HVX partially used to film Cloverfield

The real shame is that you guys haven't seen someone practiced with the HVX and an Adapter give the big screen a go.

I haven't seen Sarah Landon projected, I have seen Cloverfield and I can tell you the HVX when used by someone who USES the camera looks two to three ( 2 - 3 ) times better.

Barry keeps sayin' it, I keep re-iteratin' after my own experience: HVX is MORE THAN ENOUGH for projection. And with an adapter strapped to it and someone who knows what the hell they're doin' with the Camera, there's just no way the Camera is what's holdin' people back from big screen distro.
 
chip, thanks for that link. i don't think anyone could consider the HVX a "limiting factor" on their creativity at this point.
 
cbln said:
When we discussed the Sarah Langdon film, which I am not in any way associated with, I reported that looking past the weak acting and poor writing to judge the quality of the HVX footage alone, I was surprised to see it was a huge improvement over previous low budget digital films. I think the projection must have varied greatly, because at my theater it did not look as terrible as Ted reported. It was far better than the picture quality of Tadpole or The King is Alive or other films I had seen at digital festivals. Those screamed cheap digital. I now know the Langdon cameraman was not working under ideal conditions but I think he worked hard to get the most he could out of a film that I believe was budgeted somewhere under 1 mil, vs Cloverfield's reported $25-30 mil. Of course that is considered low-budget in the studio world, but still high compared to an true indie budget.

So my point is that of course HVX footage in a 30 mil dollar film is going to look better than in a 1 mil dollar film. But for me, the difference wasn't huge -- just slightly.
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I certainly can't account for the projection of "Sarah Landon" I saw, but it was at a large, reputable theater here in NYC, and the image quality difference between it and the Cloverfield party scene was huge. Like...immense. Cloverfield was tack-sharp and "Landon" was at *best* (in a handful of brief moments) barely acceptable. Much of the rest looked simply atrocious. Sorry, but there's just no other way for me to put it honestly. In particular, there were some scenes that were so edge-soft (over about 2/3rds of the field of view) that it was hard to imagine anyone letting it pass.

If I'd been the only one complaining, it certainly could have been a red flag projection-wise, but a large percentage of the published reviews mentioned poor image quality as well. Take a look on rottentomatoes.com and see for yourself.

Under other circumstances, Cloverfield's $30 million dollar budget might explain a lot, but remember that much of the HVX stuff in it was shot by an actor, and it was intended to look amateurish. I doubt a great deal of sweat went into the camerawork there.

In "Landon" they were evidently hobbled by bad M2s, bad M2 setups, wide open apertures on both camera and taking lens and 1/24th shutter speeds. IMHO, that combined with the spectacular edge sharpness problems attributable to any number of the above factors and quite possibly the lenses themselves, sank the picture cinematography-wise.

Note that the Cloverfield scenes were shot with a bare HVX. Given what we now know about lens adapters, and the M2 in particular, "Landon" stands for me as a major cautionary tale. Cloverfield is the other side of that particular coin.

I've often wondered why the "Landon" crew didn't just ditch the adapter entirely once they found themselves so profoundly focus-challenged and light-starved.

My $.02
 
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Ted, it was obvious from your other post that you felt there was a big difference between the look of the HVX on Sarah L. and Cloverfield and my post was making the point that I did not have that experience. I did go over to Rotten Tomatoes just now because this has puzzled me, this issue of the different takes on the picture quality of Sarah L. TV Guide said the cinematography was "soft" and one other reviewer said "fuzzy dv." But Variety, NYT and Boston.com never mentioned anything like this. If what they saw was "atrocious" they would have mentioned it. And Quad City Times, that reviewer hated the film but actually loved the cinematography:

"The rest of the acting ranges from so-so to downright terrible.
At least the movie is clean. And it has another feature going for it: The beautiful cinematography by Andrew Kuepper. The yellows, the reds and greens are all vivid and eye-catching, as though they're in another movie all together. Kuepper should use what he's done here to go on to bigger and better projects."

I don't doubt your word, as I'd like to think you wouldn't doubt mine. I can only conclude there was a big difference depending on where you saw the film or more of these critics would have mentioned the staggeringly poor visual quality you saw. "Atrocious" does not slip by critics, I'm sure you can agree. I have seen a lot of digital films in the last nine years and when the quality is so poor it overshadows everything else in the film, everyone notices.

I've seen bad, noisy digital footage (and by good directors) and it's painful for me to watch. Most of Sarah L., except for the low-light parts, was not in that category when I saw it. It was painful for other reasons the critics mentioned.

About the actors shooting the HVX, there's a lot more involved than just the camera operator. You still have to take into account lighting budget, the skill of the DP's lighting, the set design, color correction and the overall film transfer which I would guess was better and more expensive than Sarah L.'s.

As for the adapter, Kholi, please let me know when you have some footage to project. I would love to see that.
 
cbln said:
Ted, it was obvious from your other post that you felt there was a big difference between the look of the HVX on Sarah L. and Cloverfield and my post was making the point that I did not have that experience. I did go over to Rotten Tomatoes just now because this has puzzled me, this issue of the different takes on the picture quality of Sarah L. TV Guide said the cinematography was "soft" and one other reviewer said "fuzzy dv." But Variety, NYT and Boston.com never mentioned anything like this. If what they saw was "atrocious" they would have mentioned it. And Quad City Times, that reviewer hated the film but actually loved the cinematography:

"The rest of the acting ranges from so-so to downright terrible.
At least the movie is clean. And it has another feature going for it: The beautiful cinematography by Andrew Kuepper. The yellows, the reds and greens are all vivid and eye-catching, as though they're in another movie all together. Kuepper should use what he's done here to go on to bigger and better projects."

I don't doubt your word, as I'd like to think you wouldn't doubt mine. I can only conclude there was a big difference depending on where you saw the film or more of these critics would have mentioned the staggeringly poor visual quality you saw. "Atrocious" does not slip by critics, I'm sure you can agree. I have seen a lot of digital films in the last nine years and when the quality is so poor it overshadows everything else in the film, everyone notices.

I've seen bad, noisy digital footage (and by good directors) and it's painful for me to watch. Most of Sarah L., except for the low-light parts, was not in that category when I saw it. It was painful for other reasons the critics mentioned.
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I fully respect that you're as entitled to your opinion as I am, or anyone else is. The cause for the poor image quality in the theatre I saw it in is open to endless speculation. What simply can't be argued at the very least IMO, is the edge sharpeness issues in certain scenes, which was unequivocally "atrocious", especially on what appeared to be wide angle lenses, and on that I won't budge. Of course, you're welcome to disagree!

Regarding the RT reviews, there were more than two negative references to the film's poor cinematography/look among the 10 posted. To wit:

TV Guide: "the filmmaking is borderline incompetent...the cinematography is unpleasantly soft"

eFilmCritic.com: "a cheap-looking film, shot on fuzzy DV equipment" (and specifically regarding the visual FX): "the film begins to resemble a stiff, amateurish YouTube video" (which I think is fair game to at least partly link to the "fuzzy" comment).

Variety: "Beset by bad lighting..." (not explicitly mentioning "soft", but a knock on the cinematography for sure).

Sacramento News And Review: "Andrew Kuepper’s cinematography looks...flat and featureless..."

New York Times: "the filmmakers’ amateurish abilities" (since the term "filmmakers" is used, I think is fair again to at least partly associate it with the cinematography).

That's five out of ten with at least an implicitly negative reference to the cinematography...

As for the one positive comment on it, it mostly mentioned colors as its basis for the positivity, and it came from...um...The Quad City Times in Davenport, Iowa. Next to most of the other sources, well...

And there were numerous other posters in the earlier thread here that found it objectionably soft too (along with some who didn't).

But hey...I hated to write my scathing review of it here a few months ago and I hate doing it now. I wished as much as anyone that "Sarah Landon" had looked great. The reasons it didn't are now pretty well known. For me, as an HVX owner with big-screen aspirations, it's an object lesson not be be missed or excused lightly. Like the old saying goes, "those who ignore the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat them".

What I feel I learned from seeing "Landon" and discussing it here with, among others, Allen Achterberg, who was 1st assistant cameraman on the film, were the following things:

-Some lens adapters, especially the more diffuse ones like the M2, eat light for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A film like this with many nighttime scenes is a very questionable call where using an M2 at all is concerned. A Letus EX or a Brevis and top notch lenses might be ok, but maybe not.

-If you find yourself needing to go wide open on the camera and taking lens, and using 1/24 on the shutter to get enough light to shoot *you do not have enough light*. You must either get enough light, get a better adapter/lens, or use the bare camera.

-If the above problem is the case, you will have at best a couple *inches* of usable DOF, the adapter and all lenses will be liable to their worst edge softness issues, and the slow shutter will blur on even small movements. These issues pervaded "Landon's" look. Inch-deep DOF and 1/24 shutter means that unless the actors and camera are stock-still, the image is going to be blurry.

-Lens quality is crucial. The lenses used on "Landon" were evidently (at least mostly) Nikons. Many examples I've seen on this site and elsewhere show some serious image quality issues with certain SLR Nikons on 35mm adapters. I can only speculate as to that being a possible added problem for "Landon".

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I want to emphasize that it isn't and never was my intention to "bash" "Sarah Landon And The Paranormal Hour", Mr. Achtenberg, or anyone else involved in the production. I get absolutely zero pleasure from expressing my disappointment with the film. On the contrary - it makes me feel terrible to be so harshly critical of an effort I would have loved to see succeed brilliantly. But I do feel it represents a *very* important lesson, hopefully to all of us here, for the reasons mentioned above.

In a positive way, it's greatly informed my own thinking about shooting features on the HVX with a 35mm adapter. I have a Letus Extreme on order, and plan to equip it with all new Zeiss lenses. Even so, I will be doing extensive testing of it once I have it, and I *will* return it to Letus if the performance, particularly as regards edge sharpness and imager centering correction, isn't up to snuff.

Even if it is (and I am guardedly optimistic that it will be), I'll be putting it through extensive testing for its suitabilty in circumstances like some of those in "Sarah Landon" to try to determine just what its useful thresholds are. I won't be at all surprised to find that I will decide *not* to use it in many cases, choosing rather to deal with mixing adapter and non-adapter footage in a project to take advantage of the bare camera's better sharpness and low-light ability. Not every shot needs shallow DOF, which is most of what one gains with 35mm adapters after all.

So the "Sarah Landon" lesson has been a *very* valuable one for me, in spite of the misfortunes of the film itself.

Lastly, with my own films, I will encourage anyone to comment about them as truthfully as I have on "Sarah Landon". I won't be looking for gratuitous praise, but rather honest, constructive criticism that I can use to make my next effort better. That's how I've always gone about analyzing my own creative work, and how I always will.

Sorry for the mammoth post....
 
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Ted, I was with you all the way until the "gratuitous praise" comment.
Good points about the adapters.

BTW, someone on another thread reminded me about Celebration. If you haven't seen it, you should. Very cheap digital camera, no lights, nothing, and yet riveting. So aside from the general point which Barry Green and Kholi made, that the HVX is quite good on blowups to the big screen, the greater overall point is that your story has to be good.

And not overwritten.

Best of luck on your project.
 
cbln said:
Ted, I was with you all the way until the "gratuitous praise" comment.
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I hope you didn't take that as a reference to your own comments on "Landon" (or anything else). I certainly didn't mean it that way.

I hate it when people give me "gratuitous praise" for things I've done creatively, and I feel I can pretty much tell when they have. I dislike that feeling a great deal. That's what I was referring to, nothing more.

Best of luck on your project.
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Thank you!
 
cbln said:
BTW, someone on another thread reminded me about Celebration. If you haven't seen it, you should. Very cheap digital camera, no lights, nothing, and yet riveting. So aside from the general point which Barry Green and Kholi made, that the HVX is quite good on blowups to the big screen, the greater overall point is that your story has to be good.

And not overwritten.
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There's no question in my mind that the script/story is *the* single most important element in filmmaking, and the single most significant reason why most films that fail do.
 
aalleexx said:
that AD is a bunch of BS, I tried contacting the guy selling it and I asked him if he had proof that the camera was used on the movie and he never responded, and this was 3 days ago
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The guy is who he says he is, and that was the back up camera for the movie.

ProfessorU said:
Odd that he says it was "used to shoot many of the scenes in the film" even though he also says it has recorded so little it hasn't even registered on the hour meter. They must be short scenes. ;)
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Reread it. He was saying the panasonic hvx was used to shoot many scenes...and that particular camera was the back up camera.

Ted Spencer said:
I love this - an eBay auction for "the HVX200 that was used in Cloverfield" that basically...wasn't...

In other Hollywood news: I had lunch yesterday with Ridley Scott's son's rugby coach's car mechanic's accountant!

:thumbsup:
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You could look at it like that...or look at it like that camera sat there as a back up...making him rentals the entire time. I'm sure it paid for itself sitting on that shoot, and then to try and market it a little on ebay to garner more interest from people that are silly about that kind of ****...well, I'd probably do it too.
 
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Hey guy's, that HVX was acutally used in Cloverfield. Took some ugly conversations but Yes, everyone so far has been honest...

What's this "Sara L." About??? I want to see it!!!

Peace out!
 
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