Ocean's Eleven (2001) Picture Quality Question. (1 Viewer)

[kevin_asai]

Let me just go straight to the point. Is the movie's PQ on DVD is worse than it theatrical trailer on DVD? I mean the color saturations in the movie is really bad compared to its theatrical trailer.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

No, it's just that when the trailer was made, the film had not been color timed completely.

The DVD has accurate color

 

[Patrick McCart]

Trailers rarely are an accurate representation of how the film should look.

Also, take Technicolor films such as Wizard of Oz and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for example. The color is highly saturated and isn't as "low-key" as later Eastmancolor films. Does this make the color bad?

 

[kevin_asai]

IMO, Ocean's Eleven colours are too reddish and washed out. why can't they just set it to natural tone colors?

 

[Paul_D]

I did notice that the picture quality during the clips in the DVD's featurette did appear to be sharper and clearer than the film itself. However, I seem to remember the theatrical image was quite grainy, and I like that look, so I'm not complaining! I agree though, the trailer/featurette has a sharper image.

Ocean's Eleven colours are too reddish and washed out. why can't they just set it to natural tone colors?

All of Steven Soderbergh's films are heavily stylised. It works well IMO.

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

Kevin: those are the colours that Soderbergh wanted. Warmish, and looking like the light in the casinos.

 

[Patrick McCart]

IMO, Ocean's Eleven colours are too reddish and washed out. why can't they just set it to natural tone colors?

Again, the cinematographer decided to use an unconventional color scheme. A lot of newer films are stylized like this. Think of it this way...The Godfather and its sequel present a very amber and gold "tinted" look to the film. Is that wrong because it doesn't look "real?"

Part of the fun of cinematography is experimenting with the color. A lot of neat things can be done to a film by just altering the colors. O Brother Where Art Thou has a very old-time feel to it because of the overall tan/brown/amber/yellow color scheme given to it. Would it be a different film is it was kept in the original color?

 

[kevin_asai]

PatrickMcCart: does a human's skin looks very very red or goldish color?

 

[Douglas Bailey]

If you shine a red or gold light on it, yes.
Why restrict yourself to naturalism? Soderbergh (who acted as his own cinematographer on Ocean's Eleven) certainly doesn't: check out Out of Sight or Erin Brockovich or Traffic to see work that's just as (or even more) stylised. Soderbergh uses colour to provoke a subjective emotional reaction, not just to depict reality: that's why Traffic's Mexican sequences (bleached-out and yellow) and Cleveland/Washington sequences (tungsten-blue) have such different looks.
I caught Ocean's Eleven in the cinemas, and the DVD is a very accurate rendition of the colour scheme I saw. It's faithful to Soderbergh's intent. If you don't like it, your objection is to the film, not the DVD.
doug

 

[Douglas Bailey]

As a matter of fact, the excellent "Painting With Pixels" featurette on the DVD enables us to answer this question. There's a couple of shots of untreated footage, and from those I'd say the film would have had a very different feel if it hadn't been digitally colour-corrected.
Hooray for good DVD extras.
doug

 

[kevin_asai]

well, now I know why they are using color filters. Thanks for the explaination, guys

 

[Ed St. Clair]

In the trailer, the opening is 'properly' [IMO] lit. On the commentry track during the movie the director 'admits' the opening "is too dark".

 

[Ryan_TD]

i noticed something like this with the movie SNATCH.
check out the trailer on disc 2(like with brad pitts character in the ring), and then go to that same scene in the movie(disc 1)
the movie itself is much more murkier and dark looking, where the trailer looks awesome(clearer, brighter, more colorful)

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

Yep, the trailer for Snatch is completely incorrectly colour-corrected. It is not supposed to have vibrant, poppy colours.
Also, to address an earlier point: people have orange-red skin tones when they are under tungsten lighting. Your eyes adapt to it, but not totally. Just because there is a convention in colour photography to always correct a skin tone to its daylight colouring (regardless of what the ambient light is supposed to be), that doesn't make those who choose to make an image differently wrong. In fact, I'd call a lot of the colouring of Ocean's 11 closer to reality than 90% of what we see in the movies.
Do you think we'll see complaints that in a bunch of scenes in The Fellowship of the Ring everyone looks blue-ish?