Tema: Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024)

Iniciado por StarKiller Ren

La inmensa mayoría de película que ponen en IMAX (tanto los típicos de pantalla más cuadradota 1.43, como los de 1.90, que son extremadamente deferentes experiencias) NO están rodados en IMAX (entendiéndose como rodar en película, no digital). Como la Alexa 65 da una imagen de bastante definición, más o menos equivalente de 65mm pero en digital, pues usan esas cámaras. Luego la pasan por un proceso llamado DMR (que toca los colores, claridad, brillo, etc, que no pasan las copias de otras salas) y la venden como "Rodada para IMAX" (si tiene cambio de relación de aspecto) o "Experiméntala en IMAX" (si es scope y no cambia).
Y evidentemente la entrada IMAX es más cara XD

Muy interesante todo, gracias.

En el festival de cine de Morelia

https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2...d-coppola-6054

Megalopolis: Jesse James Chisholm – Production VFX Supervisor


How did you get involved on this movie?

When I was working on my last Marvel project, Francis was trying to navigate a tricky relationship with his VFX team and Art Department. He reached out to take my temperature on some of the approaches that people were pushing for. He’s never bought in on visual effects heavy handed use of CGI. He shoots miniatures, matte paintings, practical gags, etc. I mean look what he and Roman did on Dracula, that movie felt hand made in the best possible way. When he and I were trading emails, I encouraged him to continue to do as much in camera as possible, if it didn’t work, he could always fallback on CG. Of all the film makers, he knows how to get things to look good in camera and lean on persistence of vision.

So, to answer the question, I’m Francis’ nephew. I have always tried to distance myself from this fact and keep it a secret. I’m a blonde kid that was married into this big Italian family, so it wasn’t that hard to hide. I was all in on a career in film, I wanted to get jobs and be rewarded based on my merits. Stand on my own two feet bullshit. I never asked for any sort of hand out, I started sweeping floors, fabricating for Thaine Morris. I remember the smell of wrapping 4 aught cables in downtown LA, dealing with the dichotomy of being fastidious but also having to be strong enough to schlep camera cases, breaking my back in the art department. Basically, finding my way into every department that would have me, and then just trying to learn as much as possible and outwork the person next to me. Francis hired his sister Talia and nephews Nicolas and Jason to act, his son Roman to Direct, my stepfather Bill Neil, a miniatures DP and VFX Sup, my brother Chris a director that Francis hired as an acting coach, the list goes on. Francis is extremely generous in his collaborations with family, it also helps that they are unflinchingly talented. All this to say film has raised me, provided for me. I’ve come to realize that film is family, and I am so proud and grateful to be a part of mine, both in relation and through experience.

Initially I knew he had an ambitious film that was gaining momentum and at the time I was going from project to project flat out for Marvel. It didn’t look like we would line up, so I didn’t really pursue. I enjoyed our relationship as it sat, and I knew if we entered into this process, I could fuck that up. When he was nearing the end of principal photography we spoke again, I had just delivered 2800 shots for a Marvel film on a Wednesday, and I was on a plane three days later to Georgia. I spent that Sunday sitting with Francis, watching and talking film, his new cut of One from the Heart, and short films he had shot, as well as walking around his All-Movie Hotel, and riding around in his golf cart. I quickly went from nephew to student. I stayed for the next week working long days studying the photography to see what I was getting into and to figure out how I could support him. I also went through the data collected on set and sat with Bradley Rubin to look at all the design to get into the show’s head as much as possible. We tore through books, looked at architecture, studied Neri Oxman, and scientific processes of plants being grown for shelter and even shoes.




How was the collaboration with director Francis Ford Coppola?

I’ve worked with a lot of smart people, but never of his genius. I tried to be his steady ship in the middle of the storm. I know him as an uncle and from what I have read or watched in behind-the-scenes footage like Ellie’s documentary Hearts of Darkness. It felt like filmmaking was a bit like going into battle for him. It was profound to me that his films got made at all. There seemed to be a lot of acrimony to get what he wanted, and you’d see people that thought they knew better – which is crazy knowing what he’s accomplished over his career. I always had this in the back of my mind, so I knew once I crossed the Rubicon and started working with him, I was admitting that I was willing to risk fracturing my relationship with Francis. I knew that I brought a particular skill set to the table and I was excited that I could collaborate and support a film maker of his caliber, and I was equally nervous for all the same reasons. I quickly learned with him that I needed to trust the process, I wasn’t here to make what I wanted or make what I thought he wanted. I was here to do exactly what he wanted. Like all relationships, it took time to build trust. His notes weren’t always direct like “make the specular more present.” Instead, we would talk for hours about history, life, love, politics, and films. All of the small clues and details that he spoke of let me internalize what he wanted me to understand. And by happenstance along the journey, you internalize the why. You have these ah-ha moments to yourself. It sounds simple, but you have to listen.

I remember working on the girder scene where Cesar and Julia have their first kiss, we just weren’t getting there. He turned to me and said, « Jesse, think about when you kiss a girl, that first kiss is so dangerous knowing all the things that will follow and how it will change your life. » There was quite a bit more to it, but what I’m saying is it allowed me to be 7000 feet in the air with them and understand what needed to get done.

I was also able to collaborate with Dean Sherriff in post. He was painting over frames that were already shot. Dean was on for a few long runs on the film, but Francis permanently invited him to help take the film through post. Dean just spoke Francis.

Our editor, Cam McLauchlin, was also a collaborator and massive part of bringing this film to life. He worked his ass off to mold this work of art with Francis. It’s like watching someone make a painting, there is no wrong way, people may not like it, but if you choose a different color or use a different technique, it may find its way into the Louvre. This film was a living breathing piece of art, and we all had our hands in it using our different disciplines. When I finished the show and I was able to take a step back, it was clear that Francis orchestrated every part. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it was a collaboration of a small group of talented artists that cared deeply about the man and his project.




How did you choose the various vendors and split the work amongst them?

I had a few vendors in mind, but we had to partner with a team that could put out beautiful work, understand the Poetic Realism Francis was after, and be aggressive with their pricing. RISE proved to be this vendor for us, I love Florian Gellinger. We first worked together on Black Panther and when I spoke with him about the potential of Megalopolis, he said RISE would do whatever they could to help Francis see his film though. Oliver Schulz supervised, and Katrin Arndt produced for RISE. Oli is an incredible artist, and creative partner. We had Oli and Kat fly out to Peachtree to watch the film several times with Francis and the team. Francis would call out the meaning behind moments in the screenings, or what he expected to see in certain scenes and why. Through this, Francis felt Oli globally understood what needed to be done and gave RISE his blessing. So, before they flew back to Germany to undertake the project, I took them out to shoot guns, drive muscle cars, drink American beer, and eat some southern cooking in Peachtree. I ended up falling in love with that place! If you ever find yourself there, go to Elliot’s and tell John and Madison I sent you.

We were also fortunate to work with Viktor Muller and Lenka Likarova at UPP, longtime collaborators with Francis. Kevin Chandoo and the team at Ghost VFX came in clutch towards the end of post. Wild Capture in collaboration with Candice Alger and Brennen Dicker at Creative Media Industries allowed us to do our crowd capture and work at the school with their students manning the controls. They have a hell of a program over there; Francis was blown away at what the students had at their disposal. Francis also felt strongly about creating Megalopolis in Unreal, so I hired Johnson Thomasson as my Senior Unreal Engine Specialist. He was tasked with delivering over 50 shots using Unreal as our final Render Engine. I built a small In-house team with Peter Herlein as my Compositing Supervisor and Jonas Bruse an absolute beast of an artist as my Compositor.

Rob Legato is a friend of Francis’s, they were going back and forth about the visual effects for Mega for quite some time. I started at Digital Domain in 1997, I think Rob left in 1995, but I have always admired him and hoped I would get a chance to work with him. Francis intro’d us and I was blown away with how open he was and giving of his time. Francis is lucky to have him as a friend.





How did you approach recreating the iconic environments of New York in Megalopolis while integrating futuristic elements?


I believe New Rome was initially designed by Dean Sherriff. Once approved by Francis, Alex Coppedge and the Virtual Production team created digital environments as backdrops for several scenes shot in the LED volume at Trilith. The buildings were primitives with simple shaders which was in keeping with the matte painting poetic realism Francis was after. In post, Ollie and the team at Rise replaced or enhanced the environments with depth haze, clouds, birds, camera removal, lights turning on and off, etc.




How did your visual effects team interpret and realize Coppola’s vision of a futuristic New York while respecting his unique cinematic style?

Francis opens the film with footage that he and Ron Fricke shot in New York from over 20 years ago. The first visual effects in the show are on the heels of this when Cesar is on top of the Chrysler Building. I shot plates with a small team from the 63rd floor of the Chrysler building to support this moment. This was an area where we needed to keep the heightened emotional stakes and dramatic intensity while letting the audience know they were in good hands visually. It was the closest we were ever going to get to a photo real environment knowing we had to respect the tone of the film and lean heavily into the theatrical handmade world Francis designed.


Were there any specific environments in the film that required particularly innovative or complex work?

The Megalopolis environment itself, revealed at the end of the film in all its glory, was a particular challenge. There was concept art from Dean Sherriff and some 3D art developed by Till Nowak, but the art only captured pieces of the whole, which was enormous. We did a lot of work in post to flesh out the concept into a full three-dimensional place that could be viewed from any angle. Safari Sosobee ran a small team at Narwhal to help us model and lookdev in Unreal for a few weeks. We selected a 6-square kilometer area of Manhattan near the East River as a starting point because we needed some ground-truth scale to build into. We did a series of real-time reviews in Unreal Engine with Francis to find the rough placement of hero elements from the concept. From there, Dean created a top-down drawing that laid out how the walking paths curled through the grounds and intersected with the major structures. Megalon, the material at the heart of the story, is meant to be this benevolent thing that grows in ways that nurture the humanity around it. So, we avoided proceduralism and hand-placed the majority of the elements in Megalopolis. Once we had a rough layout of the grounds, we began to place cameras and render Previs in post and we sent a light version of the city in our world-space and world-scale to Rob Legato. Since he has DP wheels connected to his Unreal setup in his home office, he was able to give us camera moves that had a much-needed human touch. He is a fantastic operator. Rob sent several shots to help us tell the story of the unveiling of Megalopolis. These made their way into the cut and were refined with feedback from Francis. This iterative process was key because it allowed us to focus energy on polishing the areas we would see up close in camera.



Coppola is known for his innovative ideas. How did his expectations influence the techniques and approaches you adopted for the visual effects?



Francis used his staples, the Silverfish and Previs, but he now has LED volume under his belt. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Arriving in Peachtree for post and learning that we would all be living and working together was an innovative approach I didn’t see coming. I think he did the same for The Outsiders and Rumble fish. In post we worked at Francis’s All-Movie Hotel in Peachtree City, Georgia. But 90% of us also lived there. It was a Days Inn prior to Francis buying the 20+ room hotel. He redesigned and renovated it while he was shooting and well into post. Some mornings you got to wake up to the sound of drilling and sawing at 7 in the morning in the room next door and another day you’d stroll to the kitchen to make a cappuccino and walk by Sanjay Gupta or Spike Lee. It was absolutely wild. The end results gave us beautiful suites, editorial rooms, an ADR booth, a theater with massive mixing boards, and a beautiful open kitchen. We were a big family working, living, cooking, and creating art together. Francis called it his cruise ship.


Which aspects of the visual effects in Megalopolis excited you the most and pushed you to push the boundaries of your creativity?



This show pushed me on many levels. If I’m considering a show and it doesn’t scare me, I know it’s not for me. The first challenge that comes to mind was infrastructure, or lack of. I have been spoiled working at Marvel; they have the most robust pipeline supporting its film makers, which sadly is invisible to most. The people Marvel hires to write tools, build their plates lab with their internal pulls system, servers, databases, and the team solving color issues… They are the best in the world. In my humble opinion. hahaha. I quickly realized our newly renovated facility didn’t have any of that and Christopher Finley, Elliot Goff, Konrad Wilbrandt, and I, with the help of Masa Tsuyuki and Jordan Holifield the fixers for The All-Movie Hotel, would need to create it from scratch and share the brunt of these duties. This was strangely exciting and allowed me to flex a different part of my brain.


Looking back on the project, what aspects of the visual effects are you most proud of?

I’m proud of it all, even the warts. Our show set out to create images that elicit emotion. We were clear in our intent and knew that this was not going to be photo immaculate. We made the choice to lean into poetic realism and kept that thread through the entire film. People may not understand this film, but I doubt anyone will ever be bored watching it. Francis has been visualizing and putting energy into this film for so many years, I didn’t want to be the guy to fuck this up. There’s a pressure that comes with my seat that lots of people/artists don’t understand. The easier you make it look, the more that people think they can do your job. Good luck! Delivering this film felt incredible. If you look at the resources we had in post, we shouldn’t have been able to pull it off. Francis’s sheer will, our vendors, and all the artists at the All-Movie Hotel stepped up and refused to let it fail.


How long have you worked on this show?

I started in June of 2023, we started shot production in August of 2023, and we finished May of 2024.


What’s the VFX shots count?

How many shots did we have in production? Or how many shots ended up in the film? Either way I’m not going to answer, let’s imagine that it was all an in-camera fever dream…

Este tipo tiene un agradecimiento especial (hay varios), durante los créditos del film.

Cito extractos de la reseña de Massanet (cuatro estrellas y media le da):


(...)


Es un reto, esto para empezar. No se conoce en los últimos años un filme, sobre todo estadounidense, que plantee un reto semejante para el público, porque además de estar trufada de abundantes referencias literarias y cinematográficas, además de manejar unos temas y unos conceptos muy poco habituales en un filme de gran difusión, propone al espectador una forma inédita de mirar todo ello. El hecho de que se trate de una fábula, tal como su título indica, no hace otra cosa que coadyuvar a la dificultad no tanto en seguir la trama —como algunos despistados han afirmado— sino en ir más allá de la cáscara de lo inmediato, de la mera peripecia que nos narra, para acceder a lo que significan y suponen. Cabría esperar que el espectador medio estuviera más que preparado para poder hacerlo, si quisiera, pero a la vista está que no.

Es un desafío para la crítica. Porque si hablamos de público, ha quedado demostrado que un gran sector del público no acaba de entender lo que se propone, pero lo más preocupante es que gran parte de la crítica tampoco.

Megalópolis se erige en inopinado artefacto diseñado para ser un desafío para la crítica desde el mismo momento en que se estrena en Cannes y hasta el día presente, pues muy pocos han estado a la altura de lo que se ofrecía en pantalla, y no ya por capacidades intelectuales, ni siquiera se han tomado la molestia en intentarlo. Desde su alumbramiento, han sido centenares las voces críticas que la han atacado severamente, pero sin ningún argumento de peso que realmente explique el porqué de tan desaforado rechazo.

Es un testamento… pero también un nuevo inicio. Viendo las imágenes del filme número veintitrés de Coppola, la sensación que se tiene es la de que ha puesto en ella todo lo que le ha obsesionado durante tantos años, todo lo que ha acumulado de sabiduría y de experiencia, y que esto es una especie de despedida, quizá alentada por la inminencia de la debacle fisiológica. Ahora Coppola dice que tiene energías para dos nuevos filmes que ya estaría preparando, pero Megalópolis se anuncia como un testamento cinematográfico perfecto. ¿Y por qué perfecto? Pues porque se erige en una especie de magnum opus a partir del cual pueden entenderse y explicarse mucho mejor, como si se tratara de un juego de espejos, sus otras veintidós películas. Es un resumen, pero también la pieza catedralicia que une estilísticamente varias décadas de cine. Y también suena a nuevo inicio. Si Coppola dirige algo más en un futuro, y es posible que así sea, se habrá librado de la urgencia de filmar su proyecto más querido y quizá se sienta libre de explorar nuevos temas con nuevos estilos.




Es un sueño febril. Porque más allá de gustos y de fobias, este filme surge en primer lugar, y se ejecuta en último, como un verdadero sueño febril propio de un creador sofocado por la necesidad de dar vida a una criatura con vida que bullera en su interior. Más que ningún otro filme de su ya larga filmografía, Megalópolis se antoja el capricho estético definitivo, el núcleo de preguntas sin respuesta con el que dar sentido a toda una vida. Y de ese sueño febril emanan las imágenes, también febriles, que lo conforman. Qué duda cabe que ha estado décadas alterando y metamorfoseando la película en su mente y sobre el papel, y quién sabe qué ideas que hemos visto en ella proceden de 1982 o 1987, y qué otras ideas de 2017 o de 2020. Pero todo ello forma parte del mismo sueño.

Es una locura. Pero hay muchas acepciones para la locura. Desde su estreno, no son pocos los espectadores que aseguran que es la cosa más loca que han visto en mucho tiempo. En realidad, esto responde a una máxima de su creador: el arte no puede ser algo cerebral, sino provenir en gran medida de una excentricidad creativa, y el genio no puede venir de alguien que no esté, en cierto sentido creativo, más loco que una cabra. No caben negociaciones con lo correcto, o lo convencional, sino que es necesario abrazar el desequilibrio interior para tratar de encontrar una verdad tangible y valiosa.


Es un salto al vacío. Tal como hace Catilina (un valiente y formidable Adam Driver) en los primeros compases del filme, Coppola no siente la menor vacilación en asomarse al abismo de un proyecto que casi nadie tendría el coraje de llevar a cabo, no solamente por su amplio presupuesto —que como todo el mundo sabe, ha financiado él mismo—, sino porque los temas y las formas que aborda y de los que se vale en todo momento no parecen muy propicios en un momento en el que el cine y la narrativa en general se han vuelto tremendamente académicas. Coppola sabe que ya es historia del cine, sin embargo, y no tiene problema en emplear ese «crédito» para seguir investigando hasta el final de sus días.

Es una creación vanguardista. Lo que decía Claudia en Entrevista con el vampiro (Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, 1994), de Neil Jordan, al ver el espectáculo de Théâtre des Vampires: «how avant-garde». Eso es la cinta de Coppola, arte vanguardista, lo que se acuñó hace más de cien años como avant-garde, y es posible que existan pocas expresiones, o quizá ninguna, que pueda ceñirse a esta obra con la misma intensidad. Como su mismo nombre indica, lo vanguardista es lo que va delante, a la cabeza de todos los demás, para bien y para mal, y lo que por su propia naturaleza puede ser ignorado o despreciado a priori, pero que al cabo de unos años se empieza a comprender en su verdadera importancia y valor.

Es una despedida. Porque con este filme termina, en muchos sentidos, lo que se inició hace más de cincuenta años en la denominada «generación más revolucionaria de la historia del cine estadounidense», aquella que formaron los Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas y compañía, por supuesto capitaneada por el propio Coppola, que fue quien llegó más lejos que todos ellos. Dentro de otros cincuenta años sabremos el verdadero alcance de lo que la panda de los wonder boys llegó a aportar a este aburrimiento habitual que es el cine. Por el momento, con esta despedida —porque el resto de compañeros hace tiempo que fue absorbido por el sistema— podemos decir que se van haciendo el mayor ruido mediático posible.


Es una declaración de intenciones. En una actualidad trufada por títulos grises, planos y sin verdadera sustancia, abrumados por ficciones de superhéroes, o por directores cuyo mayor interés reside en estrenar su trabajo en streaming, un trabajo que casi siempre va a tener que ver con una idea costumbrista del drama, o con una idea convencional de la narrativa, el filme de Coppola pretende devolver al cine su grandeza, su extrañamiento natural y su carácter aventurero, en el sentido de no saber a dónde vamos, pero sea donde sea hacerlo con ganas, entusiasmo e imaginación.

Es una farsa. No solamente política, también sociológica. La extrema originalidad de plantear un Nueva Roma como si fuera un Nueva York steampunk, es el marco perfecto para desarrollar una mirada hacia nuestra sociedad y hacia nuestra forma de hacer política, sobre todo occidental, que al final deviene en un sistema de corrupción, abusos y discriminación. No por tratarse del filme más optimista de Coppola carece en el fondo de una despiadada mirada hacia lo que nos rodea. Los tejemanejes políticos y las corruptelas urbanísticas sirven de base para una farsa de gran calado en la que occidente queda retratado como lo que es.

Es una amalgama de todas las obsesiones del artista. Porque aquí está todo lo que siempre ha traído de cabeza al anciano maestro: la maldición del paso del tiempo, la familia como generadora de problemas, el artista como salvaguarda de un estilo de vida, la mirada hacia el futuro, la figura de un hombre solitario en contra de la sociedad establecida, y todos los asuntos que con mayor o menor intensidad han inoculado su trayectoria. César Catilina está directamente emparentado con Tetro, con Rudy Baylor, con Dominic Matei, Vlad Tepes, Michael Corleone, Kurtz y toda la piara de personajes coppolianos, todos ellos más grandes que la vida, capaces de cambiar el mundo de la misma manera que Coppola ha cambiado el cine.


Es una fábula. Esto es algo que muchos parecen haber perdido de vista pero que está indicado en el título de la obra. Una fábula es un relato moral con intención didáctica de carácter ético y universal. Pero es más cosas, pues una fábula también narra habitualmente el confrontamiento entre dos caracteres enfrentados y opuestos, tal como sucede en Megalópolis. Es un tipo de composición literaria realmente antigua, pues al parecer ya era cultivada en Mesopotamia, y por supuesto los griegos hicieron buen uso de ella, como Hesíodo o Esopo. También cultivaron la fábula los romanos, por supuesto, como Horacio, recogiendo la tradición griega.

Es una provocación. Casi pareciera que todas las imágenes y sonidos de Megalópolis buscan provocar al espectador, pero quizá no tanto al espectador culto que conozca las fábulas griegas o romanas, o al que conozca toda la obra de Coppola, o todo el cine vanguardista de las últimas décadas, sino a los otros, a los que seguramente sientan un rechazo frontal por el filme y que son legión. Lo desmesurado y lo grotesco del filme está directamente dirigido a ellos.

Es la búsqueda de un estilo. Eso es lo que ha asegurado su director en más de una ocasión. Según él, ha hecho filmes con todos los estilos imaginables, pero le quedaba hacer un filme en el que averiguara cuál es su estilo. Desde luego, Megalópolis es un filme estilizado hasta la abstracción, en el que cada decisión visual, de montaje, de escenografía, parece dedicada también a buscar un estilo propio y que no se parezca a ningún otro.

Es una creación total. Y pocos directores parecen hoy dispuestos o capaces de aspirar a algo semejante. Creación total como lo es la ópera, o como lo es una gran novela decimonónica. Con aspiración de llegar a cuantos más temas y conceptos mejor, y con la necesidad de ser más grande que la vida. Todo ello diseñando hasta la obsesión sus elementos más prominentes: montaje, sonido, música, diseño de producción, dirección de actores, personajes, fotografía.

Con todo lo que ha salido, creo que queda demostrado que no es que la película esté mal contada, es que Coppola no estaba buscando una narración convencional. Después podrá gustar más o menos, pero yo creo que lo que se propone contar y como lo propone contar está conseguido.

Iniciado por Marty_McFly

Con todo lo que ha salido, creo que queda demostrado que no es que la película esté mal contada, es que Coppola no estaba buscando una narración convencional. Después podrá gustar más o menos, pero yo creo que lo que se propone contar y como lo propone contar está conseguido.

Pero eso sigue sin explicar por qué muchos de los comentarios negativos que leo dicen que la historia es totalmente incomprensible. Porque estando de acuerdo contigo (y por extensión con las declaraciones de Coppola sobre la película), yo si que creo que hay una historia central muy clara, y que los protagonistas tienen su arco bien definido. Es cierto que hay elementos de las subtramas que no cierran del todo o no acaban de concretarse, pero lo que es la historia principal, yo pienso que si que se entiende sin ninguna dificultad (si se está prestando atención, porque es verdad que la película avanza a buen ritmo, sobretodo en su segunda mitad, donde Coppola se desmelena).

Entonces no sé, estoy un poco confundido. A ver si me lo podéis aclarar.

Incomprensibles para mí pueden ser Inland Empire o Southland Tales, pero no Megalópolis.

PD: Esto que digo no es solo cosa mía, creo recordar que Tripley manifestó una perplejidad similar por su parte cuando reseñó la película.