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Here is a review that I wrote for The Revenant.
Please note that I did not write this for POTN.
I wrote it to share elsewhere, and am just copying and pasting it here.
I welcome any of you who have seen The Revenant to share your thoughts on the film, as per their relevance to photography.
Also, if you have any links to share that would enlighten us as to how the movie was filmed, please post them.
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Well, last night I finally got a chance to see The Revenant.
I thought it was awesome! Definitely on my top ten list of all time best movies ever.
Why did I like it so much?
1: The visual cohesiveness of all scenes. Every single scene was either backlit, or shot in shade, or shot in subdued, diffused light, or shot after dark in moonlight or by the light of a campfire. This served to set a very consistent mood and feel for the entire film.
2: The dynamic range. Almost no blown highlights anywhere in the entire film. Many of the scenes were very strongly backlit, and yet the detail in the shaded out foreground elements was impeccably rendered. One exception to what I said about "no blown highlights" may be the near side of some tree trunks in one scene about mid-way thru the movie, but that wasn't a big deal to me because they panned across the scene and the blown highlights were only visible for about a half second.
3: The effective and quite unusual use of extremely short focal lengths. In an interview, Tom Hardy said that the director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, would sometimes have the camera mere inches from his face, and Tom would say, "what are you doing?" and Alejandro would say, "just trust me". And it worked every time! Despite the uncommonly short focal lengths, distortion was kept to a minimum......except for those times when distortion was intentionally used as a creative tool.
4: Camera movement while shooting. Many films have a few scenes in which the camera is moving while the scene is shot, but in The Revenant the moving camera technique was used in so many scenes that it became the norm. Many such scenes left me wondering, "how in the world did they ever do that?". One such scene was when they filmed one of the characters riding horseback thru a dense stand of snow-clad evergreens. The POV was quite a bit above the rider, and generally paralleled the rider's course thru a short portion of the forest. The whole clip was so clean! No out-of-focus branches in the foreground blocking the visual path to the horse and rider at any point. And such smooth movement as they panned with the action. At the final second of that clip the horse and rider get quite close, and as the camera zooms out with perfect smoothness, they stride into a break in the foliage, finally giving us a clear, open, complete view of the horse and rider that is from such a different perspective than what was shown just seconds before! It is not until that moment that I realize that a very short focal length had been used. They must have spent hours setting up for that scene - clipping branches, clearing a course for the cameraman, etc - all while ensuring that they didn't knock any snow off of any of the foliage, or leave any footprints or unnatural depressions in the snow......simply an amazing piece of directorial work!
5: The fact that the entire film was shot using only ambient light. This is really an incredible feat when one considers all of the strongly backlit scenes. The temptation to use a distant strobe, or even a reflector, must have been quite strong, but Alejandro remained true to his vision and did not give in to temptation. Heck, even the underwater scene was shot with just ambient? Amazing!
6: Composition. It seemed to me that the first consideration for every single scene was to ensure that the most visually pleasing composition was achieved:
a) Even during close-up camp scenes showing the drudgery of everyday camp chores, distant, grandiose views were somehow incorporated into a small portion of the frame.
b) When the characters would walk thru the woods, there always seemed to be a branch spanning the top of the frame, or a downed log anchoring the bottom of the frame, or a particularly massive tree trunk on the very edge of the frame......believe me - these things do not happen by accident!
c) When showing a character close up, their face was often cast to one side of the frame, so as to take the fullest advantage of contextual background elements. Sure, anyone knows to throw the subject off to one side, but Lubezki did so much with the other side of the frame that so many of these scenes are, essentially, environmental portrait masterpieces!
d) Extremely low POVs were used whenever they were pertinent to the scene, and some very beautiful compositions were thus achieved. At about 1:50 into the film, one such scene struck me in a particularly strong way. The camera must have been right on the ground.......heck, perhaps they even carved out a depression in the ground so that they could get the camera even lower! From this extremely low POV they shot some low-growing foliage that was right in front of the camera. If I remember correctly, they put the foliage slightly out of focus to give it a very soft feel. That foliage was astonishingly beautiful to my eye! In fact, it is exactly the way I try to get the foreground foliage to look in many of my wildlife photographs. I suspect that Alejandro spend quite some time manicuring that little patch of low-growing grass, to get it to look so wonderful...........plucking a few stray strands of grass here, pushing a blade of grass a bit more to the left (or right) there.......such attention to detail resulted in a perfect frame that had a most pleasing aesthetic.
Ok, I could go on and on and listing more things that I loved about this film. There are, quite literally, hundreds of scenes and clips, and each one could be critiqued for its aesthetic, technical, and compositional merits. But quite frankly, I am tired of thinking and typing so I am going to wrap things up for now.
You just can't find this degree of natural beauty and aesthetic perfection in nature documentaries - I think that they simply don't have the budget to do such a painstaking job of setting up every single aspect of every single scene.
I can't wait until this is available on DVD. When I can put a DVD in and watch it that way I will be able to stop the film whenever I want and spend many long minutes examining the way each and every scene was filmed. I will even do screen captures so that I have immediate access to hundreds of scenes throughout the movie.....and that is something that I will enjoy immensely!
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