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The One Thing You Didn't Like in TLJ (For TLJ Lovers)

Discussion in 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' started by Jayson, Jul 11, 2019.

  1. The Hero With No Fear

    The Hero With No Fear Resident Sand Hater

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    I agree about the lighting, it almost looks like a made-for-TV movie IMO.
     
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  2. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    It's the lighting.
    The lighting is very flat.
    The contrast is in the color is rich because of good color grading, but the lighting is soft lighting mostly relying on the fill light, with only a few spots in any given scene having any hard key lighting.

    Fill light is the general lighting that wipes out shadows. For example, notice the near lack of shadows on the red craps table.
    That's due to a lot of fill lighting. This is typically what you get when you set something up to shoot that you don't know what's going to be focused on by a director, or if you want to "see everything".

    It's a gamble to light t his way, though, especially if you're going to use VFX because VFX always runs the risk of looking flat and like a video game the more that the lighting is ambiguous, flat, and soft. It's easier to hide and look like part of the world with lower fills and more key lighting.

    Key lighting is the lighting that gives you the slivers of highlights and brings out depth of 3 dimensional objects.
    Usually, you have a fill light on one side (or all around), and a harder key light on the other side (or where you want highlights to come from), and then you might use a back light (back fill) which helps outline the subject.

    Look at Finn and Rose; that screen shot.
    Notice how the front and back of their bodies are equally lit. No shadows really to speak of anywhere on either of them, and only the most minor of key lighting on Rose, and none at all on Finn.

    There's also pretty much no back light. Look at them again. Sure, you see a very faint white light outlining Finn, but it's mostly from the overhead practical lights which are almost entirely being drowned out by the fill light (likely sitting about 60 degrees off to one side of the camera).

    Compare this with what the concept art is drawn like. The concept art is low fill, high key lighting.
    Like another film of fame...
    MW-FV813_BladeR_20171006122440_ZH.jpg

    So when you see the scenes, they seem very flat. Lacking in dimension. There's nothing that really POPS out for eye candy in the way it's lit.
    It's just there. All you can really do aesthetically to appreciate it is look at the cool costumes and sets.

    But it's very flat...like a lot of the recent Marvel films outdoor action sequences - big walls of flat lit low color saturation scenes...Canto doesn't have the saturation issue, though. And that's why it feels weird to you, probably.

    There's conflicting bits of visual information. On one hand, you're seeing rich color, which you expect with rich lighting.
    But the lighting is very flat and not rich at all. It's vague and diffused. Which you probably, like most, have come to correlate to low saturation.

    That's what's going on with Canto.

    Now, I THINK the reason for this is that they were trying to light it practically. Practical lighting means you use the real lighting of an area to do the lighting. Like, you just plop the camera down in the diner and let the diner provide the look of the diner. Maybe you add a little key lighting on your actors just to make them not blend in...maybe. This was more common in the late 70's through the 80's, but started dropping out of favor by the late 80's and early 90's. Still used, but not as the main "go-to" of nearly the entire film like it once was.


    What's happened since the explosion of returning to studio sets instead of going on location, is that "practical" now also includes the idea of looking like you're on location for the lighting.

    The way Canto is set up, it really reads like there was an interest in possibly lighting this thing like it was a real casino and they all went there on location - like a When Harry met Sally scene.

    harrysally.png

    But the problem with this, is that it's confusing because every casino we've typically seen in the film library is a dim, rich textured, and richly colored place.
    All of a sudden, it's a casino with bright lights like a diner.

    That's a bit confusing.
    What makes that a bit more confusing is that the entire style is art deco, which screams of not only Blade Runner, but what Blade Runner was calling upon, Film Noir.
    And Film Noir is a hard lit genre. Very little in the way of soft lighting in that style.

    Here's a general store in that style.

    double-indemnity.jpg

    BAM!
    Right in the eyeballs. Hard shadows everywhere; strong key lighting, low fill light.

    And that's just a general store.
    Like Harry and Sally's diner previously.

    So I think this is what's going on.


    If you want to play around a bit, the next time you watch TLJ and it gets to Canto, try this.
    Pause it.
    Firstly, make sure if you are using custom settings, that you know what they are so you can set them back afterwards.

    Flip the TV picture settings to a Dynamic or Vibrant preset
    Turn the brightness up on your screen just a bit (because you're going to go hard contrast in a moment).
    Turn the contrast up quite a bit - like double-digit values on some TV's - somewhere around 30 to 30% increase.
    Turn the backlight up in the TV until you can see the edges of things better; toggle between turning the brightness down and the backlight up until you get a dark, yet rich image.

    Here's what that kind of looks like (not really, since I can't emulate backlighting using just brightness and contrast on a computer without whipping up photoshop, which I'm not on my computer that has that atm).
    Picture2.png Picture.png

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  3. FN-3263827

    FN-3263827 First Order CPS
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    @Jayson: it's partly the lighting, for sure. but there's more. vegas casinos have more ambience.
    while i know the Canto Bight scene was an enormous undertaking, it just lacks the sparkle that i think it meant to convey.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    and again: look at the concept art compared to the final render:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    there's some art nouveau-ish flourishes, but almost zero texture, long flat light fixtures, and no centerpiece.
    your eyes are pulled to the curves of the walls and then go nowhere. there's nothing else to look at.
    a chandelier of some sort might have made a huge difference perhaps. or a statue. or something!
     
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  4. Stefynoseu

    Stefynoseu Rebel General

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    Ditto! I did not enjoy this part of the story. There was so much more they could have done, so much back story they could have told...I fast forward through it when I re-watch TLJ.
     
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  5. Andrew Waples

    Andrew Waples Jedi General

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    I like the idea of seeing the rich side part of the Galaxy. It's something canon and I'm gonna assume legends rarely touches on, but yeah I think most people can agree it's the Canto Bight sequence that slows down the movie.
     
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  6. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    That is the set design department...kind of.

    It happens. Especially these days.
    Often times, the sets now are set up minimal and flushed and detailed by VFX outsourcing.

    Now, iirc, RJ talked about how originally this was set up for exactly that kind of approach for the aliens but the puppetry and makeup was so good that he decided to just go 100% practical.

    If that's true, then the sets would have been originally designed minimalist to save on cost and time, but shifting gears would have caused a shift off from that plan and I'm sure the phrase "fix it in post" was said, but that didn't happen probably because Canto turned out to be a pain in the a** in the edit and took unexpected time to cut it down and make it work iirc, so you have big flat untextured walls.

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
    #26 Jayson, Jul 14, 2019
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2019
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  7. oldbert

    oldbert Guardian of Coffee Breaks

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    This. Hux was placed in this one as a punching ball for everybody he met. A bit too much comic relief. The only scene with him that I really liked was when he tried to take out his weapon the moment he saw Ren on the floor of the messed up throne room. A glimpse of treason..
     
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  8. Porco Azzurro

    Porco Azzurro Jedi General

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    Honestly the only thing that springs to mind is the title of the film itself. I don't hate it, but it's my least favourite Star Wars movie title. It just sounds a little generic, I don't think it really encapsulates the movie all that well (I know it's relevant and everything...) - it's a bit 'sensible', and it also seems to mess up the lovely pattern the previous episodic titles had going in a few ways - the repetition of 'Jedi', it being the second episode in the trilogy but only being three words not four...

    And of course you end up with Luke saying he won't be the last Jedi. I guess that makes Rey the last Jedi at the end of the film. So it works on that level. I'm talking myself into it now. lol.

    But anyway, it's not a huge issue for me, and I adore the film itself. And I don't claim to have a better title! But yeah. That.
     
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  9. Himmel

    Himmel Rebel Official

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    No Luke vs. Kylo fight, I would have loved to see Luke humiliating his nephew in front of everyone, and then after have Kylo realize it was a force projection.(duel)
     
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  10. Messi

    Messi G.O.A.T.

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    Well, in my case the concept arts always look nicer than the movie itself, especially in TPM.
     
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  11. DarthSnow

    DarthSnow Sith in the North
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    I think the title works perfectly in conjunction with the film. Before you see the film, the title itself does enough to set up and build all the tension needed for the movie's setting. As you are watching it, the title becomes a question... you're still wondering how it's going to play out: "Is this really it? Is this their end?". And then when tension is highest, Luke answers that question and tells us "I am not the last Jedi" and it's pure excitement and optimism from that point, even after we realize that was the end of Luke.
     
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  12. Trev

    Trev Rebel Official

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    This is beyond nitpicky because I LOVED The Last Jedi, but I hate that, not only is BB-8 the one to say, “I have a bad feeling about this,” but there aren’t any subtitles, so no one knows he actually says it. In my opinion, during the Battle of Crait, when Rose is flying her ski speeder into battle and she says, “That is a big gun,” it should’ve been replaced with “I have a bad feeling about this.” :)
     
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  13. Porco Azzurro

    Porco Azzurro Jedi General

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    I have a theory that if all R2-D2’s dialogue was subtitled, the films would be R-rated. :D(r2-d2 2)
     
    #33 Porco Azzurro, Jul 21, 2019
    Last edited: Jul 21, 2019
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  14. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    100% agree. "That's a big gun" fell flat on her character.
    I get that it was like a Han moment of stating the obvious in a way far less than the situation emotionally calls for, but it's Rose...she's not really that style.
    She's very feely, so this idea would have been a good twist on the phrase.
    Poe could pull of the "That's a big gun" line.

    And yeah, beyond nitpicky, but hey! That's what this is for! :)

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  15. Trev

    Trev Rebel Official

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    Oh, I totally agree –– I think it’s obvious when Luke tells him to watch his language in The Last Jedi. That little droid has quite the potty mouth! ;)

    I think you bring up a really good point. It would’ve worked if Poe was the one to say it, but Rose saying it just felt... a bit cringeworthy, not gonna lie. I loved the character of Rose, but it always annoyed me that she said that. “I have a bad feeling about this” seemed like an obvious piece of dialogue there. Regardless, if that’s the worst thing I can find in the movie, then I guess I’m pretty lucky because it’s a freaking awesome movie. :)
     
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  16. Grand Admiral Kraum

    Grand Admiral Kraum Force Sensitive

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    I liked it initially, and the first thing I really didn't like was the execution of action scenes. Slow motion doesn't fit the visual aesthetic of what Star Wars should be.
     
  17. Trev

    Trev Rebel Official

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    I was okay with the slow motion, but I see what you’re saying. From what I remember, it’s really the first time slow motion has been executed like that in a Star Wars film. I’m all for introducing new things, but it is a bit inconsistent with how every other film in the Skywalker saga was filmed. Regardless, I’m really okay with it, I still think it turned out great. :)
     
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  18. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    I look at it like ESB.
    ESB doesn't fit the OT. It's very different from the other two around it; including slow motion. :)

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  19. Martoto

    Martoto Force Sensitive

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    Canto Bight, although I think it necessary , particularly for Finn's character, is still kind of lame. I still like it though.

    The only thing I dislike is both Hux and Ren asking each other "What happened" in the aftermath of the Holdo maneuver. It just sounds odd every time I watch it.
     
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  20. Meister Yoda

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    Actually in the german dub (probably not knowing that BB8 says it and having the feeling it should be in the movie) Han was Han about it was replaced by the german translation of "Han as always had a bad feeling about it".
     
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