Let Them All Talk

[sam karr]

You can disagree all you want, but it's still a fact that if you shoot something at magic hour in an outdoor location with little to no artificial lights contaminating the scene, then it's gonna look beautiful with little to no effort. But you would never be able to get something beautiful out of a damn cruise ship, whatever modern technology you think about. Not if you shoot improvised scenes and need to make it in time over two weeks.

This is the whole point of the Dogma 95 approach he's taken. Get rid of the things that are in the way of telling the story. Free up the set. It's the same idea that created Dogma 95, but he's doing a new wave of it using modern cameras and experimenting with iPhones, which have much better quality than the video cameras back in the '90s.

This is what I mean with people today being spoiled by perfection. It's not only about how things "are supposed to look good", but it's also the obsession with perfection that makes the idea that YouTubers who shoot slomo magic hour videos with zero substance is evidence that creating an actors-driven, improvisation, feature-length film in a location that is terrible for lighting... should look just as good.

If the story was placed in Yosemite park, he would have gotten so much for free. But it's a damn cruise ship. Try and make that look good while keeping the tempo of this shoot and get everything in the bag.

Then don’t use diffusion filters, tripods and gimbals. That’s the mix between the Hollywood look and terrible grading choice which makes it look terrible .

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Guys, Soderbergh knows what he's doing.

He obviously knows how to make things that look great - form Ocean's 11 to the The Knick.

If he wants to make an indie movie in sequence in two weeks with no lights that's his prerogative.

Also why do things have to look good?

A lot of great paintings make people look terrible, and we accept them in that medium.

For some reason in movies we can't imagine a shot being made to look bad or realistic on purpose.

For some reason even "normal" life has to look good - as if Terrence Malik shot it.

Honestly I kind of love Soderbergh's zero fucks-ness, and his willingness to explore creatively.

Seems to me that people don't know the body of work Soderbergh is behind. For me, I have a borderline love for Fincher and Soderbergh, the extreme precision and quality of a Fincher production on one hand and the extreme zero fucks given and fast-paced filmmaking of Soderbergh. I don't think it's an accident that they both came out of the 80s and was part of changing American cinema.

Just wished that more filmmakers understood what Soderbergh is doing. The obsession with image quality stands in the way of many filmmakers trying to make good movies. There's no experimentation, no trying to make something original or unique, it's all about getting that pristine commercial look, emulating something else. Soderbergh just don't give a shit, he has a story and he tries to tell it in a new way or shoot movies in a new way.

That someone, who's already established long before the democratization of cinema tech started, still is a primary figure of pushing and experimenting with the technology of making movies, while newcomers to the industry go down into the emulation maelstrom of copying everyone else as "content" instead of making any attempt at creating something new, is a testimate to the brilliance of Soderbergh. Far too many make movies to be liked or to get praised for being like the ones they idolize themselves, instead of creating their own body of work that is distinctly them. Far too many don't know shit about making movies, just "content".

Since it was shot more than a year ago (and we discussed this already back then) : didn't he shot the film in ProRes on an Atomos Recorder because it was so an early prototype that onboard recording was not available yet in his Komodo ?
I'm pretty sure I have read something along those lines.

Doesn't change that it looks great and that I, too, love Soderbergh.

Yes, prototype. I think R3D wasn't ready for it yet so they shot it with SDI recording to ProRes 4K 4444 if I remember correctly. It was literary the first real project shot on the camera, which is a nice callback to Che and Red One.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Then don’t use diffusion filters, tripods and gimbals. That’s the mix between the Hollywood look and terrible grading choice which makes it look terrible .

Don't, don't, don't. Who decides that? Maybe the subject matter in this movie, about a writer stuck between inspiration and results might even be the perfect place to have a feeling of odd Hollywood glamour lurking over reality.
What measuring stick are you using to decide what he should have done instead?

Here's a good video to explain what I mean

 

[Thad K Donovan]

Since we're throwing shade here in various forms, I'll hop on!

For me, the lighting is the least of the problems. The trailer is uninspiring. Whoever financed this isn't going to make a dime. Who is the target audience? 70 year old women? Ouch!

All kidding aside, artists should make what is in their hearts. If this is Soderbergh's heart, then so be it. I don't know his stuff well enough to comment on his artistic statements.

I read all the comments on this thread before watching the trailer. The lighting looked pretty darned good compared to the comment descriptions!

 

[sam karr]

.
What measuring stick are you using to decide what he should have done instead?

The Dogma95 one you’re using.
But for me there is a difference between Dogma which is paradoxically an artistic visual choice by itself and gave some incredible looking movies and the I-don’t-give-a-damn approach. Of course it’s a question of taste. I hated The Informant look already. It’s just my own useless opinion but I find this trailer visually lazy like many of the last Soderbergh movies.

 

[Anthony Howard-Crow]

Seems to me that people don't know the body of work Soderbergh is behind. For me, I have a borderline love for Fincher and Soderbergh, the extreme precision and quality of a Fincher production on one hand and the extreme zero fucks given and fast-paced filmmaking of Soderbergh. I don't think it's an accident that they both came out of the 80s and was part of changing American cinema.

Just wished that more filmmakers understood what Soderbergh is doing. The obsession with image quality stands in the way of many filmmakers trying to make good movies. There's no experimentation, no trying to make something original or unique, it's all about getting that pristine commercial look, emulating something else. Soderbergh just don't give a shit, he has a story and he tries to tell it in a new way or shoot movies in a new way.

That someone, who's already established long before the democratization of cinema tech started, still is a primary figure of pushing and experimenting with the technology of making movies, while newcomers to the industry go down into the emulation maelstrom of copying everyone else as "content" instead of making any attempt at creating something new, is a testimate to the brilliance of Soderbergh. Far too many make movies to be liked or to get praised for being like the ones they idolize themselves, instead of creating their own body of work that is distinctly them. Far too many don't know shit about making movies, just "content".






Yes, prototype. I think R3D wasn't ready for it yet so they shot it with SDI recording to ProRes 4K 4444 if I remember correctly. It was literary the first real project shot on the camera, which is a nice callback to Che and Red One.

I don't know. I get what you are saying for sure. I find myself fighting the "will people like/understand" this thing with my own, obviously way less mainstream work for sure. So not letting that get in the way is admirable.

But I also think people do the whole hiding behind "art" thing a lot to explain away what the vast majority of of people see as simple, bad production.

I do think everything is subjective, 100%. But to ME, this just looks lazy and bad.

If this was his intended look, awesome. I'm not the target audience. I just don't get it. It doesn't feel like an artistic choice to me. It feels like I'm watching another film school project where everyone is still trying to figure things out other than the actors.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I don't know. I get what you are saying for sure. I find myself fighting the "will people like/understand" this thing with my own, obviously way less mainstream work for sure. So not letting that get in the way is admirable.

But I also think people do the whole hiding behind "art" thing a lot to explain away what the vast majority of of people see as simple, bad production.

I do think everything is subjective, 100%. But to ME, this just looks lazy and bad.

If this was his intended look, awesome. I'm not the target audience. I just don't get it. It doesn't feel like an artistic choice to me. It feels like I'm watching another film school project where everyone is still trying to figure things out other than the actors.

If the intention is to make a movie under two weeks, focusing on improvisation, at a location that's far from controllable, in order to push what's possible in terms of making movies, time and resources, then it seems he succeeded. If you think this is lazy, then check how lazy you feel after doing something similar yourself. Putting together something like this in that time frame is the opposite of lazy. There's no "hiding behind art" here, he's pushing the medium while working with what he gets. I still would want to see anyone saying this looks bad, try to make a feature film in the same way themselves, at a location of similar bad lighting, within just two weeks. The whole point he's making with how he's made this film is about the bullshit in Hollywood. It's literally made on a budget scope that probably anyone on any level can afford except for the unpaid A-list actors. The "intended look" is not the thing here, it's the "intended way" of making a movie like this. Just like Dogma95 intended to create a new way of making movies, unconstrained by perfectionism, it was never about "the look", it was about everything else.

I find the inability to see that this actually looks good for a movie done in this way, in this type of location to be a lack of perspective of the whole. I'm a photographer who loves good images, who loves beautiful shots and carefully crafted filmmaking, but taking the context of how this movie was done out of the equation and judging "the look" solely based on a comparison against any other normal production or any location that is easy for even the most amateur photographer to achieve good results with, is fundamentally missing the point.

It's like all those iconic photographs throughout history which were shot with less regard to lighting, sometimes with straight camera flashes or just unflattering locations/practical lights. But they are iconic because of the subject matter, people, the moment that can't be replicated. All those images would be regarded as "lazy" and "bad" if you just reviewed them solely on the merits of lighting and image quality. And it feels like that's the only thing many new filmmakers, cinematographers, and photographers really do today.

So many new filmmakers watch the megabudget highly perfectionalized productions, trying to pixel peep any issues and judge accordingly, slowly losing connection to their creativity and starting to become emulators of this perfection. All that focus and attention to detail in other's work slowly becoming an obsession of replication. Such perfectionism of replication, the standardization of how things "should look" just dulls the industry.

 

[sam karr]

If the intention is to make a movie under two weeks, focusing on improvisation, at a location that's far from controllable, in order to push what's possible in terms of making movies, time and resources, then it seems he succeeded. If you think this is lazy, then check how lazy you feel after doing something similar yourself. Putting together something like this in that time frame is the opposite of lazy. There's no "hiding behind art" here, he's pushing the medium while working with what he gets. I still would want to see anyone saying this looks bad, try to make a feature film in the same way themselves, at a location of similar bad lighting, within just two weeks. The whole point he's making with how he's made this film is about the bullshit in Hollywood. It's literally made on a budget scope that probably anyone on any level can afford except for the unpaid A-list actors. The "intended look" is not the thing here, it's the "intended way" of making a movie like this. Just like Dogma95 intended to create a new way of making movies, unconstrained by perfectionism, it was never about "the look", it was about everything else.

I find the inability to see that this actually looks good for a movie done in this way, in this type of location to be a lack of perspective of the whole. I'm a photographer who loves good images, who loves beautiful shots and carefully crafted filmmaking, but taking the context of how this movie was done out of the equation and judging "the look" solely based on a comparison against any other normal production or any location that is easy for even the most amateur photographer to achieve good results with, is fundamentally missing the point.

It's like all those iconic photographs throughout history which were shot with less regard to lighting, sometimes with straight camera flashes or just unflattering locations/practical lights. But they are iconic because of the subject matter, people, the moment that can't be replicated. All those images would be regarded as "lazy" and "bad" if you just reviewed them solely on the merits of lighting and image quality. And it feels like that's the only thing many new filmmakers, cinematographers, and photographers really do today.

So many new filmmakers watch the megabudget highly perfectionalized productions, trying to pixel peep any issues and judge accordingly, slowly losing connection to their creativity and starting to become emulators of this perfection. All that focus and attention to detail in other's work slowly becoming an obsession of replication. Such perfectionism of replication, the standardization of how things "should look" just dulls the industry.

if you think Soderbergh is revolutionary and anti-system, you probably didn't see enough indie and auteur movies from all over the world. Soderbergh is part of the system and the "Hollywood bullshit", as you say. Come on, look at the casting. And I guess the diffusion filter was to protect the old actresses. It looks more like a posture than a manifesto.

 

[Anthony Howard-Crow]

If the intention is to make a movie under two weeks, focusing on improvisation, at a location that's far from controllable, in order to push what's possible in terms of making movies, time and resources, then it seems he succeeded. If you think this is lazy, then check how lazy you feel after doing something similar yourself. Putting together something like this in that time frame is the opposite of lazy. There's no "hiding behind art" here, he's pushing the medium while working with what he gets. I still would want to see anyone saying this looks bad, try to make a feature film in the same way themselves, at a location of similar bad lighting, within just two weeks. The whole point he's making with how he's made this film is about the bullshit in Hollywood. It's literally made on a budget scope that probably anyone on any level can afford except for the unpaid A-list actors. The "intended look" is not the thing here, it's the "intended way" of making a movie like this. Just like Dogma95 intended to create a new way of making movies, unconstrained by perfectionism, it was never about "the look", it was about everything else.

I find the inability to see that this actually looks good for a movie done in this way, in this type of location to be a lack of perspective of the whole. I'm a photographer who loves good images, who loves beautiful shots and carefully crafted filmmaking, but taking the context of how this movie was done out of the equation and judging "the look" solely based on a comparison against any other normal production or any location that is easy for even the most amateur photographer to achieve good results with, is fundamentally missing the point.

It's like all those iconic photographs throughout history which were shot with less regard to lighting, sometimes with straight camera flashes or just unflattering locations/practical lights. But they are iconic because of the subject matter, people, the moment that can't be replicated. All those images would be regarded as "lazy" and "bad" if you just reviewed them solely on the merits of lighting and image quality. And it feels like that's the only thing many new filmmakers, cinematographers, and photographers really do today.

So many new filmmakers watch the megabudget highly perfectionalized productions, trying to pixel peep any issues and judge accordingly, slowly losing connection to their creativity and starting to become emulators of this perfection. All that focus and attention to detail in other's work slowly becoming an obsession of replication. Such perfectionism of replication, the standardization of how things "should look" just dulls the industry.

Man, I'm really with you on a lot of your key philosophy.

I just don't think that's what we have here. But again, I could be totally wrong. I'm sitting here analyzing someone elses art. So ��.

My only point is, that I if the look was completely disregarded, for everything else, thats lazy. In a cinematography standpoint. Lazy might not even be the right word. Let's just call it low priority.

But I mean, come one. You could have any halfway decent silly vlogger make a two week vlog on that same ship and it would look miles better. We see stuff shot in uncontrolled environments all the time now and it looks from decent to fantastic.

And I'm not saying this because it doesn't have a clean commercial look. One of the reasons I got a Komodo was because of the RF mount so I could easily shoot with my minolta lenses. I'm not a huge fan of a clinical image.

I just dont think this film looks like it does because of anything other than putting everything else in front of making it look any particular way.

I watch the preview and it annoys me how bad it looks.

But I also had my wife watch it with me and after saying "are you having me watch this because it was shot on a RED" she said she thought it looked good lol.

So I'm sure that 95% of the target audience will have zero issue with it.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

if you think Soderbergh is revolutionary and anti-system, you probably didn't see enough indie and auteur movies from all over the world. Soderbergh is part of the system and the "Hollywood bullshit", as you say. Come on, look at the casting. And I guess the diffusion filter was to protect the old actresses. It looks more like a posture than a manifesto.

I'm strictly speaking American cinema here, not the rest of the world. As you might have noticed, I'm not even working within Hollywood so I already know the outside of that industry. But since so much is influenced by American cinema, it's important to know what's going on there and the dynamics of the players within it. Soderbergh has been outspoken of his disdain of Hollywood for years, the only reason he's doing movies is due to how streaming services cut out that bullshit, especially how it adress marketing and distribution. If having a certain actor "is Hollywood" then you can't have an American actor in your movie, because that is then Hollywood for some magic reason. Just like when a British film is made using native British actors that people mostly know from Hollywood movies, that then, is also Hollywood? What kind of logic is that?

I think you should read up on Soderbergh and his critique of Hollywood and how "things should be done". American cinema is far more than "Hollywood".

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Man, I'm really with you on a lot of your key philosophy.

I just don't think that's what we have here. But again, I could be totally wrong. I'm sitting here analyzing someone elses art. So ��.

My only point is, that I if the look was completely disregarded, for everything else, thats lazy. In a cinematography standpoint. Lazy might not even be the right word. Let's just call it low priority.

But I mean, come one. You could have any halfway decent silly vlogger make a two week vlog on that same ship and it would look mikes better. We see stuff shot in uncontrolled environments all the time now and it looks from decent to fantastic.

And I'm not saying this because it doesn't have a clean commercial look. One of the reasons I got a Komodo was because of the RF mount so I could easily shoot with my minolta lenses. I'm not a huge fan of a clinical image.

I just dont think this film looks like it does because of anything other than putting everything else in front of making it look any particular way.

I watch the preview and it annoys me how bad it looks, in every way.

But I also had my wife watch it with me and after saying "are you having me watch this because it was shot on a RED" she said she thought it looked good lol.

So I'm sure that 95% of the target audience will have zero issue with it.

I'm also not a fan of this look in this movie. I much prefer the look of The Knick, which I feel is such an underrated piece of cinematography that has just gone over the heads of people. But I cannot judge without the context of how this movie was made. I can judge the choice of diffusion, which I have said I'm not a fan of, but I don't see the rest as being badly lit or composed as it's impossible to ignore that this was done under two weeks.

The problem with the "vlogger" argument is that most of their time goes into looking good or creating a good looking image. This is why I criticize the modern mentality of content creation. It's all surface level. Content creators for youtube and vloggers can spend hours prepping for looking good in a way that feels effortless. Everyone knows that TV is fake, reality TV is fake, but it seems that the new age of "vlogger TV" has tricked all those who know reality TV is fake to think that vlogging and YouTubers is more "real". They're as fake as any other TV, putting hours into the look of effortless perfection. So this argument against the look of Soderbergh's movie falls a bit flat since we have to take into account that the time put into making that movie prioritized improvising and experimenting with the actors to reach scenes that work. You can't put a lot of time into good looking images if everything changes all the time and the whole point is to make room for the actors to be free.

The only things that's not faked effortlessness on YouTube are cat videos and home video-stuff. The rest is carefully crafted illusions of effortlessness.

 

[Rodrigo Prata]

I Think anyone saying this trailer looks bad is insane, but that's just my opinion though...

 

[Anthony Howard-Crow]

I'm also not a fan of this look in this movie. I much prefer the look of The Knick, which I feel is such an underrated piece of cinematography that has just gone over the heads of people. But I cannot judge without the context of how this movie was made. I can judge the choice of diffusion, which I have said I'm not a fan of, but I don't see the rest as being badly lit or composed as it's impossible to ignore that this was done under two weeks.

The problem with the "vlogger" argument is that most of their time goes into looking good or creating a good looking image. This is why I criticize the modern mentality of content creation. It's all surface level. Content creators for youtube and vloggers can spend hours prepping for looking good in a way that feels effortless. Everyone knows that TV is fake, reality TV is fake, but it seems that the new age of "vlogger TV" has tricked all those who know reality TV is fake to think that vlogging and YouTubers is more "real". They're as fake as any other TV, putting hours into the look of effortless perfection. So this argument against the look of Soderbergh's movie falls a bit flat since we have to take into account that the time put into making that movie prioritized improvising and experimenting with the actors to reach scenes that work. You can't put a lot of time into good looking images if everything changes all the time and the whole point is to make room for the actors to be free.

The only things that's not faked effortlessness on YouTube are cat videos and home video-stuff. The rest is carefully crafted illusions of effortlessness.

I haven't seen The Knick but I'll check it out.

And I agree on the vlogger thing. I think were closer to agreeing here than it would seem. The main point there was about how clear it is that he wasn't concerned with how it looked. Unless he wanted this look of course.

My point is that it appears like, as you are saying as well, that not much time or effort was put into the look.

I'm sure that overall it was a pretty impressive feat to shoot this film like he did, in the time he did. I'm just saying I think it's clear he prioritized most things over achieving a certain look.

I'm not here saying in the grand scheme of the film it was a mistake to do it how he did. Hes a famous director and I'm just a guy on a forum critiquing a trailer of a film I haven't even seen lol.

I was and still am just surprised by how it looks.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I haven't seen The Knick but I'll check it out.

And I agree on the vlogger thing. I think were closer to agreeing here than it would seem. The main point there was about how clear it is that he wasn't concerned with how it looked. Unless he wanted this look of course.

My point is that it appears like, as you are saying as well, that not much time or effort was put into the look.

I'm sure that overall it was a pretty impressive feat to shoot this film like he did, in the time he did. I'm just saying I think it's clear he prioritized most things over achieving a certain look.

I'm not here saying in the grand scheme of the film it was a mistake to do it how he did. Hes a famous director and I'm just a guy on a forum critiquing a trailer of a film I haven't even seen lol.

I was and still am just surprised by how it looks.

Really recommend The Knick. It's one of those series that seem to disappear in the noise, but it's a masterpiece and the cinematography is so filled with energy that is then heightened by the perfect Cliff Martinez score.

As for Let Them All Talk, what I feel is important here is the statement he makes with this movie. That you can actually just go out and shoot your movie and it won't look like Dogma95 anymore, it will look good enough to get the "cinema" stamp. Many others before this who used cheaper cameras and tested out low-budget solutions, still did so with a pretty big team and put in hours into lighting and locations etc. This is essentially Soderbergh with his camera, makeup, costume and props, some camera crew support and a boom operator. Pretty much the least amount of people needed for a production of this caliber.

This means that if a movie takes place in a setting that's even less in need of background control; if you have makeup and costume rolled up in one additional crew, have someone handling props and set/location and a boom operator. That's a team of four people plus actors.

Four people.

If those four people are talented and good, if the director is talented in both directing and cinematography, it's still not going to look like shit based on the equipment, it's probably gonna look like plenty of high budget features with large budgets.
Of course, we need to take into account things like unions, having an administrative team for planning etc. but that all depends on what type of production it is.

The point being, it all comes down to the talent of the people now, more than ever. The democratization of cinema is pretty much completed now. Especially when adding things like how powerful free tools like Resolve and Blender makes post.

 

[Alex Stolpakov]

I Think anyone saying this trailer looks bad is insane, but that's just my opinion though...

+100%
It's all crafted, I don't see any shoot not to be made. Maybe it's not a choice for everybody.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I Think anyone saying this trailer looks bad is insane, but that's just my opinion though...

Exactly! And after all the trash talk from so many, I checked the trailer again and... what are people talking about? If we ignore the locations where lighting seems to be pretty hard to control, no one can say that this looks bad. All the criticism about it looking like pure crap is just bullshit. What kind of hacks would say that this is bad? Even ignoring subjectivity and going by a technical point of view. This is good and very good considering the shooting schedule.

 

[Ivan K. Maras]

Magnificent thread. I actually agree on all things stated. From this trailer being shit, to looking good, from The Knick to Cliff Martinez, from Dogma to big budget perfection. 100% to all of it. Because it is, as always, a very subjective thing.

Soderbergh's choices are brave and not lazy. Some of those choices can result in lazy looking images as well as gorgeous ones. Obviously. How much of them are good or bad is again, subjective.
Objectively, considering his choice of production, the results are mind-blowing. And I don't know any vlogger that could produce this in two weeks, while also DIRECTING, not just vlogging.

I find his approach nothing less than inspiring and I can't wait to get my hands on my first RED camera to use it for what it's been made for - a tool for your own choices.
I completely agree with the philosophy that the visuals of a visual medium should, but don't necessarily have to be centered on image quality or framing. For all that I know, film works through images combined. The Edit. That's what makes it unique as an art form. And here we go again: even a vlogger could make a "better" movie than Soderbergh if he has a better story and editing ideas to work with. Our emotions are indeed driven by the appeal and visual quality of images. But no single most beautiful image in the world, will ever tell a better story than two ugly images combined a certain way. Beautiful images combined are better of course, but achieving them in such a short time? Unlikely to at least difficult. Better make some imperfect ones than none at all, as long as they transport the story.

Of course it makes sense to discuss the image quality of a camera in a camera forum, however it's an interesting thought wether film has to look a certain way while the main point is story and not image quality/lighting/framing. Curious about other opinions. Especially when it comes to making movies with what you have/achieving your goals, rather than focus on perfection and risk ending up with nothing at all.

 

[Mika Hawkins]

I have mixed feelings towards it, most of the things are good though the camera work could have been more precise.

 

[James Sielaff]

I mentioned this to Christoffer earlier, but felt I'd post it here, comparing the image quality of the Komodo to the Red One from Soderbergh's "Contagion", I can see some improvements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYSyuuLk5g

 

[Stuart Hooper]

This thread also made me watch the movie, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would, and also looked better than I thought it would after reading this. It did have wildly blown highlights at first, and that diffusion, but seeing as things were more in control later in the harsh mixed lighting, I'm not sure if it was stylistic/on purpose or not. Same with Songbird actually...watched that for similar reasons, looked pretty good overall, some really blown highlights that might have been on purpose with the subject matter and something dreamy in front of the lens sometimes, but overall, solid.

Curious to see more features with Komodo, as I suspect we'll get as many looks as we had directors and dops. Certainly if it allows Soderbergh to stay light and do what he does with better quality than an iPhone, I'm in. High Flying Bird was one of the best pictures in recent memory, it looked damn good for an iPhone, but I bet it would have been even better on the Komodo.