collateral

D

dolph2000

Well-known member
speaking of film-video I was reading about "open water".
Collateral was mixed by high def video. My opninion is that it is ugly from hell. From the first frame high def was shown I saw it. So that makes it lousy.
You will see when it is shot on video (whether is it high def or something else) especially when it is mixed with 35mm.
What the hell was the reason for this.
Dolph
 
Re: collateral

I'm not completely certain that this is the reason they shot collateral this way, but I know that sometimes, the choice has to do with money. A production can save sooo much money on film processing/telecine by using high def. Also, the time involved with getting shots as compared to film represents alot of time saved. Whether or not this is the reason they shot Collateral in High def, I'm not sure. They may have also chosen high def for the fact that it *does* look a bit more like video. Possibly for sort of an artificial feel. On films such as Open Water (shot with cams like the pd-150) I am almost certain the choice was money. The fact that collateral *looks* like video in certain shots almost leads me to believe that they did it on purpose. With all the technology today, it is very possible to make high def look alot more like film than they did.
 
Re: collateral

Because Collateral takes place entirely at night, Mann used high definition digital video cameras to capture the movie’s images.

Michael Mann – “Motion picture film could not see the world that these characters inhabit, the world of this motion picture. It just can’t see it. It can’t see at night, the environments, the red desert or depopulated refineries. And so we had to invent and modify visual technology to be able to see it. And it’s a very painterly, very interesting medium you can manipulate a lot more than film as well. The scene where Mark Ruffalo shows up at the crime scene, you’re seeing two miles away, downtown, a little American flag on top of a building. You couldn’t see any of that [with film]. It’s not just the seeing though. It lends itself to taking the atmosphere and real landscapes and pushing them, to move, to drive a scene and affect a scene and affect the way you feel about these characters. It’s all story driven. And LA is unique in that sense because it provides us with those places and kind of a landscape of dreams. They’re somebody’s idea in 1958 about what’s the sci-fi apartment building of the future. There’s the ’58 idea and then it became a Hispanic neighborhood and now it’s a Korean neighborhood and coyotes are walking through it. And that’s LA. That’s what’s unique about the city.”
 
FWIW I know that nothing Michael Mann directs looks the way it does by accident or for lack of basic resources. He's extremely detail-oriented and image-conscious (the recorded image, that is). He's very perceptive when it comes to even low-level background details in the images he's framing.
 
I thought Collateral Looked great. I'd love to see it on an actual High Def display system to really get the full effect.

The parts that were shot of film have a little bit more clarity in them... but only because the lighting is much more controlled..

overall it looked damn good..
 
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I thought collateral was great but not perfect especially the pictures and night athmospheres. It`s very well done of course in every aspect but still I was reminded again and again that "something here does not look so good as they would have shot it on film"

I don`t know maybe its the projection like someone else suggested (though I was in a good cinema)

I wonder if Mann is really 100% satisfied with the overall look - I guess he will not say anything negative in a public statement while promoting his film, I`ve read too what he said and I wonder if he hadn`t sounded different if he was totally satisfies. It`s just guessing of course.

the reason he gives is basically, that you can see lights somewhere in the background better with Digital. It´s a valuable reason especially with this kind of setting and I would have done it that way too (not that I could shoot a feature yet) but I think the overall feeling of the images had something which keeped me "distanced" to the film.

With "Heat" for exampel I do get a much better feeling for the city of LA, for the characters. It`s also true for 24 hours which has a lot of night scenes and is shot on film.

I´m all for digital but I thing we have to wait another 10 years till it matches film.
 
well they shot at night and they pull the car some. plus they did the shots over and over so that they didnt have to stop shooting. it so closed in you cant tell. i think it looked wonderful. i love the first scene where thing is out of focus for and background and you just see cruise walking in. that was sweet.
 
I really liked the way Collateral looked. At first I was prepared to be distracted by the video look, but was sucked into the story within the first few minutes, thanks to beautiful cinematography and Mann's direction. Whatever his reason was to use HD (and it wasn't budget... the thing cost 60 mil and Mann could get as much as doble that, if he wanted), it worked. I *was* there in LA night with the characters.
 
I think there are more choices in style as the fact of budget. It follows the one night story, so better than film i will choose a documental look a for nearest look to reality and inmidiacy (hell, dictionary)plus, you can repeat without control and try different fast shots (i will buy DVD in evening, but if i remember well, there are lot of hand held during the executions (the bullets and the fall, and the couple) like a poor camera jounalist in middle of action, so:

I think (IMO, sure) fast scenes get better in digital filming (28 days, open water,...) because they look more real than John Woo stylish coreographies, more like war journalist videos, and by influence of television this look is geting in audiences minds. And of course the saving time in light and moving for next shot.
 
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