"Flight"...

[Louis Maddalena]

I just saw "Flight" last night. And not to spoil the movie for anybody all I'll say is that I really liked it. The cinematography was great, the acting was great, the story was great. I really enjoyed it. The only negative thing was the person in front of me was massive, so tall, had to watch the film while leaning into the aisle.

[Carey Lee Coffey]

Great movie. Great story. Great dialogue. Zemeckis all the way.

[Brant Hadfield]

Wow, I hate to be the contrarian here, but I was pretty disappointed in the film, with the notable exception of Denzel's performance, which was spectacular. I saw it projected DLP, though in a smallish screen. I found the projected image very videoish. This was due to an oddness of the motion blur or apparent frame rate - looking more like 30 fps than 24. May have had something to do with the projection. The image was hyper clean, and just seemed lifeless to me. In general I thought the cinematography totally devoid of any art whatsoever. Could the scene with Denzel opening his eyes have been conceived as happening with some daylight coming through the big windows of the recovery room? Raising the possibility of silhouette? Or cool light and its impact on the side of Denzel's face? Some visual opportunity of portraying the pilot's isolation? And if your low angle shot of the union rep must have an HVAC vent in his background, why not use a more shallow DOF? Instead, that scene, like pretty much all of them, seemed shot in really unartful light, composition, movement and even location. The scene on the stairwell being a prime example. I could write a few paragraphs about the very unrealistic ascent and descent sequence, the ridiculous sound design of cross fading turbine spool-ups over and over and over. In sharp contrast to Flight was Argo, with beautiful (yes, film and Alexa) images, great texture, effective cinematography, and amazing attention to detail. Just my take.

[Louis Maddalena]

I'll give you that the entire hospital scenes were not the best. Liked the lighting but I think there may have been one or two opportunities for a close up here or there that I would not have minded behing thrown in.. Especially on the cancer patient.

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't see why shallow focus makes cinematography more artful or why a serious drama like this needs to have more expressive, less understated, lighting. This is a case where I commend the cinematographer for not getting ahead of the story or showing off, the lighting was natural and straightforward. Hospital rooms felt like hospital rooms, hotel rooms felt like hotel rooms, etc.

[Paul Ellington]

I don't see why shallow focus makes cinematography more artful or why a serious drama like this needs to have more expressive, less understated, lighting. This is a case where I commend the cinematographer for not getting ahead of the story or showing off, the lighting was natural and straightforward. Hospital rooms felt like hospital rooms, hotel rooms felt like hotel rooms, etc.

Yeah - the whole argument is either or. Either shallow focus with beautiful knocked out of focus shots. Or be able to see everything and each story requires something different. Also, a cheat I was told in order to make some screenplays look more expensive is longer lenses with more out of focus shots. That being said, if all in all it's not pulled off it's no good regardless. If you have expensive sets, sometimes it's called for you to show everything.

Mr. Mullen what are your thoughts on this? I am a young cinematographer (35) so not that young.

Best

- Paul.

[Brant Hadfield]

I don't see why shallow focus makes cinematography more artful or why a serious drama like this needs to have more expressive, less understated, lighting. This is a case where I commend the cinematographer for not getting ahead of the story or showing off, the lighting was natural and straightforward. Hospital rooms felt like hospital rooms, hotel rooms felt like hotel rooms, etc.

David, I think you may have misinterpreted my post. Using shallow DOF is a tool of the DP. In that particular shot, I would have used shallow DOF to bring more attention to the character and his emotion. I am not, nor did I imply that using shallow DOF is in itself "art". It's been overused in place of good composition in many instances, we all know. I happen to feel the visual medium is as important as the performance of the actors - it should not devour them, but it also should not disregard the emotion. I also believe that artful photography has an important role in a delicate balance between actors, score, etc. Roger Deakins is one who is supremely skilled at walking that line, in my opinion. Just because one might want the story's focus to be the characters doesn't mean the visuals need to be completely antiseptic. I found the visuals in Flight to be antiseptic. Is that better than overwrought? They're equally undesirable in my opinion. The DOF issue is separate, but part of what, in my opinion, was a disregard of the power and role of the visual in story telling. This is all subjective. To each their own!

[charles lim yi yong]

Just read the article. What's this about RED having a "bad reputation" , does it?

[Bill Totolo]

Loved this movie and really feel this could have just as easily been captured on 35mm film and had the same impact, which is my way of giving a compliment to the RED team. Great looking skin tones, kudos to the colorist, and the team that designed the camera.

Sadly my theater appeared a bit dark, even the trailers appeared to need more light from the projector.

[Vadim Bobkovsky]

Movie looked just fine to me, maybe it was a decent 2K projector or something. That whole crash scene was amazing and overall I'm not seeing "cheap video" image, except maybe in a shot out of the window in hospital. Alexa's highlights are softer and nicer, that's true, but I weren't thinking of all this watching the movie. Maybe I've got used to the "un-filmic" video look...