Collateral - Grobkörnig ?

[preston sturges]

... Andersherum bekam ich mit "Doktor Schiwago", "In den Schuhen des Fischers" "Erster Sieg", "Kanonenboot am Jangtse Kiang" u.a. derart herausragende Bilder zu sehen, daß dagegen jede heutige Scope-Projektion heutiger Filme mit ihren verbesserten Materialien) immens flach und flau aussieht. Sah man diese 60er-Jahre Filme später in 35mm oder mit Mono-Lichtton wieder, brach da schon die Welt zusammen ... um Welten anders und schlechter und des Verweilens nicht eine Sekunde wert (Anm.: zumindest auf den von besseren Materialien, d.h. ZwiPos, kopierten heutigen DVDs kann man neuerdings wiederum einiges von der Roadshow-Qualtität dieser Kopien und Vorführungen erahnen, was die normalen 35mm-Verleihkopien dieser Zeit kaum mehr transportierten).

 

 

... nicht zu vergessen WESTWÄRTS ZIEHT DER WIND, bestechend scharf und kornlos, sowie aus jüngerer (internegativ-)zeit JIMMY HOFFA. Auch HOWARDS END sowie REMAINS OF THE DAY werden als excellente blow-ups gerühmt, leider nie gesehen.

[T-J]

@Preston,

 

so sehr ich deine Beiträge und dein Fachwissen schätze, den "Seheindruck" von Collateral hasse ich wie die Pest! :(

[cinerama]

Bei diesem Look bekomme ich, wie auch bei "Zwei Brüder", extreme Augenstarre!

 

Fazit: Kein Vergnügen, 100%ig dagegen. :evil:

Klar, denn der ist überwiegend auch digital gedreht, mit Sony-Panavision-Kameras.

Die "Kopfschmerzen" sind auch nicht eingebildet, sondern eine wahrnehmungspsychologische und psychovitalistische Resistenzbildung.

 

Völlig normal und natürlich, ging auch mir erstmals so, als ich Disneys DINOSAUR sah und nach zehn Minuten den Saal eines angeblichen Sony-Superkinos verließ.

 

Wenn es anderen nicht so geht, vermute ich, daß die Wahrnehmungsprägung seit Kindheit an (schon in der Schule) stark vom Computer-Monitor geprägt war und deshalb eine Gewöhnung an diese derartige Laufbild-Charakteristika eintrat. So oft ich neuerdings vor dem PC hocke, an diesen Look jedoch werde ich mich wohl nicht mehr gewöhnen können, da bricht echt was weg ... :look:

[preston sturges]

Michael Mann himself über das thema des threads ...

 

(aus einem artikel/interview von Steven Rosen mit Michael Mann, THE DENVER POST)

 

To capture that, Mann and his cinematographers, Dion Beebe ("Chicago") and Paul Cameron ("Man on Fire"), shot roughly 80 percent of the movie on a specially modified high-definition digital-video camera. (It has been transferred to film for theatrical projection.)

 

"You could not record it on motion-picture film – it would not be there," Mann explains of the city as he sees it. "I doubt I'd have made this movie if there wasn't digital, because there would be nothing to photograph. I'd have a bunch of darkness outside the windows of the cab, instead of this mobile landscape moving around.

 

"And every time I shot the distance, the best I'd have gotten would be defocused circles of color or something," he says. "You wouldn't have seen anything. You wouldn't have seen with clarity and focus all these buildings of downtown from 2 miles away."

 

Mann says the city speaks to him in "emotional Technicolor" when he looks around and sees the layers upon layers of development. "That means I'm looking at it and saying, 'I could use that' to make an audience feel a certain way," he says.

 

"I don't know if it is or isn't appealing – it's stuff that's thematic," he says. "Listen, it's the language of images. To make a motion picture, I have people moving through a world and I manipulate the space they're moving through to modify how you feel about them and feel about the space.

 

"I'm a maker of scenes."

 

 

Und für alle die es ganz genau wissen möchten:

 

(achtung ... extrem viel technisches detail ... gähn)

aus HOLLYWOOD REPORTER von Carolyn Giardina

 

Leave it to Michael Mann to shake up the system. The Oscar-nominated director famous for gritty yet visually dazzling depictions of urban life and an uncompromising attitude toward his craft is now ushering digital filmmaking from the extreme reaches of science fiction and low-budget indie into the realm of high-profile studio thriller. The director has elected to use Thomson Grass Valley's Viper FilmStream camera for his upcoming "Collateral," the Tom Cruise-starrer financed by DreamWorks and Paramount, scheduled for an Aug. 6 release.

 

As the first director to road-test the Viper -- much anticipated as the first cinema camera capable of storing images as data, directly to a hard drive -- Mann's choices are worth noting in a creative community coming to grips with the practicalities and pitfalls of digital imaging.

 

The Viper isn't the only camera Mann is using to shoot the movie, which he describes as a "multimedia" effort. He's using the Sony CineAlta high-definition camera, as well as shooting film, but of the roughly 80% of the finished film Mann estimates he's captured digitally, about 80% originated from the Viper.

 

Mann says his choice was driven by the film's creative needs. The story -- of a veteran hit man (Cruise) who hijacks a cab and forces the driver (Jamie Foxx) to traverse the streets of Los Angeles, transporting him from job to job until the LAPD and the FBI begin to pursue the vehicle -- seems well-suited to electronic cameras.

 

"Everything is pretty much driven by story, and this whole picture takes place at night," the director says. "I wanted to see into the night. I wanted the night to be alive so that it becomes very three-dimensional. That's what I was trying to get," says Mann, kicking back at the Santa Monica offices that house his production company, Forward Pass.

 

"There was a quality to the Viper cam that I responded to," says Mann, who is no stranger to digital cameras, having employed high-definition video for the opening sequences of his 2001 biopic "Ali." In particular, he says, the Viper's color imaging worked well for this particular film. "It had to do with the sensitivity of reds and yellows and oranges. This was not only seeing deeply into the night, seeing what you see with the naked eye and something more than you can see with the naked eye, but also the color information. It had an aesthetic that I wanted."

 

The Viper operates in several modes. At the high end is FilmStream, which captures unprocessed imagery -- no color correction, no compression -- in the 4:4:4 RGB color space, the full color range of an electronic image signal. (While analog film still offers significantly greater color sensitivity than any electronic medium, 4:4:4 RGB is the highest level currently offered in the electronic realm. Film scanned into the digital domain for effects manipulation or what have you is scanned at 4:4:4 RGB. By way of comparison, broadcast HD operates in a 4:2:2 YUV environment, subsampling in blue and red. The Viper also offers 4:2:2 options.)

 

Though other high-end digital cameras, including the CineAlta, also shoot in 4:4:4 RGB, Thomson vp strategic marketing and business development Jeff Rosica says that what sets the Viper apart is the proprietary CCDs that capture the image as well as the way the data, once acquired, is distributed. The CCDs capture 12-bit linear image, which is then transmitted and stored at 10-bit log space. "Because it's logarithmic, it actually emulates the most important properties of a 12-bit linear signal," says Rosica. The signal is then transferred to a recording device via a dual-link serial HD connection.

 

Mann and his team began an extensive testing phase by recording material in FilmStream onto a DVS digital disk recorder. "The total capacity was 55 minutes, and it took 35 hours to download (to videotape for dailies)," Mann says. "So obviously that wasn't ready for feature film production."

 

Next, they tested S.two digital mags to store the uncompressed raw data. "So our storage went down to something that was physically manageable in a much more compact hard drive," Mann says. "But what it posed upon us was a long-term storage capacity of 330 terabytes, which is economically unfeasible with the current limits of the drive technology." (A terabyte of storage costs about $50,000.)

 

Mann then decided "to see what would happen if we put a mild compression on (the images)" and switched to Viper's VideoStream mode, which offers a 10-bit 4:4:4 RGB video, as opposed to data, signal and provides light image processing allowing for truer color reproduction in the field. "With FilmStream you're getting raw data. VideoStream functions more like a normal high-def camera, which allowed him to control the ASA," says "Collateral" associate producer Bryan Carroll.

 

Both modes lens in 2.37:1 widescreen without any loss of vertical resolution.

 

"We took it all the way to the equivalent of a release print, so it's not like we were looking at something on a monitor and taking it on faith," Mann says.

 

While employing the latest in digital imaging technologies, Mann took care to note that his storytelling fundamentals are essentially unchanged. "In our system, we impose on everybody the grammar and syntax that we are shooting film. All the disciplines apply, and that's very important on the floor during production. We are mixing a digital culture with a film culture, and it has to be film grammar."

 

That approach drove the design of a massive workflow system that brought together the material from the film camera, Viper, and the other camera system Mann employed, Sony's CineAlta F900 HD. The HDCAM footage essentially had to be handled as camera negative. Everything that was shot -- film and digital -- was digitized into Avids for postproduction, during which a digital color grading session will take place.

 

Mann cites Carroll as well as Thomson's Mark Chiolis, Laser Pacific's Leon Silverman and Terry Brown and Panavision's Nolan Murdock as integral to working out the bugs in the system.

 

Prior to filming, a team including Mann and A-camera operator Gary Jay, (who has worked with Mann since 1992's "The Last of the Mohicans") guided modifications to the Viper.

 

"The camera body itself wasn't ergonomic for use on a production," Mann says. "We wanted weights added to the rear of the camera to increase the mass and balance back there. We needed rods for the matte box and focus-bracket system because we do a lot of hand-holding. The control buttons needed covers because you could unbalance the camera and not know you did it. This is small stuff, but it's major when you just got done having a take that's brilliant, or you think that the actors were brilliant and it looks perfect, and you find out you switched it to FilmStream."

 

With his arsenal of camera technology, production began and Mann focused his attention on directing. Dion Beebe ("Chicago") came on board as director of photography.

 

As 27 pages of the "Collateral" screenplay take place in a car, mobility was a priority. There were some limitations as the Viper was cabled to its recording deck. Mann says that when he wanted complete mobility for handheld work, the crew used the CineAlta F900 (which is configured more like a camcorder, recording to either standard Sony HDCAM or SW tapes).

 

"The benefit is that there is a 55-minute tape, so in that sense there are fewer interruptions," Mann says. "(With film) if you are hand holding and you have a 400-foot mag in there, every three minutes and 45 seconds you are having to stop." (There are third-party developers working on Viper recording options, including a portable drive to enable cinematographers to work untethered.)

 

Creatively, he says, "there's no silver bullet in all of this. ... You have to know what you want, more so than film. In film, you can rely on certain conventional looks, almost like a perceptual preset about what you're used to having. Not so in video, it's a much broader spectrum so you have to know what you want.

 

"What I like about the Viper is it sees colors, it sees things, in a different way," Mann says. "People are reaching for more expressive ways to visualize and have emotional impact. That's what it all comes down to, the emotional impact to tell a story."

 

 

Soweit Michael Mann, der uns mit ALI auch gewaltiges CinemaScope auf 35mm film in subtilster und genauester farbgebung geboten hatte.

 

[preston sturges]

Bei diesem Look bekomme ich, wie auch bei "Zwei Brüder", extreme Augenstarre!

 

Fazit: Kein Vergnügen, 100%ig dagegen. :evil:

Klar, denn der ist überwiegend auch digital gedreht, mit Sony-Panavision-Kameras.

 

kurze richtigstellung:

 

zu fast 80% mit der VIPER gedreht, rest 35mm negativ, die SONY wurde als B-Kamera verwandt, wenn man absolute freiheit brauchte ohne die datenkabel der VIPER (sh.o.) ...

 

......................................

 

Recherche = (frz. recherche "Nachforschung, gerichtliche Untersuchung") ist das Suchen nach Informationen, Gedanken, Literatur usw. zu einem bestimmten Thema, z. B. für einen Vortrag (Vortrag), eine wissenschaftliche Arbeit (Hausarbeit) usw. Entscheidendes Merkmal des Recherchierens ist - im Unterschied zum einfachen Suchen - das systematische Vorgehen.

[cinerama]

Zu "Zwei Brüder":

kurze richtigstellung:

 

zu fast 80% mit der VIPER gedreht, rest 35mm negativ, die SONY wurde als B-Kamera verwandt, wenn man absolute freiheit brauchte ohne die datenkabel der VIPER

Ja, so hab' ich's heute auch im "Kameramann" (Ausg. Sept. 2004) gelesen, wo Annaud etwas dazu erzählt: Sony-Panavision mit Datenband und Viper-"capture" mit Festplatte. Die Panoramen wurden aber hauptsächlich in 35 gedreht, da das der Schwachpunkt beim Digitaldreh ist, wo die Großaufnahme noch am ehesten auf Akzeptanz stößt ...

Na ja - was soll man dazu sagen?? ("Künstlerische Entscheidung" ist noch lange kein Freibrief für Unsinn jeglicher Art.)

 

Annaud hat ja mal mit "Wings of Courage" einen abendfüllenden IMAX-Film gedreht. Eigentlich waren alle Filme immer von einer "gelackten" Fotografie getragen ... (nur sein Stalingrad mußte etwas desaturierter rüberkommen, sah aber immer noch gut aus.)

 

Zu "Collateral" äußert Regisseur Mann:

"I wanted the night to be alive so that it becomes very three-dimensional. That's what I was trying to get,"

Die Tiefe des Raums meinten auch andere bemerkt zu haben, mit denen ich gerade darüber telefonierte. Da kann ich mich aber nur amüsieren.

Dass der Filmemacher damit atmosphärische Wirkungen erzielen wollte, kein Zufall ist, merkt jedes Kind.

Allerdings: so sehe zumindest ich in der Nacht definitiv nicht! (Aber vielleicht bin ich eine Katze, die zu dieser Tageszeit alles klar sieht, was in Wirklichkeit - nach Regisseur Mann - unscharf zu sein hat?

Konnte schon immer im Dunkeln sehr gut gucken, gerade in Dunkelkammern und Kopieranstalten (dafür aber im Tageslicht meist die Augen zusammenkneifen. Neuerdings ist es umgekehrt). 8) :shock:

 

P.S.: Deine Textanhänge sind ganz nett, aber die vielen Fotos der Videokameras sind ja so öde. Traurig, diese Brühe ...

[magentacine]

Stimme cineramas Analyse weitgehend zu.

 

Daß man die Schärfe der HD-Bilder oft als OK empfindet, liegt auch an der jahrelangen Gewöhnung an die üblichen mittelmäßigen Super-35-Bilder oder die durch Massenkopierung bedingten Kopierschlupf-"Gummibilder".

 

Lästig fand ich die "smear"-Effekte bei raschen Bewegungen und, besonders im ersten Akt, das auffällige Video-Chromarauschen.

 

Die überall gepriesene Tiefe konnte ich nur in ca. 15 Einstellungen über 120 Minuten Film feststellen, eigentlich gibt es (meiner Kamera-Erfahrung nach) nur wenig, was nicht mit modernen Highspeed-Filmmaterialien und Filmoptiken besser and schärfer zu lösen gewesen wäre.

 

Einziger Vorzug dieser HD-Technik scheint zu sein, daß die Taxiszenen mit minimalem Licht gedreht werden konnten. Na und? Interessiert's mich als Zuschauer, wieviel Beleuchtung notwendig war? Kein bißchen! Gestandene Filmschauspieler spielen auch nicht schlechter, nur weil ein paar footcandles mehr auf ihre Nase fallen, das ganze Naturalismusgetue von Dogma bis Michael Mann geht mir ziemlich auf die Nerven.

 

Nicht zufällig besteht COLLATERAL größtenteils aus Großaufnahmen, die für mein ästhetisches Empfinden meistens käsig und porig-ungesund aussehen. Der ganze metallic-blue/destaurierte Look ist ein visuelles Klischee und hat mit realistischer Wahrnehmung sowenig zu tun wie das nervige Handkamera-Gewackel am Filmbeginn.

Das menschliche Auge/Gehirn macht in jeder Lichtsituation seinen eigenen "Weißabgleich" und stabilisiert (jenseits des Vollsuffs/der Gehirnerschütterung) auch bei rascher Eigenbewegung das Gesehene, ich staune immer wieder, daß diese filmästhetische Hirnw****erei der sechziger Jahre nie ausstirbt. :roll:

 

Vom Handwerklichen mal abgesehen, ist das ein netter und leidlich spannender Schauspielerfilm. Die Fraktion der HEAT-Verehrer wird natürlich wieder eine Offenbarung aus dem Mund des Meisters sehen, aber aus meinem Gedächtnis fadet der Film mit rasenderGeschwindigkeit wieder hinweg - eben gehobenes Popcorn...

 

Interessant wäre zu wissen, welche studiopolitischen/sponsortechnischen Fragen hinter der Entscheidung für HD-Dreh standen, ich mißtraue immer ein wenig den großen "creative decisions"... :roll: