What Steve Soderburgh said about shooting with the Canon XL1-S...

[Alex]

CHECK OUT this interview with Mr. Soderbergh, director of "Full Frontal", that appeared in the Spiderman Issue of Entertainment Weekly.

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Entertainment Weekly, April 26, 2002 issue, Page 95, the right half of the page.....

"In the spirit of Truffaut's "Day for Night" and Fellini's "8 1/2", Soderbergh set up "Full Frontal" as an experiment in playing with what is and is not "real" in moviemaking.

He filmed one plot strand, concerning an actor (Blair Underwood) falling in love with a magazine writer (Julia Roberts) assigned to profile him, in 35mm.

But he shot shaky, reality-TV-style video footage of the actors in this movie-with-in-the movie, tracking them over 24 hours as they cross paths with a ring of their L.A. friends and lovers, including a shady producer (David Duchovny) and a sad sack journalist (David Hyde Pierce).

There also was a good deal of improv as Soderbergh manned an "out-of-the-box" digital camera himself. "I wanted extreme mobility and flexibility," he says.

"I wasn't interested in having [the video footage] look any better than it was. It was "supposed" to look like video."

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[GREATwarEAGLE]

I've mentioned more than once on this site that Soderbergh is one of the few filmmakers that has had an influence on my attitude towards film. I truly respect him and his efforts. But that doesn't mean I blindly subscribe to everything and anything he, or the other influences, says.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I wasn't interested in having [the video footage] look any better than it was. It was supposed to look like video.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

I, like most of us here, prefer film to video. Any day. And I think I understand what Soderberg means by this statement. But there's something about it that strikes me as somewhat hypocritical.

Does this mean that when he shoots film, he's not interested in having it look any better than it is? No color correction? No filtration? No image manipulation whatsoever in production, processing or in post?

[Alex]

Perhaps it was an attempt to backpedal from the digital hypster marketeers that want everyone to believe that a $4,000 dollar mini dv camera can somehow look equivalent to 35mm.

[GREATwarEAGLE]

I think you're right, Alex. That's what I think the subtext of his statement indicates. But if people are gonna wage a FILM VS. DV war, at least fight fair.