The movie "The Revenant"

[verlyn12]

Just a little "for your information". The movie "The Revenant" starring Leonardo DiCapprio is a true story and took place about 10 miles from where I grew up in Lemmon, South Dakota along the Grand River. It is really cool that this story has come to the big screen that we all heard from the time we were small children. Unfortunately, it was filmed in Canada and Australia from what I understand. There are no mountains in Western South Dakota. It is still a very rugged and very low populated area with lots of hills and rolling prairie yet today. I still live about 20 miles from this area.

[HARALD KELLEY]

Great movie

[Larry T]

Visually stunning film.

[twobjshelbys]

We got to see an Academy Awards preview. It was just a DVD, not bluray. The movie is, as stated above, visually stunning. I researched the cinematography and they were originally going to do a blend of film and digital capture, but after some test shots in the lighting conditions settled solely on digital cameras due to the dynamic range (ie, shadow to bright light) of the digital cameras. There are several articles about the filming, one really good one was by the steadicam operator that filmed many of the close up action scenes.

 

I was ready to claim that the digital movie cameras would soon make film in cinema obsolete as it has in still photography. But...

 

Then yesterday I watched Hateful Eight. Tarantino chose to use film only, no digital, in 70mm format (like Ben Hur). All I can say is "WOW!!!". He resurrected the Panavision 70mm super mode. Film definitely lives. I wish I had known this last year (Christmas day) when the film was shown in theaters in full wide screen mode. A short clip also mentions they used Panavision lenses that hadn't seen the light of a studio since the 1960s!!!!

 

I pay attention to the cinematography I guess because of my photo background. I disdain flash, and only use it in "snapshot" situations. But I have made the transition to 35mm digital.

 

The difference is that Revenant wanted to use light to convey part of the story - so low light conditions were the norm. Tarantino used well lit outdoor scenes (although I think the snow storm might have been difficult since color film isn't very "fast", I think ISO 12 or so, slower than Kodachrome 25) and his indoor scenes were "sets" so studio lighting was available.

 

There is still room for both media...

 

(Another interesting thing while researching the equipment used in the Revenant. They used Alexa cameras. They are all shot in "oversampling" 6K mode. Another very popular camera is "Red". Little is heard about these cameras outside of the industry. I've seen Red cameras and the work they get from them. The entry point for a camera body and lenses would be about 50K, and pros are likely to run 200K. One of the things that Red only casually mentions and that some studio photographers have caught on to is that every frame captured by a Red camera is a full frame still image. So imagine your Nikon shooting and saving a full image every 1/30 second. Some studio photographers are now using Red cameras for situations that don't require flash and just letting the camera free run - ie, shooting the model as a movie - but still able to extract "just the image" that has the right attributes. The only downside is that full lighting (as in movie set) has to be used since it can't sync a flash.

Edited April 25, 2016 by twobjshelbys

[mark.barton]

We got to see an Academy Awards preview. It was just a DVD, not bluray. The movie is, as stated above, visually stunning. I researched the cinematography and they were originally going to do a blend of film and digital capture, but after some test shots in the lighting conditions settled solely on digital cameras due to the dynamic range (ie, shadow to bright light) of the digital cameras. There are several articles about the filming, one really good one was by the steadicam operator that filmed many of the close up action scenes.

 

I was ready to claim that the digital movie cameras would soon make film in cinema obsolete as it has in still photography. But...

 

Then yesterday I watched Hateful Eight. Tarantino chose to use film only, no digital, in 70mm format (like Ben Hur). All I can say is "WOW!!!". He resurrected the Panavision 70mm super mode. Film definitely lives. I wish I had known this last year (Christmas day) when the film was shown in theaters in full wide screen mode. A short clip also mentions they used Panavision lenses that hadn't seen the light of a studio since the 1960s!!!!

 

I pay attention to the cinematography I guess because of my photo background. I disdain flash, and only use it in "snapshot" situations. But I have made the transition to 35mm digital.

 

The difference is that Revenant wanted to use light to convey part of the story - so low light conditions were the norm. Tarantino used well lit outdoor scenes (although I think the snow storm might have been difficult since color film isn't very "fast", I think ISO 12 or so, slower than Kodachrome 25) and his indoor scenes were "sets" so studio lighting was available.

 

There is still room for both media...

 

(Another interesting thing while researching the equipment used in the Revenant. They used Alexa cameras. They are all shot in "oversampling" 6K mode. Another very popular camera is "Red". Little is heard about these cameras outside of the industry. I've seen Red cameras and the work they get from them. The entry point for a camera body and lenses would be about 50K, and pros are likely to run 200K. One of the things that Red only casually mentions and that some studio photographers have caught on to is that every frame captured by a Red camera is a full frame still image. So imagine your Nikon shooting and saving a full image every 1/30 second. Some studio photographers are now using Red cameras for situations that don't require flash and just letting the camera free run - ie, shooting the model as a movie - but still able to extract "just the image" that has the right attributes. The only downside is that full lighting (as in movie set) has to be used since it can't sync a flash.

Great information. Back in the 70's and 80's I did a ton of photography, 35MM and some 2x2. Strictly amateur, but I loved doing it. Today, all I have left is my cell phone and go pro. Not quite the same.

 

Thanks for posting this.

 

Mark

[twobjshelbys]

Great information. Back in the 70's and 80's I did a ton of photography, 35MM and some 2x2. Strictly amateur, but I loved doing it. Today, all I have left is my cell phone and go pro. Not quite the same.

 

Thanks for posting this.

 

Mark

 

I used a lot of 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 myself (6cm x 6cm), both studio, wedding and landscape. Even cropped the larger negative gave a 16x20 print where the same image in 35mm would give 8x10. There are digital backs for Hasselblad, etc. But they are quite pricey.

 

I have a GoPro black that does 4K. It's surprisingly good, but he fisheye lens makes doing anything serious difficult. They are widely used professionally though. Much of the footage on Deadliest Catch is GoPro.

 

I'm scanning all of my film images (about 30,000) and it's quite a tedious process. I put it on hold after the Colorado floods, got started for about a week, and then got behind in the post processing. Then both Silverfast and the Adobe toolset changed, so the workflow isn't the same any more and I'm now mired in trying to figure out new tools.

[mark.barton]

 

I used a lot of 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 myself (6cm x 6cm), both studio, wedding and landscape. Even cropped the larger negative gave a 16x20 print where the same image in 35mm would give 8x10. There are digital backs for Hasselblad, etc. But they are quite pricey.

 

I have a GoPro black that does 4K. It's surprisingly good, but he fisheye lens makes doing anything serious difficult. They are widely used professionally though. Much of the footage on Deadliest Catch is GoPro.

 

I'm scanning all of my film images (about 30,000) and it's quite a tedious process. I put it on hold after the Colorado floods, got started for about a week, and then got behind in the post processing. Then both Silverfast and the Adobe toolset changed, so the workflow isn't the same any more and I'm now mired in trying to figure out new tools.

Yep, 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 (too many beers between last use). I shot mostly slides on 35mm and have thousands. Lot's of Long Beach and Ceasars Palace Grand Prix's. Good luck with the digital process.

 

Sorry about the thread hijack.

 

Mark