Public Enemies - A Michael Mann Film

It mentioned something about film scans as well, but I think they were referring to the transfer to film for theatrical release.
 
Saw this on blu-ray. This has to have the worst audio mix on a studio movie I've ever heard. At first i thought I had a bad disc or my stereo was on the fritz, but I went online and found hundreds of people complaining. The ADR often had no ambience and wasn't matched to the environment, but worst of all there were these sudden jumps of volume on the dialogue track, often in mid sentence. You could feel someone riding the pots. Don't know how the hell Michael Mann let this mix be approved. As for the image, it looked decent on blu-ray, probably better than it would on a film print, but you could tell it was shot on different cameras as the quality jumped all over the place and a lot of over sharpening was done to compensate. The movie itself was just okay. Depp was good, but I felt like I had seen this story a hundred times already, done better even by Mann himself. I thought the best part was the music and the score.
 
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Normally I love that Mann look. But I had no desire to see this film, don't know why. I still enjoy Miami Vice, Probably more than I should.
 
The high-def cinematography on this looked much better at home on Blu-ray than it did in the theater. Granted, I saw it on one of those pseudo-Imax screens that is too big for a normal 35mm film print, so I bet a lot of films would look a little maxed out on the same screen.

Some shots still looked like video on Blu-ray, but overall it felt pretty much like film.

I like the audio, or at least I didn't have any major problems with it. The shootout at the cabin had a nice mix I thought. It reminded me of the shootout in Heat, a very realistic depiction of the sound of machine gun fire, which seems to be Mann's big thing with action, to treat it in as realistic a fashion as possible.
 
yeah, I'm probably super late to this, but finally drug myself around to watching PE last night after tons of mixed reviews. the only thing I could think of the whole time is how much it reminded me of reenactment scenes in the less than great documentaries they show during the day time on History Channel, Discovery, et al. crazy handheld camera movements, extreme closeups on faces, and maybe it was just me but I didn't think the frame rate was very cinematic, did they shoot in like 60 or 30fps instead of 24? Not sure what the exact problem was, but this thing rubbed me the wrong way. just my 2 cents.
 
adamrahn said:
yeah, I'm probably super late to this, but finally drug myself around to watching PE last night after tons of mixed reviews. the only thing I could think of the whole time is how much it reminded me of reenactment scenes in the less than great documentaries they show during the day time on History Channel, Discovery, et al. crazy handheld camera movements, extreme closeups on faces, and maybe it was just me but I didn't think the frame rate was very cinematic, did they shoot in like 60 or 30fps instead of 24? Not sure what the exact problem was, but this thing rubbed me the wrong way. just my 2 cents.
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Looks like 24p with a 360 degree shutter. (1/24th in digital terms).

I watched it just recently too. I thought the story was pretty good, but all of the performances came off as half assed to me. Literally it felt like someone was holding cue cards off the side of the camera for them to read. Everything was very flat.

I didn't enjoy most of the cinematography (watched it on bluray). The smeary nature of the look really stood out to me, and it was incredibly distracting. In addition, I'm all for deep focus and compositions but I don't think the hand held camera movement with the deep focus and an open shutter works. It is a look, but I don't find it attractive (or fitting the story very well).

The sound design; well I also disliked it as well but props to them for not slamming the meters.
 
The shootout at the cabin had a nice mix I thought. It reminded me of the shootout in Heat, a very realistic depiction of the sound of machine gun fire, which seems to be Mann's big thing with action, to treat it in as realistic a fashion as possible.
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I DID like the mixing for the gun fire. I was at a film shoot about two months ago and experienced what it was like to be around fairly constant gun fire from real (automatic/semi-automatic) guns, and it sounded a lot like what's in the movie.

This has to have the worst audio mix on a studio movie I've ever heard. At first i thought I had a bad disc or my stereo was on the fritz, but I went online and found hundreds of people complaining. The ADR often had no ambience and wasn't matched to the environment, but worst of all there were these sudden jumps of volume on the dialogue track, often in mid sentence. You could feel someone riding the pots. Don't know how the hell Michael Mann let this mix be approved.
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I DID NOT like the other sound mixing work...dialog got really low in some parts. Very annoying.

I didn't enjoy most of the cinematography (watched it on bluray). The smeary nature of the look really stood out to me, and it was incredibly distracting. In addition, I'm all for deep focus and compositions but I don't think the hand held camera movement with the deep focus and an open shutter works. It is a look, but I don't find it attractive (or fitting the story very well).

Saw this on blu-ray. As for the image, it looked decent on blu-ray, probably better than it would on a film print, but you could tell it was shot on different cameras as the quality jumped all over the place and a lot of over sharpening was done to compensate.
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I didn't like the cinematography, or the look either. There were some shots inside one of the houses that looked very much like video. It was really easy to spot the stuff filmed on the EX1/EX3 as well.

This isn't really related to the technology part of the film, but I really wish that Depp hadn't grown his dumb little pencil mustache. Give the guy something more fuller. lol
 
It's hard to believe that Dante Spinotti was the DP on this. Compare it to a couple of his other pieces L.A. Confidential and Last of the Mohicans.

And I'll take Warren Oates as Dillinger. :thumbsup:
 
The biggest problem with Public Enemies isn't the cheap-looking digital cinematography or the sound, but the fact that it's just totally mediocre and forgettable. Even Johnny Depp was surprisingly bland. Oh yeah, I almost forgot Christian Bale was in this movie too. That's how memorable the performances are. The whole thing just seemed kind of by-the-numbers.
 
I saw it it yesterday on DVD. I thought the sound was fvked up, but I figure its not the DVD's fault :) - seriously, I could do a better job scoring. I listened with headphones and the levels were all out of wack. The silence and lack of flow in-between some scene was very weird. Also, about half the shots look like video - str8 up TV movie, and It wasn't shot well either.

I agree with the rest of you guys, the acting was pretty weak too.

on the plus side, I liked the fire fights...they seemed influenced by Heat.
 
Watched this On Demand HD. Sound was bizarre. Gun fights were awesome. I thought the odd digital feel was unique, but I kept thinking "If Johnny Depp wasn't in this movie, this movie would be a bad B flick."

But Johnny Depp was in the movie, so I liked it enough. :)
 
Agree with Chamber005, Depp saved the film. I didn't find the digital cinematography to be distracting just Christian Bale.
 
My wife and I just watched this on a projection system, 154" screen, from Blu-ray disc.

My impression? Overly-sharp on some scenes to the point where aliasing makes the background look busy.

Inconsistent look from scene to scene.

Lots of video noise in the hall scenes and again in the woods scene.

Edge contouring really made some background newspapers on a wall display distractingly pop out when the edges started to flicker when the camera moved.

During the night scenes, there was annoying flicker of the noise component of the picture. (Malfunction in the camera?) I've never seen noise that flickered like this.

Color grading was all over the map. Some of the restaurant scenes looked like someone white balanced for daylight and then went and shot under tungsten. White collars were rendered yellow. Yuck. Some scenes just had a sickly pale look. Others were acceptable at rare times, but too few were really good. Some night shots lacked contrast--looked like the video signal was pushed to rescue some 'too dark' footage.

Beginning of film was too grainy. Looked like fake film grain added in post. Overall film was too sharpened. Should have been less excessive. This degree of sharpness made too many aliasing artifacts.

The in-car scenes didn't look too bad. The scenes were there was enough light looked okay too. But I would have shot this film softer. This was pushed too far, going after that 20/20 vision look.

I noticed a couple of scenes where the dialogue was almost lacking in ambient sound. To the good, the gunfire was realistic. It could have been louder though, like in a recent war movie about the Japanese resistance that I'd seen. At times the gunfire was muffled even though the guns were firing in open space.

What can I say? It was an interesting watch, but I can't say I liked the look of the film. I think a better job could have been done with these cameras, had the director been more experienced using them.
 
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