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Revanche and s16mm

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Andrew Wilding

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Ok - how the hell did they manage this?

I caught this film in the theaters and was totally blown away by the cinematography - it was crisp, elegant, restrained, and remarkably clean. The lighting was incredibly tasteful and the image just had such integrity and a major lack of grain. I watched it on blu-ray last night and was amazed at how sharp and grain free these images were, especially considering it looks as if they used a fast stock, to gauge from the background city lights on night exteriors and a couple of scenes that look lit from exclusively practicals (including one with a flash light.)

So I leaf through the booklet and am shocked to see that this was shot super sixteen. The footage looks super clean for even 35mm. And SHARP. How did they do this? Aside from the deeper DOF it didnt seem s16-y at all to me. I am beyond impressed. Not to mention that this was a top notch film in every respect...
 
I really wanted to talk about this film when I first saw it a few months ago. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten what I liked about it so much. It was great i remember that.
 
When done properly, S16 can look as good as 35mm and they can be intercut together. The Constant Gardner and Babel is an example of this. Excellent S16 footage should give you a good idea about what to expect from the Scarlet 2/3 in terms of low light and dof. Shows such as Scrubs are still shot on S16. The Hurt Locker, while shaky and sometimes grainy, looked excellent on bluray. If you loved The Wrestler, that was another great example of the potential of Super 16.

Here is a list of some Super 16 films: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_shot_in_Super_16

I find it funny that two years in a row, the Academy Award for best picture went to small formats that many of us consider inferior. Slumdog Millionaire was shot on a 2/3" sensor and the Hurt Locker was shot on Super 16 film. Content always trumps technical quality.
 
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Another great example of S16 is a scifi film called Primer, made for $7000. It was a hit at Sundance, became a semi cult film. It is also known as a film for multi tasker's considering the fact that the film's director also served as the writer, cinematographer, co-lead actor, editor, producer and music composer. BTW, he was an engineer who decided he wanted to make a film about time travel and then went on to teach himself every aspect of filmmaking. No one has any excuses after watching this film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)#cite_note-story-prod-0

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CC60HJvZRE
 
Andrew Rieger said:
Another great example of S16 is a scifi film called Primer, made for $7000. It was a hit at Sundance, became a semi cult film. It is also known as a film for multi tasker's considering the fact that the film's director also served as the writer, cinematographer, co-lead actor, editor, producer and music composer. BTW, he was an engineer who decided he wanted to make a film about time travel and then went on to teach himself every aspect of filmmaking. No one has any excuses after watching this film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)#cite_note-story-prod-0

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CC60HJvZRE
Click to expand...
Primer was an excellent film, no doubt. The perfect example of "no more excuses."

EDIT - I just realized I used 3 words that start with "ex" in a row. How exciting!
 
Primer is one of my top scifi films, so simple yet complex where it needs to be, no cheesy fx that give away the budget. It looks way more expensive than it is and shows the craftsmanship of an experienced filmmaker. Hard to believe this was practically a one man show up until the cameras rolled. Seriously, if you ever think you can't make a film because you don't have the right equipment, crew or whatever, you are lying to yourself. There was a no budget zombie flick in the UK a couple of years back that was shot for free using Facebook to gather volunteers willing to donate equipment and expertise as well as locations and actors. It literally had no budget, even the filmout to 35mm was donated. Where there is a will, there is a way.
 
Relativity

Relativity

http://www.arri.de/digital_intermediate_systems/relativity.html

True RGB scans of S16 with a sharp lens DO NOT LOOK GOOD OR CLEAN!

I got some S16 negative from another REDUSER to scan in our Oxberry printer based scanner to see how it stands up vs. 35mm and without heavy temporal software filters processing like ARRI RELATIVITY it shows as much grain as you would expect. Scans look worse than S16 to 35 blow up because the printing lens in that case blurs the grain, but in scanning the de-Bayer can make the grain stand out and the chroma matrix on single pixels can show croma aliasing from the grains in various colors overlapping.

See the side by side scan unprocessed and processed at this link,

http://www.arri.de/digital_intermediate_systems/relativity.html#_blank

Click on the thumbnails in the upper left.

All film scans used in major films are "de-grained" and have the dust mitigated, and the chroma area filtered, just like video processing now, people would not stand to look at what "real" film images look like any longer.

relativity_basketball.jpg (20.5 KB) shows how the ARRI software cleans up the grain from the sky (see ARRI link for the other samples on he ARRI site, quoted here for educational use).

Bs16b.JPG (84.7 KB) is a scan I made from a sample S16 negative that has not been de-dusted or de-grained and shows what S16 looks like before processing in powerfull image processing programs. On the near 4K uncompressed version of these scans you can see the dust is sharper than any of the image details blured by the film and camera lens, which in this case was a Ziess lens. Moving film looks twice as sharp as a single frame, temporal software using "pixel strings" simulates this effect so that key-frame compression systems do not make film look bad and have the grain stand still, when movies are processed for Blu-ray or DVD they need this kind of processing to remove the grain, and since movies are now finished for DI to filmout the same masters used for 1920x1080 Blu-Ray can be used to make the 35mm prints and DCI master for projection.

See also the sample images in this pdf file,

http://www.arri.de/fileadmin/media/...e_Systems/ARRI_RELATIVITY/RelativitySheet.pdf

You need to log in to view the images, click view in another tab on them, my sample is for monitors gamma 2.2 to 2.4.
 

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Andrew Rieger said:
Primer is one of my top scifi films, so simple yet complex where it needs to be, no cheesy fx that give away the budget. It looks way more expensive than it is and shows the craftsmanship of an experienced filmmaker. Hard to believe this was practically a one man show up until the cameras rolled. Seriously, if you ever think you can't make a film because you don't have the right equipment, crew or whatever, you are lying to yourself.
Click to expand...

Primer..Pi..and Memento are films that had high concepts that
could be carried out on low budgets. No sure what happened to
the Primer director..since he hasn't had a film out in 6 years now.
 
Steve Das said:
Primer..Pi..and Memento are films that had high concepts that
could be carried out on low budgets. No sure what happened to
the Primer director..since he hasn't had a film out in 6 years now.
Click to expand...

According to Wiki:

"Shane Carruth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shane Carruth (born 1972 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina) is an American film writer, director, editor, producer and actor.[1][2] Carruth performed one of the two main roles in his independent film Primer, which was honored at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival with the Grand Jury Prize. Carruth, a former engineer with a degree in mathematics, utilized his technical knowledge on the project.
David Sullivan, one of the leads in Primer, claimed on his Twitter that "Shane Carruth's next project, A Topiary, is in the early stages of pre-production." Filmmaker Rian Johnson also posted: "Shane... has a mind-blowing sci-fi script. Let's all pray to the movie-gods that he gets it made soon." It is unclear whether both Twitter posts refer to the same project.[3]
Shane attended Stephen F. Austin State University.[4]
[edit]"
 
Masters

Masters

Steve Das said:
Primer..Pi..and Memento are films that had high concepts that
could be carried out on low budgets. No sure what happened to
the Primer director..since he hasn't had a film out in 6 years now.
Click to expand...

The guy that made Primer said he wished he had shot more coverage, i.e. Masters of each scene. What was with that one night shot that had more gain than regular 8mm?

I was wondering if he was going to get a second chance, when I went to see it here at the Opera Plaza "theatre" there were maybe three people there at the show.

I think I liked "Primer" better than "PI" maybe, did you see PI? PI was shot maybe a little more even, but "Primer" had some humor and depth?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/

Quote: [Shane Carruth stated that at most an 80 minute could be made from the footage (the film was 78 minutes). He stated that the shooting ratio was 2:1.]

What camera stops that fast? 2:1 ratio, people told me I was crazy to think I could get under 3:1!

My offer to pay for 35mm film to make a black and white feature still stands, I talked to a few people but they don't follow through with working out the details, and no I am not paying for you to play filmmaking but to work together to make a film worth making, I have access to cameras, film, lenses, and lights, you get actors, locations, sets, and permits etc. It would be less than 4:1 ratio, and shot from a story board, last chance to shoot film before they stop making and projecting it maybe... I would use the footage to help test my DI system and for development of more advanced features in scanning and filmout, as well as general shake down of working with maybe 25TB of scans.
 
peter roehsler said:
Sorry to contradict you, but I think Martin Gschlacht, the DOP on Revanche, used 35mm.
If you look at the pic of the rigged BMW in the `production diary´ on the movie´s webpage, you will find a 35mm camera (could be a Moviecam):
http://www.revanche.at/DIARY.64.0.html?&L=9
Click to expand...

It does appear that the film was shot on 35mm. Good eye, that is a Moviecam (you can see "Mk 2" on the side of one of the cameras in another diary shot.)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1173745/technical

not sure what is up with the technical page on imdb, they got a lot wrong (both cameras and format).

Edit: What gives? Many sites clearly state the films was shot on Super 16: http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/2833/revanche.html
 
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As much as I wanted to believe that "Revanche" was shot on Super16mm, as I am an advocate of the format, I too, as Peter mentioned, clearly saw in the behind the scenes of the blu-ray disc that the production team was using a 35mm Moviecam and 35mm optics. Great film, either way...

Having said that, the Criterion Blu-Ray Releases of the films "Monsoon Wedding" and "Everlasting Moments" are both shot on Super16mm and both have a nice look with good transfers, albiet, not as clean...

Also, having researched Super16mm on blu-ray a bit, I would say a very nice example of what can be done for a Super16mm transfer to Blu-ray is the 1995 BBC version of "Pride and Prejudice". For older film stock, and what I presume are Zeiss Superspeeds (it has that Zeiss look) the image looks great. There is even a short 5 minute documentary on the restoration that was kind of interesting.

The BBC series "Life on Mars" (also available on blu-ray) was, too, shot on Super16mm. It works great for the 1970's feel of the show. The follow up show of "Life On Mars", "Ashes to Ashes", which is still currently in production as I understand it, is shot on Super16mm, as well. It also looks great. Though, sadly, there is only a Standard Definition release of that series. Both the of the before-mentioned blu-ray titles (P&P and Life On Mars) are region free and play on Region A players if you are in the US.

(I realize this is a bit of an older thread, but I just recently watched the film and was trying to correct the common misconception about "Revanche"... )

Todd
 
Not the most uplifting film, but "VERA DRAKE" shot on Super16mm by Dick Pope looks incredible. It looks as though they stayed on the normal to longish focal length side of lenses, which probably helps, but a pretty incredible feat for S16. The look, feel, tone works perfect for the time period and story, as well.

Todd
 
Those are pretty interesting clips, Jake.
I think the first clip with the close up of the actress was a decent trade off on retaining some of the "grain" structure (though, I've seen much cleaner S16 clips, by far. The original looked like 500t pushed). I thought the clip with the car went too far. It started to look a bit plastic and mushy. Better to shoot digital. But I understand that a glossy car spot would call for that look, as the heavy grain would not be appropriate.

I think that the new Vision3 200t stock (which is suppose to look like the old 100t) should do wonders for Super16mm as far as lower grain.
 
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