"Played", shot with an XL2

[rawfa]

Did anyone see this movie? A friend of mine just lend it to me. It stars Val Kilmer, Gabriel Byrne and some other familiar faces. As soon as I started watching I realized it was shot on video. I stopped the movie and went to check it out at the internet movie data base and I found out it was shot with a XL2 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460902/technical). I've seen some REALLY GREAT stuff shot with the XL2 but I gotta tell you guys that this looked like crap. There was a toon of over exposed shots in situations where it could easily be avoided. But what it really surprised me was how bad the XL2 looked telecined. I'm trying to find other movies that were shot with the XL2 to find out if this was an issoled incident. I really thought the XL2 would transfer to film at least as good as the dvx (which transfers with great results). But apart from the technical mambo jambo, the film it self is really really bad. I had to make a huge effort to watch this entirely. I can't believe people like Val Kilmer and Gabriel Byrne agreed to appear here. The script was huge cliche, full of one dimensional characters saying one dimensional dialogs, in situations that should not belong to ANY dimension. There's a bunch of movies that were shot on video that are so well written that you get over the fact that you are watching "video" a couple of minutes after you start watching...but in this case you have nothing to hang on to.

 

[kyle.presley]

I know what you mean. I recently saw a movie shot on the Varicam that just looked aweful; for the varicam. I couldn't even watch it all. The highlights were hot, and the latitude looked really bad all together. The name of it was "Soldier of God," a low budget take on the Crusades. And they had top of the line equipment: Varicam, PS adapter, Zeiss Primes, tons of lights... and it just came out looking like video. I didn't know you could screw up a Varicam that bad. As I watched it, I thought it was shot on the DVX, then turned it to the special features and they said it was shot in HD. I thought,"wow, they must have used the HVX, and used it poorly." However, after watching the special features for a while I learned they used a Varicam and the Pro35 adapter and Zeiss Primes., and thought they REALLY, REALLY screwed it up. I haven't seen "Played," but wow, Gabriel Byrne???? Video???? Do those words belong in the same sentence? I guess he was doing somebody a favor or something. Val Kilmer, too. Like Harvey Keitel did for Reservoir Dogs. Dogs was great though. Yeah...

 

[c.g._eads]

Val Kilmer's weirdness has caught up to him. He's not "Batman" Val Kilmer anymore, where he can demand 10 millon per film. He's not a box office draw, and even movie stars like Val Kilmer, who live a certain lifestyle, are forced to start taking things they don't want to take in order to keep up with their lifestyle. What likely happened here was that they WERE going to shoot on film, but then Val Kilmer said "I'll come on if you pay me a million bucks". They used the entire budget on getting him, and then shot the thing on video.

The other thing about this -- and this is something I think about a lot, is that a lot of the people in this forum, who don't have any huge feature credits, know how to use these cameras (the DVX, the XL2) better than these more "professional" DPs with bigger credits who are learning how to shoot on video for the first time. I felt this way with Lonesome Jim. While it wasn't terrible, I thought, "I've seen so many things on the DVX site that were shot better than this." But these directors just don't know. Cause of course they're going to say, "Well he has five features under his belt so he must know what he's doing."

 

[rawfa]

Val Kilmer's weirdness has caught up to him. He's not "Batman" Val Kilmer anymore, where he can demand 10 millon per film. He's not a box office draw, and even movie stars like Val Kilmer, who live a certain lifestyle, are forced to start taking things they don't want to take in order to keep up with their lifestyle. What likely happened here was that they WERE going to shoot on film, but then Val Kilmer said "I'll come on if you pay me a million bucks". They used the entire budget on getting him, and then shot the thing on video.

Hahaha that is an excelent explanation. I actualy found out that Val Kilmer was working on a play and just popped in for a quick cameo. His part and Gabriel Byrne's are like 5 minutes each.