Sully doesn't look that good (who cares about 4K+?)

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VinceinLA

Carbonite Member
Sorry if this is too far off topic but bear with me.

So "Sully" was shot on the new Alexa 65. I just saw it in a newer, massive 4K theater. I have to honestly say that is looked like crap. I expected more. I know this is just one example but, seriously, has anyone else seen it yet? The Revenant did the same thing for me. I had no idea which shots were Alexa and which were Alexa 65. Very little of it looked like more than 35mm resolution, not that resolution means anything but for the sake of argument...

I'm posting here because it brings back my thoughts to the whole F35 Vs. all the 4+K cams. Where is it that people are seeing where any of this matters? Is it coming from filmmakers who sit in edit bays 12 inches away from a high-res monitor? I saw a trailer before it that I know was shot on a normal Alexa and one shot on 35mm and the film one looked great actually. It was refreshing and no less resolution-looking than the others.

Sully just looked AWFUL. I know they took color out but it was just too much. A lot of skin tones went into a very video-ish area in several shots. It wasn't just color but sometimes the texture and movement just looked like a video camera. I swear I started to think this should have just been done on an another camera or film really, like his other movies. Not one person on earth would ever know this had some huge fancy camera used on it. Think of how much money they could have saved.

I truly don't understand where people are getting this resolution obsession from anymore, and this opinion is coming as more and more movies are shot with them. Meanwhile, Matthew Libatique is shooting 16mm for their next one.
 
I saw crimson peak in a theater and it was TOO sharp. Like you could see the makeup bumps on closeups. A little less, real please.
 
Eh, looks fine to me. They were obviously going to the "cold" look in the (fake) plane footage.

 
a properly done 4k finish with 4k projection really can make a difference in experience. alot of it has to do with how the footage is processed through the pipeline. the F35 is interesting in that it ties your hands in terms of look, and thank goodness sony and panavision nailed it with the sucker. I've seen amazing RED footage and Red footage that looks like diareha, and, surprisingly, same with the alexa. I've come to accept that its not that much different than running 35 through a bad soup. if the processing isnt handled right, it aint gonna look good
 
Interesting. I saw Sully in a 4k theater (Archlight) and would have never guessed that it was shot on the Arri 65.


The Arri 65 strikes me as an odd choice for an intimate drama like Sully. Yes, there's a big fx sequence of the aircraft making an emergency landing (not crashing), but for the most part it's very much about Sully and how he deals with the fallout of the incident. A lot for the film takes place in hotel rooms and offices. Not exactly sprawling vistas.

I did notice the Arri 65 footage on the Revenant, especially the final scene. It was noticeably sharper than the rest of the picture.

I read that they used vintage Panavision glass for Sully, so maybe that's why the image doesn't a bitting sharpness.

Of course the irony here is palatable. Everyone is using vintage glass, diffusion filters and soft light to knock back the resolving power of the ever increasing pixel count of the new cameras. So you end up with the data footprint of a 6-8k image that probably has been knocked down to between 2-4k of actual resolution so your actors, costumes and props don't look like hell.

eastwoodbar.jpg

I think Arri is dead on with their argument that they want better pixels not more. I'll take dynamic range and color latitude over resolution any day. To my eye 4k is more than enough and I think a lot of aging actors must feel the same way.


http://variety.com/2016/artisans/production/cinematographers-large-format-cameras-1201859552/
 
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over the top response

over the top response

VinceinLA said:
Amateur/immature response to say the least. A trailer online? Really? See it on a 60+ft screen then get back to me.

No, it's awful. AWFUL.
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"I found it awful." is the more mature feedback. Declaring the film to be awful because you found it to be awful isn't exactly mature OR professional. Neither is firing off a personal insult just because someone based an opinion on an online trailer.

Do try to keep in mind that there are members of this forum who work on feature films. Someone who worked long and hard on the film "Sully" could well be a fellow dvxuser member. No one wants to hear something they worked on being rudely and flippantly trashed to the extreme. I know I do not. So be kind, all, in your reviews of Deepwater Horizon. :D
 
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In my opinion, many great projects have been originated in 4k.

i can't speak as to the quality of the Sully film, but resolution is not the only factor that makes a film seem overly sharp...or whatever the criticisms.

Also, vintage lenses and filtration is not just about knocking down resolution. A lot of very respectable DPs find that the digital edge of even the 2k Alexa footage needs to have the digital edge pulled back by more organic elements such as glass. Of course, that is a subjective opinion and not everyone has to agree. And while I'm not of the opinion that more resolution is the only thing I care about. But I also embrace improvements in resolution. And with that, I also welcome improvements in DR, color, processing, lighting, acting ;)

In all fairness, I just think that different technologies/parameters just require different approaches. But they also open up different looks. Me personally, I prefer the organic look of film. But that look is not dependent on less resolution.

In short, I don't think that 2k is better than 4k. Alexa footage is not better because it's 2k. I agree, better pixels are better. But you can also have more of the better pixels. Either way, F35 is great, Alexa is great, F65 is great, and so on and so on.
 
I saw it the Laemmle NoHo 7 and thought aside from the VFX shots which did look too sharp, that the image looked good/fine. Certainly nothing to take me out of the story.
 
Saw it today. Didn't look out of the ordinary from any other ALEXA footage I've seen. The only real difference I could see was the FOV/DOF at various focal lengths which would obviously differ from the traditional ALEXA. As is typical, I spotted the resolution difference on Apple Trailers far easier than in the theaters...though I didn't see it in IMAX. The film didn't look bad though. The look was understated as was the film itself. There was only one shot of the film that looked out of place to me and it was due to exposure/noise. When Sully almost gets hit by a car at the beginning, they cut to a close up of him and you could tell they shot it after losing too much of their light. The noise was significant. It happens...

Worth using the 65? That's all a matter of opinion.
 
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VinceinLA said:
Looked like crap.
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Looks like New York in winter. For a docudrama like this the cinematography shouldn't stand out or "look amazing". It should disappear under the story. I thought it was effective and appropriately understated, including preserving the native color casts of interior lighting.
 
Vince, you're out in LA, I assume. The light in NY in the winter (Chicago too, in fact) really drains the color out of the landscape. You get lots of brown, gray, and in between. So, the desaturated look that you're describing was probably a look they timed in post, right? Then it's a creative choice, not the Alexa 65. In my mind, that's like criticizing LA for being too bright with color, and color timing to match that look. Kind of a weird thing to criticize if you're talking about a camera. All things considered, though, the camera just records the max data...what you do with it in post is a decision that's baked later. As you know.

Question about the theater you screened the movie in. Was it a huge screen? Is it possible that 4K starts to fall apart at giant sizes? I know 1080P looks good on my 47" monitor at home, but when I view the same footage on my 60" monitor, it starts to fall apart. Just spit balling, but there are a lot of reasons the image might not look as "pristine" as you expected.

And finally, from my own stills background, sometimes max resolution just looks plastic and digital. Many times I add a bit of film grain to high-res images to take off that digital edge, and it looks more organic, like a photo "should" look like (our minds are programmed from decades of seeing it). Same with video for me...I take 4k footage, run the LUT, and then degrade the image with grain so that it looks like film. Less sharp? Certainly. More organic and acceptable to my mind's eye? Yes. Just choices.

Here is one last question...is it possible that the 4K theater, which is capable of projecting in 4K, bought and loaded a 2K file to play, basically upres-ing the image? Things that make me go "Hmm."

I'm not invalidating your opinions...just offering counter-points.

---Best, David.
 
Alexa 65 is four regular Alexa sensors stitched together. Which means same pixel size, same color depth, same dynamic range...pretty much same everything except for depth of field characteristics, focal view changes (don't think I'm using the correct terminology here), and higher resolution, correct?
 
go stand in best buy and watch the 4k tvs. you can see a difference. and I think the best thing about shooting 4k is editing 1080 and being able to crop in like you have 2 cameras or re framing a shot.
 
David_Manning said:
Vince, you're out in LA, I assume. The light in NY in the winter (Chicago too, in fact) really drains the color out of the landscape. You get lots of brown, gray, and in between. So, the desaturated look that you're describing was probably a look they timed in post, right? Then it's a creative choice, not the Alexa 65...
---Best, David.
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The "Revenant" looked "cold" too and it wasn't because it was shot on Alexa (and parts on Alexa65). It was to visually match the shivering cold of winter climates and its effect on a human body and spirit. But, if one goes to the ARRI Vimeo channel, he can see the "warm", saturated, sun-drenched look in several of their spliced together demos. The "Sully" trailer obviously concentrated on the visual aspect of the forced landing and its flight around Manhattan. That's why the look was appropriate to the meaning of the footage.

Eric Coughlin said:
Alexa 65 is four regular Alexa sensors stitched together. Which means same pixel size, same color depth, same dynamic range...pretty much same everything except for depth of field characteristics, focal view changes (don't think I'm using the correct terminology here), and higher resolution, correct?
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I think three sensors, amounting to just under 20 MPX in total, with the 17.6 deployed for a perfect 4:2:2.
 
VinceinLA said:
Sully just looked AWFUL. I know they took color out but it was just too much. A lot of skin tones went into a very video-ish area in several shots. It wasn't just color but sometimes the texture and movement just looked like a video camera.
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Well, it was shot on a video camera so that's not surprising. And I'm sure it looks exactly like Eastwood wants it to look. He's well known for sitting on the color grading to get exactly the look he wants.

He went the opposite direction on Jersey Boys IIRC.

I'm just sayin', it's not the camera. At least in this case, it's the director.
 
Bruce Watson said:
Well, it was shot on a video camera so that's not surprising. And I'm sure it looks exactly like Eastwood wants it to look. He's well known for sitting on the color grading to get exactly the look he wants.

He went the opposite direction on Jersey Boys IIRC.

I'm just sayin', it's not the camera. At least in this case, it's the director.
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Keep in mind that this is the same director who holds entire conversations with empty chairs that he imagines to be a profane President. :tongue:
 
"Sully" looks the way it should relevant to the story.
There is absolutely no way any aspects of the look of this film were not done on purpose.

I spent MANY cold dreary winters in Chicago, and a few in New York. This is what it looks like.
Especially outside of people's homes. Like in commercial buildings.
There's this gray light that just penetrates everywhere and sucks the color and the life out of everything. And makes you always feel cold.
It's depressing. It's half the reason I moved to the South West.
They nailed it.

To me it was really obvious that they were going for a strong dose of realism here. I think they hit it.
 
DPStewart said:
"Sully" looks the way it should relevant to the story.
There is absolutely no way any aspects of the look of this film were not done on purpose.

I spent MANY cold dreary winters in Chicago, and a few in New York. This is what it looks like.
Especially outside of people's homes. Like in commercial buildings.
There's this gray light that just penetrates everywhere and sucks the color and the life out of everything. And makes you always feel cold.
It's depressing. It's half the reason I moved to the South West.
They nailed it.

To me it was really obvious that they were going for a strong dose of realism here. I think they hit it.
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Exactly.

Nice break from the teal and orange meme that is so over used.
 
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