I saw the film Oblivion yesterday. I wasn't expecting much and hadn't read anything about the film - either the plot or reviews of it but it's fair to say it's one of the best films I've seen in a long time and the best film I've seen this year.
Why is it great? - it's a great package - the plot, the direction, the cinematography, the visual realisation, the CGI and the scoring are all first class.
Camera: This film was shot on a Sony F65 camera at 4K. This is the first major feature to be shot on an F65. The F65 shooting RAW footage at 4K is a bit data hungry and on some days they would shoot 10 terabytes! Technicolor supplied a truck with a theatre for watching dailies and data wrangling which apparently helped.
Lenses: for the exterior shots Claudio Miranda shot with Fuju Premier Zooms (zooms!) because he feels they are sharper(!) than the Arri / Zeiss Master Primes that they used for the interior shots. It's unusual to film with Fuji lenses which are more often used for sports than for cinematography, but also to use zoom lenses is very unusual.
Set: All of the interior shots feature very reflective surfaces. To avoid having to re-create the set in CGI in post and to create a more life like set for the actors, a live projection was created using 21 projectors showing a seamless 15K image. The 15K image was projected onto a 500 foot x 43 foot muslin screen wrapped around 270 degrees of the set to give the background. Because the background in this instance is the sky, the second unit went up a mountain in Hawaii for 2 weeks and shot every cloud formation they could find. The projectors were timed to the shutter of the camera and more stop was gained by riding the ISO. If they'd wanted to go up another stop beyond that which could be achieved by ISO gain it would have meant doubling the projectors to 42 - an expensive proposition given the set up they were already dealing with (21 projectors, 10 projectionists, supporting data wranglers, etc).
Lighting: This was almost all done with the projectors!
Here's a short film about the set and the process:
I knew nothing about the technical aspects of this film until after I'd seen it. The look of the picture prompted me to research it and sure enough they used a pretty unique set up to film it.
OK, onto the film..... the acting from Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, and Andrea Riseborough is believable. Tom Cruise and Andrea Risebrough work well together and the many hanging close up shots of them leave opportunities to see holes in their performances but this doesn't happen. The performances are generally quite minimal and this is in keeping with the visual style of the piece and also ties in with the plot as a whole. The acting isn't what makes the movie though.
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It's hard to talk about the plot without giving the game away, which would be a shame and which I won't do, suffice to say things aren't all they seem to be and the story is one which will make you think. What I can say is that Tom and Victoria's characters find themselves to be alone on earth acting essentially as maintenance technicians being supported by drones and command from a spaceship after a recent war. There is a supposed hole in the plot around this part of the film which did get me thinking. I won't go into detail as it would spoil the film but the reason for the supposed hole in the plot is revealed later in the piece and subsequently makes sense but until you understand it will bug you. There is also a character in the film who reminds of of GlaDOS from the Portal games - see if you can spot her ;) The end of the movie is also a bit brief and quickly resolved. Nonetheless, the day after watching the film I'm still thinking about the script, which is a good thing. It's clever and will make you go back to it.
The aesthetics of the film are great - it's been shot beautifully, with some gorgeous camera work. The framing and composition of shots is typically great and the CGI is fantastic and evocative. If you get the chance, watch this film in HD as the quality of the cinematography - in terms of lenses and photography make it worth it.
The scoring of the movie is good, minimal in parts and with an electronic feel that at times reminded me of something from that Vangelis might have scored.
I'd recommend checking this film out. It's worth it for seeing the beautifully rendered minimal future world alone. If you really want to know more, here's a trailer for it which will give half the plot away - I'd recommend you just watch the film!
