MovieChat Forums > Mr. Turner (2014) Discussion > Anyone take issue with the digital cinem...

Anyone take issue with the digital cinematography?

posted 10 years ago by wearyourlove
18 replies | jump to latest

I loved the movie, but I couldn't help but somewhat regret that it had been shot digitally rather than on film. Now I'm all for digital, and have really appreciated it in the past, but it just didn't seem appropriate for this movie and this material. This is a hugely immersive and textural piece, and digital simply lacks the kind of tactility you get from film, including the natural grain and the darker blacks. Things just felt too smoothed, and the sense of light - paramount to a film about "the painter of light" - wasn't as rich or as evocative as it would have been on film.

So I'm just curious if others agree that the movie loses a little something due to its digital format. I heard nothing but breathless praise for the film's cinematography before I saw it, and I'm not dismissing its beauty as is, but I'm surprised there hasn't been more lamenting what could have been an even more astonishing picture.

[–] persistenceofvision 10 years ago

There's a thread titled 'If Turner Made Films...' by someone who agrees. I thought it looked fantastic. Maybe they went digital for budget reasons?

[–] wearyourlove 10 years ago

Hm, thanks. I thought it looked pretty great, too, but I just couldn't get past the nagging feeling that something was missing, especially in darker scenes. I miss the tactility of film. And it's just so ironic considering film literally, physically captures light, what Turner was all about, while digital does not. I suppose you could argue there's a philosophical reason to it, in that digital is the future and Turner in many ways looked forward to the future in his style and technique and even seemed to somewhat grudgingly embrace technological advancement. But it seemed like an odd fit for this picture.

[–] TheEpicPancake 10 years ago

I have to agree in that I'm surprised it was shot digitally given the subject matter and time period. That being said, I was actually very impressed with how it looked. I'm a huge proponent of film and continually say that film looks better then digital, but Pope did an amazing job with this film. Now would it have looked even better on film? Perhaps. But I guess that's for us to wonder about.

[–] bcamphome 10 years ago

If MR. TURNER were shot on 35mm film and projected on 35mm film, I may have been much more engaged in it. Whenever there was a shot of a Turner painting, I never got a sense of that painting's beauty from seeing it in a digital image. Film would have captured the painterly qualities a lot more, not just of Turner's paintings but of all the other artists' works seen in the gallery scenes. To get a sense of what I mean, just see Vincente Minnelli's LUST FOR LIFE (1956) in a 35mm print with all its breathtaking shots of Van Gogh's paintings. As well made as MR. TURNER is, there's nothing breathtaking in it.

[–] gortx 10 years ago

I loved the movie, but I couldn't help but somewhat regret that it had been shot digitally rather than on film. Now I'm all for digital, and have really appreciated it in the past, but it just didn't seem appropriate for this movie and this material. This is a hugely immersive and textural piece, and digital simply lacks the kind of tactility you get from film, including the natural grain and the darker blacks. Things just felt too smoothed, and the sense of light - paramount to a film about "the painter of light" - wasn't as rich or as evocative as it would have been on film.

Totally agree. I'm sure it looked fine on their monitors in the editing room, but, projected on the big screen the combined digital photography and digital projection gave it a washed out look. And, as you say, without proper black level it doesn't have that tactile look. Further, as any Art School 101 instructor will tell you, without black as a basis, your color scale is simply off.

As to why it was shot digital. DP Pope said he wanted to shoot on 35mm film but was convinced by Director Leigh that it would be a cost and labor efficient way of going about it.

As almost always: The conversion to digital is ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. Not the ART.

[–] jonathanmarklund 10 years ago

Digital does give you better control over the colors in post.

Signature:
Sorry for the horrible english. I'm Swedish.

[–] All_Seeing_Fly 10 years ago

Exactly, it's all about the post production. You can alter EVERY aspect of contrast and lighting curves. If it looks washed out then perhaps it was either:-
1. Just you wanting to notice something, because you hate digital.
2. The cinema was at fault, or the copy.
3. They intentionally made the colours as exactly as you see it. EXACTLY.
4. They made a post production mistake.

[–] jonathanmarklund 10 years ago

No. You can't change everything.
*beep* in = *beep* out.

There is no post-production that can satisfyingly fix the lack of contrast. Adding a contrast filter would have made the inside scenes to dark.

They made a choice. Either shoot it with film and get great contrast but not have control over the colors. OR shoot it in digital and be able to reproduce the colors to look like the original paintings, but loose some of the depth and contrast.

Signature:
Sorry for the horrible english. I'm Swedish.

[–] gortx 10 years ago

If it looks washed out then perhaps it was either:-
1. Just you wanting to notice something, because you hate digital.
2. The cinema was at fault, or the copy.
3. They intentionally made the colours as exactly as you see it. EXACTLY.
4. They made a post production mistake.

#1. I apologize for having good eyesight. I go and see a LOT of movies. I do "notice" things.

#2. I go and see a LOT of movies. (and in Los Angeles, the movie capital with lots of great theaters). The problems with digital are industry wide - not one theater (and I saw it a premiere screen)

#3. Yes, I'm sure Dick Pope and Leigh said, "You know Turner's paintings had THESE colours (they're British), but we intentionally want to change them so they don't match EXACTLY." As others have pointed out, the biggest problem is the digital PROJECTION. As I noted earlier, I'm sure it looked fine on their monitors in the editing room, but, projected in a theater, the black level simply isn't deep enough, AND, the contrast issues only magnify that deficit.

4. See #2

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] gortx 10 years ago

This movie looks like a painting in motion.

A painting without real black and with poor contrast in motion.

[–] cuchelo1 10 years ago

I'm just replying to the last post to add my two cents...

I saw it tonight at a decent theatre, and I thought it looked beautiful.

(In case anyone wants to know my background- I was an art major in college, and I am a complete cinemaphile and love to see films on the big screen, where they were meant to be shown.)

I knew ahead of time that this was shot with digital cameras, but I didn't have any preconceived ideas. I found myself getting lost in several of the shots.

However, the script was quite disappointing and I felt a bit cold at the end of the film. Not due to the cinematography, though.

Just my opinion.

Falling feels like flying... until you hit the ground.-Tom McRae

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] alifeatthemovies 9 years ago

Wasn't at least part of this shot on film? I thought I saw in the credits listings for "digital intermediate" and "film transfer".

[–] gortx 9 years ago

Wasn't at least part of this shot on film? I thought I saw in the credits listings for "digital intermediate" and "film transfer".

No. It was all shot on digital. The terms you refer are technical ones having to do with post-production.

[–] ghtx 9 years ago

This is a really interesting thread. I just saw the film on my TV at home on Blu-ray, and I thought that it looked fantastic. I think that most people won't really care about or appreciate the difference between a film shot digitally and on film. I consider myself a fairly big fan of cinematography, but you'd have to be a really big fan to notice the difference (which no doubt many posters on this board are). If the choice to shoot on digital was a sacrifice that had to be made for the budget, then I guess that's too bad. But the fact that it was so gorgeous even given the budgetary sacrifice kind of makes it all the more impressive. I'm not convinced that it was just for budgetary reasons, either; it's possible that Leigh and Pope thought that Turner's work could somehow be better represented by digital than by film. Whatever the reason, it works great, and the cinematography Oscar nomination is well-deserved (and it fact Pope should have won).

[–] jimthing1 9 years ago

Laser projection is forthcoming, which is apparently one way to increase and deepen the colour gamut (black is pitch black, white is strong white), which is one step further down the path of improvement at least in projection.
See this quick video on it:
http://youtu.be/nl9ysS1CdYY

Colouration is a much easier (and quicker) task on digital, and cinema colour professionals have some amazing tools at their disposal to help directors achieve exactly what they want.

Film still has its things, but sooner or later digital will reach and surpass it. Even studios are digitising their archives at 16K for some time now, knowing future proofing for updated digital delivery methods will come.

[–] Mr. Bug 9 years ago

Lack of real black or missing contrast is not an issue of digital origination but projection. There are digital projectors that have better blacks and more contrast that any film print. And there are others that have not. I watched the Blu Ray on a digital projector that surpasses a film print concerning black and contrast and it looked gorgeous.