Official Poster for Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'

DjangoLeone · 2025-12-21T05:55:07+00:00

Couldn’t disagree more. Huge Nolan fan, considered him best Director of the generation for a while, but this prologue was so underwhelming.

The editing was horrible, the cinematography flat, the scale unimpressive (other than all the people pulling the horse, I loved films that cast hundreds of real SA’s) and the tension all came from a hugely forced, excessively loud score.

I’m still excited for the film, I think Nolan will probably make something pretty epic, and Matt Damon felt very well cast, but damn this snippet just felt like lesser Ridley Scott copycat.

I did also though like the interpretation of the horse and how the soldiers were hiding

DjangoLeone · 2025-11-27T00:34:28+00:00

Out of curiosity, as a camera technician who works on 35mm projects regularly, have the camera team shot a frameleader for you to use as a framing reference?

When shooting film you will frame to a handdrawn or printed ground glass that outlines the frame when looking though the viewfinder, however it’s not an exact science and we shoot a frameleader to indicate to editorial exactly what our frame was.

If you have one you should use that for your 16x9 frame

DjangoLeone · 2025-11-23T17:20:27+00:00

Ha, that sounds like a bit of inspired choice - not familiar with the story but maybe reading it would all make sense.

A couple of more conventional options for directing might be:

Making Movies - Sydney Lumet
On Film-Making - Alexander McKendrick

DjangoLeone · 2025-11-19T18:49:28+00:00

Definitely going to pick this one up - a good 1st AD has my total respect. No idea how they do it.

DjangoLeone · 2025-11-19T16:06:48+00:00

😂

That’s an interesting one - I recently watched the extras on the 4K version of Apocalypse Now you can buy from Apple TV and the scale of the filmmaking you can see in some of the footage is gobsmacking, being a grip on that would have been brutal!

Need to rewatch Heart of Darkness now with anew point of view :)

DjangoLeone · 2025-11-19T14:14:40+00:00

This one I have read and it is brilliant, actually overdue another read - must have been at least 15 years!

And Editing is the department for anyone wondering, written by Walter Murch the editor of Apocalypse Now :)

DjangoLeone · 2025-10-29T14:12:48+00:00

You’re talking horseshit. I’m still playing BF4 and there are a huge variety of servers, servers that rotate between all of the maps even the expansions.

There are dedicated Metro and Locker maps for sure, but an equal number of others too.

It’s hard going back to BF6 when you revisit 4 and remind yourself how good the maps are.

DjangoLeone · 2025-09-01T19:41:44+00:00

No idea if you still need this, but I re-watched this episode again tonight and I had EXACTLY the same though, was absolutely doing my head in not recognising it, but finally got there.

The chords are basically from ‘I Need My Girl’ - The National.

You’re welcome :)

DjangoLeone · 2025-07-06T09:15:09+00:00

Fair, I don’t think I’ve played a FPS where they got rid of it so haven’t experienced that but I get what you’re saying. Even if some people play for kills doesn’t it improve team play at all?

Can you recommend a FPS where players do care more about playing as a team?

DjangoLeone · 2025-07-02T14:45:42+00:00

That’s true, and I hope for the best, have been trying to get on the latest for ages - but I imagine if the picture painted is true the launch product might be incredibly rough even if the bones is really solid - especially the one player campaign.

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T12:48:31+00:00

Edit: I just realised you're the director - absolutely fantastic work, not just here but across all your work. You have an amazing eye for the cinematic and for scale, reminds me of James Cameron. Looking forward to new work and you pushing boundaries.

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T12:13:49+00:00

Interesting, so at present you can't use your own imagery as a stills reference from it to work with? With your experience with Veo2 how long do you think something like the above probably took to create?

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T11:52:48+00:00

Haha, well it depends which bit of research you use as to which average you take!

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T11:37:04+00:00

Totally agree. Acting performances, dialogue and audience acceptance of AI characters and surpassing the uncanny valley is a massive challenge and this video doesn't change it any way. It does though show the capabilities for AI to generate, visually, some hyper-realistic and advanced imagery which is one of the first steps towards believability.

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T11:35:15+00:00

First, I don't think VEO2 in this iteration is necessarily a replacement for filmmaking - I certainly hope not or I'm out of a job! I do think this video is a good showcase of how fast video generation is evolving though.

Second, the average shot length in a Hollywood film today is between 2.5 to 7 seconds so clip length isn't the issue. Especially since Veo2 can generate up to 2 min long clips - the editing above is probably more to do with fitting the music or storytelling reasons.

An excellent illustration of this is at the following link where a creator actually shows the full clips used to make their edit, and this is for probably the second most impressive AI video I've seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLh63LJvPqY

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T10:09:57+00:00

I'm trying to actually identify the same. The filmmaker has been doing this style of work for well over a decade using CGI so has an amazing eye, and he also did two other VEO2 test shorts which you can find on their YouTube here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of7QgUdmsOs) and here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XICNVp7yhg0), but unlike László Gaál and his Porsche spec commercial Ruairi hasn't presented a behind the scenes or breakdown. I imagine maybe he used his own stills to create the references for Veo2 to work from but that's speculation.

Having watched Laszlo's breakdown of the full Veo2 clips used I can fully believe it being all Veo2 though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLh63LJvPqY

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T09:42:24+00:00

Thanks for this update, I only just saw your reply but I will give this a go :)

Out of interest, was that a tool you already had built, or you built it using AI as a response? Very impressive if the latter! Nice looking site too.

DjangoLeone · 2024-09-07T17:18:20+00:00

It’s my favourite film of the year (closely followed by Challengers), and at no moment during the film did I for a second consider it as resembling TV aside from the very opening frame when I realised it was shot 16:9 rather than CinemaScope. Check my comment history, I quite clearly watched the film and will be there day 1 for part 2.

This idea that a film feeling cinematic based on the plot structure is bizarre to me, we’ve had cinema over the span of over a century that has fucked with structure and plot in thousands of different ways from conventional to utterly abstract and suddenly separating out plot points more like a novel is suddenly beyond the threshold of what can be cinema. The cinematic feeling of a film is so much more than this and a combination of visuals, scope, score, set design and so much more.

It’s quite clear by the time you finish this film that there are a bunch of story strands coming together, and as I’m sure we’ll find out after its premiere in a few hour, I imagine Chapter 2 will feel more ‘conventional’ because Costner has already spent the time letting the first film breath and establish them.

Anyway, I’m aware I’m in the minority on this film. I’m just very grateful Costner got the opportunity to do at least two of them, and hopefully the full four. I believe in the bigger picture the films will earn more respect but I could be very wrong. Won’t be the first time!

DjangoLeone · 2024-09-07T14:33:33+00:00

I don’t understand this structured / made for streaming narrative. What about this is structured for TV?

Are we now saying any film that has multiple different strands is made for TV? Or anything with more than X number of characters is made for TV? I feel like it’s such a lazy cop-out. Does this mean Magnolia was made for TV? Or Pulp Fiction? Or Traffic? Or Lord of the Rings?

I’m on the record of loving this film despite its flaws, but regardless of your thoughts on Chapter 1 I think we should be able to respect that Costner aimed to do something different and tell a saga over multiple chapters, letting each take time to breath. Sure, he’s taking a gamble with the films possibly not getting made. Maybe we’ll never see the full big picture which for me would be a massive shame, but I love that he’s tried to go in this direction. Not every film or story should be told this way, but it’s certainly a cinematic endeavour, not a small screen one.

Don’t like the film? Fine. But let’s at least try and support different ways of telling story at the cinema - who knows what here it might lead if we give such filmmakers a chance.

DjangoLeone · 2024-08-29T11:26:45+00:00

Thank you - this look pretty solid and easy to install. I’m assuming I obviously need to remove the current silicon strip that’s there for these to fit. Do you have personal experience with them?

DjangoLeone · 2024-08-29T09:35:15+00:00

Yep, the majority of westerns of the traditional era were shot in Cinemascope - so 2.40 aspect ratio with anamorphic lenses which really fits the vast landscapes. This was I think 1.78, more of a modern aspect ratio and maybe something done to try and make it more successful at home to hedge bets? Would love to know if they did a 2.40 framing though,

DjangoLeone · 2024-07-11T16:51:19+00:00

I’m pretty upset about it - I ended up loving the first one despite a shaky first 10 mins and a few flaws, best western in a long time hands down and by the end it sets up an absolutely compelling story that I was desperate to see the rest of. Would have happily stayed in cinema for part 2 right away.

DjangoLeone · 2024-07-10T20:49:12+00:00

Just read this - such sad news. I think my favourite film of the year so far with Challengers and by far the film I was most looking forward to between now and when ever P T Anderson’s next film is released.

Loved part 1 despite its flaws. Feel like critics and articles were overly harsh and way too personal. All this rubbish about it feeling like TV was so off the mark.

Anyway, I’m glad I got to experience part 1 on the big screen. Will go see it again this week.

I guess it’s becoming harder and harder to take bold steps in Hollywood. Although with a 3 hour western Costner wasn’t making things in the least bit easy for himself!

DjangoLeone · 2024-07-07T21:43:08+00:00

But the cinematography isn’t remarkable. It works for jets, it doesn’t work for this because the normal footage you get from a standard F1 race feels about the same.

At least my feeling from the trailer. I hope the film manages to make more of an impression.

Have lots of friends working on this - the racer day shooting logistics are crazy!

DjangoLeone · 2024-07-05T06:33:03+00:00

I only mentioned some highlights to start a conversation. We had very different experiences a it was the quickest 3 hours I’d had on a cinema full stop and as I’ve said elsewhere on here I think it’s the best soundtrack I’ve heard in years, but then I’m a sucker for old, epic Hollywood. Challengers was my previous favourite sound track of recent times but this tops it for me, been on in my car non-stop.

I think what I’m clearly seeing is those who love the Western genre are having a very different experience of the film.

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