Super 8 (the movie)

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Just saw this today with my family. It's great! A pitch-perfect bit of early-Spielberg-style suburban sci-fi.

I assume this was shot digitally and treated in post. As in Star Trek, Abrams kinda overdid the fake lens flare, but the grain simulation was actually pretty terrific, IMHO. If it was actually shot on film, all the better, it does look great.

The Super 8 movie the kids make in the movie is, in fact, shot on Super 8 and Super 16:
http://www.motion.kodak.com/us/en/motion/Publications/In_Camera/Web_Exclusives/index.htm

 

[wolfpeterson]

Saw it last night, thought it was great. I went to see it in IMAX and had to call ahead to see if it was in 70mm or if they had already converted to digital, I'm a bit of a stickler (read: snob) for these things. I was glad to see it was originally shot in 35 and the projection was film, all in all a good day for a celluloid fanatic.

Also, I agree on the excessive use of lens flare, although it's a JJ Abrams staple.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

From the Poster it looked like the Kid had a Kodak Ektasound 240- did they shoot a sound movie?

 

[majid]

Are you sure it's digital? Spielberg, unlike hi friend Lucas, prefers film for capture (as opposed to editing). Nowadays, effects and color are done digitally, of course.

There's a scene in "The Minority Report" where Tom Cruise's character's wife is seen emerging from a darkroom.

 

[filmtwit]

According to IMDB, it was shot in 35mm w/Panavision camera, then had a digital intermediate done.

Just saw this today with my family. It's great! A pitch-perfect bit of early-Spielberg-style suburban sci-fi.

I assume this was shot digitally and treated in post. As in Star Trek, Abrams kinda overdid the fake lens flare, but the grain simulation was actually pretty terrific, IMHO. If it was actually shot on film, all the better, it does look great.

The Super 8 movie the kids make in the movie is, in fact, shot on Super 8 and Super 16:
http://www.motion.kodak.com/us/en/motion/Publications/In_Camera/Web_Exclusives/index.htm

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

OK, that makes sense. I assume it was not shot on the kind of film that would give the kind of grain and saturation it actually has. It looked heavily, though appealingly, "vintageized." The flare looks pretty explicitly fake--the movie displays fairly unusual artifacts with great frequency. But again, it kinda feels "right."

majid, it's not a Spielberg movie; J. J. Abrams is the writer/director. But it is put out by Spielberg's production company. It would seem he and Abrams both like film capture...

Brian, yes, the kids make a sound movie!

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Ektachrome 160 Sound with an f1.2 lens on that camera could handle low-light. Kodak also notched out the shutter to increase the exposure time over the non-XL cameras.

I have a Sound-Super 8 Kodak Projector.

 

[cinemakyle]

As mentioned in the article, they shot with anamorphic lenses. The flares are caused by those anamorphic lenses, and can be seen in dozens of movies. (Close Encounters, and Full Metal Jacket come to mind)

Check out these examples: http://www.claudiomiranda.com/lenstest/page2.html

 

[filmtwit]

It's also a 2:35 (anamorphic) film. Speilberg hasn't done anything wider then 1:85 since Raiders of the Lost Arc back in 1981. My understanding was that once he started to produce his own work, he thought that too much lost in pan-scan when brought to TV aspect ratios (1:33). Though he's been OK producing films since 81 that he hasn't directed that are anamorphic.

OK, that makes sense. I assume it was not shot on the kind of film that would give the kind of grain and saturation it actually has. It looked heavily, though appealingly, "vintageized." The flare looks pretty explicitly fake--the movie displays fairly unusual artifacts with great frequency. But again, it kinda feels "right."

majid, it's not a Spielberg movie; J. J. Abrams is the writer/director. But it is put out by Spielberg's production company. It would seem he and Abrams both like film capture...

Brian, yes, the kids make a sound movie!

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

As mentioned in the article, they shot with anamorphic lenses. The flares are caused by those anamorphic lenses, and can be seen in dozens of movies. (Close Encounters, and Full Metal Jacket come to mind)

Check out these examples: http://www.claudiomiranda.com/lenstest/page2.html

Yeah, I get that! But Abrams rather famously added all kinds of fake flare to pure-CGI scenes in Star Trek, to the annoyance of some. So it's unclear to me whether this is actual flare or flare added for flavor. There does seem to be a lot of it.

 

[ampguy]

Not sure about this movie, which I'm looking forward to seeing, but somewhere out there is a photographer for Full Metal Jacket mentioning the flare techniques (not lenses, or shutter angle, but shutter mis-syncing) that was later copied in other war films like Saving Private Ryan, etc.

For grain, you can't really see [true] film grain anymore, the films that had it aren't made anymore. Probably the last 2 that you can see real film grain would be The Year of the Horse, and a film theatre version of Eyes Wide Shut.

 

[rbiemer]

I saw Super 8 yesterday afternoon and liked it fairly well.
Yes, there is a lot of lens flare that I presume is added. But it wasn't quite so distracting as in Star Trek.
I think that is because this movie wasn't so obviously CGI and my experience is that in "real" life lenses do sometimes flare while there is no reason for that to happen in CGI other than the director's choice. So the lens flare did seem more natural.
Maybe we could give JJ Abrams a lens hood for his birthday?
Rob