June 14, 2013

Man of Steel and dissipated visual tension

Updated

I haven't seen the movie yet and probably will not, mostly on the basis of the dull-looking visual approach that's evident in the trailers -- monochromatic, desaturated, uniform lighting, deep focus (information overload focus), jarring action tempos that you can't get into the groove of, and so on. "Bombastic" keeps coming up in reviews, both about the look and story.

I had hopes for this one looking cool, given Christopher Nolan's influence as producer. But his cinematographer Wally Pfister is absent, and pinch-hitting for him is Amir Mokri, known for such sublime-looking films as The Joy Luck Club, Coyote Ugly, Bad Boys II, Fast & Furious, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. And with the director of the hit video game 300 at the helm, a nerdy in-your-face overload look must have been inevitable.

Again, I haven't seen it yet, and you don't want to make too much out of a single frame, but it represents a larger problem with the movie's visual style. Now, we don't know exactly what's going on plot-wise in the image below, but it's clear that the butt-kicking babe type on the right is physically threatening Lois Lane on the left, with Lois' partner Superman looking on anxiously from further back.


Superman is the protagonist, the character we're supposed to identify with the most. We are meant to feel how tense he must be right now, not knowing how far the man-woman is going to escalate things. With her larger size, dark armored clothing, and colder stare, she looks like she could just snap Lois' neck if she wanted to. How far is she going to take it?

Since all of the action is taking place between the two women in the foreground, our attention should be concentrated there, and Superman should be far less intrusive visually. He is too in-focus -- more or less as in-focus as the foreground characters -- and we can read too much detail on his face. The shadows thrown on his face don't do enough to hide the details of his expression.

Instead it needs to be blurred enough so that we can tell in what direction his head is pointing, which tells us who he's looking at, and only the vaguest hint of what expression he's making. We assume that he's feeling worried and watching carefully for the slightest sign that things are taking a turn for the worse before he jumps in to save Lois. We don't need to have that telegraphed in crisp detail from the background -- it's a natural, normal reaction to the action in the foreground. Reactions that are not noteworthy or surprising do not need to be focused on, pulling our attention away from where it should be building up.

In addition to keeping our attention where it should be, a blurry focus on Superman would also heighten our concern for him. We assume that he has that look on his face, but by obscuring the focus enough, we don't get 100% confirmation. It keeps us anxious and uncertain ourselves.

We also would not feel complete reassurance that there's a deus ex machina waiting in the wings to rescue Lois if things go horribly wrong. With his determined, ready-to-sacrifice expression so clearly in focus, we're never in doubt that Lois is safe. I mean, just look at that face -- one false move, and that chick's ass is grass. We need to see a blurry face instead, just to keep us guessing about how prepared he is to intervene. It would feel like something bad could happen, that something is at stake, and worth getting on the edge of our seat about. As it stands, it looks like Superman is Lois' spotter at the gym.

This is such a glaring mistake, and the fix so obvious, that it leaves little hope for the rest of the movie's visuals.

To see what I mean, let's revisit an image from an earlier post on The Parallax View and sublime visual style:


The placement of characters within the frame is similar enough to the Man of Steel image, with the background figures looking on and from between those in the foreground. Since most of the action is going on in the foreground, those two are in good focus. But since there's little going on in the background, those two are out of focus. We can tell that the background character on the left is watching the foreground characters, sizing them up, biding his time until he sets a trap for them. And we can tell that the man on the right is turned toward him in a show of deference, so he must be the subordinate going along with whatever his boss' plan is.

All of that hits us immediately without being able to clearly read the faces of those in the background. Indeed the blurry focus heightens the menacing atmosphere of the bar, making the boss man look more shadowy and difficult-to-read.

The background character looking on does not always have to be blurred out of focus, though. Here is a shot from The Dark Knight Rises, where the Batman suit is staring at Bruce Wayne, practically calling out to him to put it back on:


Notice how sharply in-focus the suit is. Now if it were a human face in the background, this "calling out" image would feel too on-the-nose. But since it's a mask that has had most of the fine details of human facial expression stylized out of it, we don't attend to it that much, even though it's in crisp focus. The apprehensive look on Wayne's face provides more expressive detail, so we attend more to his face than the mask.

Particularly in action movies, a genre that should be about building up and releasing tension in catharsis, we need to feel a sense of mystery, uncertainty, and menace just from looking at the setting and the people and things moving around in it. If everything is so clearly in focus, anxiety cannot build up in the first place. Thus with nothing at stake, the action scenes are like watching a child swinging his action figures into one another.

The simplest way to fix these problems is to shoot with an anamorphic lens, which brings the things being focused on into even sharper clarity, while throwing everything in front of and behind that distance into a blur. And also refraining from racking focus so often -- that is, shifting focus from one distance to another, typically to focus on one character and then another within a single shot. That works well enough when it's shifting between two people chatting inside of a car, with one closer to us than the other, and switching focus to whoever is speaking at the moment. But when a sense of uncertainty is called for, we need for the character to remain blurry throughout the shot.

Probably the best use of these focus techniques to build and release tension in an action movie is Die Hard, but that's a topic for a post of its own. Aside from more effectively giving us the right emotional response to the plot, it helps to give the movie a striking visual style that has been lacking in the kickass summer action genre of the past 20 years, and that was absent before the rise of sublime-oriented filmmaking during the '60s, '70s, and '80s.

Update: It appears that Man of Steel was shot with an anamorphic lens after all... not that you can tell from looking. It takes a special skill to deaden the shallow-focus effects of shooting in Panavision. I should have looked it up on IMDb first, but if it's used the way it's supposed to, it should leap out and not be something you have to look up to confirm.

Going back to the first image, and contrasting with the one from The Parallax View, it's not only the depth of focus that's off, but also the depth of staging. Superman is standing too close to the foreground characters, again as though he were spotting Lois Lane at the gym. It's too close for the shallow focus to work its magic. He should be placed 5 to 10 feet farther back, close enough to still be connected to the foreground action, but far enough that he'll be blurry and not acting as Lois' training wheels.

And of course all the CGI stuff is deep-focus and information overload, not real things seen through the camera lens. CGI is either incapable of mimicking shallow focus, or its creators and consumers do not resonate with that kind of look, and dig the boring crappy look instead.

29 comments:

  1. What do you think of the casting? Christopher Reeve was so exceptionally good-looking, tall, and frankly, well-bred: an outstanding representation of the Wasp upper-class.

    I don't know much about this guy, but his being 6 ft or 6'1" alone ensures Reeve as the most iconic superman. Reeve was 6ft. 4! Reeve's face is more Patrician, intelligent, and yet still sexy.

    The other man is handsome and tall, but he's also going up against the memory of *Christopher Reeve*. I just don't understand what they we're going for in this casting. With Reeve, it felt like they were seeking the most perfect specimen of man who could also act.

    I don't care much about a comic book movie, just passionate about Reeve... He was very special.

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  2. And yet with Christopher Reeve -- at least in the first two movies, i.e. the good ones by Richard Donner -- he shows a bashful side, a humorous side, a prankster side, a vulnerable side, and so on.

    That makes him still seem like a super-specimen, while also human like the rest of us.

    From what I've seen of the new guy, his Everyman appeal is that he gets picked on and bullied, rather than has a funny, playful, and cheerful side. And his super-specimen side comes out not through the traits you mentioned, but by just going on the hulk-out to end all hulk-outs.

    So, it appears more like a rejected teenager's fantasy. Though again I'm going by the trailers, and it may not be that bad in the movie itself.

    The Reeve Superman seemed much more approachable as a person, where this one seems more aloof. I think they're going for a different characterization -- grittier, darker, more tortured, identity crisis, etc.

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  3. Here's a quick comparison of how they differ physically and what that means for their characterizations.

    Reeve

    Cavill

    Reeve has larger eyes, or tends to keep them open wider, while Cavill narrows them more. This makes Reeve seem more approachable to normal people, and Cavill more mean-looking to the average person. But it also makes Reeve's angry glares look more intense to enemies, and Cavill's less so and hence makes him more of an underdog.

    Reeve generally has his mouth closed, almost pursing his lips at times, while Cavill periodically lapses into a slight slackjaw expression, at the least opening his lips. It makes Reeve look more composed and unflappable, and Cavill more thin-skinned and uncontrollable.

    Reeve has a much lower hairline than Cavill, making him look more commanding. The added curl could look like a joke on most other people, but it looks rakish and devil-may-care when seen within the entire gestalt of his face.

    Basically, Reeve looks dominant and assertive, while Cavill looks like a reactive underdog or upstart.

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  4. Still, they can't make a new Superman like the old ones. They should just re-release the original two at that point.

    Seriously, who *could* they cast today who looks dominant and unflappable, rakish, bashful, charming, etc.?

    It's another case of back to the mid-century. They had the rakish / charming types (Jimmy Stewart), the dominant / unflappable types (John Wayne), but not many who could do both. That's more of a '60s, '70s, and '80s phenomenon -- Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Harrison Ford...

    I'd even put Michael Douglas in that type, though I could see others saying he's a bit too much of a touchy loose cannon type, like the iconic hyperactive maverick, Tom Cruise.

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  5. Film looks horribly de-saturated, anxious and po-faced, which seems to miss the spirit of Superman. Superman is meant to be a confident invincible character who is noble, human and protective, and not in a way that is like a ruler, rather a more powerful equal, who is looking out for you.

    And the best versions of the character also downplay the Jewish angst of being from a group which has great individual talent, and yet which has not been sufficient to maintain or create a great society. This is something which has seems to have always plagued American superhero comics, but I wonder if it was more prominent in the '90s, as a slightly more alienated age. The 90s was when the "gifted, yet hated and feared" X-Men became mega popular for example. Yet on the other hand I liked the '90s New Adventures of Superman as a kid - Dean Cain was, in memory, a pretty good slightly Asian Superman, even if lacking in presence for the big screen.

    Also, Snyder seems like he has a bit of a shallow ability to get absorbed by a movie, so perhaps that's why he's bad at making truly immersive works -

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22894714

    "What Man of Steel displays in highly visual and dramatic set pieces, it lacks in humour.

    ...

    Referring to Donner's 1978 movie, Snyder says he was against creating a film that had any hint of a superhero who saved people with a wink and a smile.

    "At the end of the movie, Christopher Reeve looks in the camera and smiles. In 1978 that made me crazy.

    "I was 12 years old but it made me say 'why would you do this? You just ruined it for me because I believed that was real until that moment and now I know I'm watching a movie'
    ."


    Now, not wanting to make a film that eye winks at the audience, that's fine (who needs all meta-irony all the time?), but if you're drawn into a film, in a trance-like state, that's not really going to jog you out of it or break the immersion of the experience.

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  6. Love your blog -- been lurking for awhile and finally feel compelled to comment.

    I just saw the movie last night and loved it. The picture you are showing your readers is really just a "transition" shot -- Lois can't breathe on the alien spaceship so Faora-Ul has to fit her with a breathing device before they go together to the ship.

    Some of your critcism makes sense if you don't like CGI spectacle. The movie really is a well-drawn comic book come to life -- for me it was enchanting and larger than life. The alien world and technology was awe-inspiring and Superman was someone who had to wrestle with his duel nature as human/alien. I can't wait to see it again.

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  7. CGI can mimic shallow focus just fine, but is usually set to infinite focus.

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  8. This is off-topic, but the most recent "Mind Report" on Bloggingheads touched on the universality of our association of certain emotions with certain musical elements. You're a psych grad student, right? If you're not already claiming it for your own research, you might want to pass on some of your ideas to Wheatley and generate some studies.

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  9. "What do you think of the casting?"

    One great thing is that there are no Millennial actors. Cavill is the youngest, born in 1983. They really can threaten to ruin a movie.

    I couldn't stand that chick from Juno in Inception. Luckily she wasn't that central, but her blank face and mumbling, fry-register voice got to me every time she was the focus. Just because it's a sci-fi movie doesn't mean you have to act like a robot.

    Otherwise all of Nolan's movies have avoided young actors too.

    It's kind of like film noir from the mid-century -- that was mostly Greatest Gen actors, with not even minor parts for up-and-coming Silent Gen actors. It wasn't until about 1955 (Rebel Without a Cause) that they were able to show any real humanity.

    And we're not quite back to that mid-'50s period just yet. Still feels like the early '50s.

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  10. It's kind of like film noir from the mid-century -- that was mostly Greatest Gen actors, with not even minor parts for up-and-coming Silent Gen actors.

    Classic noirs were late 40s mainly with a few in early 50s. Silent Generation is supposed to be 1925 to 1942. The Silent Gen would've been around 25 at the most in 1950.

    That said, I don't know anything about noir, but I happened upon this list today - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/classic-movies/10002807/Best-film-noirs-of-all-time-chosen-by-Tim-Robey.html. This is just one critics view, but in terms of female leads, this gives: Joan Bennett (Feb 1910) - The Woman In The Window, Lauren Bacall (September 1924) - The Big Sleep, Jane Greer (September 1924) - Out of The Past, Maxine Cooper (May 1924) - Gun Crazy, Ruth Roman (December 1922) - Strangers On A Train , Jean Peters (October 1926) - Pickup On South Street, Peggy Cummins (December 1925) - Kiss Me Deadly, Shelley Winter (August 1920) - The Night of the Hunter.

    The men skew older though, and I remember what you've say about female noir roles.

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  11. "The Silent Gen would've been around 25 at the most in 1950."

    Well that moment lasts at least through the mid-'50s with Kiss Me Deadly, Rear Window, and others. Touch of Evil in '58. So the Silent Gen should have been able to do something there. Janet Leigh is an exception (born in '27).

    Laura Dern was 19 in Blue Velvet, and the Gen X-ers in Twin Peaks acted well. They weren't old enough to be the leads, but they were socially savvy and empathetic enough to create memorable characters. You don't really see that in mid-century drama, crime, thriller, suspense kind of movies.

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  12. Rear Window is a good movie, and indicative of the times. Its interesting that Grace Kelly's character(Silent Gen) is portrayed as glib and superficial. In your review of "Network", you pointed out how the Silent Generation actress in that movie was also shown to be off-putting.

    Blue Velvet is an example of the time it was made in, also. Two teenage Gen Xers are forced to see the darker aspects of life.

    -Curtis

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  13. "
    And we're not quite back to that mid-'50s period just yet. Still feels like the early '50s."

    Can you think of another statistic that can be used, along with the crime rate, to classify historical periods?

    -Curtis

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  14. "Its interesting that Grace Kelly's character(Silent Gen) is portrayed as glib and superficial."

    Although with her heart in the right place, thoughtful, and charming. I think we'll know we're out of the neo-mid-century when we see fewer fast-talking dames and more proto-ditzy girls like her character in Rear Window.

    "Can you think of another statistic that can be used, along with the crime rate, to classify historical periods?"

    That exists for a lot of societies over a long period of time? None come to mind. If you mean, something that slices history up into similar periods as the rising / falling crime thing does.

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  15. "Two teenage Gen Xers are forced to see the darker aspects of life."

    Kyle MacLachlan is actually a late Boomer, but because of his youthfulness is convincing as a college student, who would've been early Gen X at the time.

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  16. "
    Although with her heart in the right place, thoughtful, and charming. I think we'll know we're out of the neo-mid-century when we see fewer fast-talking dames and more proto-ditzy girls like her character in Rear Window."

    Yeah, I liked the character too. Rear Window is def. a good movie, and seems to be about how people started coming out of their houses and trusting each other again.

    -Curtis

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  17. Agnostic,
    Thanks for your replies. I think your take for the direction or purpose of it *based on trailers, stills, etc.*, seems right to me: "a rejected teenager's fantasy".

    I thought briefly about the Lois Lane character, but she's supposed to be ordinary and therefore isn't as interesting. Amy Adams is much more striking than girl-next-door Margot Kidder, however.
    It occurs to me that the trend for women, actresses and news anchors and reporters, has been to be more striking, beautiful, and/or vavavavoom. I'm not talking demands on models, but on the roles that would have been filled by pretty or lovely women when I was younger. I mean, Laura Logan doing investigative journalism? And when Maria Bartiromo is who you have doing the boring staid money news, a Mary Tyler Moore getting her own sitcom is inconceivable.

    Perhaps the competition has just gotten stiffer. The women I mentioned are actually quite intelligent...
    Anyway, that's another topic.
    (BTW, I'm not complaining about this change.)

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  18. Just looked up ages of Kidder and Adams... Both seem too old. Kidder would have been 29-30 while Adams would have been about 37 (!)
    Saw Superman the other night with family, 1978, and Kidder was annoying: too feminist, too much harping. Reeve was better than I remembered.

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  19. "It occurs to me that the trend for women, actresses and news anchors and reporters, has been to be more striking, beautiful, and/or vavavavoom. I'm not talking demands on models, but on the roles that would have been filled by pretty or lovely women when I was younger."

    Men have always been in the mood for a little eye candy, so this must reflect a change in female preferences. Especially if it's on TV, which is even more heavily female-oriented than ever.

    Models don't really exist in popular culture anymore (I've got some posts coming on that change). In the '80s and early '90s, female audiences wanted to imagine themselves as striking models -- women of glamor and mystery. Now they want to imagine themselves as striking TV reporters, red carpet actresses, and the other professions you mentioned.

    It's a shift toward trying to glamorize the mundane, somewhat akin to the housewife vacuuming the carpet in heels during the mid-century. "I dreamed I _____ in my Maidenform bra."

    When women are more empathetic and curious, they want to play roles that are much farther away from their everyday life at home and the workplace. Actresses aren't so heavily sex-bomb in their appeal, which is more of a mid-century and Millenial era thing. Instead women want to imagine themselves in more exotic settings, inhabiting more enigmatic personalities.

    The Gibson girl or Ziegfried girl of the early 20th C, and then the model (and later the supermodel) of the New Wave age.

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  20. off-topic, but I'm thinking more and more that we're entering a rising crime period.

    I remember what its like, since the culture got outgoing 2001-2005. Lots of stress, not getting any sleep, and overwhelmed by ideas and possibilities. Getting outside, after having cocooned, seems to cause shock to the system. Or maybe the shock is because everybody has dulled judgement, does stupid things and roughs each other up.

    -Curtis

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  21. Jeffrey S., for some reason your comment went into the spam folder...

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  22. "In the '80s and early '90s, female audiences wanted to imagine themselves as striking models -- women of glamor and mystery. Now they want to imagine themselves as striking TV reporters, red carpet actresses, and the other professions you mentioned....When women are more empathetic and curious, they want to play roles that are much farther away from their everyday life at home and the workplace."

    And Action Girls and bold explorers, but that's less distinctly female?

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  23. Those are more in action movies and video games, so they have more to do with males (nerds) wanting to see a guy with a boob job, than females wanting to imagine themselves in those roles.

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  24. One of the most saturated movies was Green Lantern. It also sucks when the denouement depends on doing battle amidsts ectoplasmic energy streamers like The FF/Silver Surfer end battle.

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  25. Have you seen Immortal Beloved? I think you would like the use of the camera in that movie. There's one scene where Beethoven is explaining to his secretary his philosophy of music--how it transports the composer's state of mind into the listener's mind directly--and as he gives this explanation his image is above the secretary's head, speaking into it.

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  26. hey, you mentioned how much New Jersey sucks in a previous comment. what are the best places to live in the country? how about upstate New York?

    -Curtis

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  27. what about determining which colleges have a better atmosphere? do you have any advice for that(I'm probably going to get a Master's at some point)?

    -Curtis

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  28. "Have you seen Immortal Beloved?"

    I haven't, but I'm up for anything where the camera work isn't spastic, flat, or gimmicky.

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  29. "how about upstate New York?"

    Never been, but my impression is that everybody's moving out of there and not much is left.

    You won't believe until you come out here, but the Mountain West really is the most happening region in the country. The entire eastern half of the country is rotten, and the west coast had its heyday during the New Wave age. Everybody's leaving California for the Mountain Time Zone.

    "what about determining which colleges have a better atmosphere?"

    For graduate school, the most important thing is not incurring debt. Go wherever gives you the best deal. I'd worry more about the atmosphere of the larger city or region -- like avoiding the NYC metro area and finding a spot that agrees with you in the Mountain West.

    You were a skateboarder, right? That's still really huge out here.

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