Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Is "The Hurt Locker" a case for resolution?

What bugged me to distraction (watching Bluray on a very decent Toshiba Regza) was the way the grain was so different from one shot to the next, even in bright daylight. One shot would be as clean as you could ask from 16mm and it would be cut with something that looked as if it had been pulled up 2 stops. Graininess is one thing, but its got to be consistent.

I think the problem may have been in the DI, where a lot of work seems to have been done:

"The 16mm footage has a much larger grain structure than 35mm or digital footage. Any compositing work had to be regrained and given a contrast in colour space to match the quality of the rest of the image and avoid looking artificial or standing out."

http://www.digitalmedia-world.com/i...gital-war-zone&catid=90:lead-story-of-the-day

Also I wonder if this contributed...

"I shoot 500 ASA film, underexpose it a little bit, and I know the grain is going to be so much but not too much.”

http://filmmakermagazine.com/news/2...royd-talks-the-hurt-locker-by-scott-macaulay/

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-grain by any means, but I found the lack of continuity in grain really distracting too.

Tom Turley
---------------------
www.filmtom.com
 
Rudi,

I feel your pain. Nothing quite as annoying as having technical aspects of a film
literally stand in front of a story that might be interesting. As far as nominations
for Awards go well need i remind you who is voting. I trully didnt feel moved by
this film and feel like those that were voting were also feeling the story on a daily
basis by way of the news.IMHO the same people voted for Avatar for cinematography
and thats not anything agaist Mauro but the lighting was done
in a box.
 
The Hurt Locker proves once again, that a good story well told, trumps all else.
 
yap;
Peter got it.
Story rules; story backed by good cinematography rules double.
People stop braking it down by technicalities. It becomes math not art.
Forgive me; it's Friday.
 
I loved Hurt Locker. The 16mm looked great and I feel it was the right choice. Had it looked 35mm perfect I don't think I would have been drawn into the story as much. It would have been to glossy. If they had used digital they might have saved money with the film but would have broke the bank with keeping all the ice packs cold to keep the cameras running. :)
 
I enjoyed the movie except for and in spite of the excessively shaky camerawork. I had to close my eyes for extended periods of time when I began to feel the onset of queasiness even though I was sitting in the second-to-the-last row of seats in the theater.

BTW, did anyone have the same interpretation/theory of Jeremy Renner's night visit to the professor's house as this reviewer did?:

http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2010/02/01/finding-deeper-meaning-in-the-hurt-lockers-carnage/
 
I haven't seen it yet, but I thought "The Wrestler", also 16mm, looked amazing. Even the Bluray holds up surprisingly well in 1080p. I think it's a real testament to the format, and I love shooting my school projects in 16mm.
 
I thought the Blu-ray was very nice on a 72" screen, but a 35mm projection of the trailer I saw in theaters looked soft.
 
I have worked in movie theaters as a projectionist, and we are a long way from the days when that was a guild job and a place of pride. I always did my best, but in certain towns and certain theaters they don't give an eff and will grossly misshandle a negative, and after a couple weeks, its toast... add in a bulb past due for a change and an out of focus picture.... nightmare. 2k Christi projection may not be everyones choice, but its damn consistant!
 
I loved the grain of this film but what killed it for me was the motion sickness I felt with so many dodgy camera moves.

Not sure what this trend of film making is bringing or I think I might be too sensitive to motion sickness on shaky none steady shots.
 
Don W said:
I enjoyed the movie except for and in spite of the excessively shaky camerawork. I had to close my eyes for extended periods of time when I began to feel the onset of queasiness even though I was sitting in the second-to-the-last row of seats in the theater.

BTW, did anyone have the same interpretation/theory of Jeremy Renner's night visit to the professor's house as this reviewer did?:

http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2010/02/01/finding-deeper-meaning-in-the-hurt-lockers-carnage/
Click to expand...
This scene had the least believability to me in the movie. Looking at it metaphorically gives it much more reason for inclusion. At that level it can be hard to read a directors conscious or subconscious intentions. Food for thought though, Thanks
 
I too found the shakey hand-held distracting -- and worse for me, used inconsistently and at times inappropriately. But there were definitely compelling moments.

As to its originality as a film, I didn't see it. I too found it pretty cliched and the same but not that different -- what was "original" I think, was the specific narrow focus on a bomb defusing unit. I agree with many here, that 2 perf 35mm would've been a nicer choice esthetically -- and since the film is a lot about "being there" watching men perform a life or death job, all the extra detail has special value in conveying the texture of what its like.
 
Having seen the movie on both dvd and in theaters, I would recommend that those who can't stand shake cam, watch the film on dvd since it is much less noticeable. In general, the large screen tends to show flaws much much more.
 
if you cant handle the handheld in the hurt locker you wont like green zone
 
Michael McVicar said:
This scene had the least believability to me in the movie. Looking at it metaphorically gives it much more reason for inclusion. At that level it can be hard to read a directors conscious or subconscious intentions. Food for thought though, Thanks
Click to expand...

I didn’t draw the 9/11 comparisons when I first saw the film and I think it’s a bit of a stretch. I was on the opinion that the driver of the car dropped James off at a random house, it just so happened to be a professors. I think the point of the scene was to highlight just how confusing it is for the American soldiers to know who the bad guys are. It also gave us an insight into James’s failing mental state.
 
Tom Turley said:
What bugged me to distraction (watching Bluray on a very decent Toshiba Regza) was the way the grain was so different from one shot to the next, even in bright daylight. One shot would be as clean as you could ask from 16mm and it would be cut with something that looked as if it had been pulled up 2 stops. Graininess is one thing, but its got to be consistent.
Click to expand...
Very true. Grain management can solve this problem, not so much reducing the grain, but keeping it consistent shot to shot. I have no idea why they didn't do this more effectively in Hurt Locker, but obviously it didn't matter so much to the people who hand out nominations and awards. It doesn't add that much time and money to the D.I. to schedule 3-4 days for grain management; dirt fixes take at least that long for film projects.

I blanched at the news that the production shot 1,000,000 feet of film. If that was a million feet of 16mm, that would equal 2.5 million feet of 35mm, which is (if I did my math right) over 460 hours of material. This is an ungodly amount of footage to deal with for editorial. I know of many A-features that go well over 100 hours, but over 400 hours is kind of stunning. I think more planning would've easily cut this in half, plus it would've given them the ability to shoot in 3-perf 35mm.

It'll be interesting to see this on Blu-ray and see if they were able to control the grain in HD any better. Super 16mm can actually yield reasonably good pictures; I've color-timed a half-dozen network TV series shot in 16mm and generally had good luck with them, provided the DP overexposed at least 1/2 stop (like taking 500 ASA film and rating it at 400 or a little lower). Getting a thick negative is critical for projects like this; underexposure in night scenes is a killer. And getting good dailies scans is essential, especially from 16mm; bad dailies (or scans) will torpedo this kind of thing if the balance and levels are off.

The shakey camera thing goes back more than 20 years, popularized by NYPD Blue and a lot of David E. Kelly productions. It's not to my tastes, but I recognize it's yet another creative technique that can be used well or used badly. I have absolutely no problem with honest handheld shooting, but deliberate jerkiness just seems very obvious and "showy" to me. I think they do it very well on 24, to name one example; DP Rodney Charters did some genius work in this show, and much of the camerawork is damn near flawless, especially for TV.
 
scott william said:
I didn’t draw the 9/11 comparisons when I first saw the film and I think it’s a bit of a stretch. I was on the opinion that the driver of the car dropped James off at a random house, it just so happened to be a professors. I think the point of the scene was to highlight just how confusing it is for the American soldiers to know who the bad guys are. It also gave us an insight into James’s failing mental state.
Click to expand...
Looking at things metaphorically is always a stretch. The meaning of things is always in the eye of the beholder. That part of the story didn't ring true to me for many reasons, operationally being one. I don't think the writer and director introduced these elements just randomly. I also think that his questionable mental state was brought up right from his characters introduction. The rest of the movie explains that.
That being said, confusion on knowing the bad guys was definitely a major point. Thanks for more insight. It's great to hear what people came away with.
 
Marc Wielage said:
Grain management can solve this problem, not so much reducing the grain, but keeping it consistent shot to shot. I have no idea why they didn't do this more effectively in Hurt Locker, but obviously it didn't matter so much to the people who hand out nominations and awards.
Click to expand...

Perhaps because the filmmakers liked it. Perhaps because they felt that the mismatched grain gave more of a feeling of multiple cameras covering a chaotic scene, and felt the lack of continuity, and the jarring quality of that lack of continuity, was appropriate and desirable for the story being told. Pictures like "Hurt Locker" aren't made for armchair critics on RedUser, they're made by passionate filmmakers who have a story to tell and a very specific, personal way of telling it. Much of the world isn't pretty, and it's even less pretty in a war zone. Not all films should have technically perfect images, particularly if the filmmaker doesn't want them that way.

I blanched at the news that the production shot 1,000,000 feet of film. If that was a million feet of 16mm, that would equal 2.5 million feet of 35mm, which is (if I did my math right) over 460 hours of material. This is an ungodly amount of footage to deal with for editorial. I know of many A-features that go well over 100 hours, but over 400 hours is kind of stunning. I think more planning would've easily cut this in half, plus it would've given them the ability to shoot in 3-perf 35mm.
Click to expand...

With as many cameras rolling as they likely had on a lot of this picture, it's not surprising that they would have such a high footage count. You have absolutely no way of knowing whether they could have "planned" it any better, or whether they should have, or, more to the point, wanted to, shoot on 35mm. Especially 3 perf, which would either have demanded physically larger cameras or considerably shorter loads, either of which would likely have presented other problems.

The shakey camera thing goes back more than 20 years, popularized by NYPD Blue and a lot of David E. Kelly productions. It's not to my tastes, but I recognize it's yet another creative technique that can be used well or used badly. I have absolutely no problem with honest handheld shooting, but deliberate jerkiness just seems very obvious and "showy" to me.
Click to expand...

Having worked for David Kelley for over 8 years, I think I can address this. The only show of David's that I recall using a "shaky" shooting style is Boston Legal, and it was done for a very specific reason. That show was a spinoff (in some ways, a continuation) of The Practice, a show that was shot in a very conventional style. Boston Legal was intended to have some of the same characters (Spader and Shatner), but a very different, much more farcical and comedic tone. That demanded a different visual energy to differentiate it from the original show. Bill D'Elia (executive producer on the final 6 episodes of The Practice, and all of BL, as well as a frequent director) felt that the use of somewhat unmotivated snap zooms, as well as hand held techniques, would bring that different energy, so those techniques were used on the BL pilot, and continued on the series. Personally, I think it really succeeded in matching the unpredictable nature of the characters and the stories being told, and really complemented David's writing. But, as I admitted, I'm a bit prejudiced in that I happen to have a great deal of admiration for Bill's directing talents and David's extraordinary writing gifts. That, and I happen to personally like both of them very much.

I also happened to have worked on NYPD Blue, and although the "shaky cam" style was certainly identified with it, the fact is that there was actually very little use of hand held cameras on that show. It was almost entirely shot on dolly mounted cameras, and much of the camera movement was "directed" during the shot by the director of photography (Brian Reynolds, during most of my time there) using a PL to his operators and cueing most of the moves based on the dialog. I know it doesn't seem like that was the case to many viewers, but I can assure you that it was.
 
Mike, I think we have a non-argument here. I merely offered some suggestions on how film grain can been managed better; I haven't seen Hurt Locker, so I can't say whether they should've done it or if it was a specific technique. Anything I say is just an opinion.

Me personally, I think drastically-changing grain levels from shot to shot is a terrible distraction that calls attention to itself. Photographically, I don't think it's necessary, but I also recognize that we're in service to the DP and the film. If they're committed to that idea, then it's the job of the colorist and post staff to give it to them.

The problem with visual trends like these -- shaky camera, excessive grain, etc. -- is when people imitate them and don't do it well. I see this done often in low-budget films, and it's discouraging, particularly when it's done as a gimmick or a visual crutch. Like anything else, it can be done well and it can be done badly, but I seem to see more of the latter these days than the former. Boston Legal was done very well, and I know that the snap-zooms were done very specifically on word cues; 24 also does it, and these are two examples where they pulled it off successfully, as witnessed by the ratings, the reviews, and their commercial success.

I do think that a 230:1 shooting ratio seems a bit extreme (460 hours of film for a 2 hour film). I think my record was about 250 hours of film for Scorcese's Shine a Light, but that was a concert documentary, which puts it in a different class than a dramatic film.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top