and make adjustments if there are any contrast problems.
Sure, I try and shoot at f/2.8 to keep the depth of field reasonable but the lens behaving well optically, but I don't go into more elaborate tricks than that, not on a feature where I have to shoot five pages a day.
"Badasss" was just shot well, and lit well, by a talented DP (Bob Primes, ASC) who respects digital for what it can do for him, but I don't think he employs any special tricks to hide the fact that the image is digital. He did what every cinematographer tries to do -- tell the story in appropriate images. It was shot on a Panavised F900 in an 18-day schedule I believe."
i'm not sure what you "don't buy".
on the one hand, you are saying film and HD - no stop difference, hence, you can get the same amount of light.
but then on the other hand, you're saying digital is a completely different look.
but to specifics...do you "not buy" that the color of the sky in collateral and miami vice is unique to hd - or to be very specific, michael mann's hd process.
could you, as a dp, also get the sky to look the same with film?
i don't think you could. and my speculation is that the look of the sky and the skline is something mann was interested in when making these films.
i think one of chuck's points is that on film, with a DI, you can make the sky look like anything
i'm going to go ahead and call bullshit, even though i don't know for sure.
if you can make film look like anything with a di - can you make it look like hd? if so, then can a di make hd look like film?
and then the question is - what the hell are we talking about a difference for?
a fair attempt at reductio ad absurdum, but unsuccessful.
DI can't do everything, like make a shot in focus, or fix performance.
however, changing the color of the sky in the shot you're talking about has to be one of the easiest things you can do in a DI. if you can do it in photoshop, you can do it in a DI.
and yes, talking about the difference between film and HD is a bit pointless, but you posted about it, so...
i don't speak dead languages.
but you cannot make the sky look like it does in collateral and miami vice with film and a di. first off, it would too dark and you wouldn't be able to see the detail. you can't fix that in photoshop with the paint tool.
i don't even know what the point you and chuck are trying to make. you are both arguing a point you don't even agree with.
and to prove me wrong, go shop a photo shot on 35mm and make it look like the sky in collateral. i bet you can't.
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