The DARK Cinematography of Solo

Okay, finally had a chance to watch Solo in 4K and it's far too dark! I've just tried the Buray disk that comes with the 4K package and the lighting is far better.

I don't really understand why this is but it's disappointing, especially when the 4K set is £10 more than the Bluray.

 

i'm going to agree that the theatrical presentation (at least at my theatre) was way too dang dark. once we got off of Corellia and Mimban, everything was cake, but those two locales were entirely too hard to see. not sure if the BlueRay is any better or if i'm just used to looking at it now.

all that said, the contrast between the opening and the heist is so slam-bang that it actually works on that level. once Han separates himself from his home world and from the Imperial army, it's like the galaxy brightens up for him with all its possibilities. : D

 

I think this was the intention, personally. Solo's world was claustrophobic before he could fly among the stars. The opening shots are a perfect example of it. Total blackness illuminated briefly by sparks of an engine firing up. And his first conflict is with a villain who is damaged by the light - thus epitomising the darkness that he fights against and longs to escape from.

 

i completely agree, but it doesn't make it any easier to look at! XD

 

speaking of hard to look at ~ hahahahahaha

 

This is a great thread! Agree on the dark look to SOLO at the beginning, it is tough to make out, but after watching my 4K again this morning with an eye towards watching for lighting use, on purpose, it makes more sense.

Did you notice the one scene on Corellia as Han and Qi'Ra are blasting along in the stolen M-68, when they exit the structure they live in, there is a blast of white light. Does this portend a life-changing event for Han, as he leaves behind his past life "in the darkness" and goes forward "into the light" of new horizons, new adventures, etc. Great use of light in this scene...… @Jayson and @Jedi77-83 interested in your take too

 

As Han leaves the large structure where they live, the light illuminates his face in stages, check out the below....as he leaves behind his old life and "shoots for the stars".....

 

For anyone wondering what's going on with the 4K and Theaterical vs the BluRay, the reason is that Young sat there for the processing and editing, like a good cinematographer, BUT, quite often the copy they are working with at the studio is a theatrical copy equivalent to about the BluRay setup in most cases.
In most cases, unless specifically engineered for it, 4K is a post production rendering like most 3D's are these days.

That means that most of the folks involved in the film control during production and even in early post, folks like Young or Gunn, don't typically have any involvement in the 4K and 3D portions of their film - being that MOST films are polished off at a calibration equal to that of around BluRay.

That said, it IS assumed to be THEATRICAL quality, HOWEVER...and this is where Young plays with fire, and he full well knows this - and has spoken on it, MOST theaters don't have a dedicated projectionist anymore.
The digital projectors are automatically set to a pre-can setting (I call this the "dummy setting", because it's autoset because it assumes the staff are ignorant people who know nothing about projectors...which is typically true).

Now, if a projector needs to be re-calibrated at a theater, they have to call a projectionist in who knows how to work with digital projectors.
Most places don't keep a projectionist on hand, and just hire out as needed like a plumber is treated.

The result is that these digital projectors are often set to REALLY crap settings, or even worse, they're automatic settings don't automatically work 100% of the time.

For instance, the most common automated feature that doesn't work right is the turning OFF of the 3D projection mode.
Leaving this on during a 2D film will cripple the saturation and brightness of the film.

Solo is already a film that plays around in the deep, and yummy space of the dark, which means it really should be a film carefully calibrated on EACH format to the best viewing on EACH format, buuuuuut....

That didn't happen. Young's opinion on the theatrical is basically that he's not going to cripple his art because the industry is choosing to take short cuts. If anything, he is of the mind that this raises more awareness of an issue that EVERYONE in the industry is already well aware of but no one is addressing.

So he's taken a sort of artistic punk protest approach of saying the theater's need to toe the line and get their gear set up properly instead of setting things to autopilot and running on cheap staff.

I agree to a point here.
And I had to tell my theater on my second Solo viewing to go turn off the 3D mode, because it was still left on (it's really easy to tell if you know what you're looking for).

The first viewing was great! The projector was calibrated almost perfectly for the film. The second watch was an entirely different story, but then again, the audio was also entirely off from what the settings should have been...oh well.


When it comes to the HOME copies, well...again 4K and 3D tend to be "rubber stampped" onto the film by the distribution portion and not by the production (except for some folks, like Gunn actually did a hand-by-hand holding of the 3D for Gaurdians).

BluRay is currently what MOST monitoring gear is defaulted to in the editing room etc.., and everywhere else on the production (unless they specifically shoot for 4K tailored shooting...but that's not really common - some do).

Solo didn't do ANY extra frills.
Solo shot in 2D right down the middle using all classic modes of shooting and dug into the old late 70's arts world for the cinematography - meaning, you stick up a middle finger and go for what artistically makes a point; not what is commercially conventional.
Young talked about that as well; both he and Howard were on the same page in reaching back to the yesteryear for method of shooting inspiration so that it feels like an old film and not a new film of the 12st century.


I wrote a whole thread on how much I love the cinematography of this film. It's damn brilliant and I can't get enough of it.
I'm fine with 4K sucking, and I'm fine with 3D not really holding up, and I'm fine with theatrical being meh because theater's suck at actually ...oh...running a friggen theater!!!

I'm fine with all of that because I knew all of this BEFORE I ever saw the film.
If I'm going to watch a film in the theater, I immediately check how it was shot, and how the cinematographer intended it to be seen.
Then I make sure to see it that way.

I don't waste money or time on 3D viewings for films that weren't shot native in 3D, and the director or director of photography weren't involved in the 3D post production.
Same goes with 4K.

That means the director and director of photography weren't interested in those mediums, but the distributor IS, so the distributor just smashes the square can in a round hole anyway and kicks it out the door.


Just watch the bluray at home on a reasonably good TV and you'll be fine.

It's a bad-ass movie and beautifully shot!

Yes there were problems with this film, but they are all problems that are actually a consequence of the commercial "pre-fab" production of films these days, so when someone plays more artistically with the film AND isn't pulled in post-production and instead the distribution goes the "pre-fab" route....yeah...it's going to suffer.

There's nothing anyone can do about it.
You'll see more films like this happen, actually.
Just always look up what they intended and stick to that.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

@Jayson Another in a long line of incredible posts.....specific to your comment above, can you summarize in purely layman's terms how you "check how it was shot and how the cinematographer intended it to be seen"?

Thanks so much

 

I enjoyed reading your post and it would explain why my 4K copy looks much darker than my Bluray copy. I am seriously considering just buying the Bluray's from now on, it's annoying that here in the UK we pay £10 more for the 4K disc than the standard Bluray so it's just as well that the Bluray disk is included in the 4K package.

It's even more annoying that I've invested heavily in 4K if this format is considered an after though and not producing the best quality possible, I do like having a physical copy especially when it comes to Star Wars as I have a collection starting as far back as my old Btamax tapes which is why I might just buy the Bluray from now on, but maybe digital copies are the way forward as my digital copy of Solo actually looks the best out of the 3 formats.

 

The way I go about it is probably not easy to convey. I basically google stalk the filmmakers until I find that either they did nothing and no one's talking about it, or I find some thing they did novel, etc...

That said, for regular folks, cinemablend does a really good job of capturing the 3D, as well as the general picture quality of a film.
https://www.cinemablend.com/3d/

Here, for example, is Solo
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/24...d-buy-the-right-solo-a-star-wars-story-ticket

I don't think anyone in here, nor do I think Young either, would disagree with their rating (which is effectively the lowest C score possible - 60%).

They also review different aspects of the 3D so if there's an aspect of 3D that's important to you, you can choose to concern over that section more if you want to.

For 4K, I'm not aware of a similar service, BUT...
Here's my thoughts on 4K...and it's creepy...it's like this guy crawled in my head and mad a video. This was almost my line for line lesson when I taught multimedia training a few years back.
The only difference is that towards the end, he doesn't really explain WHY the Hz bit over 120 isn't that important - he just implies it by saying that watching something play back at rates greater than those who made the footage intended is probably not a good idea.

True, and to be clear, what he means is that everyone is still shooting at 24 and ~30 frames per second.
That means a 1:1 projection/playback rate is going to be 48/60 per second.
A 2:1 (double flash) projection/playback rate is actually beneficial because it adds brightness and a bit more clarity to the motion of small objects. This is at 96/120.

Now, no one's offering 96's, and that's fine because most TV's reprocess films to 30 frames anyway (unless you have a 24p input jack, in which case, it preserves the frame rate so it doesn't screw it up....get a SONY; they have 24p input/output hdmi jacks), so that means 120's really the highest that you want to go.

After that, you just cause that "Why does this look like I'm watching British TV?" effect.

Cheers!
Jayson

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 1, 2018, Original Post Date: Nov 1, 2018 ---

Watch the video I just posted above...
Yes, unfortunately I'm afraid 4K is purely an afterthought.

It was quite literally a technology for giant screens at stadiums that then someone said...Hey, sooo TV's too?

And out the door they went. WAY faster than the production industry was even ready for it.
Think of this for a moment: the highest broadcast TV is 720p.

Let that sink in.
Oh, no, yes, there's 1080i, but that's lower than 720p because i sends half the frames at a time while p sends all of them (i.e. no ghosting).
No, no one actually broadcasts 1080p.

Providers UPSCALE to 1080p, but your TV already does that on its own so...woopty doo.
No TV broadcaster wants to spend the cost for generating a signal greater than 720p so far, and that is ESPN who broadcasts in 720.

Streaming content providers and video games are an ENTIRELY different world, however. If that's where you spend most of your time, then keep grabbing the next shiny thing all you want because gaming always goes way farther than shows and films. Films on streaming are iffy. You can get WAY up there if they shot it that way, but it's hard to verify that it was shot that way for streaming exclusive content, and just selecting "ULTRA" from the menu doesn't mean it will be ultra if it wasn't shot native to it in the first place.

If it wasn't shot with 4K, then basically they take the bluray 1080 size, scale the image up to match the bigger area, fill in the areas with more clone pixels of areas around the original pixel of the 1080, and close the hood and call it done.

That's never going to look as good as something shot native with 4K....but not a lot of folks are doing that.

Cheers,
Jayon

 

That's both interesting and frustrating, the only reason I bought a 4K tv and player was to watch my favourite films in the highest quality possible. I was aware that Satellite HD chanels were 720p and not full 1080p which for me is a bit of a con especially when you have to pay more for the privilege. BT provide some 4K /Ultra HD Sports channels which again you have to pay extra for, I wonder if they are truly 4K?

 

Wow! Well done, @Jayson! Thank you for a great and informative post Not only am I smarter now after reading that, I've got the answer to something that has puzzled me about this discussion -- I didn't understand what ppl are talking about 'cause Solo looked great in the theater when I watched it. Basically, I was lucky

I started reading your post thinking, "great, here's another knowitall with way too high opinions about his own intellect", but I was thoroughly educated and proven wrong. I take my hat off and bow to you, sir. Here, have a follow!

 

No.
The best anyone can do is rescale it to 4K.
So you take a 720 wide image (about 1280 is the width for 720p), stretch it out to 4000 wide(which is 4000 width by 2000 height), then fill in with clone pixles around the original 720p pixels.

That's not the same as native 4k, and I seriously doubt anyone's coughing up the money for satellite broadcasting in 4k. That would be a very high bandwidth to fund.

Native requires they have 4k cameras on the ground and the times that's available are few.
4k is cool, but we're a few years still (if ever) from getting good saturation.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I know the main Satellite provider in the UK show their HD channels in 720p, however BT tv boxes run through broadband so have no dishes and they show some live sport in 4K/UHD. Is it likely for this live tv the would use 4K cameras?

I'm just curious more than anything as I'm not inclined to pay extra to watch football in 4K when BT also have HD sports channels at no extra cost. Thanks

 

That is possible.
4K sports, currently, tends to work by a company in distribution of some kind talking folks into putting x# of 4K cameras on the ground.
So it depends on that coverage they haggle.

Two olympics ago it was pretty good, for example. Not great range of sports but the shots were pretty good.

Last olympics was worse.
The reason was a smaller range of events had cameras and the events that had cameras had fewer of them, so you got pretty boring coverage.

So it's possible. It's just expensive so there's not a lot pushing for it yet because it's hard to turn a dime on the return so far.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

@Jayson I have been fully immersed in "The Art of SOLO" - incredible book, highly recommended. Near the end of the book they have a 2 page spread of the "color map" of the movie. They basically looked at all the scenes and mapped the major color palette from each scene onto a continuous strip. It is quite telling and really shows their masterful "transformation" of Han from his early life of struggle and hopelessness (muted grays) to "shooting for the stars" as a swashbuckler (color palette really changes!). See below, I scanned both pages in:

Page 1, look across the strip at the bottom

Page 2

 

Ooooo...I'll have to mark that down for my list of things to get!

And yeppers, , wouldn't you know it, that's pretty much the same thing outlined back when I made the post about "Too Dark" in my original Solo Review thread.
(Which, not to be rude with self-promotion, but I'd encourage folks to give that thread a read because it has a pretty deep dive into the cinematography of the film. note: some of the animated gifs and images are broken now for some reason related to google sites changing their link structure, but I can't edit to fix them anymore...but you can right-click and open the image in a new tab and it will render correctly via an automated redirect from google sites legacy to current.)

I said it back then, and I'll happily say it again...most films only have one to two lighting motifs to juggle.
Last I counted, there were somewhere around 4 to 5 lighting motifs in Solo, and they run in a narrative flow from dark to bright as Solo becomes increasingly more free and fully in his own element.

It's just an amazing film of art.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I know I'm being a necromancer with this thread right now, but I just came by this post to say I noticed the same thing. The regular blu-ray seems to be the best looking version of this movie. Also, for what it is worth, I really like Solo. It deserved better at the box office in my honest opinion.