Klipp og Lim – Blog
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Digital Blue Lights
13. June, 2008 Ι Tags: Digital lighting, MoviesI just recently saw the new Indy film, and all in all I found it pretty entertaining. I won’t be giving a review here, but if you should happen to see it in near future, try to pay extra attention to the digital lighting: this is the first movie I’ve seen where I’ve actually found the excessive use of digital blue light and lensflares to draw the attention away from the actual movie. I’m not kidding when I say that around 80% of the scenes in this movie has some sort of artificial blue light-streak no matter if that blue light should realistically be there or not. We’re talking blue light in every environment we’re in here; from flashlight, lamps, torches, the sun, they all emit a blue streak of some sort.
Now I’m not saying the guys working with the effects on this movie doesn’t know their stuff, the digital effects in this movie are no doubt very impressive and probably got the best guys in the business working it. And I’m not saying digital lighting is in any way a bad thing, it can really make a scene come alive – when used carefully. And this film is generally beautifully lit. But seriously, there’s a limit to how much moving digital light you can fit into one shot and I would probably suggest not cramming in your favorite light effect or lens flares in every shot where there might be a light source moving offscreen. It gets annoying, at least in my opinion.
I suppose most moviegoers don’t really notice such minor details, but I’ll bet; if you pay extra attention to the blue lights throughout this movie, you’ll notice it. Maybe such excessive lighting has been just as instense in hundreds of other movies and I’m only starting to notice it now. Anyway – I’m not trying to ruin the movie here, but it certainly made me lose my focus now and then.
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Johan
It’s NOT digital light effects. The movie is just made the good old way with sets instead of blue/green screens (at least not much). And because the set must be lit the optics from the camera lenses get this effect with blue light.
If you’re scandinavian Johan, I’d recommend you check out this thread.
They’re discussing the topic and a lot of sources seem to see the movie is actually not made ‘the good old way’.
I quote: “To match the footage Spielberg had shot, ILM added volumetric lights to the bluescreen footage, mist, dust, and insects swarming in sunspots. They sent plant parts flying back and hitting the camera. They created lens flares and light flashes. They added camera shake and ran the camera into trees.”
I really doubt your claim that they did not use much blue/green-screens in this movie.
Ole Andreas
This thread is quite old, but I thought it was interesting.
I can´t say I remember the blue flares, and you may be right about digital lighting. But it´s also possible that it is analog lighting – on set. When you use anamorphic lenses (usually from Panavision) – and they normally shoot anamorphic in Hollywood – you often get this horisontal lens flare. Which ironically is a optical imperfection. Here in Europe – where we rarely shoot anamorphic – some DOP´s want this kind of lens flares. That´s the reason why Vantage in Germany made their Blue Vision filters.
The Blue-Vision filter will give you a blue horizontaly lens flare used on Vantages Hawk Anamorphic lenses (which is made so “perfect” that you avoid the – sometimes annoying – flare without the filter). The Blue-Vision filter can also be used on some regular spherical primes – which is more used in Europe.
George Lucas used the Hawk Anamorphic lenses on Star Wars Episode I, so It´s reason to believe that these flares are made optically in the lens itself.