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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 :)

The Ravenant, shot on Alexa 65

Nick Morrison said:
For all intensive purposes.
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Just to clarify (and being a writer I assume you'd want to know this anyway Nick), the phrase is: "for all intents and purposes". People garbling the words seems to have led to widespread mishearing of it.

If anyone has further details on this post re-lighting stuff I'd love to hear it. Sounds both insane and insanely interesting.
 
The techincolor article mentions 2000hrs of rotoscoping...thats 2-3 months...when you consider most features are graded in a week or two (as far as I understand) this should give us a sense of the scope and scale of The Revenant's color correct.

And thats just the rotoscoping...not the grade itself...
 
I love the film, and hope to get into big sensors soon..
 
This film certainly took a "light in post" approach. It was difficult to shoot as it was in those locations. An interesting but expensive method, but I'm not sure they had much choice.
 
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/rant mode on/

If that much work is being done on captured material it is not mainly cinematography any more but CGI/VFX.

This is getting out of control. Re-framing, re-lighting, stitching, re-whatever.

Using tech to compensate. Someone needs to draw the line and decide on the terminology. Yeah it looks great. So does photo manipulation, but there is a distinction between what some worked on right on the set, using real light and thought process and actions to capture it and what someone worked on in an armchair later. Regardless of the tight schedule or how complex it is. It is not the same work.

Might as well shoot all green screen with puppets and buy a license to actors face scan and hire other folks to bend over backwards in post while taking the statue instead of them. I also have a "vision" which includes a whole team painting for me while I'm being creative without the limitations of actual set, real time, real space and real light, no "undo", crew's stamina, actor's emotional capacity & focus-span, and with seven figures for post.

It will look great.

/rant mode off/
 
I am sure there was a great deal of grading done on this film... no doubt about that. However, that should in no way take away from what Chivo did on this film. His composition, camera movement, camera placement, and of course the use of natural light are all pretty unique.
 
Hrvoje Simic said:
Might as well shoot all green screen with puppets and buy a license to actors face scan and hire other folks to bend over backwards in post while taking the statue instead of them. I also have a "vision" which includes a whole team painting for me while I'm being creative without the limitations of actual set, real time, real space and real light, no "undo", crew's stamina, actor's emotional capacity & focus-span, and with seven figures for post.
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Someone already did that a few years ago. It was called "Avatar."
 
Bobby Farokhzad said:
I am sure there was a great deal of grading done on this film... no doubt about that. However, that should in no way take away from what Chivo did on this film. His composition, camera movement, camera placement, and of course the use of natural light are all pretty unique.
Click to expand...

I dont think it takes away, but I do think its indicative of where cinematography is going...and of the expanded role of the DP across multiple departments.

Remember, Chivo shot Tree of Life with Malick (on Film?)...so its not like he hasn't done "naturalism" the "traditional way." I would argue that, like most great artists, Chivo is taking advantage of every tool at his disposal, including roto and grading.

That said, my concern is producers will just hear "natural light" and "The Revenant" and think it was EASY (ie not see or understand the 1000s of (billable) hours Technicolor added in post).
 
Well, this Immersive style of filming (all super wide angle, long takes, camera moving all the time) ruled out a lot of filmmaking and lighting "cheats", so those had to be done in post...

What interested me also is the tonemapped look of the movie, I wonder if they have a less tonemapped version for HDR viewing.
 
Bobby Farokhzad said:
His composition, camera movement, camera placement, and of course the use of natural light are all pretty unique.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing the post team responsible for relighting, rotoscoping, retiming, parallax fixing, shot stiching, shot elements recreating etc. is very aware of the uniqueness.

Nick Morrison said:
That said, my concern is producers will just hear "natural light" and "The Revenant" and think it was EASY (ie not see or understand the 1000s of (billable) hours Technicolor added in post).
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And have brilliant ideas "as seen on tv" in order to skimp on lighting time and budget. As if "hey it's raw and high DR" wasn't enough for the trend of grading suite type of cinematography.
 
Hrvoje Simic said:
/rant mode on/

If that much work is being done on captured material it is not mainly cinematography any more but CGI/VFX.

This is getting out of control. Re-framing, re-lighting, stitching, re-whatever.

Using tech to compensate. Someone needs to draw the line and decide on the terminology. Yeah it looks great. So does photo manipulation, but there is a distinction between what some worked on right on the set, using real light and thought process and actions to capture it and what someone worked on in an armchair later. Regardless of the tight schedule or how complex it is. It is not the same work.

Might as well shoot all green screen with puppets and buy a license to actors face scan and hire other folks to bend over backwards in post while taking the statue instead of them. I also have a "vision" which includes a whole team painting for me while I'm being creative without the limitations of actual set, real time, real space and real light, no "undo", crew's stamina, actor's emotional capacity & focus-span, and with seven figures for post.

It will look great.

/rant mode off/
Click to expand...

This post is ridiculous. I worked with Chivo on Tree of Life and To The Wonder, and I can tell you 100% that he is absolutely OBSESSED with capturing the most perfect light on set. Never ever ever does he cut corners on set and plan to "fix it in post". Read any article on the making of The Revenant and you will see how much planning, scouting, and rehearsal went into capturing the most perfect light possible.

But Chivo is also a perfectionist in post, so it makes perfect sense that he would use all the tools available to pull the most out of his images. I think it's an amazing testament to his skill that the images don't LOOK like they had a heavy DI.

If you think 1000 hours of rotoscoping will make average footage look like Chivo's, you're out of your mind.
 
I don't know Chivo, but I agree with the last post by Julio.
I don't understand what you guys are talking about. Natural light used properly looks great. Better than any lighting. And they used it properly.
One thing we all forget at times, the sun is a light that we control the way we want. So whether your lighting comes from it, or from other sources, you are still lighting it.

In post there is desaturation, contrast, vignetting and probably few more tricks. It looks great, but it does not look like they "relit" and fixed the light. Just check in the BTS when you see the BTS camera and the footage, and tell me if it is two complete different lighting.

They might have used more post to stick scenes together for that continuous feeling, but that to me is understandable. Using post to help you does not take anything away from your use of a visual language.

My 2 cents I found the movie quite great, with few things I did not love. Most of the movie is very intense, raw, and filmed beautifully. I am not a big fan of wide lenses all the time, but Chivo uses them perfectly. I mean, this guy won 2 oscars in a row and might get the third one. And you are making it sounds like post production studio did all the cinematography....
 
Julio Quintana said:
This post is ridiculous. I worked with Chivo on Tree of Life and To The Wonder, and I can tell you 100% that he is absolutely OBSESSED with capturing the most perfect light on set. Never ever ever does he cut corners on set and plan to "fix it in post". Read any article on the making of The Revenant and you will see how much planning, scouting, and rehearsal went into capturing the most perfect light possible.

But Chivo is also a perfectionist in post, so it makes perfect sense that he would use all the tools available to pull the most out of his images. I think it's an amazing testament to his skill that the images don't LOOK like they had a heavy DI.

If you think 1000 hours of rotoscoping will make average footage look like Chivo's, you're out of your mind.
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100% correct. Some of the posts on this thread are a bit embarrassing.
 
I was under the impression that an awful lot of that rotoing was to replace and augment backgrounds similar to what was done in Fury Road.

Nick
 
Folks, remember, Chivo is one hell of a talented DP, the snow is a giant bounce, and the sun travels favorably when a location is selected carefully and the weather cooperates.
 
The look of this film is modern cinema at its best. I actually prefer the "look" of this film to the "Hateful Eight" ......gasp 70mm film, yes ...I know politically incorrect. My only issue was all those super sharp lens flares taking me out of the period of 1825 ?

Natural light ...looked natural ; ) ( I assume with a whole lot of reflectors & control ) and nothing like the stylised/commercial cinema look we see on everything else.

Camera choice, who cares this is why we still go to the cinema.

As Julio stated a DP obsessed and it shows ........what an achievement.
 
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