Quick survey for those who have seen the movie...

The problem with that is, nobody is showing it in 2D around here, although I had my 2D glasses from Deadpool 2 with me, it didn’t help.

Especially at the 2nd viewing, it became blatant obvious that there’s nothing in that movie supporting any cool 3D effect, at least not for me. So I’m looking for the 4k Blu Ray release in HDR on my 55” OLED. Should have way better contrast ratio.

 

AHHCK!
Horrible!

I'm sorry!
This thing is brilliant on a classic screen.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I can imagine this. At least I got the problem that in 3D, all the control light’s within the Falcon’s cockpit unfortunately show up in double vision.

Maybe it would have been a 9/10 then for me in 2D, to pay this thread’s main topic some respect.

 

That's pretty common for a Western movie.

 

Yeah, it's not desaturated.
It's exactly saturated as designed.
You'll see exactly as intended; there are very vivid sections where it's supposed to be, and dim where it's not.

There's a film noir, western outside and inside (both different), war film, adventure (brighter gloss), and space themes, not to mention that the lighting also follows the mood in this film.

There's a LOT going on in this thing.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

there's not enough contrast in this movie for me and a lot of other people.
i don't care what genre it is. if you can't see the dang picture, its not a good thing. XD

 

I will be seeing this film again over the weekend, and I'm going to pay close attention to this.
I already do, because I'm highly sensitive to the visual aspect of film, in part because I studied to be a cinematographer when I was in high school (I once wanted to go into film, and then life had different plans that ultimately lead to me meeting my wife, so I'm not complaining), and I didn't see any errors when I watched it.

I mean, I regularly watch film without sound because I prefer the visual side of film over anything else in it. I will look for foreign films that don't have dubbing or subtitles just so I can focus on the visual as the story teller.

I was actually blown away by the quantity of different cinematographic settings employed in the film, and how each was set very purposefully for the way it was used.

I wrote about this a bit in my thread, but I think I'll need to revisit the topic in more fine consideration considering how much this has become the topic for this film.

Last time, I was writing from a point of "This was intentional, and here's why", but I'm starting to become more fascinated with why it didn't work for some people (and by that I'm thinking more technically and not expecting people to answer that...I'll have to find what folks didn't like, and then go hunt down the camera and lighting settings used in those moments and see what's going on).

Is it, for example, a shot like this?


Cheers,
Jayson

 

the illustrious @DarthSnow shared this with me: http://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/so...rojection-problems-bradford-young-1201969989/

it's just food for thought. my two experiences watching Solo in two different theatres were very different.

p.s. i am highly sensitive to this aspect as well ~ as someone with beady mole-like eyes who doesn't want to squint through my popcorn flicks. XD

 

Interesting perspective.
I do agree that theater's are garbage, in my opinion.
I actually don't go to theaters unless it's Star Wars, and the main reason I'm going is for the crowd; not the quality of the film. For the highest quality experience of seeing the film, I rely on getting the disc - it always looks better than the theater.

I've hated digital projection since very early on; mainly because of this problem. Because it's poorly used with bull[beep] excuses about why it's OK.
I mentioned this before in another thread (maybe this one?); I've had multiple exchanges with theater employees trying to explain fundamental basics to them, whipping up pdf's at times.
I hate that the role of projectionist has gone away; it shouldn't've. It should've just rolled into digital projectionist. Oh well.

That all said, I have a bit of a difficult time lining everything on this perspective because it's unique to this film. Perhaps it's quite simply that folks don't make that many low light films these days...I find that a bit unlikely, though because there have been other dark movies lately....though not as profiled in the dark when they go there as Solo perhaps (actually, one of the problems I have with Blade Runner 2049 is that it's not profiled in the same light style as the original...everything's so crisp and bright - I mean, yeah, it's "dark", but it's not a low light cinematographic film), and I think that's more the point here.

Young goes deeper into low light than normal, and that may be a problem theatrically. It may not fit the current technology plane without a larger than usual error rate.
This is what I'm interested in here.

I do think that you have to be mindful of the medium of consumption. I mean, if you tried to project some of the scenes in Game of Thrones in a theater...lord, no. It would look terrible. It's really shot perfectly to employ ultra vivid backlighting and deep black degree contrast of modern televisions. If you tried some of those on a theater, you'd just end up with black and mud; listening to voices.


I'll still be looking into this because it's rare that cinematography becomes the talking point of contention in a film - it's usually the forgotten and thankless job of film in discussions about a film, so I'm excited that it's this that is the topic, but I think the take-away may very well be: Watch Solo on your TV.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

it's an interestring discussion because you would think one would be saying: hey, see this in the theater for the optimal experience (i.e Dunkirk), rather than: don't bother with the original vehicle of the medium and watch this digitally at home. that's kinda backwards. : o p

and, ultimately, a popular film trying to reach an all-ages audience for a fun adventure should really take both into consideration.
because you're right: Game of Thrones isn't made to put on the big screen. Solo is.

just as a note: this was the scope of much discussion regarding Coppola's Dracula back in the day. it plays dreadfully on the big screen and audiences laughed all through it for its ludicrous buckets of blood and over-the-top melodramatics, but on a small screen, it actually works fine. people criticized that this canyon of discrepancy was the result of Coppola never having screened it properly for himself, but just watching it from the monitors (sounds like some other director i know?).

finally, i personally have no "contention"; the film is dark. i have to squint. oh well. this is the price i pay to see Star Wars. XD

 

This kind of reminds me of when Abrams' admitted he'd gone too far with flares in Star Trek?

Young may have gone too far with the toe and shoulder work in this.




On the other hand, this does speak volumes about the theater industry itself, because a trained projectionist on hand would simply adjust the digital projector so that the exact amount of darkness and light as intended is visible.

It's a catch-22.

On one hand, Young's partially at fault here for not thinking about the current state of theater technology management, and on the other hand, it's entirely not his fault at all that the current state of theater technology management sucks far more than it should.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

we're in a lacuna for standards for film and digital presentation in theatrical releases and how they are handled; half the world thinks theater is dying, the other half thinks it's never been stronger.
it's probably going to be messy until we get to the other side (whatever that may be).

just hope there aren't too many more many-eyed tentacle monsters waiting to pounce on us from the dark! : D