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From 'Drive' To 'Melancholia,' Here's Why 2011 Marked a Shift In the History of
Cinematography
By Jamie Stuart | Indiewire December 28, 2011 at 10:00AM
The first movie I saw in theaters in 2011, aside from a couple of press screenin
gs, was "Hugo." Yes, that's correct: I went nearly 11 months without bothering t
o see a new release. The reason? Honestly, there was nothing I felt couldn't wai
t until the DVD release.
42
Lars von Trier's "Melancholia"
Magnolia Lars von Trier's "Melancholia"
The first movie I saw in theaters in 2011, aside from a couple of press screenin
gs, was "Hugo." Yes, that's correct: I went nearly 11 months without bothering t
o see a new release. The reason? Honestly, there was nothing I felt couldn't wai
t until the DVD release.
During this period, I finally upgraded my home viewing set-up to accommodate Blu
-ray. Between the high-definition (HD) I use for movie-watching at home and the
HD video that I use to shoot and edit for a living, by the time I got to my seco
nd theatrical viewing of the year, "Shame," digital projection felt completely n
ormal to me. I'd become a purely pixelated creature.
However, as I watched the trailers before "Shame," I realized that the only time
s when digital projection didn't look right was when a movie was shot on film an
d color-corrected for film projection. Too often, the contrast, grain and colors
were too harsh, as if they were over-compensating for the softer film they woul
d print out on. (Incidentally, "Shame" was shot on film, but it looked fine proj
ected digitally.)
2011 was the year in which the Arri Alexa, the first significant digital camera
released by leading equipment developer Arri, was put to wide use. Three wildly
different examples of the new camera can found in "Drive," "Hugo" and "Melanchol
ia."
Drive
FilmDistrict "Drive" was shot on an Arri Alexa
My initial reaction to seeing "Drive" was that it was the most organic-looking d
igital image I'd ever seen. At first I kept scrutinizing the image, but after 15
minutes, I simply relaxed into it. There was nothing idiosyncratic about the pi
cture that bothered me on an aesthetic level.
On the polar end, I thought "Melancholia" was a mess. It looked like Lars Von Tr
ier and his director of photography, Manuel Alberto Claro, arbitrarily adjusted
the camera's ISO scene by scene, shot by shot, resulting in a wildly uneven disp
lay of picture noise -- sometimes the image was perfectly clean, while other tim
es it looked like a crappy home video. Either or would've been fine, but the mov
ie's complete lack of consistency threw me off.
Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" wasn't comparable to the other two because it was shot
in 3D. It featured the best use of live-action 3D I've seen since "U2-3D," which
, incidentally, was the first live-action digital 3D movie in 2007. The success
of "Hugo" was the result of the combined efforts of DP Robert Richardson and S
corsese, who really took the use of space seriously and not simply as a 2D enhan
cement.
Watch: Rooney Mara Lives Up to the Hype in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" Tra
iler
Sony David Fincher's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."
"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" proved that David Fincher understands digital
cinematography better than any other working filmmaker. He has made four digital
features and five on film. As a result, he understands that digital works best
when the lighting is built primarily around practical sources and the aperture i
s wide open. His approach on both "The Social Network" and his latest work, both
shot by Jeff Cronenweth on the RED, is basically an extremely upscaled studio v
ersion of DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) filmmaking.
Three major indie releases were all defiantly shot on film: "Martha Marcy May Ma
rlene," "The Artist" and "Shame." I agree that film was the right choice for "Ma
rtha," with its soft, organic, rustic images in long shots, and "The Artist," wh
ich sought to capture the feel of a silent picture in a black-and-white 1.33:1 a
spect ratio. However, while Steve McQueen is a film purist, "Shame" could have b
een shot digitally in a manner similar to Fincher's approach without losing anyt
hing. When I watched "Shame" projected digitally, the source of the image didn't
matter.
"The Artist," while printed as black-and-white, was actually shot on color film
stock, as were other recent black-and-white pictures like "The White Ribbon" and
"The Man Who Wasn't There." And even though "The Artist" was intended to evoke
the feel of older movies, a lot of its technique was pretty modern.
Considering that the vast majority of movie viewing is digital, including home v
iewing, why are filmmakers still shooting on film if virtually nobody will ever
see it projected on film? "War Horse," for example, was shot on film by Steven
Spielberg and his longtime DP Janusz Kaminski. When it comes to shooting on film
, Spielberg is--to quote "Network"--"intractable and adamantine."
"War Horse," one of many Spielberg movies shot on film.
David Appleby - DreamWorks "War Horse," one of many Spielberg movies shot on fil
m.
After watching "War Horse" projected digitally, I must confess that it fell into
the category of movies shot on film that didn't transfer properly to digital. T
he soft image with high-key lighting was inherently designed for celluloid. And
Spielberg, in his rigidness, shot himself in the foot: Few will ever see it proj
ected on film. The digital counterpart was too harsh and vivid where film would
have been kinder. Either he should have made the movie two or three years ago, w
hen film projection was more widely used, or he should have shot it digitally an
d adjusted it for that format.
Somebody needs to slap Spielberg in the face and tell him to wake up, because he
cannot move forward as a filmmaker by holding so tightly to the past (he even w
ishes he could return to cutting on a Moviola). The roots of filmmaking are its
language, not the technical medium. I love Spielberg, but his stubbornness is de
pressing me. He should be leading the way.
Spielberg cannot move forward as a filmmaker by holding so tightly to the past.
The first major digitally shot and projected feature I saw was David Fincher's "
Zodiac" at New York's Ziegfeld Theater (the same theater at which I saw "War Hor
se") in 2007. Shot by Harris Savides, "Zodiac" was actually designed for a film
print release with digital as a minor component. The digital image was so clean
and sharp, so alien, that it was almost a distraction.
Now, digital is the new normal. This needs to be accepted. It's this transition
that has manifested itself in the nostalgia of many of the movies I've noted abo
ve: "Martha," with its long takes and its grungy seventies vibe, "The Artist" wi
th its celebration of silent film, "War Horse" with its celebration of old-fashi
oned 1940s-style filmmaking, and "Hugo," which used modern 3D to pay homage to t
he dawn of movies.
Movies will go on. The past will inspire the future. But the future will also ne
ed to stand on its own feet.
Jamie Stuart is a New York-based filmmaker.