George Lucas talks Lord of the Rings, Film, HD and more (1 Viewer)

[Gordon McMurphy]

I'm not a big fan of Lucas' current way of filmmaking, but ask an 8-year-old what he/she thinks of Lucas' "storytelling". It's his/her opinion that matter, not a 43-year-old who ought to be watching Bergman and Fellini films by now!

But I will admit that I love American Graffiti. I think it is one of the finest American movies of the Seventies.

 

[Dave H]

That's definitely true. However, you will never convince the "Lucas can do no wrong" crowd of that.

 

[richardWI]

For me, the best argument for shooting digital is Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Never saw it in the theater, so it might have looked a mess there, but it looks mighty fine on DVD. There are some extreme light conditions in the church shoot out scene and the cameras held up better than any video camera I'd seen before. RR's "film is dead" lecture on the disc has almost made me a convert as well.

28 days later had some nice looking moments as well, mainly the outdoor shots.

While the arguments for film over digital aren't changing, digital IS evolving and we're seeing better looking digital features each year. Are films looking better each year? Sure, and most of them have digital intermediaries (LOTR, The Passion, Panic Room, Kill Bill).

 

[RobertR]

I dispute the idea that they look better than the films made using the best non-digital processes, especially the large formats such as 70 mm. I was at a presentation given at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, where comparisons were shown between digital and film on the theatrical size screen. Film was clearly better. I'm not someone who thinks that digital can never equal film, but I don't think it's there yet, no matter how much propaganda Lucas hurls at Spielberg, Coppola, and others (fortunately, they haven't bought into what he says).

 

[richardWI]

Let's speak realistically. We will never see a new 70mm film coming out. Of course they were beautiful, so was technicolor. Both were sacrificed to the gods of economics and with prices falling on digital, and 35mm could be facing the same threat.

 

[RobertR]

They were sacrificed to the gods of economics (it pisses me off that Hollywood thinks this way, because they spend way more on bloated perks than they save on film processing costs), but why should we encourage such a thing to keep happening? If film really is better, shouldn’t we demand the highest quality?

 

[Randy A Salas]

I would have loved to have seen this comparison.

I've seen only one movie projected digitally--a special critics' screening of the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring--and it was absolutely amazing. My impression (from an admittedly isolated viewing) was that it was definitely a better-looking presentation than any of the traditionally projected presentations I saw of any movie from the LOTR trilogy.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Only when that crowd actually shows up in this thread will your point have any relivance to this discussion, however.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I can’t say about El Paso, richard, but we have several screens in Dallas with digital projectors—both in mainstream, multiplexes and in our smaller, ‘art houses’. Just off the top of my head, I’ve seen Attack of the Clones, Giant, and Finding Nemo shown by digital projection. You may be aware that Mark Cuban, who just acquired the Landmark theaters, is a proponent of digital projection, so I would expect that we will see more and more of this technology in his chain.

So I’m not sure why you seem so aggressive about the theaters, as I don’t find it to be the case.

Regardless no one can say with certainly if Once Upon a Time in Mexico is more accurately rendered via an analogue projection or a digital one, unless they have access to a master that the filmmakers consider the benchmark. And then have compared both types of theater projections to the master.

I have nothing at all against the newer HD Panasonic and Sony cameras—and actually feel that they and the next generation will become increasingly important as time passes. But right now, I just don’t see that they are the answer for all types of movies—or even most types—or even very many.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I walked straight from a digital projection of Attack of the Clones to a traditional one (the multiplex had only one digital projection system) just to make the comparison.

The digital projection was indeed amazing, but I could detect some artificing in some scenes at the edges of the screen that I did not recall has having been present in the analogue one. To be fair, I did not go back to check my memory, as three times in a row for this film was way too much even for the intellectual interest of the comparison.

Overall, I’d give the digital projection for this (and for Finding Nemo) very high marks.

I saw the restored Giant in one of our ‘art’ houses, projected digitally and thought that overall the picture quality was very good. But as this was the only format that the movie was being screened in Dallas, I could not make a comparison. And my memory from seeing it all those years ago in the theater has no validity.

I was impressed, but—the screen was only a moderate size and it was my impression that the movie lacked a bit of the warmth that I remembered (to be honest I may be falling into a ‘tubes are better than transistors’ trap). If it were a choice between being able to see such a restoration on a big screen (even if not a giant one), where technology will probably drastically reduce the distribution costs, and demanding that it be only be shown on film—it gets real easy for me.

I’ve seen a few other movies on big screens projected digitally, but I’ve run out of energy to write.

I’ll be really interested in what professionals such as yourself think, when you can make some valid comparisons.

 

[TheLongshot]

Well, has others have said, it is fine when technology is the limiting factor, but for the prequels, it wasn't the technology but the writing and directing that was in that. Maybe George should work on his own limitations? I honestly wished he had worked on those before starting in on the prequels.

Sometimes, tho, the limits in technology work to the filmmaker's benefit. The temptation now is to push beyond limits, when in some cases, the limitations put on them perhaps would make a better film. The question is, would you like something that looks good, but is perhaps less ambitious in scope, to some CGI that may be a bit questionable in quality, but larger in scope? There are some in the former camp and some in the latter camp.

There isn't a question, tho, that there should be people out there trying to push the limits. It is how they get better at it. The question is, tho, have things come too fast for the rate of improvement in technology?

Jason

 

[richardWI]

DVDs certainly count as a digital presentations and DVD sales are eclipsing ticket sales. And judging from the wide variety of dvds being sold, I'd say most filmmakers ARE onboard with digital presentations of their material, and point to the dvd section in most stores are proof. I have yet to see a known filmmaker refuse to have his/her movie transfered to the digital presentation of DVD.

 

[richardWI]

In the end economics, not asthetics or quality, will be the determing factor that will make make 35mm a thing of the past. I'll bet my Betamax and vinyl record collection on it.

While speaking of economics I should point out that it is now cheaper for a couple to BUY a DVD of "Matrix Revolutions" than to go see it on a Friday night. Will this trend totally replace the old fashioned way? No, but it gives less incentive for people to see it in theaters. Add "bonus" material to that equation and DVD is on track to becoming the main medium people see new movies on. Digital presentation sales are booming and analogue tapes are being phased out. Of course studios know this and are gearing moviemaking towards it. Making every step in the process digital just makes economic sense.

 

[RobertR]

I thought it was clear that I was not talking about DVDs, but I'll state it more explicitly: Do you have data to show that filmmakers are anxious to abandon film for principal photography in favor of digital for theatrical exhibition, or that digital theatrical presentations have a higher per-screen average than film presentations? As I said, people such as Spielberg and Scorcese have responded with an explicit "NO" to Lucas urging them to go digital.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I would observe that there is a very big difference between consumer digital presentation and shooting a movie in a digital format.

I’ll again state that I have nothing against the use of this technology as regards moviemaking, but how a movie is shot has nothing to do with how it is presented.

And even DVD presentation gets a bit blurred, except for those with a digital display.

 

[Grant H]

There's still lots of model work in the Prequel Trilogy, even for ships at times. The quality of what's shot is just so much higher today that people assume EVERYTHING is digital when in fact that's not the case.

I saw Once Upon a Time in Mexico in a traditional theater and it looked FANTASTIC. It took a while before it even occurred to me it was shot digitally since that's what Rodriguez does now. It was beautful. I wished the movie itself were better.

And, I don't think 28 Days later was SUPPOSED to look very high quality. If it was, they F---ed up big time.

I like the LOTR movies. There are a lot of subplots, characters, and details that add to the complexity, but the main story itself is pretty darned simple. The mystique created by the backstory only visited in flashbacks really helped the epic feel, but at the same time set me up to be let down for the saga's ending.

Lucas has somehwat sacrificed the once epic feel of Star Wars by boiling down (or maybe watering down) the Original Trilogy's backstory into the Prequels. Turning Star Wars Skywalker-centric takes away from the grander Jedi vs. Sith dynamic. Star Wars films a thousand years before the originals could have been much more enthralling than the backstory of the originals, a story we basically knew already. I guess he could still do new stories and take the Jedi/Sith back to a period where there was no interstellar travel. If it wasn't in space I guess he couldn't call it Star Wars, huh?

Anyway, you can bet if LOTR had been conceived as movies from the start instead of existing as fleshed-out novels, they wouldn't be the epics you see on screen today. They'd be condensed; basically the outlines.

It's great that we got to see such fantastic adaptations of the written words, but I certainly wouldn't expect too many scratch films to compare to them. People tend to take breaks reading, but you're supposed to stay in your seat to watch a movie theatrically.

I doubt I'll ever watch them as much as the SW films simply because they're so much more drawn out. Guess I'm getting old--I fall asleep and my rear starts to hurt. Sitting down to watch 9-11 hours to complete one story is a bit much, at least to do too often. They're not built to be good standalone episodes, IMO anyway. Even ROTK to me somehow made me fee like I ran a marathon across the US so I could get a corn dog. A very yummy, delicious corn dog, but not that much of a payoff, especially considering someone kept taking the corn dog away from me when I was trying to eat it, and then finally I got it back, was able to finish it and the movie was over. The LOTR pandemonium won't last. When they do The Hobbit it will be re-invigorated, but as great as the movies are they won't be the new Star Wars and Jackson won't be the next Lucas.

Lucas, and I say this with kindess, is an excellent rip-off artist who does a great job "borrowing" from others' work implementing some of the best things ever written or put on screen into his own original films.

Hopefully, the LOTR films will pave the way for some more excellent fantastical adapatations though. I'd love to see Roger Zelazney's "The Chronicles of Amber" for instance. I'd love to see Jackson tackle that.

As far as CG goes though--there's plenty of bad CG rearing its ugly head in the LOTR films just as in the SW prequels. If you looked at the percentage of FX shots I wouldn't doubt SW actually has a higher percentage of what I'd call believable or good CG. Some of the stuff in FOTR I found particularly disappointing considering the amount of FX the film had. I wonder, however, if Jackson will go back and update the CG every so many years like Lucas seems to do with his movies.

In the new SW films, there are so many FX there had to be only so much time for each one. Filming the way he does now we might as well consider the original theatrical prints workprints we're allowed to see since he'll be updating them until the day he dies I bet. Jackson might do well to do the same considering the films will look considerably dated in a relatively short time.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Probably not. It was shot on mini-DV; not even HD. I’m pretty sure that the base camera was a (highly modified) consumer Cannon (XL-Pro or some model like that).

They also fitted it out with professional lenses.

 

[Dave H]

The word is spelled "relevance" and they ARE irrelavent. I was making a point. You are a perfect example of what I am talking about Brandon. I've read many of your threads and you think George can do no wrong. Hey, that's fine; it's your (wrong) opinion.

 

[richardWI]

Are they anxious to do it? No. And as George Lucas, the inventor of one of the first non-linear computer editing machines said, no one was anxious to use digital editing either, and now AVIDs are the industry standard. No one was anxious to use data compression in movies and now it's the norm. No one was anxious to create talkies and now it's the norm. No one was anxious to make feature length animation but Disney did it anyway. No one was anxious to to fly either and the Wright Brothers were alone for years. Rodriguez is anxious for it and so is Lucas, Sony, Texas Instruments, and others. Large amounts of people being anxious to use something is no indication of what actually will happen, especially when it comes to technology.

 

[RobertR]

Ok, that answers my question. As for the examples you gave of new technology eventually taking over, they happened because the new technology was clearly better (digital is NOT clearly technologically better than film, and in fact is inferior in a number of ways), and/or is more profitable than the old technology. Digital hasn't shown that it's more profitable, either at the theater or as the source for DVDs.