Michael Mann look

[gsusmurphy]

hey i'm really new to all of this, but just curious to know if anyone out there knows how michael mann acheives the look in his films. there are scenes from Collateral, Ali, and Miami Vice where it appears very grainy almost like it was shot with a consumer camcorder. is this something he achieves in post production? specifically in Miami Vice if anyone is familiar with the movie, in the beginning of the movie chapter 2 on the roof top, the sky looks purple but is so bright. any info or tips people can throw out there would be much appreciated

[harkangelproductions]

I haven't seen those movies, but is the same type of effect from Man On Fire (2004) with Denzel Washington?

[gsusmurphy]

no not really like Man on Fire. the shots are mostly outside shots at night in all these movies. so i'm wondering if it was the camera he used to get this effect because its really similar from each film.

[lordtangent]

I'm a pretty big Mann fan but I have to admit I haven't seen Miami Vice. The reviews were so bad, even my love of the director was not enough to get me out to see it. I HAVE seen Collateral though. That film totally put Jammie Foxx on my radar as an Actor (not just a funny guy). Man, can that guy act! Anyway, Mann used video cameras for a lot of stuff on Collateral. In the special features he mentions it is because the the reach they have in the toe area of the picture. That plus they were really running them with a LOT of gain, so they could shoot in very low light and pick up all that ambient street light in the BG. Night city scenes seem to be a Mann staple. He is obviously in love with the way cities look at night. (I am too... sometime I just love driving around at 4am out here in LA and looking at the empty streets in the street light. It's like another world)

My guess is they must have been using the video cameras at an equivalent of like 1000-2000 ASA (maybe even higher) to get that "city glows" effect at night. (Forget about that with the HV20... you are probably not going to get that ASA equivalent without also getting an unusable amount of noise)

If you cant shoot at like 1000-2000 ASA, then the other option is to wait until "magic hour" when you can balance that sky color with your foreground with a little lighting in the foreground. The problem there is you only have like 15 minutes to shoot.

[Erik Bien]

The camera nerd in me can't resist pointing out that both Miami Vice and Collateral were shot by Dion Beebe on the Thompson Viper. It seems Beebe and Mann like the look of that camera down in the noise floor ...

[gsusmurphy]

see i'm a huge Michael Mann fan. and to tell you the truth, Miami Vice really kicked a ton of a$$ as far as i'm concerned. Forget not staying true to the original. i mean the guy produced the original. who cares. this movie was so slick. i really have a dislike for Colin Farrell, but man his Sonny Crockett was rad. Jamie Foxx disappointed me in this one especially after Collateral and Ali. and just to throw it out there, that was my favorite Tom Cruise character since Top Gun. wow. He was scare ree. Watch Miami Vice, keep an open mind. i loved it.

[lordtangent]

I'll check it out.

[RobPhoboS]

lordtangent:

How the hell can you base your opinion on someone else's ? This is the problem we had in the UK with Mary Whitehouse.
You love the directors previous work yet you wont go and watch a film by him because someone didn't like it ? Doesn't make sense. Sure its fine to get a rough idea of what to expect (action film, porno ect) but to actually deny yourself down to other peoples views is madness !
MADNESS I TELL THEE !!!!!

[Ian-T]

lordtangent:

How the hell can you base your opinion on someone else's ? This is the problem we had in the UK with Mary Whitehouse.
You love the directors previous work yet you wont go and watch a film by him because someone didn't like it ? Doesn't make sense. Sure its fine to get a rough idea of what to expect (action film, porno ect) but to actually deny yourself down to other peoples views is madness !
MADNESS I TELL THEE !!!!!

Umm...Rob....go get a glass of water...sit down...relax...think of all your favorite Michael Mann movies....there you go....breath in...breath out...

....r u tweakin yet...?

[RobPhoboS]

Heh

Depends how you read that, I put the smile in the end...so I wasn't freaking out fella. But it does wind me up.

[lordtangent]

lordtangent:

MADNESS I TELL THEE !!!!!

My time is valuable. If a film bites hard enough I don't have the time to see it. Really. So, when reviews and buzz are bad enough, I have to weigh that against the track record of the director (and other talent), how much I personally love them, etc. Sometimes I just need a time sink to pass a couple of hours and that changes the picture dramatically. Hell, on days like that I've been known to watch films like "Underworld", "Van Helsing" and "Resident Evil". (I KNOW walking into those they are gonna suck, yet I watch them anyway) Most of the time though, I don't have the luxury of burning time like that. I usually have to pay a certain amount of attention to reviews and stuff otherwise risk wasting two hours of my life I'll never get back. I have more time for watching films on DVD but sometime I just let them fall off my radar and I forget about them.

[RobPhoboS]

Underworld
Van Helsing
Resident Evil

Unfortunately I saw those as well but after 30 mins I put Van Helsing back in the box
I guess if you know a critic who has near identical opinions as yourself when it comes to film reviews, then thats good enough to get a basic idea if you will like it or not. I'm sure you and your friends enjoy most of the same films but often there will be clashes of opinion too.

Back to the OP's question:
I think most of it was done in camera and usually there is post colour correction anyway. Experiment

[Numbox]

Resident Evil did not suck at all, 'twas pure fun. I'm a fan of Paul Anderson and i'm not ashamed to admit it. The man directed Event Horizon and Soldier, tha makes him a good director as far as i'm concerned.

[jmalmsten]

I watched Resident Evil 1 & 2 in a theater from DVDsource and digital projector just prior to the owner of the place pulling in 3 as a 35mm print... on the same screen... it was quite a technical experience aside from the lack of quality's of the films in themself...

Resident Evil: Weird and boredom a lot of the time... total in-doors wich I never like... (aside from Jim Hensons The Cube of course)

2: YAY we're outside for a while... then it got dark again and all the creativity whent out of the window...

3: oooooh... outside all of the time! now this is more like it... Finally it's just Milla whipping zombie butt... not a masterpiece... but as close as it will ever get I guess... since it's quite a far way away from a real masterpiece...

Event Horizon... oooooh again... really good and nice and creepy... where's all that when he did the RE movies?

Soldier... EWWWWK!!! Is this really the same guy??? and Peoples??? the one that co-wrote Blade Runner??? something went terribly wrong here...

Just my buck o' five anyways... I like the Mann movies... but I don't nessesarily agree with his use of HD... aw well, as I said before... He does MultiMillionDollar blockbusters and I'm still struggling to make my first feature... haven't even written a full script yet!... so I guess there's a reason for this

[Ivan Fuentes]

back on track, I think maybe what you may want to achieve is some Bleach Bypass look.

[lordtangent]

It sounds to me what gsusmurphy is asking for is basically the Mann "Video Look" he's used in some of his recent films. How does he achieve it? Well, by shooting video of course!

What looks like Hi-gain video is in fact high gain video. That's how Mann is able to shoot those night scenes in available light.

Sadly, the HV20 isn't fast enough for that, even using gain. You'll have to use a different camera if you want to shoot "night for night" stuff the way Mann does.

[Erik Bien]

You could always shoot with the RED One at 1250 ASA ...

[mattias]

What looks like Hi-gain video is in fact high gain video. That's how Mann is able to shoot those night scenes in available light.

Sadly, the HV20 isn't fast enough for that, even using gain.

i disagree. i'm planning on shooting a feature that's all night ext using the hv20 so i've done a lot of tests. i think the results are beautiful. i'll shape and fill the talents with flos and maybe chinaballs on booms, but the backgrounds will look like this.

http://www.mattias.nu/stuff/mann.mov

/matt

[mattias]

some will notice that i use a 1/25 s shutter here, check the trails from the car lights, but you can do the same with 1/50 it just get grainer. i personally don't have anything against 1/25 and couldn't care less whether that's possible with film cameras or not. i come from a film background and i think the few things that are better in video are to be used. :-)

/matt

[Ian-T]

mattias...I agree with you. I have also shot a lot of night scenes, not at 1/24shutter but at 1/48. The footage is a bit grainy at times....buit not "un-fixable." I find with a little filtering in post that the footage looks like a million bucks. I find in a lot of cases where I am spending my time trying to shoot with no grain, the footage comes out too dark....so i let the camera do what it thinks is best (so to speak) and add gain. In dark lit exteriors I think that as long as you have some sort of light source on the subject matter, not necessarliy "flooded" with lights everywhere, you can salvage the picture, The camera is able to make up for a lack of light pretty decently.

Edit: Also, I've been watching some of the Miami Vice trailers (matter of fact I have one open right now) and suprisingly, in some of the dark scenes, there is much grain..everywhere....but to be honest...it looks good....gritty...matches what's going on in the scene. The "clean" looking dark scenes have light strategically set...which is also cool because the "dark" areas have "no grain"...and the "lit" areas are "clean" and detailed. I have some similar shots like those...(which I think I'll post somewhere later...maybe)...

[Ian-T]

Just saw your footage.....that is exactly the type of shot I was talking about. Thanks for the look.

[lordtangent]

i disagree. i'm planning on shooting a feature that's all night ext using the hv20 so i've done a lot of tests. i think the results are beautiful. i'll shape and fill the talents with flos and maybe chinaballs on booms, but the backgrounds will look like this.

http://www.mattias.nu/stuff/mann.mov

/matt

Well, I said available light. If you use china balls and flos you are lighting. That's not available light. Of course you can make it good if you light it. The fact that it's night time outside really has nothing at all to do with the effect you get at that point. But the point is your exposure wont be balanced with the street lights and that "city glow" you see in the sky of large cities like LA at night. And how are you going to hang a china ball over the entire city?

Nice test though. Did you meter the light? How many foot candles did you get? DId you "cheat" by cleaning up the image with Neat Video or anything like that?

I too have done tests and my results were not nearly as good. (Of course I stayed at 1/48th sec) I suspect the street lights on the street I tested must have been much weaker because my meter told me I even if I used 1/24th sec shutter I still would have had had at least two stops to go to stay out of gain. As I've mentioned if other posts, I rate the HV20 at about 64 ASA which is miserably slow.

The street lights in your test look like HID and the lights on my street are sodium vapor.

[mattias]

Well, I said available light. If you use china balls and flos you are lighting. That's not available light.

it's manipulation of available light. :-) the problem with available light at night is not the level, it's the quality and the contrast. if you don't augment it you need to place the scene by a shop window or similar or faces will become black. i'm not using these lights to bring up the level and get an exposure, i use them to shape and give life to faces.

Of course you can make it good if you light it. The fact that it's night time outside really has nothing at all to do with the effect you get at that point. But the point is your exposure wont be balanced with the street lights and that "city glow" you see in the sky of large cities like LA at night. And how are you going to hang a china ball over the entire city?

exactly. you don't even realize that you're agreeing with me completely. ;-) the lights are not there to add exposure, they can't or they will take over the background, which is what already sets the level for the exposure.

Nice test though. Did you meter the light? How many foot candles did you get? DId you "cheat" by cleaning up the image with Neat Video or anything like that?

no cleaning. it's very hard to measure the light in a scene like that since it varies so much and the incident level is very low compared to the level of exposure since there are so many light sources in the frame, and so much black. i would probably have got maybe 10 fc directly under the lights and 0 elsewhere.

The street lights in your test look like HID and the lights on my street are sodium vapor.

yes, sodium is generally only used for freeways and ski hills over here (stockholm).

two stops under on an incident reading isn't bad at all. in fact that's probably how i would expose my key for a night look. of course that's when i shoot film. i never really meter for video, i just use the monitor and my zebras.

/matt

[mattias]

actually now that i watch the clip again i think the overhead lights in the foreground are probably sodium, but maybe the greenish color of the mercury lights in the background fools my eye to think the foreground is more pink than it really is...

/matt

[mattias]

here's the same street but shot with my diy 35mm adapter. less sharp, more grain, but beautiful. notice how after i pull focus the car is sharp while the far background is slightly out of focus. this is what's cool about adapters, not necessarily the closeup against a completely blurred out bg. my plan was to use the adapter for the day shots and lose it at night, but now i'll keep it on at all times.

http://www.mattias.nu/stuff/mann35.mov

/matt