"Nebraska", stunning black and white cinematography

CharlesPapert

CharlesPapert

Director of Photography
Had the opportunity to go to a screening of the new Alexander Payne film "Nebraska" this week. I enjoyed the film very much, the performances are very strong and it's the kind of subtle, character-driven filmmaking that we have too little of in this day and age.

It's impossible not to notice and marvel at Phedon Papamichael's beautiful anamorphic widescreen black and white photography. I kept wondering what stock he could have shot this on to achieve the tones I was seeing--I assumed color negative with a DI. There was clearly grain present, but not as much as I would have expected from classic black and white stocks. I just read the ICG article and learned that it was shot on Alexa with a carefully designed grain overlay based on 5248 stock. Phedon was thus able to make use of the high speed capability of digital for night exteriors, but the overall effect is extremely filmic, enough so that I didn't suspect digital while watching.

This does bring up an interesting question--at this point, with the aesthetic of digital firmly in place, is it cool or gimmicky to add grain to a digital image to replicate film? Of course if one is looking to match archival footage it makes sense, but as an artistic choice for a modern-day drama--what do you think?

This discussion may have to wait a while until people get to see it in the theaters. In the meantime, there's this trailer, but thanks to the compression the grain isn't visible.
 
I saw Nebraska at the Vancouver International Film Festival. It was shown on a new 50ft screen to a packed house. The grain was not too noticeable but there. I thought the BW look suited the mental state of Bruce Dern's character, if not all of the characters!

http://www.viff.org/festival/series/galas

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Black and white lights up screens in 'Frances Ha,' 'Nebraska'

Black-and-white movies are having a moment, thanks to 'Frances Ha,' 'Much Ado About Nothing,' 'Nebraska' and more. So why now?

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/12/entertainment/la-et-mn-black-and-white-20130714

Cannes: Before You Ask, Here’s Why Alexander Payne Shot Nebraska in Black and White
http://www.vulture.com/2013/05/cannes-alexander-payne-nebraska-black-and-white.html


In the press kit for Escape from Tomorrow, director Randy Moore explains the use of BW and post production process:

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j...=yYRKhwNRZA3YmOZdLl3pzw&bvm=bv.55980276,d.cGE
 
CharlesPapert said:
This does bring up an interesting question--at this point, with the aesthetic of digital firmly in place, is it cool or gimmicky to add grain to a digital image to replicate film? Of course if one is looking to match archival footage it makes sense, but as an artistic choice for a modern-day drama--what do you think?.
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When I make tiny 3D animations (10-15 seconds) with no footage to match, entirely rendered scenes, I usually add some minor amount of B&W film grain to the final render when doing the color correct. It actually takes the edge off the pure digital renders. Without it, it doesn't look as good.

Have I been brainwashed into believeing film is good and digital is bad? I don't think so. I actually think it works better with just a wiff of noise (and sometimes a small blur too). Though the amount I'm talking about is almost invisible and I never push into the full on aged film look. A little grain seems (to me) to be a good thing.
 
msorrels said:
Have I been brainwashed into believing film is good and digital is bad? I don't think so. I actually think it works better with just a wiff of noise (and sometimes a small blur too). Though the amount I'm talking about is almost invisible and I never push into the full on aged film look. A little grain seems (to me) to be a good thing.
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Human beings are drawn to things that are organic in nature. That's why we find a river, a beach, a canyon, a sunset, beautiful. Digital images are teh antithesis of something organic. It's 0's and 1's, bits and bytes. Film being an analog medium had an organic nature to it. That's what makes it pretty.

So I agree. We're not "brainwashed" by film. It simply looks pretty because of it's organic nature. The Digital realm is getting so sophisticated that it can replicate an organic look such that you can't tell the difference.

I was convinced of this completely after watching The Hobbit in 48 frames per second. The big argument was that audiences were simply brainwashed into watching 24 frames per second. That 24fps was completely arbitrary, something made up because it was needed to be that fast for sound, but slow enough to save film.

It was completely obvious to me that this wasn't true at all. 24fps was used in film for so long because it's beautiful. Of course digital is going to emulate that beauty with 24p. The faster you go the less organic the movement becomes and the more "digital" it becomes so that it's less like a beautiful sunset on a beach and more like something harsh and unnatural.

I think we'll be adding grain to digital images for a long time. Film is a chemical process that occurs and while you have some control, a lot of it is out of your hands. That's the nature of anything analog. Digital is completely manipulated by programming to be whatever the chip makers and programmers want it to be. Why wouldn't you try to make it as much like something natural as you can?
 
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Gillvane said:
I think we'll be adding grain to digital images for a long time. Film is a chemical process that occurs and while you have some control, a lot of it is out of your hands. That's the nature of anything analog. Digital is completely manipulated by programming to be whatever the chip makers and programmers want it to be. Why wouldn't you try to make it as much like something natural as you can?
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Film stocks were just as 'manipulated'... The consumer had some ability to 'alter' things, but not that much. The same is true for digital, although the manipulation does not require ugly chemicals or bizarre printing practices.

For most of Film film's 'useful life', the goal was minimal grain for 90% of the work. Labels such as 'fine grain' were used to indicate 'less grain'. Developers were also listed as producing 'fine grain'. The idea being that while grain was present throughout the photographic process, it was something to be mitigated, lessened, and lessening the effect.

Choosing a 'fast film' over a 'slow film' centered on how much 'grain' one could live with, vs how much light was available.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Choosing a 'fast film' over a 'slow film' centered on how much 'grain' one could live with, vs how much light was available.
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Yes and no - lots of discussions also were about which stock would deliver the most "elegant" grain. But, sure, more often in the world of arthouse movies. There were people who disliked the t-grain stuff a lot and believed that other material delivered a bettter or more interesting rendering of tonal dynamics/colours. Call them grain-peepers....:-)

Still have the feeling that film-stock had (or even has) some advantages - maybe a problem of perception. Thats why I liked the images coming from the Arri D20 a lot, reminded me more of film than some of the cameras coming later (all though we had to add grain there too).
 
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Saw Phedon speak yesterday at Createasphere. Interestingly, he revealed that he did actually shoot the exteriors of the film on 5222 (Double-X) and the night work on the Alexa--actually not sure at this point which he used for interiors. In any event, the movie is a mix of film and digital orginated material. They corrected the Alexa footage to match the 22 in terms of contrast, but preferred the grain signature of 48. He did indicate that he generally rated the Alexa at 1200, so the slight added noise at that EI would have been part of that mix also.
 
Rolf Silber said:
Still have the feeling that film-stock had (or even has) some advantages - maybe a problem of perception. Thats why I liked the images coming from the Arri D20 a lot, reminded me more of film than some of the cameras coming later (all though we had to add grain there too).
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There is of course an aesthetic element in image formation, of which 'grain', 'flair', 'soft focus', etc. are all techniques available. The issue that bothers me about this sort of thing is the fetishization of 'grain' as a Film film aesthetic, that only Film film can deliver.

There are artifacts in digital capture that I hope do not become the next generations 'aesthetics'... like banding, digital noise, rolling shutter... etc.

As for 'adding grain' digitally, I think it can benefit some situations... such as the aforementioned 'banding', or 'moire' mitigation.

I did try some experiments in this regard with my DVX100 some years ago, where I 'uprezed' an SD image to 2K, added 'grain'. Unfortunately the processing took a day for just a few seconds of footage... but to me the results were 'better' than the usual 'uprez' filter at the time. (And such 'randomization at edges' is one moire mitigation DSP technique...).
 
CharlesPapert said:
Saw Phedon speak yesterday at Createasphere. Interestingly, he revealed that he did actually shoot the exteriors of the film on 5222 (Double-X) and the night work on the Alexa--actually not sure at this point which he used for interiors. In any event, the movie is a mix of film and digital orginated material. They corrected the Alexa footage to match the 22 in terms of contrast, but preferred the grain signature of 48. He did indicate that he generally rated the Alexa at 1200, so the slight added noise at that EI would have been part of that mix also.
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Interesting use of 'grain' for an aesthetic goal.
 
I would totally use grain packs for aesthetic purposes given the project. But, for online it might be too fine to even notice so I might only add it knowing it was going to the big screen and I really wanted that organic look at can experience at a theatre.
 
starcentral said:
I would totally use grain packs for aesthetic purposes given the project. But, for online it might be too fine to even notice so I might only add it knowing it was going to the big screen and I really wanted that organic look at can experience at a theatre.
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One of the things that is in the back of my mind, is use of 'grain' to tune to output device resolution. This is similar in principle to 'sharpening' for the final output.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
As for 'adding grain' digitally, I think it can benefit some situations... such as the aforementioned 'banding', or 'moire' mitigation.
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in the case I mentioned we thought that the picture from the D20, while we liked it more than we expected, was a tad "too perfect" - almost creamy. we believed then that this came from the Fraunhofer sensor Arri used in the beginning. And my DOP and I wanted to add some slight coarseness as the movie in question was a rather dramatic one. Strangly enough we liked the result a lot - it was outright "wrong" but right for our story.

Talking about grain: Wolfgang Petersen - while a student at the Berlin film academy - shot some reels of s-8 stock in slow motion, drivers view in a car in a nordic landscape with an anormophot adapter attached to the camera and then made a blow up to 35 mm. Watching the short film on a big screen was kind of a church service for grain fanatics.... :-)
 
Lovely digital B/W movie. Goes to show that color bit depth also helps in the translation to B/W gray shades. Unlike some comments on IMDB, this wasn't just a simple "desat" by the colorist. I'm sure they carefully manipulated the color channels for best effect.
 
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