Danny Cohen , Tom Hooper and many many more (les miz)

The BBQ Pit
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Bernard Bellew, Raphaël Benoliel, Tim Bevan, Lisa Chasin, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, Cameron Mackintosh, Angela Morrison, Thomas Schönberg, and Universal Pictures.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! You are the Director of Photography, (Danny Cohen) the director of the film, (Hooper) the producers (the rest) and the distributor of Les Miserables. (no I’m not going to figure out how to put the fucking accent mark there.) Do you want to know why? Because they couldn’t out how to fucking FOCUS a camera properly.

This film has the absolute worst cinematography in a major motion EVER! The film is shot almost entirely in either close up or extreme close up. The composition of shots is frankly amateurish. But the real problem is the Depth of Field in the shots.

Let me explain what Depth of Field (DoF) is for a moment. When you open the aperture of a camera up you will shorten the DoF. This is kind of nice. Your subject can be in focus and the background and even perhaps the foreground is out of focus. Now, when you use a short DoF, you have to be careful to have the actual subject in focus. Now usually this would be the person in the shot.

BUT NOT IN LES MIZ! He keeps the DoF so fucking short that people constantly pop in and out of focus. Move an inch and you’re out of focus. A good example is when Marius is singing Empty Chairs at Empty Tables. He has a nice profile shot of the actor. He is sitting still, singing. He collar and his ear are in focus, but his nose and eye is not in focus. I don’t know, maybe it is some sort of artsy-fartsy thing where I’m supposed to ponder his ear wax and that gives me the true meaning of the song. Oh no, the meaning of the song is quite clear. He is sad about his dead friends. Of course this focus problem is THROUGHTOUT THE ENTIRE FUCKINNG FILM! Cosset and Marius sitting at ValJean’s feet. Only Marius is in focus becasue of the small DoF.

SPOLER

Oh and when you have Fantine show up as an angel, she should have long hair, you fucking morons.

Any of the producers of this film should have looked at it and said, “No, we can’t release this. Go back and reshoot” But they didn’t. They failed to do their fucking jobs because they all suck and they all need to suck on my cock for 2.5 hours as compensation.
(I have many other complaints about the film but this one is the only pitable offense, except that damn kid who gets shot, and not enough, was so fucking English I thought he wandered in from a production of A Christmas Carol and they didn’t shoot him enough)

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Maybe it was all shot in Instagram?

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I haven’t see the film (and probably won’t) but from your description it sounds like the shallow DoF is probably due to the close-up rather than aperture. At such close distances you won’t get much DoF however much you stop down. I would probably blame the director for demanding the close-ups rather than the director of photography who may be struggling with impossible demands.

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She shows up as he remembers her. If it is your claim that she was an actual angel instead of just a comforting delusion however, then all you’ve you’ve got to support your bitch is, well…nothing but you own vision as to how an angel would appear to someone else.

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They are lucky I actually stayed till the end. This film deserved to be walked out upon.

I believe that the story does have religious tones and is not atheistic. “To love another person is to see the face of God”. That is their line. She is not a delusion. She is an spirit who has returned from HEAVEN and is there to guide him to the other side. She should be perfection.
Now you support how the film is atheistic to support your wild bullshit claim that “she could be his delusion” and would appear how he best remembers her. He did see her with long hair at one point.

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Everything in that movie could have happened without benefit of miracle/mysticism, including what he saw in the end.

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Did you watch the fucking movie? It is about redemption. Redemption of the SOUL.
Don’t give me that crap. Just because you don’t believe in God doesn’t mean that the text being presented doesn’t. This in not a news story. It is fiction and it has it’s world and it needs to be consistent within THAT world.

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Oooooh dude. You know what a cinematography nut I am.

Clear to me that about 75% of it was not just shot with a shallow DoF, but at the minimal focus mark on the lens. This provided for the b.g. (backgrounds) to be even softer.

Saw it last night.

Loved it.

Either I accept the " I am in their face AS they are singing " conceit, or I walk out. I chose to buy into it.

Lazy “creative” choice, but not a mistake. A deliberate choice.

Meh. I was so entranced by the real-time singing on camera that I forgive a lot of other offenses.

Lazy isn’t creative. But I see deliberation in the focus issues.

Not gilding the lily here. But I get it.

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What if her true inner spirit HAS SHORT HAIR and the long tresses were nothing more than the acquiescence of a woman to the dominant aesthetics of the male-controlled fashion of the day ?

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This has nothing to do with my believing or not believing-I just thought of the end sequence as a closing of the circle from when she died and saw her child…who was most assuredly not an angel or a ghost.

Getting beyond that, I agree with Cartooniverse as to the cinematography, and I loved the movie just the way it was.

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I’m sure they’re down on their knees as I’m typing this.

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They are so relieved.

As it happens, Cohen, Hooper, Bellew, Benoliel, Bevan, Chasin, Fellner, Hayward, Mackintosh, Morrison, Schönberg, and Universal were all at the Laurel Tavern, watching the Vikings game yesterday. They were on the edge of their seats, just sure you were going to get up and storm out (in fact, Raphaël mentioned that you squirmed once with your hand on the arm rest, and his heart caught in his throat). When you made it until the credits, their collective sigh was palpable, and Universal’s marketing department bought a round for the whole bar.

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Heh.

Look, I get your outrage. I just arm not outraged too.

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I see about making the background in soft focus, but the SUBJECT should be in focus. And when there are two people on the screen they both should be in focus. This is not some art house deal. Being experimental would be expected. This is a major tent pole release for a major Hollywood studio. Some minimum standards should be in place.

It really looks like the results I get when I taking photos with a shallow DoF but I let the autofocus take over. The part of the image intended to be in focus isn’t. And do you know what I, a hobbyist photographer do with those photos? I delete them.

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Shaky-cam sucks.

That is all.

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Was this shakey-cam? It certainly was more stable than Dance in the Dark. (an awesome film, but you need to take Dramamine due to the shakey cam)

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It was shakey cam in parts, especially at the beginning. Not as bad as Dancer, of course, which was shakey cam **of **shakey cam, IIRC.

And you so far missed the point of that line that it’s frankly staggering. “To love another person is to see the face of God,” means that being loving and generous and merciful - all those lessons that Valjean learns and masters and Javert faces but flunks - means you see the face of God in the people around you that you love. Valjean saw the face of God in Cosette, and maybe Marius - the people he was singing to and telling to “remember, the Truth that once was spoken:…” Fantine was not the face of God in that scene.

And Valjean didn’t give her a second look when she had long hair, which was the entire fucking problem that led to her getting kicked out of the factory. He didn’t get to know (love, have compassion for, save) her until she was all shorn and consumptioney.

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I didn’t take issue with the decision to have Fantine’s ghost have short hair. At the time Valjean was interacting with Fantine, he had not yet learned his lesson - in fact, I don’t think he really learns it until he rescues Marius for Cosette’s sake, sacrificing his own well being. His focus while in Montreuil-sur-Mer is to lay low and not be discovered by Javert; helping people is secondary, as is evidenced by how he allows the foreman to dismiss Fantine. Therefore, for Valjean to “see the face of God” in Fantine with no hair is for him to recognize that beauty comes from within, no matter how you look on the outside. It’s a metaphor for the fact that he’s learned his lesson.

Also, she provided him with the one joy in his life, Cosette, and he raised her daughter “to the light”. She comes back to him in a guise he will recognize to guide him to Heaven - job well done, thank you Monsieur.

In re: shaky-cam. It may not be as bad as others, but it was certainly enough to drive me to distraction and give me a blasting headache. Could we please get a few longer shots where I can’t see their 15’ tonsils?

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If so, why was Fantine wearing a nice new dress at the end? She did not appear as he saw her last. She was cleaned up a bit.

I’m not saying she is the face of God, I’m saying the story, believes in God and an atheist interpretation does not belong there.

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I guess I’m just fanwanking it because it didn’t bother me.

I always interpreted the stage play, where they gave Fantine her hair back, as her being “perfect” in Heaven. The fact that he kept her short hair in the film I just viewed as a different interpretation.

I do agree that there are serious issues with this film, the cinematography chief among them. I so wanted it to be good…