Mad Max /Fury Road

[Shane Betts]

The guitar flames were real. The guy with the guitar (Iota - awesome singer - played the band leader in The Great Gatsby) is a friend of my wife's. Saw in interview somewhere with the production designer. He said whenever he makes a prop for George Miller, Miller says, "That looks great. Plug it in!". Everything has to work.

The stunt guys are lucky he's mellowed with age. In the original Mad Max everything was done for real and at full speed. Those stunt guys were genuine heroes.

 

[David Ellison]

All I could think when watching this was the amount of coverage required for a non stop two hour action scene.
Beyond exhausting, At Millers age he must be superhuman.

 

[Peter Hybal]

My screening looked oversharpened (unsharp mask) and every shot had heck loads of very visible post-added film grain which made it look quite amateurish. But a good movie anyway.. in comparison to movies made in the last 8+ years.

 

[Shane Betts]

All I could think when watching this was the amount of coverage required for a non stop two hour action scene.
Beyond exhausting, At Millers age he must be superhuman.

John Seale says he had to convince Miller to shoot multi-camera. Imagine doing that single camera?!

 

[David Ellison]

God, that would have been insane.

 

[Martin Stevens]

If you shot it with a single camera, you would be arrested and put in film jail.

 

[Nick Gardner]

I you know what you want to shoot, 1 camera is plenty. Miller knows this.

Nick

 

[NOSA OBAYIUWANA]

Agree 100% Mark. I watched it in 3D and I did not enjoy it... will watch it again in 2D and see if it will be a different experience.

 

[Mike Garrick]

and another review to end all reviews................... ; ) !

http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=mad_max_hell_yeah

 

[Brandon J.F.]

and another review to end all reviews................... ; ) !

http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=mad_max_hell_yeah

Yeah, I think he liked it

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Moving images

Moving images

Looked pretty ugly at the 2D screening I saw at an LA multi-plex - can't imagine how bad the dim S3D exhibition might have been.

I believe the physics of practical acquisition of imagery where both the subject and the camera are in asynchronous high speed movement virtually non-stop creates massive amounts of motion blur. My armchair guess is that they were struggling to reproduce distinct edges (an even bigger bugaboo in optimizing compression, BTW) so they used post-sharpening tools in DI. Once they started down that road they likely discovered that it took a stupid amount of sharpening to even show much effect on an image with low contrast edges. (Unsharp mask and it's progeny rely on a threshold between adjacent pixels to determine object edges).

Part of the motion blur "signature" is that photons bouncing off of a particular spot in the scene will hit several adjacent photo sites during the 1/48th of a second the shutter is open. This "divides" the luminance value of that particular object/edge over several photo sites and essentially "mixes" those values with those captured at those same photo sites just slightly offset in time. Does that sound like how one creates a distinct high contrast edge to an object in frame? On the contrary, it means that edges no longer provide a high enough contrast threshold to be "picked out" from code value changes that are not edges. Our friend Tony Davis might even consider it another facet of temporal aliasing - I would. I'd even guess that the reason the practical fire effects seemed like they'd been added in VFX is that their extreme brightness gave the sharpening algorithm something to bite on.

Why would the distributor choose to release an over sharpened DCP? They must have screened it…

Yes, I have a fair guess on that point as well - but perhaps I've exhausted my speculation quota by now…

Cheers - #19

 

[Wayne Morellini]

He could have filmed at high framerate and fast shutter and then post processed it to look like 24p, the tools would have had a lot more edge data to work with, but then again he was not shooting Dragon.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

I you know what you want to shoot, 1 camera is plenty. Miller knows this.

Nick

Ha, ha, "Yes, just wreck those twenty vehicles again so I can get another angle".

 

[M Most]

Why would the distributor choose to release an over sharpened DCP? They must have screened it…

Maybe they didn't care because it was such a good movie. I know I didn't. In fact, I didn't even notice anything that people seem to be complaining about here. All I saw was a nonstop thrill ride of a movie. And isn't that the whole point? Because if it isn't, it should be.

 

[Adam Eden]

I watched it last night in 3d at Imax Sydney, which is suppose to be the largest Imax screen in the world. ( its advertised that way)

I thought the movie was amazing, i did have to have a couple of drinks afterwards as the whole movie was so intense.

Great direction, script, cinematography... Actually great everything! John Seale and David Burr did a great job

 

[Owen Rennie]

I had to stick tissue in my ears as it was way too loud.. Maybe I'm just getting old.. Great movie though. That blonde girl was the hottest thing I've ever seen too

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Maybe they didn't care because it was such a good movie. I know I didn't. In fact, I didn't even notice anything that people seem to be complaining about here. All I saw was a nonstop thrill ride of a movie. And isn't that the whole point? Because if it isn't, it should be.

Fair enough. FWIW, my point was that they made a choice in terms of how much sharpening they wanted in the DCP based more on marketing concerns than genuine image quality. I was also hinting at the underbelly of compression failure points when working with motion blurred material. I believe this type of reciprocity failure is exacerbated by entropy encoding schemes like J2K that are predicated on a typical distribution of low frequency, mid frequency and high frequency detail vs material that has virtually no high frequency detail due to motion blur.

I enjoyed the movie myself (brought ear plugs with me ;-) despite it's meh IQ, it is certainly a thrill ride.

Cheers - #19

 

[Wayne Morellini]

You Americans Blair, we produce anything perverse over here and stick a label on it and you'all love it like its high art.

Now here is an example of a truely great movie, in the comedy genre, that people are not raving about:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?132403-Movie-Spy

 

[M.Halsell]

So today I committed my dollar(s) to the filmmaking industry. First off, I wasn't unhappy with the movie itself. Its alway tricky when extending or remaking a classic franchise. I enjoyed Mad Max (1979) particularly because it was dialogue light and the action brought forth the performance. This movie stayed on par with the original. I enjoy movies shot off set, so again thumbs up for Fury Road. The casting choices were not my favorite, but again criticism is to be expected on any extension or remake.

But the the takeaway from a cinematic experience: For the first time, I finally got the "it factor" for a film with principal photography shot with Arri. I was able to to slump down in my seat an enjoy the film for the aesthetics. I find that I'm more pensive in watching films where principal photography was shot with RED. Im constantly zoned in: How was the sharpness, what about the resolution, highlights, rolloff, etc? I definitely am taken out of the story based on the technical with RED. I know that RED is better in every way, but the Arri look stimulated a subjective and cognitive response that resembles what I enjoyed for years with the traditional film look. Not good or bad, its just my subconscious response.