KNIGHT OF CUPS aka Malick and Lubezki say to hell with shallow DOF

i thought this film was supposed to be set in Austin Texas. nothing in the trailer looks like atx.

maybe its the other movie that Malick was shooting at the same time.
 
Batutta said:
I don't think they used anything longer than a 25mm lens in this whole movie.

Yeah, looks like they shot it with a GoPro - playing the camera in the foreground, by uneducated and excessive use of wide glass, is a total deal breaker for me.
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Postmaster said:
Batutta said:
I don't think they used anything longer than a 25mm lens in this whole movie.

Yeah, looks like they shot it with a GoPro - playing the camera in the foreground, by uneducated and excessive use of wide glass, is a total deal breaker for me.
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Definitely some GoPro stuff in there, although I doubt they shot most of the movie with it. Lubezki likes to make arbitrary rules for each film to limit his choices. I'm guessing this was his 'no long lenses' on this one.
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I fear this is going to be yet another insufferable Video Installation piece from Mallick... how did something so good, go so wrong? (post-Thin Red Line) :/
 
I actually hated The Thin Red Line. I thought the style a complete mis-fit for the subject matter. Badlands for me is his only great movie. Of the work he's done in his 'renaissance' I probably liked Tree of Life the most. I thought the style fit the content best there.
 
I have to give Malick credit for experimenting with the form. He's searching for something new. I don't think he's found it yet but if he ever does it could be transcendent. In the meantime, I'm content to enjoy the pretty pictures (although possibly not in this case).
 
Even by the end of the trailer I felt exhausted by the wide/ultrawide perspective. I feel the same when a director locks you into ultra shallow DOF for an entire movie. My eyes don't see life in one perspective and change focus depth and angle depending on what I am looking at so it feels un-natural and starts to drive me crazy as I feel trapped in that perspective.
 
Batutta said:
I have to give Malick credit for experimenting with the form. He's searching for something new. .
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I just wish he would wait till he found it, and THAN make a film.

I don't have a problem with wide glass per se.
Sometimes you want to use it (big landscape), sometimes you have to use it (tight spaces), but it is IMHO pretty limiting.
With limiting, I mean how you can set up and move, and place the camera, without playing the camera into the foreground.

In Knight, the camera is like a parrot with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, sitting on a guys shoulder,
constantly saying

"hey look at me, I'm a camera - look at me, I'm sitting on this dudes shoulder - look at me, he is carrying me around -look at me, and now he shoves me in that guys face"

If you use a camera like this - no mater what film, director or DP - it takes me out of the movie.
 
Postmaster said:
I just wish he would wait till he found it, and THAN make a film.
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You can only experiment so much to get a sense of the whole...then you just gotta go for it and see what sort of mess you make.

I'll be honest I got bored out of my mind with that trailer and couldn't even finish it, and that's REALLY unusual for me. I'm totally OCD about turning anything off, even a full-film.
 
RatLabProductions said:
Even by the end of the trailer I felt exhausted by the wide/ultrawide perspective.
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Me too.

In film school, a DP spoke in one of my classes. He had begun in music video and moved to narrative. He said narrative was harder. With music videos, you just try to make the lighting look cool. With narrative, it has to be more motivated.

I think the same with Terrence Malick. It's easier to just walk around actors with a wide lens, trying to catch some suave angles, and then stitch it all together along some tenuous thread, with voice-over and music. It's easier to do that than to take a script that has a definite structure, rehearse it and block it, and then stitch all that together into a tight, ever-escalating plot, with clean sound.

I'm all for experimentation. I'm all for it. But traditional narrative moviemaking is a ton of hard work to do right, often harder than your superficially dazzling but ultimately thin arthouse fare.

There are things about Terrence Malick's movies that are very attractive, but he should maybe do commercials or something that lasts only 30 seconds. Being stuck for two hours in the theater with one of his movies is insufferable for many.
 
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homestar_kevin said:
I'm in for anything Lubezki does, especially with Malick

I'm excited to see what they do here.
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+1
Even though I personally don't use wide angles very often, I am excited by Malick films. 'To the Wonder' was a bit loose, but I still enjoyed it. I like the trance like nature of these films. Sometimes I enjoy a silly campy comedy, sometimes a rather meaningless blockbuster, but sometimes a good mood piece by Malick fits the bill.

Tough crowd here.
 
combatentropy said:
Me too.

In film school, a DP spoke in one of my classes. He had begun in music video and moved to narrative. He said narrative was harder. With music videos, you just try to make the lighting look cool. With narrative, it has to be more motivated.

I think the same with Terrence Malick. It's easier to just walk around actors with a wide lens, trying to catch some suave angles, and then stitch it all together along some tenuous thread, with voice-over and music. It's easier to do that than to take a script that has a definite structure, rehearse it and block it, and then stitch all that together into a tight, ever-escalating plot, with clean sound.

I'm all for experimentation. I'm all for it. But traditional narrative moviemaking is a ton of hard work to do right, often harder than your superficially dazzling but ultimately thin arthouse fare.

There are things about Terrence Malick's movies that are very attractive, but he should maybe do commercials or something that lasts only 30 seconds. Being stuck for two hours in the theater with one of his movies is insufferable for many.
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This. I want a good plot and I want the blocking, camera angles, cuts to reinforce the plot. That is why the Shining is so wonderful to watch.
 
I definitely disagree that's it's harder to make a more stringent/formulaic narrative film than something more loose and sprawling.

Neither are easy by any means, but just pulling together the scope and vision that some of this stuff takes on is incredible.

Movies are supposed to invoke reaction and make you feel something, which Malick's films do for me.

If the only thing they make you feel is bored that's fine, but that doesn't mean Malick is bad, just not for you.

Tree of Life was by far my favorite and about 20% of the theater walked out during the screening hahaha
 
Batutta said:
I don't think they used anything longer than a 25mm lens in this whole movie.

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I can't wait to see this the trailer looks awesome. thank god theres filmmakers out there that throw away the same boring wide medium closeup over the shoulder look for something that tries for a more personal visual style that fits the characters and story.
 
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