Being the genre-film geek I am, I hit up the midnight screening of District 9 on Thursday night, equal parts excited for a refreshing Sci-Fi aesthetic and to see what Jackson and Blomkamp could do with an all-RED Camera shoot, since Roll the Hard Six will be primarily shot on RED. Well, that’s the plan at this stage of pre-production at least. Despite “Angels & Demons” and “Knowing” being billed as RED Camera films, they only used the RED for effects shots for ease of compositing, and did the rest on 35mm, so they’re hardly examples of a RED film. And Pontypool was all shot in one room, so lighting that for a 90-minute movie is a cinch. But District 9 is a film with chock-a-block effects shots, broad daylight, indoor and night shots, and was 100% RED. You’ll note in the credits there is NO film stock brand. Nice.
Anyway, within about 60 seconds I was so engrossed in the film, that the technical director in me was completely overcome by the film lover, and I was awash in the most significant Sci-Fi film since the Matrix. Needless to say, I loved the film (behold, the review of the film at YourGeekNews.com) and now I need to go watch the film all over again, and try flip the techie switch back on and really examine D-9 as a digital film. I want to see how far they’ve pushed the highlight latitudes and exposure, to the compression artifacting and the other limitations to shooting digital that I’m familiar with from shooting films like Six Reasons Why, and really deconstruct it as a film shot with a lot of the restraints we’ll have on Roll The Hard Six.
Except that Neill and Peter had 30 times the budget. Small detail.
Roll Hard,
~M@
