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An update of sorts...
Sep. 7th, 2005 09:44 pmSo I finally got around to seeing Batman Begins this weekend. Over all, I like it, despite a couple of glaring technical errors and the fact that Christopher Nolan couldn’t direct an action sequence to save his life. Maybe it’s just me, but I actually like to see the action in the action sequence. I really don’t feel that using the camera in a hand held fashion with quick edits adds to the excitement; in fact it detracts from the action for me. Perhaps I’m a minority on this, and dead gods, I hope not, but I really don’t like hand held camera work, save for one exception where it was done really, really well and consistently.
Ever since the Blair Witch Project, we’ve seen this humungous rise in the number of movies that use the hand held camera. In Firefly, the hand held camera works because it’s consistently used through the show, right down to being simulated in the CGI work. I refer to this as the “Oh my god, that was so cool” effect. For example, the Matrix and the Wachowski Brother’s came up with “Bullet Time”, we’ve seen it used everywhere, from Shrek (where it was used in parody) to Charlie’s Angles (which was just as laughable).
Okay, back to Batman Begins. Warning: in the black box text are some spoilers. Read at your own risk.
Technical problems: The microwave emitter just seems to defy the laws of physics as I know them. First of all, waves have to travel through space and presumable the idea behind said emitter is that it super heats the water to a boil much like a microwave over works, by bouncing high speed radiation through the water to heat up, right? Which means this radiation had to start some where (the emitter in this case) , and, for the sake of arguments, let’s say it’s focused in a downward direction, going through the floor of the train which is probably made out of sheet metal. Now the insides (and outsides for that matter) of microwave ovens are made out of sheet metal for a reason: To redirect the microwave energy so that’s its doing its job, namely cooking your food. Now if it could go through the floor of the train, it would then have to go through layer upon layer of track (two levels worth, if I remember correctly) before hitting the asphalt and earth and penetrating the water mains.
Problem number two: While I thought the idea of dispensing an airborne agent through vaporized water was pretty neat, the method of putting it into the water mains just didn’t work for me. Why, you ask? Simple, water mains are a pressurized system which enables it to beat the gravity game. This poses the problem of when the mains were broken into in the basement of Arkham Asylum, you saw the water running through the pipes, implying it was a gravity fed system, which is not how water is delivered these days. In ancient Rome, perhaps, through those aqueducts, but not in a modern water system because the moment they broke those pipes, water should’ve been spraying and pressure drops like that tend to show up as a pressure drop back at the pump house.
I’m not sure why technical issues like that bother me so much, but they do. When I was in high school, I went to go see a production of South Pacific at another school. As I watched it, something I was seeing was setting off my little OCD around technical details and I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. I sat that there and tried to ignore it through the first act and well into the second. It occurred to me then what it was. There was this gorgeously constructed windmill as a part of the set and the blades of the wind mill turned. It was really cool, except for one detail: It was spinning backwards.
Tonight was night three of shooting West Side Story down at the Burien Performing Arts Complex at High Line High School for the Hi-Liners. The first night, last Thursday, I shot 705 photos. Last night, I shot roughly 1700 photos. Tonight, I only shot a about 300 or so as it wasn’t an actual dress rehearsal. It was a run through the director and stage manager could tighten up the tempo and the scene changes.
I rented a 70-200mm f2.8d Vibration Reduction lens from Glazers and I have to say, so far it’s been really nice, but I won’t know until I look at the photos. My only complaint thus far is it’s so slow compared to my f1.8d 50mm prime lens. How “fast” a lens is relates to its maximum aperture rating (the f1.8d for example and smaller is better than larger) or how much light you let in to expose the film (or the sensor in this case). Mind you, it’s way faster than my 100-300mm f5.6d lens which is so not useful for shooting shows and the vibration reduction helps a lot too, though if the actors are moving around a lot, it’s still going to be fuzzy at ¼ of a second shutter speed. And then, I worked with the little f1.8d 135mm prime lens as well.
Ever since the Blair Witch Project, we’ve seen this humungous rise in the number of movies that use the hand held camera. In Firefly, the hand held camera works because it’s consistently used through the show, right down to being simulated in the CGI work. I refer to this as the “Oh my god, that was so cool” effect. For example, the Matrix and the Wachowski Brother’s came up with “Bullet Time”, we’ve seen it used everywhere, from Shrek (where it was used in parody) to Charlie’s Angles (which was just as laughable).
Okay, back to Batman Begins. Warning: in the black box text are some spoilers. Read at your own risk.
Technical problems: The microwave emitter just seems to defy the laws of physics as I know them. First of all, waves have to travel through space and presumable the idea behind said emitter is that it super heats the water to a boil much like a microwave over works, by bouncing high speed radiation through the water to heat up, right? Which means this radiation had to start some where (the emitter in this case) , and, for the sake of arguments, let’s say it’s focused in a downward direction, going through the floor of the train which is probably made out of sheet metal. Now the insides (and outsides for that matter) of microwave ovens are made out of sheet metal for a reason: To redirect the microwave energy so that’s its doing its job, namely cooking your food. Now if it could go through the floor of the train, it would then have to go through layer upon layer of track (two levels worth, if I remember correctly) before hitting the asphalt and earth and penetrating the water mains.
Problem number two: While I thought the idea of dispensing an airborne agent through vaporized water was pretty neat, the method of putting it into the water mains just didn’t work for me. Why, you ask? Simple, water mains are a pressurized system which enables it to beat the gravity game. This poses the problem of when the mains were broken into in the basement of Arkham Asylum, you saw the water running through the pipes, implying it was a gravity fed system, which is not how water is delivered these days. In ancient Rome, perhaps, through those aqueducts, but not in a modern water system because the moment they broke those pipes, water should’ve been spraying and pressure drops like that tend to show up as a pressure drop back at the pump house.
I’m not sure why technical issues like that bother me so much, but they do. When I was in high school, I went to go see a production of South Pacific at another school. As I watched it, something I was seeing was setting off my little OCD around technical details and I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. I sat that there and tried to ignore it through the first act and well into the second. It occurred to me then what it was. There was this gorgeously constructed windmill as a part of the set and the blades of the wind mill turned. It was really cool, except for one detail: It was spinning backwards.
Tonight was night three of shooting West Side Story down at the Burien Performing Arts Complex at High Line High School for the Hi-Liners. The first night, last Thursday, I shot 705 photos. Last night, I shot roughly 1700 photos. Tonight, I only shot a about 300 or so as it wasn’t an actual dress rehearsal. It was a run through the director and stage manager could tighten up the tempo and the scene changes.
I rented a 70-200mm f2.8d Vibration Reduction lens from Glazers and I have to say, so far it’s been really nice, but I won’t know until I look at the photos. My only complaint thus far is it’s so slow compared to my f1.8d 50mm prime lens. How “fast” a lens is relates to its maximum aperture rating (the f1.8d for example and smaller is better than larger) or how much light you let in to expose the film (or the sensor in this case). Mind you, it’s way faster than my 100-300mm f5.6d lens which is so not useful for shooting shows and the vibration reduction helps a lot too, though if the actors are moving around a lot, it’s still going to be fuzzy at ¼ of a second shutter speed. And then, I worked with the little f1.8d 135mm prime lens as well.
