Vancouver-based DOP/Director/Colourist | Host of @filmformally. Adjunct Prof @FilmUBC | Faculty @emilycarru letterboxd.com/DevanAGScott/ ernstcast.com
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Insofar as I've stuck around here at all, it was motivated by the podcast: well, the darn podcast is over, so I've got no excuse.
Find me at the site below, or on my YT channel.
So long as folks are making the jump....
(If I don't follow you on there, feel free to respond to this with your info, mutuals!)
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Had no idea there was a new restoration of SO THIS IS PARIS on HBO Max of all places. The upgrade is, um, significant.
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This is the lighting that $200M USD gets you in 2021, apparently. Inflation is just killing the industry, folks.
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Please give Mark Ruffalo an Oscar for corpsing his way through POOR THINGS. We need this.
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THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is such a towering example of the creative opportunities that arise when you're freed from the bounds of such useless concepts as "sense" and "good taste."
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THE NORTHMAN has intensely peculiar camera operation, and I'm surprised it hasn't been brought up more. You've got lots of shots like this, in which the camera seems to be reacting deliberately sluggishly and panning/tilting in a jagged and awkward way.
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There's a scene in Atom Egoyan's CHLOE (2009) in which Amanda Seyfried's character casually attempts to ride a bike down a sidewalk in the middle of the winter in Toronto during a snowstorm only to wipe out after five seconds. This is, astonishingly, played as a dramatic beat.
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Higuchi and Anno's absolute unwillingness to cover a single scene like sane people in SHIN ULTRAMAN is an inspiration for us all.
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I don't have much to say on this that hasn't already been said a million times, but the contrast between the duels at the end of STAR WARS 2 and STAR WARS 3 is a good argument for why thinking of light as a compositional tool is, to say the least, handy.
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People in 2022: "Why are movies so dim now? It's the digital that's done it!"
Gregg Toland, 1940, shooting the most beautiful movie ever:
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Not to pile on the discourse too much but it strikes me that "ugh, VEGETABLES" is generally considered a phase children go through before they grow into adults and develop actual palettes. At least, that was my understanding.
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I defy anyone here to identify what the first shot in this clip is establishing on your first try. I included every single frame of the shot. Nothing has been trimmed.
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I would bet actual money that it went something like this:
1. Marketing intern asks AI chatbot for "negative contemporaneous reviews of THE GODFATHER"
2. Chatbot spits out some hallucinated nonsense.
3. Nobody checks.
The trailer for Francis Ford Coppola's MEGALOPOLIS features a history of dismissive quotes from noted critics about the director's earlier masterpieces. There's one problem, however. The quotes appear to be made up. vulture.com/article/did-the-…
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So we all agree an AI is writing these, right?
Martin Scorsese is the master of the mafia film and perhaps the most underrated of all of Scorsese's impeccable gangster films is Scorsese's 1995 hit- Casino. Casino isn't exactly Goodfellas (Scorsese's best film) but damn it's close. While Goodfellas & Casino share much of the same energy & pacing, Casino is Scorsese's take on the rise of the "legitimate" corporate gangster, rather than the old-school street gangster we see in Goodfellas. Most importantly, Casino gives us one of the best performances of Robert De Niro's career, including an awesome De Niro narration. Casino feels much more De Niro-centric than Goodfellas, something you don't take for granted when you appreciate the fact that this film came out during the heart of De Niro's prime. Further, Sharon Stone & Joe Pesci join De Niro by delivering two of their own outstanding performances. Whether it be shots of the desert, unlimited pastel suits, or a vintage Scorsese soundtrack, Casino is Scorsese reminding us that no one does mafia films better.
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It's such a shame George Miller, King of Naturalism, would stoop so low as to use noticeable VFX in FURIOSA. Who could have predicted this?!
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Everyone's talking about how 'flat' THE BATMAN is visually. Well, not everyone: but I've certainly been far from the only one to notice a common thread among criticism that it, and other 'underlit' movies, feel 'flat'. But what the hell does 'flat' mean???
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Thirty five minutes into THE GRAY MAN and we've had eight location title cards. Who approved this.
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This is by no means a rigorous rundown of all the possible issues with the new AMERICAN GRAFFITI 4K release, but *yikes*.
First: possible the messiest power widow / local adjustment I've seen in a UHD release, in which the Mel's sign has been *very* clumsily adjusted.
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The thing is that "They should have kissed at the end of TWISTERS!" is not *really* about whether or not they should have kissed. It's about the fact that the beat comes after a sequence that is clearly builds tension for a release in the form of a display of affection...
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It's remarkable how you can just *tell* a movie is shot on glorious 70mm celluloid film stock, you know? There's a *romanticism* in the way it sees the eye sees, the way that you're seeing something that is *physical*. A chemical reaction. Astounding.
#filmisnotdead #kodakshootfi
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Do I need to tap the "OLD HOME VIDEO TRANSFERS ARE NOT MORE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ORIGINAL THEATRICAL PRESENTATION JUST BECAUSE THEY CAME OUT FIRST" sign again?
Our new 4K edition of Danny Boyle's TRAINSPOTTING (1996) enters the collection in January! 🧡💿criterion.com/films/29627-tr…
A darkly funny adaptation of @IrvineWelsh’s novel, Boyle's breakthrough was a jolt of adrenaline shot straight to the heart of 1990s British cinema.
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BIG THREAD:
Can we blame the current plague of ‘flat’ lighting on digital image capture? Are DOPs getting lazy because their cameras can do low-light? Are DITs ruining movies by insisting on overexposure? Sounds like a great time to talk about digital cinematography and 'log'!
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I think it's worth noting that ASTEROID CITY features a roadrunner that literally says "beep beep."
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One specific camera movement that encapsulates the aesthetics of the entire decade of the 00's doesn't exis-
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Now that I've finally seen all five, here's how I'd rank the five nominees for the 94th Academy Award for Best Cinematography. A thread!
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It's like every common misapprehension about what makes film aesthetics work distilled into a single terrifying clip.
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To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the BBC PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995) is significantly better-composed in its 1.33:1 originally-broadcast ratio than in its 1.78:1 form, which remains the only version available digitally.
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Per the "why is THE NORTHMAN on 35 when it doesn't look texturally filmic" discourse, it's worth looking at late 00s 35mm films. Deakins is among the most telling examples here. Little-to-no apparent scrubbing of grain in the DI, but images as grainless as most Alexa films.
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The use of unexpected camera height choices in this scene from THE GRAY MAN (Russo Bros, 2022) reminded me of what I still insist is the finest scene in any MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movie...
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I feel like Guardians of the Galaxy's reputation as a "colorful" film stems from a misunderstanding where people mistake that term for "has colors, sometimes"
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I am begging folks to do even *cursory* reading on this subject before posting absolute nonsense.
One of the problems with Hollywood today is that all the movie editors are now using HDR screens with 1000 nits brightness, and they don't realize that they are making every movie and TV show way too dark to see.
Take this example... how the f... will you be able to watch this?
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The inconsistency in lighting ideology is interesting to me. Films don't need to be lit according to the same 'rules' as one another, but it's often a good idea to set guidelines within a film.
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John Frankenheimer is great at shots that make you go "wait, that was in the cards for this setup?"
E.G.: a shot from THE TRAIN in which Burt Lancaster enters a hotel and the camera whips around to reveal the bad guys running right at him.
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It is truly weird to me how predictable people in replies to posts like this being like "Am I crazy for liking the turd-looking inaccurate version with highlight clipping, no film grain, and auto-white balance more?" has become.
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One of the most sneakily brilliant moments of the year: Spielberg/Kaminski don't rack focus to the compositional focal point of the shot. Felt like a mistake for a split second before I realized what was going on. The sound mix follows suit. Wonderful.
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Quick addendum: I know that it's a common first instinct to blame the 'editing' for stuff like this, but I would bet actual money that virtually all of these issues are due to either:
-The director straight-up not getting workable coverage
-Drastically pared-down scenes.
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Bizarre to me that all the refutations to this are "you can't actually do the film look with digital!" because that's not why this argument is nonsense: it's nonsense because calling any artistic medium 'dumb' totally misunderstands art in the first place.
Shooting on film is really dumb. Anyone with a decent understanding of post production can replicate that look with digital.
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It's just so anodyne. Anyways, here are some shots from SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, SHIN GODZILLA, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, and COLLATERAL.
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Take this scene, for example: there's no evidence whatsoever that the clone kid enters an entirely new room until we cut back to BDH. Plus, unrelated: the screen space here is just a mess. Everyone just kinda shares the center. No attention to how the shots graphically interact.
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It is *amazing* that Peter Jackson seems to have stepped on every single disastrous aesthetic landmine that the two 1995 Beatles music videos managed to, miraculously, largely avoid.
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This is your annual reminder that your choices for watching THE WIRE are:
A. A ropey SD transfer from the early 2000s in 4x3.
B. A nice HD transfer in 16x9.
Now, one might conceivably say "but Devan! What if it looks better in 16x9? It's wider! More Baltimore!" Well...
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The thing that makes discussing the immense brokenness of JURASSIC PARK 6 in any coherent way difficult is that there's no consistent throughline to the incompetence. Every other scene presents new issues. Check out this set of cuts. I don't even know where to begin.
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Or, for example, when they're lit by candlelight. There's no 'correct' way to motivate anything, but it's clear that both CHUNGKING EXPRESS and BLACK NARCISSUS feature internal logic that is consistent within each work.
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'The “Film Look” and How The Holdovers Achieved It'
Wrote an article for @FilmmakerMag about THE HOLDOVERS, Payne, DP Eigil Bryidl, and colourist Joe Gawler's use of film emulation. We went deep on both technique and philosophy. Craziness! Have a look:
filmmakermagazine.com/124994…
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Me, Repressed: Be careful when mixing aspect ratios, kids, they might be a distraction!
Ernst Lubitsch, Liberated:
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I'm not usually one for moral panics but this square/vertical cropping of promotional material needs to stop right at this very moment. Like holy shit.
Alexander Payne is going back in time for his first film in six years.
More details on the film can be found here: trib.al/9NRObNx
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I straight-up asked Bryld this and his answer was extremely reasonable: For all the efforts they made, their experiment in period emulation was very much not their #1 priority with the film: the classical elements of character and story were more important.
The Holdovers tries so hard to ape the look of analog film that I gotta question why they didn’t just actually shoot it on film?
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This is still awful and unnecessary. A more complex version of motion smoothing modes on televisions.
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Problems arise when a film's internal logic is inconsistent. SPIDERMAN 7 is a pretty good example of this: are we lighting for shot-by-shot consistent glamor and portrait-style keying, as in this reverse?
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The thing I wish more folks would be open to is that visible VFX work is not automatically a bad thing.
Miller clearly stopped trying to hide his digital brushstrokes with 3000 YEARS and was already well on the way there with FURY ROAD. He's got different aesthetic goals.
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Still waiting on that THE STUDENT PRINCE IN OLD HEIDELBERG restoration...
(If any boutique labels are listening: please, PLEASE include the Carl Davis score.)
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"Choose a director you like, and share 4 shots from their filmography"
Terrence Malick
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Dug the blocking in PASSAGES. Great example of carefully arranging camera and performers so as to comprehensively lay out the mechanics of how an absolute narcissist manipulates those around him. Tomas [Rogowski] routinely barges into frames that compositionally aren't his.
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Always fun when you can see a camera operator sweating really hard to frame out a mirror.
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Used the AI voice isolation thing on the club scene from THE SOCIAL NETWORK. You're welcome.
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E.G.: When a character's lit by direct sunlight, how rigorously do we adhere to the laws of physics, or do we want to telegraph our modifications? (WAR HORSE / CERTAIN WOMEN / FIRST COW)
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This was the scene that, I think, broke @SadHillWill and I's brains the most. It's transparently obvious they cut out a whole lot (see BDH at 0:43) and had to frantically edit around those gaps to establish blocking changes. Try and keep track of where Pratt is. It's nonsense.
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Or are we going for a slightly more messy naturalism, as in this shot in the same scene where none of the character's faces are particularly attractively-lit?
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It's a basic technique done -extraordinarily- well, but Suschitzky's separation of foreground and background using a complimentary palette of orange and blue allows him to construct geometrically effective frames from virtually any angle.
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One of the key figures of new Hollywood cinematography. Pioneered the sorts of things that too many folks these days attribute to Gordon Willis and only Gordon Willis.
(Some shots from PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, my favourite of his work.)
We are very sorry to hear that cinematographer Owen Roizman, ASC has died at the age of 86 following a long illness. Nominated five time for his camerawork, he was presented in 2017 with an honorary Academy Award for his contributions to cinema. We are preparing a full memorial.
ALT Accepting his honorary Oscar in 2017.
ALT With his father, Sol, on his first day at work as a camera assistant in the 1960s.
ALT With Faye Dunaway while shooting the classic satire Network (1976).
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Joe Wright complaining about a stick in PRIDE & PREJUDICE (2005) is one of the unsung pinnacles of DVD commentary history.
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The way that people seem, like, viscerally revolted by Daniels genuinely confuses me a bit.
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Okay yeah maybe dim cinema is a problem
The #MTVAwards provided a first look at "Kiss the Girl" from #TheLittleMermaid
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This is where I'll also reluctantly cede just a little bit of ground to the "Digital is why things like like shit now!" crowd. Though making digital look like 35mm is not rocket science, it can slightly lower the floor on how underbaked pop cinema can look texturally.
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I saw THE KILLER last night and couldnt shake (👀) the feeling that the handheld was done in post. Thanks @scottsecco for alerting me to the primary source here! Deeply cool stuff from @e_messerschmidt, and a good explanation of why "we did it on set" shouldn't be a purity test.
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For those curious, here's a list I curate of interesting digitally-captured cinema.
letterboxd.com/devanagscott/…
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I'm gonna be that insufferable guy:
Cinematheque Francaise: Definitive version! Forget about the others! A new era in NAPOLEON VU PAR ABEL GANCE begins in Paris in July 2024!
...but let's downscale the triptych finale and play it on a single screen at the big premiere.
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Inspired by the folks who prefer the 'before' screenshots of new home video restorations, I'm going to white balance some classics.
FALLEN ANGELS (Dop. Chris Doyle)
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HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON has got to go down as one of all-time great examples of a series ending at the exact moment where it's clear that the artist behind it is running dry on the concept but before there's any sense that it's being needlessly dragged out.
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Apropos of this, here's a thread on my evolving feelings about the 'dim' panic.
I could take issue the specific wording he uses, but Jay's focus on motivation and 'sourciness' is pretty much on the right track here. The focus should be on aesthetics and trends.
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Of course, this moment was a highly-choreographed crane shot using a remote head!
(Interesting sidenote: this b-roll clearly reveals the stitch in the action in the clip posted above, which is neat!)
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I genuinely can't figure out if these guys are joking when they post stuff like this. I want to believe this is a bit.
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Saw Hopper's studies for 'Nighthawks' today; it was, in Hopper's own words, 'suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet', so of course we stopped by 11th and Greenwich to see the [alleged] spot that loosely inspired the painting.
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Imagine having to sit through IRON MAN 32 after witnessing the doors to all the possibilities of cinema kicked open like this.
At my #GotGVol3 screening they played the transformers and little mermaid trailers at the same time and they synced up perfectly
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Every Cinematography Teacher Ever: 'Nobody should ever notice or think about your cinematography while watching the movie.'
Sławomir Idziak: *Relentless farting noises*
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