Anyone seen sarah landon and the Paranormal hour?

Haven't seen it yet, but I just looked up a few things about it:

Rottentomatoes.com has five reviews on it so far, all negative, so the "tomatometer" is at 0%. I read three of the reviews, and two, including The New York Times, mentioned poor,
soft" cinematography. All mention bad acting and story.

Thenumbers.com says it opened in 1121 theatres nationwide over the weekend and earned $565,500, averaging $500 per theatre.
 
Yes, I've seen it. And it was actually a lot better than the reviews say. The image quality was very good, actually. Any perceived "fuzziness" as some of the critics call it, I'm willing to bet was because they knew going it that the film was low budget and not shot on 35 or a higher-end HD camera. I attended with my 11-year-old son and two of his friends (the target age-group). They loved the film, and of course said nothing about the image quality. I have a fairly trained eye for this sort of thing, and I know that if viewed side-by-side with a 35mm or 2K or 4K image, of course you'd notice a difference. But you're not doing that when you go in to watch a movie on the big screen. Only thing that stuck out was some graininess in a couple of very dark interiors, and the actor happened to be wearing a very red shirt (not good for the DVX, apparently not for the HVX either). And even so, I was on the lookout for such things. Of course my son and his friends didn't notice, and you often see graininess in dark scenes of horror films of any budget, so it certainly didn't detract. I actually enjoyed the story, it had a good script, the major weakness was in some of the acting (which I believe is the first and main stumbling block for the average viewer and professional critics alike). But like I said, my son and his friends were not bothered by this. They loved the film and left the theater with smiles on their faces.
 
I'm relieved arotan liked it. The trailer looked abominable. Hoping the movie itself is better than the trailer leads me to believe.

I totally agree that the only reason they're mentioning the "soft cinematography" is that they know it's a low budget, indie genre film and not shot on 35mm film. No critic seemed to mention the incredibly soft quality of the images in Inland Empire (which I loved). Who cares if it's "soft" if it's captivating as a story. Then again...this story looks really thin.
 
Perhaps the M2 and not the HVX itself could be the primary cause of the softness. I've never used an adaptor, but most posts about them mention
an overall softer image.
 
A lot of our Softs on the movie were due to 2nd unit's work. They had trouble figuring out the rig. had edge focus problems galore, and 2nd unit AC was my 2nd AC for the Production. I'm not pleased with how that represented the work of the guys who spent hours and worked hard to work out kinks in the system.

I thought it blew up to 35mm quite nicely. I expected worse.
 
I have to agree with the critics. It did look really soft. I have seen two dvx films in the theaters LONESOMEJIM and NOVEMBER and they looked way better then this film. I was shocked. But I think it was they way it was printed on film. Because parts of Jackass were shot with the hvx and they looked great. Also as stated before the redrock softens the image somewhat.
 
The movie looked VERY soft in our theater too. I really liked the framing and the composition of the shots. The lighting was very well done and the colors were very rich. The bad though, the acting was quite bad and for a lead character, Sarah had almost no bearing on the outcome of the film. She seemed more like a passive watcher as the events unfolded around her. As a character, she showed zero growth and was the same at the end of the film as she was at the begininng (in drama, stories usually involve the change of a character as they battle with an inner struggle).

This was the first HVX footage I have seen blown up, and I am honestly concerned with the fuzziness. I'm not sure if the print Arotan saw was a better copy or not, but the one I saw was by FAR softer than any movie I have ever seen in a theater (and I too have a trained eye). A couple of times I was starting to get a little naseous not being able to focus on the image.

What is interesting though, is that before the movie our theaters here use a digital video projector to play ads and "Screenvision" a pre movie show that keeps the audience entertained while waiting. They were playing clips on this video project and they looked MUCH sharper than they did in the actual movie.

Could it have just been the printing job done for the 35mm blow up?
 
I haven't seen the movie, but after watching the trailer, it could have been better suited for television. The subject matter is not edgy enough for the big screen.
 
Sprocketboy said:
The subject matter is not edgy enough for the big screen.
Click to expand...

Children's movies and young teen movies are often some of the biggest moneymakers.
I'm not saying this film in particular is going to rake in the dough - but whether or not something is 'edgy' doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether or not it's suited for the big screen, in my opinion.

Just look at any movie with Hillary Duff, the Olsen twins, or anything made by Disney and Pixar.
Don't forget that marketability plays just as large a role (if not larger) in what gets released than does the quality of the product in and of itself.
 
I saw the film the first day...

It was soft in parts... but even using the Pro 35 and going to film will make it soft using a Varicam or a Cine Alta...

I thought in the interior night stuff in the old house was a little noisey...

But over all... the acting and the script was weak... if the acting would have been on and the story... I think I would have just sit back and enjoyed the movie.... but this is the problem using friends or family as actors... they were okay... but when the scenes had to have more emotion in them... they just couldn't pull them off...

And I agree didn't think about it... but that was what was bugging me about he movie... Sarah the lead like someone said had really nothing to do with the outcome of the movie..

But hey.. they got a big screen release... got to give them thumbs up for that...
 
Haven't seen it yet but I'll try to this week. But to explore the question here: I've seen DVX stuff projected in a theater that looked quite good. People who saw Iraq In Fragments in theaters were hard pressed to know it didn't originate on film. And HVX stuff is unquestionably much sharper than DVX footage.

I've seen HVX 720p footage projected in a theater and it looked perfectly acceptable.

So if there's issues of softness with the Sarah Landon print, it could be traced to one of three areas:
1) a lousy print
2) the M2 adapter or lenses used on the adapter
3) operator error when shooting the original footage.

In short, there is no valid reason that HVX footage wouldn't just blow away DVX footage on projection.
 
You are quite right, sir. I might have been too black and white in my statement, but the MOST successful children fare on the big screen are not that sappy. The people and studios you mentioned, do work that require gross-out humor to succeed, besides their usual Mickey Mouse fan-following.

Marketing, I agree helps tremendously. Sarah Landon has terrible marketing and no fan following. That is another reason why it is more for television than the big screen.

On my computer screen, I could see shots in the trailer that look soft and some bad acting. The ghost scenes weren't that thrilling either. Besides getting a lot of HVX users into the theater they need to get families in there too. I don't think it was wise for the distribution company to invest in a theatrical release of this movie. It looks like a Hallmark Cable TV movie.

Good marketing could be worse for this movie if it doesn't deliver on audience expectation.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it rated a zero. I've never seen a movie on that site rate a zero. That is really bad.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sarah_landon_and_the_paranormal_hour/

Luis Caffesse said:
Children's movies and young teen movies are often some of the biggest moneymakers.
I'm not saying this film in particular is going to rake in the dough - but whether or not something is 'edgy' doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether or not it's suited for the big screen, in my opinion.

Just look at any movie with Hillary Duff, the Olsen twins, or anything made by Disney and Pixar.
Don't forget that marketability plays just as large a role (if not larger) in what gets released than does the quality of the product in and of itself.
Click to expand...
 
I say the M2 won the battle, and the overall film lost the war.

I bet if the story was a good one, and the acting was good as well, we wouldn't care less what it was shot on.
 
I saw "Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour" last night at the Loews Theater in Methuen MA. I have to say the story, audio, and cinematography was really nice. Very well done with what they had!

However in the technical critique, I agree the picture seemed soft in places and I am not sure it was 100% the hvx. I have a hunch it may have had somethig to do with the lens adapter with a narrow depth of field on what felt like almost every shot. The wide shots especial sometimes had a very soft feel. But every once in a while there would be a really sharp clip so something was happening.

All over the place I keep reading the HVX grain yadda yadda. Sarah Landon is a good place to check this out. The movie had many "dark night" scenes (appeared dark considering it was very well lit) and I only notice the grain in one or two clips which wasn't bad at all. In discussions with friends after the movie, no one else even noticed it. Its only there to a trained eye looking for it. In filmmaking I feel the story is the glue that holds the whole movie together and in this movie it’s easy to get lost in the story and forget to about the little things. If you like mystery movies that unravel with unexpected twist I would suggest seeing it. (Or you’re an HVX fan!) Anyway those are some of my refections.
 
I saw it in a theatre today and thought, in terms of film quality only (that's the only reason I went to see it), that it looked much better than November or other digital-to-35mm films I've seen. I was surprised, in fact. The only noise giveaway for me was in the dark interiors, especially in the shadows, and they kept those short. I am thinking from the comments here that the quality must vary from theatre to theatre.

The beginning appears to be written so the lead girl has a flashback memory in the first few minutes of the film. It looked to me like a conscious choice to go soft and washed out there as she remembers her past and I felt it was too early in the film for that because it was the least successful "look." I think that is what some of the reviewers online are referring to (as well as the effects at the end). There was a problem with framing as some of the top was bleeding off the screen and that meant heads in a long shot were close to be chopped at the top a few times, so when you're shooting something that's going to be transferred, give yourself more of a safe zone.

But compared to the overly hard edge of some HD originated footage I'd seen a couple of years ago, this was a big improvement overall. To think this footage came from our little, relatively inexpensive HVX is pretty revolutionary to me.

I can't wait to see more films from this camera.
 
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