Something a little "off" about how the movie Public Enemies was shot?

The idea of a Johnny Depp / Christian Bale movie that 'didn't look right' and has 'something kinda "off" about it' seems highly implausible, if not impossible. please... say it isn't so!

I'm getting your same impression already, just from the ad clips. For all the care Mann took in the authentic period prep, I'm seeing emphasis on his close action style, ... which seems to forgo the juicy atmospheric smoldering scene setting I was hoping for, and makes it look cheap and cartoony. Can't wait to see it.

Ditto to Michael, the trailers I've seen really looked "off" to me as well.

I saw the trailer in the theater when I was watching another movie and it looked pretty good at the time. That was what got me interested in the movie, and I was looking forward to it for a while. But I have to say a lot of the scenes just looked really crappy...it seriously looks like it was shot with a hand held camera. The framing was too tight, the camera bounced around too much and sometimes it looked as though the point of view was totally random and I wasn't sure what they were trying to convey to the audience. If they were trying to make it look "edgy" it did NOT work at all. The shootout scenes just looked like a home video, like something some kid would record with a handheld digital camera and post on YouTube :(

Just imagine "Cops," like the cameraman chasing after a cop to tape him while he runs after a suspect...except with everyone being dressed in 1930's clothes. And that basically sums it up.

They filmed much of the movie here in Milwaukee and other parts of Wisconsin. They did use small digital cameras, often hand held according to people that watched them film. I have not seen the movie yet, even though it is playing at a theatre a few blocks from me.

if i recall correctly, this movie was shot in digital, not film. also, think handhelds were used. do this explain the look?

see movie review in todays ny times on line-front page

Well, I guess that's why then. I just looked it up on Google. The funny thing is, I kept thinking to myself I wonder if this was shot on digital?

There was just something really off and fake about it, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I've read a few reviews, and some people are saying that it looks like a home movie or a Discovery Channel re-enactment. That's exactly what it looked like to me! If you just want to see an action movie, then it's fine. But if you want to see an interesting time period movie...then forget it. I think you'll be disappointed :(

The bouncy camera and tight framing thing has been done for a long time, and way before digital cameras. But when you combine that with the digital...it just looks horrible. It looks like a home video or something you'd see on YouTube.

I don't know what that writer at the New York Times was thinking though. It sucked.

As a medium becomes easier and less challenging to employ, our moves to it's perfection grow weaker.

That is the current style to get the viewer to think they are right there. Lots of camera movement. Even on close up shots the camera will constantly be moving so the actor's head goes from profile to 3/4. Or the camera just drifts on close up shots. I don't watch much TV but when I do I see that all the time now. Even to having the camera circle around a group of people when they are talking. It gives me vertigo.

James, I think the first time I ever saw the jerky camera movement thing was on the tv show "NYPD Blue" sometime in the early 90's. I was a kid then and I didn't know anything about how movies and TV shows were filmed, but I still hated it. It seemed like just when the camera had a character in frame and a shot was composed, the camera would start jerking left and right and then it would sweep wildly across to another shot. It was like the camera guy was on drugs or something. Just imagine that...pointing a camera at someone for a couple of seconds, and then start shaking it left and right, and then suddenly sweep it somewhere else. It made me dizzy...and mind you, I was used to playing video games and seeing stuff fly across the screen. But this looked horrible. I don't know what that style of tight framing and jerky camera movements is called, but I hate it.

Public Enemy had the jerky camera thing...but it also just looked like a cheap home movie shot with a video camera.

According to the movie review by David Edelstein, featured on NPR's "Fresh Air" (july 1), "Michael Mann (the director) shot it on high-def video."

"That is the current style to get the viewer to think they are right there."

Similar to Chris' observation, I first noticed this on the original "Law & Order" many years ago. It was kind of an interesting gimmick at the time, but my head does not constantly bob around in real life.

If they are handholding cameras for a project as important as that, for primary shots? As in, that was the main way they were using the camera? There would be some backup handheld shots, but was that the main way? If so, that sounds like inadequate logistical support for the production. Maybe it's a sign of financial difficulties. Who knows?

My guess is that there would be about 10 people on hand, per featured or "key" person, to make sure things go smoothly. They probably sapped their own logistical base of support. Corporations do that all the time in business. It never goes well; and, sooner or later someone cuts support staff to the point they've crippled their operation. Maybe that's what happened. Just spitballing.

" . . . my head does not constantly bob around in real life."

This is the sort of optimism that we are all better off corroborating with our nearest and dearest.

I'm going to see this movie just to see what Chris is talking about. I think I know the kind of look he's describing and it reminds me of period piece attempts made by DIY commercials and music video's where it looks too clean and modern looking and where the movement is too fluid as you'ld see in 60 fps video instead of the flicker effect from 24 frame film.

I believe Michael Mann and other seasoned directors may need to bone up on the look and feel digital brings to a movie and adjust accordingly through post. Not sure if they've developed an eye for noticing this.

One really good looking movie shot entirely in digital is "Wolf Creek", a slasher horror movie similar to "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" shot with a small Sony HD camera that looked like those long shaped $3000 Canon DM-XL2 miniDV camcorders. I was convinced it was shot on film from the look, color and fps. Rented the DVD to find out in the added feature section it was shot digitally.

yeah, Tim if you do go see it, you'll know what I mean when you see the gunfight scenes. It looks very amateurish, like something out of a reality tv show. It's not only just the shaky camera movements, but also how it was framed. It looks like someone was following them around with a handheld video camera. The rest of the movie was okay. There was one shot when a train pulled into a station and the angle they got on the locomotive was awesome. But the way they captured the gunfight scenes just sucked. Really lame and obvious "video" look to it.

I don't know about other movies...I have to admit that some of them are so well done that you can't really tell if they are shot on film or digital. But this movie just screams "digital." To the point that it's distracting and takes away from the movie. It just didn't work at all with a historical movie like this. It would have been better to shoot it on film.

Chris,

Sounds like a cinéma vérité wannabe to me. The newer it gets, the older it gets. We all want to be artsy, don't we? Blair Witch Project, anyone? The f-64 group, it ain't.

Mark

I actually liked Blair Witch Project. The amateurish, low budget, bouncy camera effect worked great for that movie. It actually did add tension and suspense. But it just did not work at all for Public Enemies. Instead of making the viewer feel like you're actually there in the gunfights, it had the exact opposite effect on me...it made me feel outside of it, and like I was watching a re-enactment on the History Channel. I just can't understand why he would use that effect in a time period movie. And the digital look just sucked.

I just watched the trailer for "Public Enemies" and I feel a little dizzy. That may be more from the effect of editing in a new scene every 1 or 2 seconds not to mention the constant camera motion, zooming in, out, panning, wiggling, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjTlcTztp2A&NR=1

No, James that actually looks normal! That's not even the scenes I was talking about. I think that's the same trailer I saw in the theater, and it looked interesting to me. What I was talking about is the gunfight scenes later in the movie, which they don't even show in the trailer. The gunfight scenes looked like they were shot with a handheld video camera.

Here, this is what I mean.

** WARNING! This is an actual clip I found from the movie, so there might be some minor spoilers. **
But this video shows exactly what I'm talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pyZ0wgMQro

Chris,

I think we are talking about the same thing. The amateurish look is more pronounced in your trailer than in the one that I showed. Most of the scenes in my trailer were only about one second long, yet one could still see camera movement even on close up head shots.

Michael Mann has always used a very stylized approach to cinematography, choosing a look that suits his vision of the material. Even the films on which he's not credited as the director show his influence. I can't tell much from that herky jerky YouTube video, but the promo clips I've seen show the appearance of a deliberate choice to use that style. Whether it turns out to be a good choice, eh, who knows.

I believe Michael Mann and other seasoned directors may need to bone up on the look and feel digital brings to a movie and adjust accordingly through post. Not sure if they've developed an eye for noticing this.

Michael Mann was one of the first directors to adopt the use of digital cameras for major feature films. All the talk in this thread about insufficient logistics, amateurism, and ignorance is way off base. You may not like the choices he's made for the movie, but they were conscious choices about how the film should look made by someone who has more experience with the medium than most.

From the YouTube links provided here I think the color is just gorgeous. Opened up shadow detail compared to what I've seen from film does give a sort of video feel, but the color saturation and designer style color palette takes it in another direction. It does look different, but far from amateurish. It kind of reminds me of the overly tack sharp B&W old 120 prints my grandmother took with her Brownie camera of our family from the '50's into the '60's.

This looks nothing like Blair Witch which was unwatchable for my tastes and it was obviously shot with a DV camcorder as I'm sure the maker's intended to give a more viral video feel.

However I am viewing these movie trailers on a high rez LCD where everything looks better than the film print version released at local theaters. The recent Terminator movie I saw comes to mind, but I liked the courser looking high contrast film print version than the clean, sharp, wider dynamic range movie trailer version shown on TV and YouTube.

Mike, apparently I'm not the only one who thought that the "herky jerky" look (as Lex put it)wasn't appropriate for this movie either. Do a search online and a lot of movie reviews said the exact same thing that I did...that the movie looks like it was filmed by a handheld video camera and it DOES look very amateurish. It's undeniable. That's just the feeling you get when you watch the movie. Have you actually seen it yet?

I actually liked the movie (mostly) until it got to the gunfight scenes. I saw the movie with a couple of friends, and it was so lame and distracting that at one point I even turned and said I hated how the movie was shot. And really, I've never paid that much attention to how a movie was filmed. But here, it just looked so FAKE. It looked like it was something out of a documentary or reality tv show. My friends agreed. I can't explain it any more than that. You don't have to be an expert in cinemaphotography to say that as a viewer, the way a movie is shot is extremely distracting and just doesn't look right. I'm not the one who mentioned it was shot digitally. But it does just LOOK digital. I didn't even know the movie was digital until after I posted this topic. I just knew that there was something different about it besides just the jerky camera movements and I couldn't explain what. It looked like a video.

I'm not saying the movie wasn't interesting. It was. In fact, otherwise there are a lot of things I liked about it. I think Jonny Depp did a great job playing John Dillinger, and all the characters were very well developed. They also did an awesome job with the costumes and the sets, and it really did look like the 1930's. And there was one scene that was hillarious and had everyone in the audience laughing. (I'm not going to say anything about it). I'm just saying that the way they shot the movie...the jerky, video camera documentary style, and the digital look was just REALLY distracting. It took away something from the movie.

Oh well...it's just a movie, anyway. I guess I'm just more picky now that it costs $10 for a movie ticket! And that was with a student discount!

Sorry, but for 10 bucks, I DO get to play armchair movie critic.

Chris I get what you're talking about. Growing up as a teen in the '70's I hated the gritty, documentary style look of films pioneered by directors like Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese to name a few. I was so used to seeing the slick looking, beautifully lit Hollywood studio productions from Disney, George Cukor and Alfred Hitchcock.

The cultural and political tumultuous vibe between the haves and have nots, working class conservatives and the perceived hippy slackers and those against the Vietnam war and those for it was so thick you could cut it with a knife. And I felt the film makers injected this gritty feel to their films to reflect the vibe going on back then. I couldn't help but think they were basically communicating an attitude of "I don't give a hoot about production values anymore, what's the point". Now I see they were just experimenting with different looks to film and lighting as another way to communicate an alternative attitude based more in reality over Hollywood polish. But then the Technicolor of Star Wars came along and changed all that.

Maybe Michael Mann is just doing the same thing with "Public Enemies". Fortunately I'm only having to pay $5.50 at the 2:50 matinee down here in New Braunfels, TX, so there's some benefits for not being a big city boy. I'll post back my impression of the gunfight scene you refer to in the film.

If it's any consolation, Mann already made one of the most gorgeous movies anyone could ask for. Watch Last of the Mohicans again and you'll forgive him.

I saw it yesterday afternoon and immediately posted an inquiry on the Fred Miranda Forums. I was directed here. First thing I noticed was the vast amount of purple fringing. Not edge CA, but rather like sensor bloom I get on my Canon 1Ds when there are strong highlights. Never saw it in a feature film before. It got to be annoying.
Next thing I noticed was when my eye would drift to the edges of the scene, things looked jittery and distorted, made it very uncomfortable. Movie and plot aside, I felt the technical aspects were simply not ready for prime time.

I saw it on friday. My overall impression was of it was that it was a music video without the music. The camera movement, deliberate use of "grain" or bad pixellating (whatever it was), total lack of either plot or characture development made for a looooonnnnnnggggggg two and a half hours. Happily we were only out $12 for the matinee.

Just saw it.

Well they finally pulled it off. A movie with the look and color of 4x5 Kodachrome similar to some of Russell Lee's work he did during the 1040's Security Farm Administration photography project:

(link)
(link)

And from Shorpy Kodachrome:
http://ronald.andrews.googlepages.com/historickodachromeimages

Of course the movie is a lot more sharper, vibrant, clean and polished than the old images in those links even for a 2nd generation theater film print. Some scenes do show the tell tale signs of digital's abruptly clipped highlights with a thin rim of posterized pure yellow as well as some purple fringing on backlit trees in the background, but the amount of detail and gorgeous color soon made me forget about that real quick.

The gunfight scene was edge of your seat intense much like the battle scenes in "Saving Private Ryan" without that odd jittery dropped frame effect. Things went so fast and in low light I didn't get the impression of it looking amateurish at all. It had the same frenetic, un-choreographed feel as in the Art Penn's "Bonnie And Clyde" with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway but everything in tack sharp detail as in those Kodachromes.

I don't know how they did it, but there is some almost impossibly extreme depth of field sharpness mostly in low light two person framed close-ups where both are in sharp focus. You will see the pours of the actor's skin in these close-ups, but it gives the feeling you are there back in that time.

The story line is smartly injected with sociopolitical undertones that were going on during that time when the FBI was just being created and new laws were being put into place to cause all the organized crooks to rat on each other that most aren't aware of at least I wasn't. "Public Enemies" is a fitting title that's simply told and told well with good timing and pacing.

It's a lot smarter than all the films out so far.

Just saw it, too, and as each minute passed, I became more and more thrilled (it was not what I had expected from the trailer). I LOVED the way it was shot, grainy scenes, atmosphere etc, and as Tim says, there are some close, backlit intimate scenes which are phenomenal. The direction was true to Mann form, possibly some of his best work yet. Add to this several riveting performances making this a well balanced, engrossing and thoroughly enjoyable movie. I'll be seeing this again before the awards for sure.

Wow...did you guys even see the same movie? It was intense, sure. But it had anything but atmosphere. The acting was great, and I never questioned that. But I seriously don't see how anyone can watch the shootout scenes and not say that it didn't look like it was shot with a handheld video camera. Every single person I've talked about it so far, other than on this forum, said the same exact thing...that it just looked like a documentary re-enactment, shot with video cameras.

I guess it does all just come down to taste. But you have to at least admit that it DOES look like video. If you like that, great. But that is NOT what I wanted to see. It's a good action movie, I'll give you that. But it never drew me in. I never at any point felt like I was watching something in the 1930's, like I have with other movies. The way it was shot, and the whole time I just couldn't get past how it just looked weird somehow...that was extremely distracting. There are PLENTY of great time period movies that are intense, with a lot of action AND look authentic. This one is definitely not it. It just looked too modern, too digital, and too much like video.

"Gangs of New York" and "Road To Perdition" are two period movies I can think of right now that are also very intense with a lot of action, but look MUCH better. And I'm sure there are other more recent movies.

I don't know why everything has to be so dark. Atmosphere I suppose. I have a single 60 watt in a lampshade fixture next to my bed and it lights the entire room. When the shooting starts, Depp's room is very dark. One would suppose he only had a 10 watt bulb. And he did look very orange. Maybe the cinemaphotographer never heard of color correcting filters for tungsten or white balance. Even with lights on in other rooms everything looked very dark. Too much atmosphere can be, well, too much. Perhaps he is emulating a 1940s cinemaphotographer (I forget his name) who was know as "The prince of darkness". He had a lot of fights with the film directors concerning his lighting techniques.

There is a film noir lighting feel to this movie that doesn't show in the linked Kodachrome samples. I too was a bit put off by actor's faces plunged into darkness as in the opening scene but that's the art of film noir which is to conceal looming danger and the anticipated with lighting. I mean no one seemed to complain about some of the scenes in the "Godfather" that were so dark you couldn't even identify who was talking to who like where Al Pacino's character is talking to his mother in the living room.

"Road To Perdition" was filmed and processed with diminished colors and lots of browns and grays and was less sharp. "Public Enemies" has the vibrant and rich colors and sharpness of old 4x5 Kodachrome slides. The infamous woman in the red dress looks really red.

I saw the film and thought it was expertly done. Mann uses everything at his disposal to communicate with the viewer. The style and the story are well-integrated, IMHO. YMMV.

A movie with the look and color of 4x5 Kodachrome

Looked more like bleach bypass to me. I suppose that could be interpreted as Kodachrome by some, but it's a simulation of bleach bypass that I see going on.

No, if you want to see what bleach bypass really looks like, then watch "Terminator: Salvation." They DID shoot that on film. And McG specifically said that they used the bleach bypass technique to develop it...to give subdued colors and a very unique, surreal look to it...to fit the grim, post apocalyptic atmosphere of the movie.

There are a couple of scenes in the beginning of "Public Enemies" that vaguely look like bleach bypass. But if you really want to see it, then "Terminator: Salvation" and "Minority Report" are good examples. (Both were shot on film). I've also heard that "Saving Private Ryan" used bleach bypass, but I'm not sure.

Jeff, what scene in the movie are you talking about?

There were different color treatments throughout the movie depending on time and location. The scene where Depp's character and his friends are at the race track has a completely different color palette with a gorgeous dull yellowish amber color cast that reminds me of certain shots in the 4x5 Kodachrome examples of '40's rural America I've come across from the Library of Congress.

Didn't post a link to them because the database of Kodachromes is huge and didn't have the time to go hunting them down.

Have you seen the movie? From what I saw it couldn't have been all bleach bypass. And from what Chris described what that looks like which I'm not that familiar with, there were no high contrast scenes as in "Terminator:Salvation" and "Minority Report" which do look high contrast.

I don't think it all was, the way color was rendered changed from scene to scene. However, the first indoor scene at the FBI office was the one that showed this effect, and it came up from time to time in a number of scenes.

Excellent movie.

By the way, here is a trailer for "Terminator: Salvation." I'm sure everyone has seen it by now. But I think it's the most awesome trailer, and you can really see what real bleach bypass, with film, looks like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg9ooaozu-8

"We've been at war since before either of us even existed..."

And here's another longer trailer. You really get a feeling of it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff19bMye4JM

Tim Lookingbill hinted at it, but I'm not sure anyone nailed the answer to Chris's original question:

'Public Enemies' was shot in HD, presumably at 60fps, instead of the 24fps that is used when movies are shot on film.

Home video (at least, the home video that was shot by older video cameras) used to be shot at 60 fields per second, and while this isn't exactly the same as 60 frames per second, nevertheless, the resultant fluidity is essentially the same. That's why 'Public Enemies' looks like home video, not like the theatrical movies we're used to.

News is also shot in HD at 60fps or some variant thereof... which makes it look 'live' and not 'movie-like'.

I, personally, thought that the 'home video' look of Public Enemies (and, for that matter, 'Collateral', which Michael Mann also directed) really cheapened the film. The film was gorgeous otherwise, but I agree with the OP that the home video look really killed the mood of the movie.

This does bring up a very interesting debate, but, alas, an unresolved one that has surely been touched on before. Most of us have grown up watching movies filmed at 24fps. That's why when you watch the 'making of' featurettes, the behind-the-scenes shots of actions shots as they're being filmed look fake, cheesy, like 'home-video'. Watch the same scene in the original movie, and it looks 'larger than life'. Granted, some of that is because of color correction, exposure adjustment, etc., most of what makes it look 'larger than life' in the feature as opposed to the 'behind-the-scenes' is the 24fps. Whoever was shooting behind-the-scenes footage on the set used cheaper camcorders or what have you that shot at 60fps (most likely fields -per-second).

But now that the industry is slowly shifting to digital, and since digital has the capability of filming high def at 60fps, should Hollywood start filming at 60fps as opposed to 24fps? It's an interesting question. If you ask me or anyone in the generation of folks that grew up watching 24fps movies, I (we) would give a vehement 'No! ' However, one can't help but wonder that if our kids grew up watching all movies newly shot at 60fps-- would 24fps look 'larger-than-life' or 'movie-like' to them? Maybe the new generation will accept 60fps as 'movie-like' and not particularly 'home-video-like'. Maybe there'll be no distinction between the two!

Fun to ponder :)
-Rishi

The movie I saw at the theater, Rishi, was on film and projected at 24 fps. I could not detect anything that looked close to the fluidity of movement as seen in 60fps video. HD can be made to record in 24fps BTW but I can't verify that for this movie. I can tell you 24fps' characteristic motion blur seen in action sequences was clearly retained in 'Public Enemies'. True 60fps video frame rates won't allow this depending on how fast the subject crosses the frame.

But yes, I'ld have to agree, this is a fun subject to ponder. I love movies and and everything about making them.

Tim, shoot you're right-- I think that even though the theater I went to does have 'digital presentations', I also saw a film projection of Public Enemies, since the flicker on the screen definitely indicated 24fps source doubled to 48fps or whatever it is their film projectors do.

I know that HD can be made to record in 24fps, but I'm fairly certain that at least some of the scenes in this movie were shot at a higher frame rate. Especially the shoot out at Little Bohemia at night (a trailer of which was linked to above). Other scenes didn't look as fluid and looked like 24fps. Which leaves me a little confused.

I know that source shot at 60fps can be mixed with 24fps sources when transferred to DVD video, since these are typically encoded at 60fps anyway (i.e. 24fps source 'pulled down' to 60 for NTSC video). But if it's going to theater, I would imagine they'd leave it at 24fps...

Can anyone verify that films at movie theaters are 24fps? Maybe they up the frame rate when they print the final positive that runs in the theater? In which case both 24fps and 60fps could co-exist on the same reel of film... although the 3:2 pulldown for 24fps source might then introduce its own problems...

Rishi