Strangely I find myself agreeing with both sides to a great extent. I think there are a lot of really amazing cinematographers in this country, a lot of them struggling to get by. At the same time tho, you do see some shocking looking stuff at times, both on TV and in low budget films. Sometimes I can't account for it beyond, they must have wanted it to look like that for some reason.
Also there is a TV series on right now on the BBC that I kind of like. Visually it looks like a really cheap digibeta production (might be being kind here), there are problems with the directing, and very often the story line seems to have holes in it that you kind of have to ignore, it's all rather far fetched anyway which helps with the ignoring stuff bit. However it does have some things going for it and it also has some kind of magic in there. I've been quite impressed with it and thought it was a great testament to what can be knocked together on a budget of about 10p and can still really work!
...only I just found out what the actual budget supposedly is the other day. Apparently £3 million for 13 half hour episodes. Probably works out at about $1 million U.S. dollars an hour. I'm still in shock about this. I imagine that the people making the programme don't care much about the visuals really and poor digibeta guy is working hard to make good of a bad situation Like a lot of what is happening in the UK, I just don't know what to say. It's always stuff that makes you gasp.
Which brings me neatly to the fact that Seamus McGarvey just missed out on the cinematography BAFTA, not to skyfall (which in itself would be plain wrong) but to "Life Of Pi". Although to be fair the latter film does feature very impressive and beautiful shots of a tiger. Doesn't that tell you something about the attitude we have here?
There are basically just really fundamental things wrong with this country. It's been like that a long time. Hopefully it will change soon.
Freya
Well, there are only two dozen shots of a real tiger in the whole movie, the rest are digital. I don't know if those 24 or 25 cuts are the impressive beautiful ones or not though. My guess is that PI -- which I haven't yet seen -- is an accomplishment in terms of making piecemeal vfx-heavy filmmaking seamless, without distracting from the artistry and mood.
That should have given it an edge over SKYFALL, which I found to be an infuriatingly stupid, wrongheaded mess that has effectively ended decades of Bond admiration (Roger Moore era excepted, along with this short thug they've got in the tuxedo now) that dates back to age 4 for me.
Maybe somebody should have the tiger from PI duke it out with the CG komodo dragons from SKYFALL. Winner gets to eat the rest of Daniel Craig's face off, along with the hands of John Logan, to keep him from doing any more 'creative typing' that he passes itself off as screenwriting.
