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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Elysium - Shot on EPIC

The handheld shaky telephoto during the fight scenes gave me motion sickness. But when the camera was on a tripod it was beautiful, and I wasn't queasy.
 
It looked great, but thats about it. Movie started with an interesting premise but quickly fell apart and never recovered. Just all over the place. Dialogue was generally pretty terrible. And then there was jodie foster's accent.
 
Chris Lowe said:
It looked great, but thats about it. Movie started with an interesting premise but quickly fell apart and never recovered. Just all over the place. Dialogue was generally pretty terrible. And then there was jodie foster's accent.
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I completely agree. Most of it was gorgeous, except for these really jarring shots with the weird camera movements (looked like failed smooth cam) in the fight scene on the bridge and the car scene. Other than the great cinematography, it was really a huge disappointment. Poorly written, superficial tackling of heavy and interesting subject matter, and just pure cliche and contrived moments as well as strict adherence to conventions without much logic behind them.
 
Justin Gum said:
Most of it was gorgeous, except for these really jarring shots with the weird camera movements (looked like failed smooth cam) in the fight scene on the bridge and the car scene. Other than the great cinematography,
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??? If those shots were so bad, how can you call the cinematography great? (I happen to think it was pretty great, myself.) Nobody ever won a cinematography Oscar for failed camera technique.

I agree that there were some jarring shots, but they were very intentionally created and used artfully, to good effect.

I too was distracted by Ms. Foster's delivery, but I don't think it was her accent that was grabbing me. It was technical. It seemed to be all ADR somehow, though I can't quite put my finger on it. The synch seemed fine, but the problem was I was looking for a synch problem in the first place. No matter where she was, she sounded just the same. Whether she was in a big, open air wide shot or in a small isolation room she sounded clean and in your face. Maybe it was a mixing thing.

I was happy to see references to another film about classism and the struggle of the oppressed to retain their honor; Rob Roy. Did anyone else see that?

An interesting idea left unexplored or even mentioned is an idea from Orwell's 1984 that was reduced to a single poignant line in the film with Jon Hurt. The earth dwellers (the Proletariat of '84) have at their disposal the tools to control the situation, if only they realized it. They could control all of Earth's resources. Elysium must rely on natural resource shipments, don't you think? The pieces are there in Elysium. Max does toil, suffer and ultimately die building the tools of his own oppression, but it's use as a part of the theme is more subtle... Not a bad thing. ;-)

Edits
 
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I think what a lot of feedback is indicating is that the traditional cinematography was well executed... but the shakeycam shots weren't as well received. I'm not a big fan of shakeycam shots in theaters - a huge screen flopping around is a really risky approach to generating a 'gritty realistic' feel and should be used VERY sparingly IMHO. If it's used so often and for such durations that the average moviegoer notices then maybe it's a bit too much.

As far as the class warfare undertones, I think it was sufficiently sublte that it didn't have much impact unless you were looking for it. Really it was a straightforward action flick with some social commentary hiding in the margins. I've heard some complaints about the languange choices (French/Spanish) but I particularly liked how the choice of French popped connotations of Versailles and Louis XIV into my head. The problem with the social commentary subtext for me is that it was so simplistic that it was borderline trite... and if the movie had actually dug into that aspect there'd have been no time for blowing stuff up (and it's very risky... take the 'Atlas Shrugged' disaster for instance). As for me... I was ok with it being a straightforward 'guy fights the system, blows a lot of things up, and learns he's an OK dude on his way to redemption' relatively brainless action flick - especially when so much of it was georgous.
 
Jodie Foster is a talented actress, but every time she was on screen it was awkward. I felt embarrassed almost. I think her role and dialogue were not written well. Her death was so anti-climatic, that I feel her character didn't even need to be in the film in the first place.
 
We saw this on IMAX and the clarity was great, overall I enjoyed the cinematography and coloring but the shakycam shots bugged me. I found myself wondering how much time was left in the film about 3 - 4 times, not a good sign. And the more I think about this film the more it bugs me. I really enjoyed District 9 and this film wasn't even close. I felt like the entire film was one long trailer, high-impact score carpeting the audio, lots of action and effects, lack of story and motivation.
 
Simpatico.

It's funny, with all of the classic French class struggle stories I have read, seen or heard, none of them came immediately to my mind. That probably reveals more about myself than I should. ;-)

Thanks David.

David Kuhn said:
I think what a lot of feedback is indicating is that the traditional cinematography was well executed... but the shakeycam shots weren't as well received. I'm not a big fan of shakeycam shots in theaters - a huge screen flopping around is a really risky approach to generating a 'gritty realistic' feel and should be used VERY sparingly IMHO. If it's used so often and for such durations that the average moviegoer notices then maybe it's a bit too much.

As far as the class warfare undertones, I think it was sufficiently sublte that it didn't have much impact unless you were looking for it. Really it was a straightforward action flick with some social commentary hiding in the margins. I've heard some complaints about the languange choices (French/Spanish) but I particularly liked how the choice of French popped connotations of Versailles and Louis XIV into my head. The problem with the social commentary subtext for me is that it was so simplistic that it was borderline trite... and if the movie had actually dug into that aspect there'd have been no time for blowing stuff up (and it's very risky... take the 'Atlas Shrugged' disaster for instance). As for me... I was ok with it being a straightforward 'guy fights the system, blows a lot of things up, and learns he's an OK dude on his way to redemption' relatively brainless action flick - especially when so much of it was georgous.
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jamesbridges said:
It looked soft in my theater, was it a 2K output?
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The space shots looked fantastic to me (digital theater, not sure if it was 4k or not). Incredibly crisp, which is how space SHOULD look. The trailer for the "Gravity" looked so amazing it gave me vertigo (the trailer was pure entertainment all by itself), had me giggling in the pretty full theater... all by myself... inappropriate given the subject matter but I couldn't stop myself it looked so good... space is really starting to look great on screen, makes an old school sci-fi fanatic all warm and fuzzy.
 
Saw it at 4K on a 20 meter/70 ft screen, looked really good. Since this is a thread about how the film was shot on Epic, not about its social message (even though when a film does nothing but show how the majority of mankind lives in a ravaged place and the rest in a picture perfect world, how is that "social commentary hiding at the seams" or whatever, what were the "message driven" people expecting, a documentary or an existentialist new age piece?) I will comment on the look of the film.

It was plenty sharp, crisp and devoid of noise. Given that Epic was shot anamorphic at about 3.2K wide, and then uprezzed to 4K, it looked very good, and it should give those who feel their "barely" 5K Epic MX won't cut it some respite. In fact, the old Red ONE at "only" 4K will cut it fine too. I personally wasn't enamored with the grading, but that said, the skin tones and colors in general were the most consistent of any RED film I've seen, except perhaps Flight which was outstanding in that respect. That should give us some thought about the validity of the ACES workflow, because it did this movie a lot of good. I remember lots of weird color casts, blown out highlights (which I'm sure were not a result of improper exposure) during the Hobbit, as I've seen on other Red films, but this had none of that, again, very consistent all around.

The Barco DP23 4K projector is very good, perhaps a tad less sharp than the Sony one, but its colors feel a lot more natural. I think going forward it will be very important for the enjoyment of 4K on the big screen for the people doing the post/making decisions NOT to over sharpen their deliverables because oversharpened 4K will not only look awful and "video like" but it also has the potential to tire the eyes and make the experience a negative one.
 
Most definitely not! HAH!

I actually first saw this trick used during some fight sequence stuff for, coincidentally enough, another Matt Damon movie (The Bourne Ultimatum).
 
I am hearing people say that the shaky, up close and personal camera work made them disoriented and a little nauseous. The last time I was in a fight, taking shots in the head and belly, that is exactly how I felt. How much more evocative could the camera work and editing style be? Mission accomplished! Well done!

While the style was reminiscent of the Bourne series (which was also wonderfully visceral) this one was toned down quite a lot.
 
Scott Crawley said:
I am hearing people say that the shaky, up close and personal camera work made them disoriented and a little nauseous. The last time I was in a fight, taking shots in the head and belly, that is exactly how I felt. How much more evocative could the camera work and editing style be?
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Shaky fight scenes are the work of lazy people. Do a haphazard choreography and then just shoot a bunch of angles, hide everything and add huge sounds. If it's supposed to be chaotic, why are the sound effects always crisp and precise? Because you can't see shit and without sound people would have no idea what's going on.

Mostly directors get bored in the editing room after watching the same stuff for hours and then they want it to be "MORE INTENSE! MORE CUTS!" forgetting that first-time viewers don't have that clarity that someone who knows what's going on does. There's a way to make handheld look great (example: Children of men.)
 
So by your estimation George Richmond, BSC. Is some kind of lazy schmuck? I am curious about this more angles + more cuts = less work theory. Tell a cast and crew that has been doing "intense" all day every day for a week that they are lazy. I'd like to see that.

You remind me of so many of the laymen I have met on and around jobs. "You have a pretty easy job, don't you? All you have to do is hold the camera steady."

Then there is the well meaning "That is a really nice camera! If I had a fancy camera like that I would have saved some money and shot these myself."

That is some funny shit. Thanks.

maarek said:
Shaky fight scenes are the work of lazy people. Do a haphazard choreography and then just shoot a bunch of angles, hide everything and add huge sounds. If it's supposed to be chaotic, why are the sound effects always crisp and precise? Because you can't see shit and without sound people would have no idea what's going on.

Mostly directors get bored in the editing room after watching the same stuff for hours and then they want it to be "MORE INTENSE! MORE CUTS!" forgetting that first-time viewers don't have that clarity that someone who knows what's going on does. There's a way to make handheld look great (example: Children of men.)
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