Michael Mann shooting difficult boat scene

Always great to find something new. I found this amazing YouTube clip of the Miami Vice film crew shooting the racing boat scenes that were supposed to feature at the start of the movie. I have only ever seen the original movie version and have only Standard Def DVD, so never saw the spoken of racing scene that Universal forced Mann to cut from the final edit to shorten the movie. Looking at this spectacular footage it was madness to cut it. Some shots are just stunning. Was this footage included on new bonus features for the BluRay edition?

You have Dion Beebe rigging up the cameras in the hull of the boat, and Michael Mann behind the cameras as they shoot that famous crane shot as the camera surfaces from beneath the bubbling water to reveal the boats speeding past. Great footage! Enjoy.



Also, I have never seen this featurette before... is this a BluRay edition? This is notable for watching Michael Mann location scout a guys house with a, errr, rather interesting "bed". I just think its great seeing Michael passionately looking at every detail with his DSLR. Us photographers are all the same... running around like rabbits finding aesthetic details under every rock!

Michael Mann closing on deal to direct Agincourt

Available from Amazon

ScreenDaily has posted information that suggests Michael Mann's production company Forward Pass is close to a deal with Independent to develop the rumoured Agincourt project. The Robert Capa movie was also supposed to be in the making, but the allure of Agincourt's sumptuous pallet of medieval grit appears to have finally won over Michael Mann. Ever since The Last of the Mohicans, I think Mann fell in love with period pieces. I generally think Mann excels most in the contemporary setting, but its not for us to decide. Check out the links to get all the details:

http://www.screendaily.com/news/production/roegs-independent-lines-up-films-with-michael-mann-saul-dibb/5027599.article


http://www.filmshaft.com/agincourt-will-be-directed-by-michael-mann/

http://thefilmstage.com/2011/05/16/independent-moves-forward-on-michael-manns-agincourt-other-projects-lined-up/

Michael Mann's HBO Luck Trailer (production preview)

Michael Mann's Luck production preview has arrived - and I can barely contain my excitement. It looks AWESOME. Talk about taking your breath away. This is going to be huge. We have waited a long time for this and here it is...



Tell me what you think?! Would love to hear your views. I think in particular the in-race cameras transporting you inside the horses battling it out is extraordinarily good. People have done it before, but not as dramatically as this. You can see Michael Mann camera angles all over this preview... the oblique viewpoints with telling movements and over the shoulder intimacy. Hoffman looks perfect, and since Miami Vice I have really warmed to John Ortiz – his character looks equally promising in the flash we see of him in this. Stylistically, the visuals hit every single note with power, and I am sure Milch's script is going to deliver the storyline. I just need Dillinger to break into a bank for me so I can buy that 42" HD TV and HD subscription for Sky Atlantic... this is not going to be missed!

Incidentally, I should at this point tell you about a guy who left a comment on an earlier post here, predicting this preview/trailer would appear during the first showing of Game of Thrones. He was spot on. He had his theory over HBO marketing, which he shared with me. I am sure he won't mind me quoting him here for all your interest in future HBO trailer releases:

I forgot how exactly I worked it out, but one night I examined the reveals HBO has for teasers of brand new shows, and it usually corresponded with the premiere of a show's first episode about 3/4s of a year away or more away.

So, the first teaser of Boardwalk Empire was in January of last year, and it aired with the first new episode of Big Love's new season. Boardwalk Empire aired in September. Game of Thrones was first revealed with the first new episode of True Blood. 

Since Game of Thrones is the only close "big deal" HBO show, I would think Luck's first teaser will be paired with it. Then again, it might also be a little later with True Blood, but I imagine they want to get the marketing started soon since it's going to air around September or early next year.

James Caan appearing at "Thief" Double Bill event

Today's Los Angeles Times gives mention of James Caan, star of Michael Mann's Thief, appearing in person at a double bill event this Friday.


Aero Theatre
1328 Montana Avenue,
Santa Monica, CA 90403
Fri, April 15
7:30pm

http://www.americancinemathequecalendar.com/content/thief-hide-in-plain-sight


Here is an extract:

Caan will be appearing in person with Friday's double bill: 1981's "Thief," which marked Michael Mann's acclaimed feature debut, and Caan's own directing debut, 1980's "Hide in Plain Sight." Though the reviews were strong for the drama about a man who discovers that that his ex-wife's new husband has been put in the witness protection program and she and his children have joined him, the film was barely promoted and languished. He was so disappointed with the outcome, Caan never directed another film.

Full article here.

Site Update: Adverts

My apologies to all my regular blog readers. I have had to include some more prominent advertising on this site to see whether I can drum up any small amount of revenue to help pay for the social site I have set up over at www.michaelmann.ning.com. I hope the ads don't interfere too much with your experience on the site.

In terms of latest news, there isn't much out there at the moment. I am hearing journalists are not being given access to the cast or location scenes of Luck, so news is scant. They have done well to lock it all down so tight. No doubt the marketing machine will be launched in summer as they whet people's appetites for its USA TV debut anticipated for this Fall. Mann is no doubt very involved in the Robert Capa film as I write, and hopefully some more news will trickle out about that.

In the meantime, my plan is to provide some coverage of "Ali". I am looking forward to boosting information surrounding what might just be one of Mann's most carefully crafted films in his portfolio.

Michael Mann screenwriting approach

Here is an interesting quote from Michael Mann on his approach to screenwriting:

Screenwriting 101: Michael Mann

"All right, let me try an example. A story about a guy who's been a bootlegger and a gunman who's retiring to a rural part of the Midwest. There were some political conflicts in this area; an interesting alignment of forces between the KKK and mine owners on one side, and organized labor, immigrants, and bootleggers on the toher. This guy found himself caught in the middle, became a reluctant gunfighter, and killed a man who was the leader of the Klan in his region. He himself was wounded and died in the skirmish. True history Now, go make that into a story.

Well, how? Where do I start? If you do it the way I just told you, it's like any number of bad screenplays. This is a linear biopic: this happened, that happened, this happened, that happened. That's not a story. A story is, he dies. We don't want to do a linear biopic, so let's have an investigation. In the process of investigation with multiple detectives, I can break down into its component parts the true history of Hearst -- call him "Kane" -- and I can arrange the sequence of all these encounters without regard to chronology. I don't have to move through time in a linear fashion. I can cut to either investigator investigating whatever aspect of his life I want to reveal. I can go present, I can go three weeks ago, twenty-six years ago, back to four years ago; put it in any fashion I want. I've liberated myself from the tyranny of chronology by inventing the narrative."

-- Michael Mann (Manhunter, Heat, The Insider), excerpt from "Screenwriters on Screenwriting," edited by Joel Engel

Michael Mann talks about digital collateral

The following is an article I found on the net, but the source link of the article appears broken. I can say it was originally from the Hollywood Reporter. It is below in entirety:


Revving up digital cinematography

By Carolyn Giardina

Pictured: Director Michael Mann with the Viper FilmStream digital camera on the set of "Collateral" 

Leave it to Michael Mann to shake up the system. The Oscar-nominated director famous for gritty yet visually dazzling depictions of urban life and an uncompromising attitude toward his craft is now ushering digital filmmaking from the extreme reaches of science fiction and low-budget indie into the realm of high-profile studio thriller. The director has elected to use Thomson Grass Valley's Viper FilmStream camera for his upcoming "Collateral," the Tom Cruise-starrer financed by DreamWorks and Paramount, scheduled for an Aug. 6 release. 


As the first director to road-test the Viper -- much anticipated as the first cinema camera capable of storing images as data, directly to a hard drive -- Mann's choices are worth noting in a creative community coming to grips with the practicalities and pitfalls of digital imaging.


The Viper isn't the only camera Mann is using to shoot the movie, which he describes as a "multimedia" effort. He's using the Sony CineAlta high-definition camera, as well as shooting film, but of the roughly 80% of the finished film Mann estimates he's captured digitally, about 80% originated from the Viper.


Mann says his choice was driven by the film's creative needs. The story -- of a veteran hit man (Cruise) who hijacks a cab and forces the driver (Jamie Foxx) to traverse the streets of Los Angeles, transporting him from job to job until the LAPD and the FBI begin to pursue the vehicle -- seems well-suited to electronic cameras.


"Everything is pretty much driven by story, and this whole picture takes place at night," the director says. "I wanted to see into the night. I wanted the night to be alive so that it becomes very three-dimensional. That's what I was trying to get," says Mann, kicking back at the Santa Monica offices that house his production company, Forward Pass.


"There was a quality to the Viper cam that I responded to," says Mann, who is no stranger to digital cameras, having employed high-definition video for the opening sequences of his 2001 biopic "Ali." In particular, he says, the Viper's color imaging worked well for this particular film. "It had to do with the sensitivity of reds and yellows and oranges. This was not only seeing deeply into the night, seeing what you see with the naked eye and something more than you can see with the naked eye, but also the color information. It had an aesthetic that I wanted."


The Viper operates in several modes. At the high end is FilmStream, which captures unprocessed imagery -- no color correction, no compression -- in the 4:4:4 RGB color space, the full color range of an electronic image signal. (While analog film still offers significantly greater color sensitivity than any electronic medium, 4:4:4 RGB is the highest level currently offered in the electronic realm. Film scanned into the digital domain for effects manipulation or what have you is scanned at 4:4:4 RGB. By way of comparison, broadcast HD operates in a 4:2:2 YUV environment, subsampling in blue and red. The Viper also offers 4:2:2 options.)


Though other high-end digital cameras, including the CineAlta, also shoot in 4:4:4 RGB, Thomson vp strategic marketing and business development Jeff Rosica says that what sets the Viper apart is the proprietary CCDs that capture the image as well as the way the data, once acquired, is distributed. The CCDs capture 12-bit linear image, which is then transmitted and stored at 10-bit log space. "Because it's logarithmic, it actually emulates the most important properties of a 12-bit linear signal," says Rosica. The signal is then transferred to a recording device via a dual-link serial HD connection.


Mann and his team began an extensive testing phase by recording material in FilmStream onto a DVS digital disk recorder. "The total capacity was 55 minutes, and it took 35 hours to download (to videotape for dailies)," Mann says. "So obviously that wasn't ready for feature film production." 


Next, they tested S.two digital mags to store the uncompressed raw data. "So our storage went down to something that was physically manageable in a much more compact hard drive," Mann says. "But what it posed upon us was a long-term storage capacity of 330 terabytes, which is economically unfeasible with the current limits of the drive technology." (A terabyte of storage costs about $50,000.)


Mann then decided "to see what would happen if we put a mild compression on (the images)" and switched to Viper's VideoStream mode, which offers a 10-bit 4:4:4 RGB video, as opposed to data, signal and provides light image processing allowing for truer color reproduction in the field. "With FilmStream you're getting raw data. VideoStream functions more like a normal high-def camera, which allowed him to control the ASA," says "Collateral" associate producer Bryan Carroll.


Both modes lens in 2.37:1 widescreen without any loss of vertical resolution.


"We took it all the way to the equivalent of a release print, so it's not like we were looking at something on a monitor and taking it on faith," Mann says.


While employing the latest in digital imaging technologies, Mann took care to note that his storytelling fundamentals are essentially unchanged. "In our system, we impose on everybody the grammar and syntax that we are shooting film. All the disciplines apply, and that's very important on the floor during production. We are mixing a digital culture with a film culture, and it has to be film grammar."


That approach drove the design of a massive workflow system that brought together the material from the film camera, Viper, and the other camera system Mann employed, Sony's CineAlta F900 HD. The HDCAM footage essentially had to be handled as camera negative. Everything that was shot -- film and digital -- was digitized into Avids for postproduction, during which a digital color grading session will take place.


Mann cites Carroll as well as Thomson's Mark Chiolis, Laser Pacific's Leon Silverman and Terry Brown and Panavision's Nolan Murdock as integral to working out the bugs in the system.


Prior to filming, a team including Mann and A-camera operator Gary Jay, (who has worked with Mann since 1992's "The Last of the Mohicans") guided modifications to the Viper.


"The camera body itself wasn't ergonomic for use on a production," Mann says. "We wanted weights added to the rear of the camera to increase the mass and balance back there. We needed rods for the matte box and focus-bracket system because we do a lot of hand-holding. The control buttons needed covers because you could unbalance the camera and not know you did it. This is small stuff, but it's major when you just got done having a take that's brilliant, or you think that the actors were brilliant and it looks perfect, and you find out you switched it to FilmStream."


With his arsenal of camera technology, production began and Mann focused his attention on directing. Dion Beebe ("Chicago") came on board as director of photography.


As 27 pages of the "Collateral" screenplay take place in a car, mobility was a priority. There were some limitations as the Viper was cabled to its recording deck. Mann says that when he wanted complete mobility for handheld work, the crew used the CineAlta F900 (which is configured more like a camcorder, recording to either standard Sony HDCAM or SW tapes).


"The benefit is that there is a 55-minute tape, so in that sense there are fewer interruptions," Mann says. "(With film) if you are hand holding and you have a 400-foot mag in there, every three minutes and 45 seconds you are having to stop." (There are third-party developers working on Viper recording options, including a portable drive to enable cinematographers to work untethered.)


Creatively, he says, "there's no silver bullet in all of this. ... You have to know what you want, more so than film. In film, you can rely on certain conventional looks, almost like a perceptual preset about what you're used to having. Not so in video, it's a much broader spectrum so you have to know what you want.


"What I like about the Viper is it sees colors, it sees things, in a different way," Mann says. "People are reaching for more expressive ways to visualize and have emotional impact. That's what it all comes down to, the emotional impact to tell a story."