"Mission: Impossible - Fallout" (2018), cinematography by Rob Hardy
This shot is compelling on many levels. It takes its time, its classic composition, its deliberate moves mirror the emotional journey of Ethan and Ilsa's relationship. But you don't have to be a film scholar to *feel* that something special is going on here.
Currently cameras can not see detail inside of dark shadows and also decode super-hot surfaces hit with sunlight simultaneously. It's most obvious when the camera moves from interior [dark] to exterior [bright] (or vice versa).
There are a lot of great examples in the above thread, the most glaring is this one from "It's Kind of a Funny Story" (2010), where you can feel the camera operator irising down (reducing the amount of light hitting the sensor/film gate) just after camera goes through the door.
This exposure rack can be done in-camera, but it takes careful choreography & lots of rehearsal. One can also choose to do this kind of exposure rack in the color timing session. This was true in the photochemical days as well, but we have a LOT more precision in the digital era.
Also, in the digital era, you can choose to recolor/re-expose *certain* areas of the frame with great flexibility.
What does all this have to do with that "Fallout" shot?
Without animating anything, there is no way for the camera to properly expose for the deep dark shadows inside the tree tunnel *and* to be able to clearly see anything in the bright daylight. Rather than doing an in-camera exposure rack during filming...
The filmmakers chose to do the work in color timing/digital intermediate stage using the foreground tree as a convenient place to hide a soft matte transitioning between two different exposure settings.
A comparison of an early and later frame from the shot.
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David Duchovny sued Fox because Fox sold "The X-Files" reruns to Fox-owned stations in a sweetheart deal (rather than on the open market), scamming him and other participants out of millions of dollars (they settled out of court). Studios will try to get away with everything.
Shows like Friends, M*A*S*H and Seinfeld were shot on film and presented on TV in 4:3 aspect ratio.
For streaming, unused portions of the film negative are used to create a 16:9 widescreen image—if the reframe is sloppy, the audience sees more than was intended. "Friends" s10e01
There is no reason these shows can't be presented in their original aspect ratio of 4:3. Streamers claim audiences will be confused by pillarboxing (black bands on the sides of frame). It's actually MORE WORK for the studio to reframe every single shot for 16:9!
How "M*A*S*H" s11e04 looked like as originally broadcast vs. today on Hulu. Previously unseen portions of the neg are restored l and r & top and bottom are cropped.
You can't even see the shoe that Hawkeye is trying to pick up (that BJ nailed to the floor) in the 16:9 version.
(if you ask something mega-vanilla I’m going to assume it’s one of the bot-generated questions, so add “vfxqanda” to your vanilla question so I know it’s genuine)
“Favorite Marvel project you worked on?”
I’m really proud of our work creating Stark Expo for “Iron Man 2”.
can someone please chart the evolution of the excuses given since the search warrant was executed because hoo boy the goalposts are moving really quickly
I've seen this movie A LOT and I don't think I ever fully grasped that the entire bottom half of the shot of our heroes standing on the log is synthetic.