"Get Smart" It even looks digital!
 

I recently watched the trailers (there are three of them) for the new Carell movie "Get Smart." About halfway through the second I realized something didn't feel "filmic" about the picture. Looked on imdb, and sure enough, it was shot with the Genesis camera.

Normally I say it's hodgepodge when people insist something doesn't look "filmic" but, there's truly something, I can't quite place it--I think it has something to do with the motion blur, ala shutter speed--that makes it feel very "video."

Watch the 2nd trailer on Apple's website (http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/getsmart/hd/) and see if any shots stick out to you as particularly video-looking. Don't read the rest of this post until you do: I'll describe one shot that stuck out to me.


About forty-nine seconds in, a man gets shot and flips over a railing. It's a dark scene, so perhaps they fudged the shutter speed to get more light? The sensor noise is particularly noticeable. The "video" blur occurs again and again, most noticeably when there's lots of movement, aka when Carell and the lead lady swing over to another building and miss the window.

Anyway, of course most audiences won't notice this nonsense but from a technical perspective it's a real shame Panavision has created a camera that doesn't live up to the expectations of those using/watching true film.

Also I'm wondering if Panavision has fixed the massive chroma aberration problems they experienced with the Genesis since it's use on Superman--they had been experiencing it for a long time and didn't know what was wrong...no matter what lens they slapped on the front they were getting blue and yellow smear, indicating the CA was occurring at the sensor level!

Yes, you're picking up on a 1/24th shutter.

The way this is graded, I think if those shots weren't there to give it away, nobody would ever know.

The noise visible throughout just looks like film grain to me, albeit a very tight film grain.

So should that be 1/48 shutter normally?

EDIT of course.

1/50th shutter is used alot with the Panavision II E.