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Although the visual-effects work and final filmout were done at 2K, Spider-Man 3 was scanned at 4K for the DI. Pope notes he was very excited to do a 4K scan for Spider-Man 2 (see AC June ’02), but he would have preferred to work in 2K on its sequel. “I’ve found that I actually like 2K scans better. There’s a certain softness to 2K, in addition to softening filters that are not yet available in 4K, that hides a lot of flaws. 4K is so brutally sharp and clear there’s nowhere to hide. Every blemish, every wrinkle, every hour of work into a late night or a long week shows up on the actor’s face, and that’s not what I want to see — especially not in a movie like this, which is set in a made-up wonderland. It’s just too much to fight later on. “In many ways, cinematography is about deciding what you don’t want to see, and if you don’t have the tools to erase what you don’t want to see later on, you tend to walk away from that tool the next time. Right now we’re doing 2K projection and 2K effects, so why bother to scan at 4K when it’s just too sharp? Honestly, if I’d thought about it more carefully, I would have shot all the actors through a light [Tiffen] Pro-Mist filter or something similar, just to take some of that sharp curse off the back end. I used a little filtration in the shooting, but not nearly enough.” The project’s 4K DI pipeline was a little unusual in that it involved three separate facilities. Pope, Raimi and colorist Stephen Nakamura graded the picture at Technicolor’s new Culver City facility, which is on the Sony lot. (See Post Focus on page 86.) The facility was so new at the time that its laser recorder was not yet fully integrated, so EFilm in Hollywood handled the filmout. Deluxe Laboratories in Hollywood made the prints. “I was little wary about timing the movie at one place and outputting it in another, but EFilm, Technicolor and Deluxe worked very closely to iron out all the kinks and get us prints that were spot-on,” says Pope. Given Spider-Man 3’s daunting logistics, perhaps its biggest surprise is that the focus stays on the characters. “The strength of Spider-Man lies in the characters, especially Peter Parker,” says Pope. “You care about what happens to him, as opposed to every other superhero whose alter ego is really just the husk for the superhero. Peter is a real guy. Even when he puts on the suit and becomes Spider-Man, it’s still Peter in there, and you always feel that. On this movie, everything got larger on us. The story got larger, the sets were larger, the cast was larger, and there were more CGI effects, but Sam also got deeper and deeper into the characters, making them and the narrative better and better. As a result, this is a movie that’s bursting out at every possible seam.”
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TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
2.40:1 Super 35mm, VistaVision Panaflex Platinum; Arri435; Beaucam Primo lenses Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383 |
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