Dave Ferdinand...

I have watched a lot of bad movies and almost always can find one or more redeeming qualities, even the worst of them, but...

I could not agree with you more. I was dumbfounded that it made it to Block Buster / Cable TV. The camera work, characters, and editing looked VERY rough in my opinion to have made it as far as it did. Intended as a rough gem or not... I still think - yuck. It's not that the story was so bad, but I absolutely hated the joggy camera motion and was never drawn into the characters enough to take it as serious as the situation would have been. I can honestly say it's THE worst movie I have seen in years. I watched the whole thing in total disbelief.

I hope I have not offended anyone involved with the picture (and I'm sure I have, my apologies extended), but how did this movie get funding for release?


EDITED:

I just noticed that another thread had gone through it's paces regarding this movie but didn't see it until after posting here, so sorry to beat a dead horse.

My .02

Blair Witch

Never got it; disliked it. Horrible. Completely in awe that it did what it did and a complete insult to Cinema. This film did not inspire except for one factor; If they can make this crap, I can make this crap and there is hope.

Open Water

As Luis mentions; great hook. I liked this for what it was. I knew about it before sundance and during and lauded the release. It most definately looked like video in all of it's bad video way's (Like Tad Pole for instance) and I only imagine if they shot this using the DVX or Cinealta or one of the coming HD-24p ameras. It would have been fine. The filmmakers knew how to tell a story and I think they suceeded. I felt the actors were first rate and it was a well done film with the only drawback being the limitations of the cameras used. This film inspired me in a way "That was really cool; and damn it. I can make something that cool too!"

They really didn't have much choice of cameras when shooting underwater.

Whos talking about the underwater shots? What about all of the non-underwater shooting? They DID have good cameras for that, in fact the ones used are not bad cameras by any means.


John Hudson
"I only imagine if they shot this using the DVX or Cinealta or one of the coming HD-24p ameras. It would have been fine."

You don't believe that do you? Don't blame the camera, that's just wrong, I can get better results from my mini-DV hand held. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash the efforst made to produce this movie, my hats off to them, but it is very "Indy". So how did this ever make it past that stage?

I guess I should produce one, if that movie can make it then so can mine.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash the efforst made to produce this movie, my hats off to them, but it is very "Indy". So how did this ever make it past that stage?

Content is king.
Apparently the story spoke to somone who had the power to get it distributed.

The same question you are asking in relation to 'Open Water' is the same question I ask myself about just about every movie that I see released....how did this get out there?? If it were up to me, no one would have ever seen "White Chicks," yet it was number one at the box office.

I found Open Water to be very enjoyable... you may not, and that's fine.
But apparently someone thought it was good, regardless of the cameras, regardless of the level of production.... content is what counts.

I'd rather watch Open Water again than have to watch a Deuce Bigalow sequel.

LOL

Exactly Luis; and White Chicks is a perfect example of "What and how in god's name did this happen?".

M Struthers:

They had a choice. They make water housings for all kinds of cameras including the big toys.

Daniel:

In this case, I'm putting a ton of the blame on the cameras used; like Tad Pole, like Pieces of April and like 28 Days Later it just looked horrible no matter the chosen comps and framing. Yes, I think with higher caliber cameras this film would have looked just fine and worked even more. Unfortunately it just looked and tasted like a reality program. Those cameras are great for weddingography but not a feature film and surely not a film shot on the ocean. The film looked everybit the VX-2000 and the PD150. I asked the filmmaker if they had used the DVX100 when Variety first reported it being 24-p and he said "He wished; but that camera had not come out yet."

It's a good piece if indiefilmmaking. Engaging storyline and well told. If you did not like it then it's really just subjective anyway which makes this kind of moot. Better results from your mini-DV? Yeah yeah. Give us a link when you do.

Like Luis, I'd rather watch this than Deep Blue Sea.

LOL... now we can disagree for sure! hehe... Deuce Bigalow was slapstick and I expected that "Simpsons" humor. For me Open Water simply missed it's mark.

And yes, I'll stand firm that the camera is not all that it takes to produce a good movie. Any single aspect of production can kill a movie even with a compelling story; like bad lighing, poor camera work, unconvincing acting, etc.. It's unfortunate that this movie had more than one rough wave to ride.

Would a better camera have helped? Likely. Would it have improved the lighting? I doubt it. Would it have helped the acting, not likely. I could go on but you know where I'm going with this. My only real point is: impressive as an indy, VERY impressed... but as a box office movie at $7.50+ a pop... Aw hell naw. It's okay that we disagree, I don't expect you like my movie list either. In fact, I like the fact that we can simply agree to disagree.

Peace!

Now that I will agree with.

The camera is very important in trying to make it as professional looking as possible... Sure, you'll need many other things, but if you just shoot video without any color correction it's a very bad start.

Placing 28 Days alongside with Open Water is just not fair. 28 Days looks a bit like video, but not 'holiday video with family on the beach' style video. It looks professional and worked really well, regardless of the acting and story. Open Water just looks like they didn't even make the effort. I'm making my own little first short at the moment with my GL2, and consider I achieve a much better look than this. I've also seen other stuff shot with the Optura, GS400, GL1, etc. that look way better than this.

As to 'content', I don't think Open Water had much of that either... The acting is fairly good most of the time, but there's no character development (we know almost nothing about the 2 leads), and there's no proper supporting roles. The other people there are just props, along with the boat and diving suits.

Maybe Lions Gate bought this exactly because of the video look; the 'reality show' style the film has... Just like Blair Witch. Strange, but it could be true.

A DVX would've been nice, but thought they did an outstanding job nonetheless and never seen a big problem with the image quality - I was shocked a PD150 could pull that off - haven't liked PDs for a while, but they pushed the cam to the limits for that - looked great.

Was Open Water shot on minidv?
 

IMDB says it was transfered from 24p to 35mm. I'm also curious what cameras they used in the film. Anybody have any guesses?

Well, here on IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374102/technical

it says they used a VX2000 and a PD150.

Thanks, Vito. I think I did not see that because I did not want to believe it. Thirty million from a budget of a 130k. Not bad. I wondered if it showed at sundance before it was blown up to 35mm.

Yeah, I remember when it came out that everyone was going nuts because it was shot on DV. Quite the sacriledge... A classic case of content making format irrelevant.

Please search first before posting new topics on DV Info Net... I've merged your post into our gigantic four-year-old Open Water discussion thread.