What's up with Spielberg and Kaminski?

FILMKRUSC

New member
gear01 said:
Maybe Douglas Slocombe is the unsung hero of the first 3 Indy films.
I totally agree with deckard24, I hated the look of KOTCS. I hated the washed out, overexposed dull frosty look of KOTCS. Go back and watch the originals, lush colors, crisp details, and excellent lighting.

I couldn't agree more. That was one of the big problems with KOTCS for me.
Why Spielberg let the cinematography go down the road it did is beyond me..

I also got sick and tired of seeing all the lens flares in KOTCS. For me lens flares are not stylistic but sloppy uninspired lighting.

Slocombe was a genius with lighting. I would have rather have seen Dean Cundey shoot KOTCS.
He could have kept it closer to a Slocombe look.
 

Sankara

Guest
I agree! It didn't look and feel like the old movies! But this is only the fault of Kaminski. I like his work very much but in "Skull" many-many scenes look not real. Wrong colours, to soft...
 

Sankara

Guest
gear01 said:
I totally agree with deckard24, I hated the look of KOTCS. I hated the washed out, overexposed dull frosty look of KOTCS. Go back and watch the originals, lush colors, crisp details, and excellent lighting.
Also, the trilogy's placement of the camera, with interesting angles, and the camera set in realistic locations with attention to composition. Something glaringly different in KOTCS was the computer generated flyover or flyaround shots. In the original films every camera was mounted to a truck, the ground, or a helicopter or a plane, throughout the originals the camera was attached to a physical thing.
If there was a matte painting it was a 2 dimensional element that was creatively composited with live action footage or effects. That was the formula we remember and love. It should have been recreated, but sadly was not.

Yes, you are right! I don't hate the look of "Skull". Sure, it's nothing against the look of "Raiders", "Temple" and "Crusade". Yes, the washed out, overexposed dull frosty look of KOTCS is lousy BUT some angles are really really great! Especially in the Warehouse-Scene...

I like Kaminski.
 
The basic look of the film I don't really hate, it's just that when it gets bright, it gets REALLY bright with it looking like there's a glow on everything. But on the other hand, when they hit it, they really hit it. For me, the graveyard/Orellana's cradle sequence is a highlight of the film on just about every level--particularly cinematography. This was the best. It seemed like generally, the darker scenes were the ones that looked the best.

As I watch it on DVD, though, I'm finding more scenes where I like the look of them. It's certainly not as sharp a contrast as something like, say, TPM to AOTC.
 

Darth Vile

New member
Ben Friend of Indy said:
The basic look of the film I don't really hate, it's just that when it gets bright, it gets REALLY bright with it looking like there's a glow on everything. But on the other hand, when they hit it, they really hit it. For me, the graveyard/Orellana's cradle sequence is a highlight of the film on just about every level--particularly cinematography. This was the best. It seemed like generally, the darker scenes were the ones that looked the best.

As I watch it on DVD, though, I'm finding more scenes where I like the look of them. It's certainly not as sharp a contrast as something like, say, TPM to AOTC.

I agree... The warehouse, Oxley's cell, the graveyard/Orellana's tomb and the interior of Akator are all wonderfully lit. I also don't have much issue with the romanticized lighting of some of the interior shots e.g. the diner, college classroom or Indy's house... it's more the external jungle/waterfall scenes where it?s apparent.
 
The washed out, overexposed dull frosty look of KOTCS was the pits. But why the harsh lighting on Harrison's craggy face?
 

Vance

New member
Darth Vile said:
I agree... The warehouse, Oxley's cell, the graveyard/Orellana's tomb and the interior of Akator are all wonderfully lit. I also don't have much issue with the romanticized lighting of some of the interior shots e.g. the diner, college classroom or Indy's house... it's more the external jungle/waterfall scenes where it?s apparent.

It's the overuse of CGI all over the place. You can easily tell that much of the 'outside' locations were actually CGI tweaked (nearly all of the jungle sequences were almost entirely CGI, ala "Clones" and "Sith"). That made the lighting and everything look much more... 'video-gamey'. You can see the palette dithering and other effects quite easily in the shots, which make them look poor compared to the oddly crisper 'real world' shots in other places.
 

AtomicAge

New member
Vance said:
It's the overuse of CGI all over the place. You can easily tell that much of the 'outside' locations were actually CGI tweaked (nearly all of the jungle sequences were almost entirely CGI, ala "Clones" and "Sith"). That made the lighting and everything look much more... 'video-gamey'. You can see the palette dithering and other effects quite easily in the shots, which make them look poor compared to the oddly crisper 'real world' shots in other places.


Actually its not. If you watch the extra features on the DVD you'll find that about 80 to 90% of the Jungle scenes are Hawaii untouched.

For every shot in that sequence to have been an effect, they would have used more effects shots than were used in the whole movie, which has been reported to have been around 450 shots in total.

Doug
 
AtomicAge said:
Actually its not. If you watch the extra features on the DVD you'll find that about 80 to 90% of the Jungle scenes are Hawaii untouched.

Well the 10 to 20% of the Jungle scenes that are CGI were dreadful enough to dissapoint many people.
 

nitzsche

New member
The jungle is real. There are a few animated elements to cover the real road they were driving on and to close it in with foliage.

The cliff with the river below was added.

But they were in a real jungle.
 

Sankara

Guest
At the ILM offices, Helman and his team meshed the Hawaiian footage with the Brazilian and Argentinian imagery, adding huge swathes of flora using a new digital-effects technique. The result is a fictitious jungle, one with its own look, layout and laws of physics, that only exists inside the computers at ILM.
 

nitzsche

New member
The principle actors were in the jungle. The composite imagery was about 90% real jungle with some CGI animated foliage added to cover the road and to be shot up by guns.

Almost all of the imagery was real, but in some cases (like with the cliff) it was composite shots taken of real jungle to create new geography.

Hawaiian footage with the Brazilian and Argentinian imagery

^ Real imagery, not computer generated imagery. Not animation.
 

Sankara

Guest
The result is a fictitious jungle, one with its own look, layout and laws of physics, that only exists inside the computers at ILM.
 
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