Scorsese's Hugo

[carllooper]

Spoiler Alert.

Someone told me they found the 3D effect in Hugo too "cardboard cutout" looking. On the basis of this I was going to see it in 2D instead, but I kept saying to myself: surely if Scorsese made it in 3D, then there's a reason it's in 3D. So I saw it in 3D and I'm somewhat glad I did. For the most part the film would work just as well in 2D and is an otherwise very engaging film ...

But the film also shows some George Melies clips in 3D! I thought perhaps they had been done using some "fake" 3D process. While looking for how Scorsese might have done it I discovered something I didn't know: Melies often shot scenes with two cameras, side by side, where one was for domestic distribution, and the other for the American market (something to do with fighting bootleg copies). Indeed there are scenes in Hugo where they are shooting Melies scenes with two cameras. So it seems to me that the Melies 3D in Hugo might be authentic, ie. from original two camera prints.

See the seciton on George Melies:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2010/ ... imensions/

The interesting thing is that the film emerges as a celebration of George Melies, the pioneer of visual effects in the cinema, so the question would be: would it matter whether the Melies 3D was authentic, (ie. from two camera prints)? For me it matters. In the world of cinema there are special effects on the one hand, and special causes on the other. While I often enjoy the former I very much appreciate the latter.

[Nicholas Kovats]

It is a very passionate film and historical overview of Milies filmography.

I was not expecting that but then again Scorsese is a very articulate and passionate preservationist of motion picture films. His work on the seminal classic The Red Shoes (1948) is gorgeous. I have seen it twice at TIFF as a restored film print. It exemplifies British cinematographer Jack Cardiff' s incredible 500 LB 3-strip Technicolor work. The colors! Just amazing.

[carllooper]

Scorsese is a very articulate and passionate preservationist of motion picture films.

Yes. It's on that basis I believe the Melies 3D clips might be authentic, ie. stereo reconstructions of the original scenes from original French/American dual camera prints. Searching the web, however, one finds all manner of information on the other visual effects work in the film (green screen stuff etc) but next to nothing about how the original Melies clips were restored/reconstructed or otherwise synthesised in 3D.

The relevant paragraph in the link I provided earlier is:

The evening ended with a surprise, two films that had never been meant to appear in 3D.

Méliès’s early shorts were often pirated abroad, and a lot of money was being lost in the American market in particular. After the Lubin company flooded that market with bootleg copies of a 1902 film, Méliès struck back by opening his own American distribution office. Separate negatives for the domestic and foreign markets were made by the simple expedient of placing two cameras side by side. The folks at Lobster realized that those cameras’ lenses happened to be about the same distance apart as 3D camera lenses. By taking prints from the two separate versions of a film, today’s restorers could create a simulated 3D copy!

Two 1903 titles–I think that they were The Infernal Cauldron and The Oracle of Delphi–triumphantly showed that the experiment worked. Oracle survived in both French and American copies, and the effect of 3D was delightful. For Cauldron only the second half of the American print has been preserved. Watching the film through red-and-green glasses, you initially saw nothing in your right eye, while the left one saw the image in 2D. Abruptly, though, the second print materialized, and the depth effect kicked in. The films as synchronized by Lobster looked exactly as if Méliès had designed them for 3D.

A big thing in film history/theory has been an ongoing debate between "realism" on the one hand and "formalism" on the other. From the formalist side of the debate there is only a difference of degree between the two categories: realism being regarded as just a minimalist formalism, a general effect (no more real/authentic than a special effect). But from the realist side of the debate there is argued a qualitative difference between what is regarded as essential to the art of photography (realism) and what it borrows from the other arts (special effects etc).

Melies is sometimes regarded as belonging to the formalist side of the argument, as a pioneer of special effects - where the real and the imaginary are no different - where they would otherwise slide into each other. But an alternative appreciation of Melies is possible, and I think Scorsese hints towards such.

Bazin is the spokesperson for the realist (so called) camp. Bazin's argument is that visual effects interrupt one's appreciation of a photograph or a film. Those in the business of making visual effects would typically read this as a signal to make effects more believable so as not to produce such interruptions. However Bazin would counter that the more believable an effect was trying to be the worse it would be: "a pseudo-realism aimed at fooling the eye". Indeed there is a note somewhere in Bazin's writing where he offers an appreciation of Surrealist photo-montage. Such work doesn't aim to fool the eye into believing in the collage. That is not it's purpose. On the contrary it amplifies the disjunctures and ruptures involved. It recognises the monstrous. That is what Bazin enjoys in the Surrealist work - that it does not seek to suture the monstrous nature of compositing. Attempts to produce seamless effects are attempts to do something else. And it is this something else Bazin sees as generally artless (in terms of the art of photography/film).*

In this context Melies can be repositioned as an early surrealist (in the Bazinian appreciative sense) rather than necessarily as a pioneer of special effects (to which Bazin would otherwise emit a groan). Indeed seeing Melies in the context of Socrsese's homage one sees a child like sense of fun at work in Melies. The last thing on his mind is fooling the audience as such. It's about a sense of magic - rather than believability. Indeed the unbelievability of Melies is so intensely accute one can treat this as deliberate, intentionally over the top, rather than as some technically inept special effect. The naivity is deliberate - a celebration of such.

And in Scorsese one could argue Hugo operates in a surrealist mode (the Bazinian loophole). There is a large number of modes in Hugo, generally subtle but nevertheless recognisable. The stop-motion shot of the mouse for example, where the intent is not to fool the eye as such, but on the contrary, to recognise the disjuncture between that shot and it's otherwise photographic context.

In Scorsese's earlier Shutter Island there are also subtle (but recognisable) visual effects that interoperate with the narrative in a purposeful way. The effects are not arbitrary - as if to achieve something not otherwise possible. They operate, on purpose, as special effects. In the case of Shutter Island they prefigure the film's conclusion: the protagonist's less than secure grip on reality, while simultaneously acting as an appreciation of that state. If you recognise the effects the ending of the film confirms what you may have suspected. And if you did not anticipate it, the ending acts as a trigger for a reappraisal of what you had seen, to discover the subtle differences in modes in which the film operated.

Carl

* a good example of artless effects are the digital effects George Lucas added to the original Star Wars films.

[Nicholas Kovats]

What would Bazin make of what I consider the seamless special effects of 2001? An epic film event that was a 'religious' experience at the age of 12 years. A self contained world that stunned me. And responsible for embedding the permanent wideformat virus in my head.

John Gledhill (bitworks.org) and I were discussing some forthcoming 8Fest workshop R8 scans and he sent me the following sample, i..e. http://www.pbase.com/filmworks4ever/image/109081460

The Kodachrome colors pop! Would Bazin approve of such digital/film hybrid conversions?

[carllooper]

What would Bazin make of what I consider the seamless special effects of 2001? An epic film event that was a 'religious' experience at the age of 12 years. A self contained world that stunned me. And responsible for embedding the permanent wideformat virus in my head.

John Gledhill (bitworks.org) and I were discussing some forthcoming 8Fest workshop R8 scans and he sent me the following sample, i..e. http://www.pbase.com/filmworks4ever/image/109081460

The Kodachrome colors pop! Would Bazin approve of such digital/film hybrid conversions?

2001 operates across two modes. On the one hand are explicit photographic long takes (an overt reference to Bazin's appreciation of such a method) and on the other: explicit special effects, potentially as a counter to Bazin's argument. But 2001 is also intensely surreal, becoming more so, as it evolves. I read Kubrick, like Scorsese, as acting on Bazin's loophole (wormhole). The issue is not special effects per se, but the nature of those effects - how they operate in the context of the narrative and wider debates. Kubrick's special effects (unlike George Lucas' bizzare attempt to update Star Wars), just get better with age. Imagine if 2001 underwent the same process - where you went back and redid the special effects using digital techniques. It would be a complete travesty. The travesty done to Star Wars would pale into insignificance.

The "seamless" effects in 2001 are not as seamless as you might otherwise imagine. Many of the shots are not done using compositing in the lab (which is Bazin's beef) but done in front of the camera (with which Bazin has no problem: re. The Red Balloon). There are no seams requiring obscuration. It is the composite shots (using travelling matte photography) where 2001 would cross with Bazin, and these become more obvious as such with age. The seams show. They are less than seamless. But somehow they still work. Indeed they work better with age. The thing is that Kubrick takes us down a wormhole (Bazin's loophole) where the effects become overt and surreal - experimental. They are no longer operating in "seamless" mode. This journey, in a sense, redeems the earlier compositing effects - repositions them as a kind of limit - a failure, which the film then transcends. The final scene in the fake hotel room is photographic and fucks around with diegetic continuity in a very surreal and stunning way (excuse the language but imagine we're back in the 60s). From a narrative perspective the hotel room is a simulation prepared by aliens (at least according to AC Clarke) but where lesser minds might have sought to invoke such a narrative point using special effects Kubrick does it through direct photography and surreal editing.

2001 resonates.

So how would Bazin respond to film2digital processes? I've re-read Bazin many times and what he appreciates in a photograph is the "automata" involved in photography. The systematic. The art of photography is in concentrating the special in terms of the content (special causality) and generalising the systematic (despecialising the effect). When you intervene in a system to obtain a particular effect. ie. a special effect, it effectively deautomates the system you are using and produces all sorts of interferences across the other shots in a film. The trick with film2digital systems (to maintain some fidelity with Bazin) would be to either use a global automatic system for all shots (the content maintains the focus, eg. Down By Law), or if intervening, then to manage how those interventions interfere with the shot and what they do to every other shot in the film, the narrative structure and wider debates.

Working with an automated system is the simplest approach. One shoots a film where there is no reliance on any special post-production techniques. One is concentrating one's creative (special) work on the outside of the system, and the system's role is to remain a system (general).

The alternative is intervention in the system, but this can very difficult, especially when working in a mainstream context. One has to consider all manner of side-effects and what to do with them - how to respond to such. How will your responses affect the authenticity of the work? Are you trying to hide something with an effect, or show something? My only answer here is simply being honest with one's interventions. That is what Bazin would argue.

There are also two types of effects. One is synthetic and the other analytic. Analytic effects are to do with a systematic reconstruction of the emperical, whereas synthetic effects focus on fabrication. For example, reconstructing a 3D view of Melies' scenes from original films shot on two side by side cameras is an analytic effect, whereas reconstructing a 3D view from a single camera shot would be a synthetic effect. Analytic effects interlock with Bazin from what I can understand. One is not adding anything to the image that wasn't, in some sense, already there in front of the camera. The analytic is a systematic organised according to a respect for what is already there. For this reason the analytic can be written independantly of content. It does not rely on content for guidance on how it should operate. It is unaffected by content. The synthetic is organised very differently. It relies on a goal, a target, an agenda, a special effect (rather than a special cause) that it aims to achieve.

As already discussed, this is not to deny the synthetic, but to be wary of it - to treat it as different. Today it might look seamless but tomorrow it won't. Take tomorrow into account when dealing with the synthetic.

Carl

[David M. Leugers]

Back in the silent days at least two camera negatives were shot side by side for quality and money saving reasons. Instead of shipping prints world-wide, one edited camera original was sent overseas where prints were then struck and distributed. At the time the drop in quality from print generations away from the original negative was unsatisfactory and noticeable. This also saved wear and tear on each camera negative. This practice is what ultimately saved a great deal of the silent motion pictures that exist today thanks to European and South American film archives. So many films that no longer exists in America have been discovered in foreign archives.

I enjoyed Hugo, but I don't think 3D is all it is cracked up to be. Some scenes are impressive but observing the aspects of the 3D image takes you out of the movie which to me is a negative. Wearing those glasses for a few hours is no bonus either. After awhile you kinda forget it is 3D, so then what is the big point? I never once thought I was in the movie as if the 3D made it all so real. Much better 3D than it used to be, but to me it is still more of a gimmick, Great lesson in the film is that all artists are destined to be forgotten if their work is not preserved. Funny it was shot digitally...

[woods01]

The 3D in Hugo was quite annoying and made me realize just what a stupid gimmick it really is. Not helping was the fact it was a rather dull and predictable story. Sad to see a guy like Scoreses waste so much money and over a year of his life producing this. He's doesn't have that much time left in his life.

However, I did enjoy seeing their representation of a circa-1900 film set though and it did make me watch some Melies films and read up on his bio which is surprisingly close to what was in the film.