Godzilla's cinematography

[ray243]

One of the highlights of Gareth Edward's Monsters is the cinematography. Despite its small budget and poor equipment, Edward is able to capture or digitally create beautiful scenes on screen.

Seamus McGarvey is the cinematographer for Godzilla, and some of his recent works includes Avengers, Anna Karenina, World Trade Center and Antonement. McGarvey is famous for his long shots in movies, the most famous of all is the long shot sequence in Antonement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WOnC-nIJYI

Then there is the dance sequence in Anna Karenina, one of the major reason why the film was nominated for best cinematography.

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

However, I think one of the reason why Edward's chose McGarvey as his cinematography was because of his work on World Trade Center. Gareth have talked a lot about how he wants to approach Godzilla in a realistic manner, and McGarvey's work on WTC certainly makes the film feels real and raw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeFdeC6ukDY

Taking a quick look at McGarvey's work, I think we might end up with a Godzilla that has a slight documentary feel rather than a thematic feel. The lighting would perhaps feels a little bit more intense, with steady cameras quietly letting all the action past by.

Of course, it could also end up as a mess like Avengers.

There's a documentary about McGarvey and his works. It talks about some of his philosophy when it comes to shooting pictures, as well as his relationship with directors.


Important note: The documentary might be considered as NSFW by some, mainly they showed on of the more artistic nude sequence in it.

http://vimeo.com/59484983

[KingGhidorah]

Dude you picked the wrong World Trade Center Clip to show McGarvey's work. The Collapse seen(Clip #3) is WAY better. I tried to imagine Godzilla tearing down the WTC in that scene and it wasn't so hard. McGravey is going to make us squeel with fear over Godzilla! I'm so hyped!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPCt2BBq ... E054ED305F

[ray243]

Dude you picked the wrong World Trade Center Clip to show McGarvey's work. The Collapse seen(Clip #3) is WAY better. I tried to imagine Godzilla tearing down the WTC in that scene and it wasn't so hard. McGravey is going to make us squeel with fear over Godzilla! I'm so hyped!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPCt2BBq ... E054ED305F

I don't really find the collapse scene to be a good example of his work. It is very obvious that the scene was shot in a sound stage. The building floor have minimum exterior lighting, which is a huge contrast to the first scene I posted.

I choose the exterior shot of the policemen arriving outside the WTC because it felt so documentary like and so natural. Usually, the mood of such a scene would warrant a more subtle and depression tone. Instead, McGarvey chose to shot the scene with very naturalistic lights and high contrast.

I want to see Godzilla being shot in such a tone, to highlight how the characters would have felt in real life. This is a huge contrast to many kaiju films, whereby monsters are shot in a dark and moody environment.

[Pkmatrix]

Of course, it could also end up as a mess like Avengers.

Huh? I strongly disagree with that point.

Most modern action films are incomprehensible when the action starts: too many short cuts, too much shaky cam, and too many extreme close ups. McGarvey's cinematography in The Avengers produced the clearest and most comprehensible action sequences in years...and these were really long and complicated sequences! His work on The Avengers is one of the reasons I'm stoked for Godzilla.

[Godzilla165]

How he thinks Avengers was a mess if baffling to me. Would you rather want the camera to spaz out like in Transformers 1 (which is my favorite of the three btw), or would you want clear, focused, long, and nicely timed/paced action like Avengers? I'm going for the latter and I can't wait to see what type of action scenes this movie has in store.

[ray243]

Of course, it could also end up as a mess like Avengers.

Huh? I strongly disagree with that point.

Most modern action films are incomprehensible when the action starts: too many short cuts, too much shaky cam, and too many extreme close ups. McGarvey's cinematography in The Avengers produced the clearest and most comprehensible action sequences in years...and these were really long and complicated sequences! His work on The Avengers is one of the reasons I'm stoked for Godzilla.

The action sequence is actually understandable, I give him that. However, whether the action itself have too many short cuts is the responsibility of the editor, not the DOP. An editor can make a perfectly shot sequences look like a mess.

The reason why I call it a mess is because like Wally Pfister said, the camera angles are all over the place. The camera shot itself doesn't convey anything to the audience other than showing the actions and the sets.

However, my biggest peeve with his work on avengers is that the cinematography is just so freaking bland and boring. I want what I am seeing on the screen to draw me into the movie, and not just be there on the screen to let me watch it.

[JGAR]

I had no problem with Avengers' cinematography. I thought it was fine.

[KingGhidorah]

I just hope the Cinematographer makes the movie into GOOD 3D. This article should explain what I'm trying to say.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18877_4- ... -suck.html

[Destoroyah of Worlds]

I had no problem with Avengers' cinematography. I thought it was fine.

Same here.

I mean, Edwards can still tell them to saturate it with tons of color, like Monsters was..

[GigaBowserG]

Most modern action films are incomprehensible when the action starts: too many short cuts, too much shaky cam, and too many extreme close ups. McGarvey's cinematography in The Avengers produced the clearest and most comprehensible action sequences in years...and these were really long and complicated sequences! His work on The Avengers is one of the reasons I'm stoked for Godzilla.

This.

If you want an example of how not to handle cinematography - try the 1st Transformers movie, at best. I seriously had to put effort in to watch the chaotic fighting scenes, and I still had trouble making heads-or-tails of some.

Avengers was crystal clear when I watched it. I could keep up with the action... I could remember where characters were at, and who they were fighting... I could probably keep track of the body count if I wanted to! All these little people running around, with the occasional giant Jonah space whales showing up.
And when compared to Godzilla, which will no doubt be focusing on giant, slow, lumbering monsters duking it out (with some scenes of people running around), that should be easy enough to capture.

[KingGhidorah]

So apparently, these are the camera's that are being used to film Godzilla:
http://www.arri.com/camera/digital_came ... e3ac4ed746

[PygmyZilla]

Avengers was crystal clear when I watched it. I could keep up with the action... I could remember where characters were at, and who they were fighting... I could probably keep track of the body count if I wanted to! All these little people running around, with the occasional giant Jonah space whales showing up.
And when compared to Godzilla, which will no doubt be focusing on giant, slow, lumbering monsters duking it out (with some scenes of people running around), that should be easy enough to capture.

Pretty much what ^^^^he said.

[ray243]

Thought I might update this thread given the recent interview with the cinematographer on Godzilla.

http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2013/10/0 ... arvey.html

Some relevant bits to Godzilla.

Kirill: Do you see shooting on film as a vanishing craft, to be relegated to the “artsy” fringes, with everything else done digitally?

Seamus: I think so. It’s sad to say, and I’m a diehard celluloid cinematographer. I’ve shot thirty films on celluloid. The problem is that you simply cannot get the stuff processed reliably anymore. “Anna Karenina” was the last film I shot on celluloid, and it was a nightmare with the laboratory. It was a reputable laboratory – Deluxe in London, and we had endless problems with scratching, wavering chemistry of the lab, particularly towards the end of the week as the film baths were getting weaker leading to milkier images. I got all my gray hair as a cinematographer in the era of film, but I must say that I really embrace the possibilities of digital as it’s getting better and better.

I have Arri Alexa camera, and particularly in dark sets it allows me to light in a totally different way. For instance, on “Godzilla” we did a lot of stuff that was at the very lowest register, and the director kept encouraging me to be brave with it. Had I been shooting on film, I wouldn’t have been gone quite so dark. But that gave me confidence, witnessing it on screen and seeing how far you can take it, because you see exactly what you’re getting.

Kirill: Shooting on film had all the imperfections of the analog medium, from the lens distortion to all the mechanical parts to the grain of the film itself, while capturing on digital sensors is much more exact and, to a certain degree, lifelessly perfect. Do you see it as a certain magic that will be gone from the moviegoing experience?

Seamus: It is, and I did like those aberrations. We can still preserve this with lenses, for instance, that are now more vital as we put them in front of the sensor. On “Godzilla” I used the old C series anamorphic lenses, and for the section in 1954 I used really old vintage lenses from the early 1960s. They took the edge off of the very vivid, sharp sensors, and gave it a distant period feel. That’s exciting as glass is coming back in terms of lending difference to each project that we do. It’s nice to be able to interfere with image, to sort of mess it up a bit.

There’s a lot more that we do now in digital intermediate [DI]. That becomes a much more important part of my job because of the possibilities of the manipulation. Now I try to have my contract include that they keep me on to DI. You used to do it physically with film stock, pushing and pulling different processes, and now it’s done entirely digitally. In some ways you have a lot more control in the digital realm, and it’s not baked in either.

I still conceive of something of how I would do it on film, so I’m not just sitting in the DI trying this and that. I still have the same disciplined approach to imagining what the image might be. For example, for the 1950s section on “Godzilla” I knew that they look I wanted was a peeled look with muted colors and diffusion on the highlights, a sense of period distance. I found a lot of photographs and magazines, and I knew that I wanted the blacks to be imbued with a tint of magenta. I assembled a lot of references, and I was able to show it and do some tests in advance. We nailed the look when we established a lookup table which we applied every time we shot those section. It was the same pre-conception of what we were going to do on the day.

Kirill: And stepping back to “The Avengers” and “Godzilla”, these big sci-fi productions take the usual trio of primary collaborators – the director, the cinematographer and the production designer – and bring in the visual effects supervisor. Call it the fourth part, the fourth leg, the fourth wheel, but it does bring at least some amount of initial imbalance to the discussion. Does it take away something from your creative power as some of the sequences are augmented or even shot completely in the digital universe? How do you approach such an extended collaboration?

Seamus: For that sort of movies, the visual effects (VFX) supervisor becomes very much a collaborator in cinematography. I’ve ruffled some feathers in the BSC and the ASC by suggesting that we should embrace that completely. Essentially it’s our responsibility to make the cinematography the best it can be, and it involves collaboration with the VFX department.

On “The Avengers” Janek Sirrs was the VFX supervisor, and on “Godzilla”, which is a very different movie visually it was Jim Rygiel. Their work treads on mine, so we have to go in hand in hand, because there’s so much lighting that happens in the CG world. First they start with pre-vis, and the die is cast then in terms of the photographic style and certain sequences, so I like to get involved in that. These kids are drawing the pre-vis CGI get carried away. There’s a tendency to go videogame-style with their visual approach, and if I can be involved at that early stage, I can make it cinematic and point out shots that are unachievable or very expensive to achieve. These kids just make the camera hysterical.

On the set I like the VFX supervisor to take their lighting cues from what I do. And to that end even now I’m in constant dialog with Jim as they’re compositing in backgrounds onto the already photographed plates. I’m advising on the lighting, when they put something outside the window that had green screen, on the level of exposure. Sometimes I find that when those things are composited, without the correct exposure for the exterior it looks just wrong to my eye. And he’s been great that way, as we’ve been able to collaborate.

Kirill: But if you’re only talking about the technical sides, like the bulkiness of the equipment or changing lenses, that might get much better in five or ten years, as with any hardware technology that has a lot of money invested in it.

Seamus: I’m sure it will. But the problem is that aside from the technical difficulties of achieving a 3D shot, there’s something about the film in 2D. We don’t want an impression of reality when we go to the cinema, we don’t want that brightness, I mean I don’t want it anyway. I like the inherent flatness, and creating depth with lighting cues, with focus, with darkness and light. That is, to me, essentially cinematographic.

Then, when we get to the exhibition stage, everything’s darker. You wear the glasses which is actually a pain that corrals your vision and experience. It’s just not fun in cinema, and I always get a headache when I watch a 3D movie. Everything seems fuzzier. I don’t think that it looks as good, and I’m hoping that it will go away. 3D sales are dropping significantly, and kids in the cinema are not responding either. A lot of the studios are staying away from it now. In fact, “Godzilla” will get a predominantly 2D release, with a 3D version.

So from what we know, some scenes are going to be set in 1954, with the film having a retro-look. We also know that the film is going to be a 2D film, so they are going to covert it to 3D in post-production. We also know that CGI in this film is going for a more controlled look, and Seamus is trying to ensure the CGI artist will make the SFX less video-gamey.

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

Funny I thought they always intended for it to be shot in 3D.

[ray243]

I liked the small snippets of the cinematography seen in the trailer. It is very atmospheric to say the least.

[Bluezilla 65]

I liked the small snippets of the cinematography seen in the trailer. It is very atmospheric to say the least.

Agreed. Love the fps visor shot.

[Destoroyah of Worlds]

I liked the small snippets of the cinematography seen in the trailer. It is very atmospheric to say the least.

The wide angel shot in the airport of like a hundred people watching the monster blow up a plane was really cool.

I hope we get wide angel shots panning UP to the creatures from the ground.

[junkerde]

Watching the trailer, it honestly looks like alot of shaky cam, not as bad as man of steel, but you can see it. Also, it might be post, or the camera, but the introduction of more apparent lens flares, especially that last shot blinding godzilla out of view. Not really a fan but I could live with it, wish it was just a bit more traditional. Yes shaky cam works for action sequences and its a godzilal film, i just hope its not for every scene.

[ray243]

Thought I should revive this thread given the sheer amount of new footage we have seen. I really like the cinematography based on the recent extended look at Godzilla.

Instead of trying to frame the camera from impossible angle up in the air, framing the camera on the ground really makes Godzilla look really huge and menacing. This really helps to sell the idea that you can feel as if Godzilla's leg is right next to you.

[BARAGONBREH]

The cinematography looks pretty spot-on. The color tone is perfect in the limited footage I've seen. I especially love the brights during the daytime.

One of the many reasons Zilla sucked so bad was because they tried to cover up the horrible CGI by making the lighting very dark whenever he appeared, thus the reason it was always either very cloudy or nighttime.

Don't get me wrong, Godzilla looks most badass in the night, and this movie looks to have plenty of him in it. But that scene of his back emerging from the deep in the sunny day tells me Edwards has enough faith in the CGI of this movie to let us look at the monster in the unforgiving sunlight. That's a great sign!