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Dave Cutler

"Do or do not, there is no try."

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Dave Cutler

Nope, Brad's right...The Green Mile was definately flat.

"Sometimes the Green Mile seems awfully long..." You got that right! My ass is still numb!

Brad:
You are correct. Graininess is very dependent on the choice of camera format ("flat", Super-35, or anamorphic), film speed, and film exposure. In general, the larger the image area on the negative, the lower the graininess. A slower film like KODAK VISION 200T Color Negative Film (5274) is less grainy than a high speed film like KODAK VISION 800T Color Negative Film (5289). Underexposure tends to produce more graininess and more "smoky" shadows. Film type, exposure and even camera negative format can vary scene-to-scene in a feature, often depending upon the "look" desired for a particular scene. (Recall that for "Little Buddha", Storaro actually intercut scenes shot in 65 mm with scenes shot in 35 mm to achieve a sharper, grain-free look for the Buddha scenes).

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

Yes... but... as I understand it, the D.P. will usually choose one stock for interiors and one stock for exteriors. And they generally like to shoot everything at the same (or close to the same) f-stop setting. The goal is always to intergrate the different stocks without letting the audience notice a difference. Film formats change often in films with visual effects and they always work hard to keep you from seeing a difference (which would then tell your mind that you're watching an effect and not something "real"). Exceptions would be films like Little Buddha or Brainstorm where they wanted two distinct looks in each film. But they still wanted consistency within each "look."

There appears to be evidence of sloppy lab work with The Patriot. But how many of those thousands of prints are bad? Were they in a mad rush to make the prints at the last minute? Hmmmm.

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"The large softbox was used to get an ambient source that would produce enough light for Kimball to work at his preferred stop of T8/5.6." (From the article about Mission: Impossible 2.)

or

"I was shooting the night exteriors at about a T-2.8/3.2 on the C-series and at more of a T-5.6/8 for day exteriors." (From the article about Gone in 60 Seconds.)

or

"Thorin used Kodak's 500T Vision 5279 stock for night exteriors and most interiors, and Kodak's 250D Vision 5246 for daylight exteriors?" (From the article about Shaft.)

And that's all from just one issue! But now you guys have me extremely curious to read what they'll print about The Patriot.

Oh, wait! Here's an even better quote from the article about The Perfect Storm...

"Seale and Peterson also elected to shoot the film in the anamorphic format, which created its own set of considerations. The anamorphic zooms would be considerably slower than spherical zooms or primes, and there was also significant concern regarding focus because the entire film would be photographed primarily wide open at a T4.5. 'I opted to shoot anamorphic rather than Super 35 because I felt the quality improvement was a significant advantage for the film,' Seale asserts. 'It made things a bit more difficult, however, because I had to light everything up. I just said to the guys in preproduction, "Your stop is a T4.5. Lock it off!" The 8-perf VistaVision cameras from ILM were all T4.5 as well, so the whole film was planned for that stop.'"