Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

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mfunk9786
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#226 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Jul 09, 2018 4:43 pm

Mixed feelings about the film itself aside, a Criterion edition of an Anderson film is always an essential purchase, regardless of format.

John Shade
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#227 Post by John Shade » Mon Jul 09, 2018 6:01 pm

Totally agree; hoping the slight delay for Grand Budapest will mean some more extras.

McCrutchy
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#228 Post by McCrutchy » Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:50 pm

The Fox Blu-ray extras (six featurettes, photo gallery, trailer) add up to less than 25 minutes, which further points in the direction of a Criterion release.

Also, I believe some or all of the featurettes are the same as the ones Fox posted online.

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R0lf
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#229 Post by R0lf » Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:45 am

So can someone spoil this for me: is the ISLE OF DOGS an island or a peninsula??

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TMDaines
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#230 Post by TMDaines » Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:09 pm

So I’ve only just realised this film’s title is a holorime. I cannot be the only one who’s late to this.

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Never Cursed
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#231 Post by Never Cursed » Sat Sep 15, 2018 10:19 pm

Wait till someone tells Demi Adejuyigbe

John Shade
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#232 Post by John Shade » Sun Sep 16, 2018 10:04 am

Earlier in this thread someone suggested that it's apparent Wes isn't much of a dog person. Also earlier a number of us wondered if something about this film was missing, whether characterization or, for lack of a better term, an obvious passion or source of inspiration. I stumbled on this interview and Wes basically admits he isn't much of a dog person. I think if he had gone ahead and made a David Copperfield adaptation it would have been a more interesting choice.

https://www.timeout.com/london/film/wes ... ian-london

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dda1996a
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#233 Post by dda1996a » Sun Sep 16, 2018 10:27 am

I dunno, I really dug this. Yes the melancholy undercurrent that elevates most of his films was a bit lacking here (this isn't even close to how brilliant I find Mr. Fox) but I still found it both funny, beautifully made and crafted while it's political undertones were rather great. Also disagree about a lot of the "appropriation" but I'll leave that subject for now. Can a minor Anderson film still be great? I'll say yes but I never disliked or felt average about any of his films so I'm probably not objective enough...

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whaleallright
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#234 Post by whaleallright » Mon Sep 17, 2018 7:24 pm

The truth is, I like dogs as characters in movies. To me, the dogs in our story are people.
Yeah, this is what I was softly complaining about above. Anderson can make whatever movie he likes, of course, I was just disappointed by how the dogs didn't really behave like dogs, at all.

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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#235 Post by MongooseCmr » Mon Sep 17, 2018 7:45 pm

I can’t say what “behaving like dogs” means, but found the first half hour in the dump with the dogs behaving like the Dogs Playing Poker the most amusing stretch of the movie.

black&huge
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#236 Post by black&huge » Thu Sep 27, 2018 12:47 pm

Watched this last night just a quick question: what did Anderson do to achieve the simultaneous background/foreground focus shots? Examples would be the translator in the booth for when Kobayashi spoke and she was in focus on the far left side of the screen while the stage and Kobayashi were dominant on the right side in focus as well in the background and also the ending speech with Atari at the podium with the exchange student close up in profile. I thought it was split diopter at first then wondered if it was an actual deep focus lens or if it was a compositing trick done in editing.

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movielocke
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#237 Post by movielocke » Thu Sep 27, 2018 3:01 pm

black&huge wrote:Watched this last night just a quick question: what did Anderson do to achieve the simultaneous background/foreground focus shots? Examples would be the translator in the booth for when Kobayashi spoke and she was in focus on the far left side of the screen while the stage and Kobayashi were dominant on the right side in focus as well in the background and also the ending speech with Atari at the podium with the exchange student close up in profile. I thought it was split diopter at first then wondered if it was an actual deep focus lens or if it was a compositing trick done in editing.
Deep focus might be possible depending on the lenses used, but it would require a lot of light. A split diopter would require even more light. And you don’t want to damage the puppets by blasting them with 4-10x normal light requirements.

So I would guess it is just your standard compositing.

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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#238 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Sep 27, 2018 3:53 pm

Didn't he shoot this digital like Fox?

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Lost Highway
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#239 Post by Lost Highway » Thu Sep 27, 2018 4:27 pm

flyonthewall2983 wrote:
Thu Sep 27, 2018 3:53 pm
Didn't he shoot this digital like Fox?
Yup

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Kirkinson
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#240 Post by Kirkinson » Thu Sep 27, 2018 5:59 pm

They definitely did some compositing:
Filmmaker: If you’re on a 20mm, the dog on the right of frame must be pretty close to the lens.

Oliver: Yeah, he is very close. Occasionally we would just run into an issue of physics [when trying to replicate the animatic]. Actually, when I say occasionally, I mean daily. (laughs) If you are working in the live action world then you can happily compose a shot like this without any real problem regarding how much focus you’ve got, because your characters are going to be three or four feet from the camera. But when your characters are three or four inches from the camera, then it’s a whole different ballgame. You’re working at the minimum focus point of the lens and the only way to get anything resembling an acceptable depth of field is to wind the aperture right down to the bottom, and even then it’s never going to be quite as good as you want. So we do occasionally split shots into planes of focus and shoot the foreground elements against greenscreen and then shoot the midground elements separately and then composite the whole lot together afterwards.
But Oliver also says that they tried to achieve as much depth of field as possible in-camera, and notes that for stop motion you can easily use a much slower shutter speed than if you're shooting video or motion picture film, so that can help compensate for the high f-stop you need to achieve deep focus.

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movielocke
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#241 Post by movielocke » Thu Sep 27, 2018 6:18 pm

Kirkinson wrote:
Thu Sep 27, 2018 5:59 pm
They definitely did some compositing:
Filmmaker: If you’re on a 20mm, the dog on the right of frame must be pretty close to the lens.

Oliver: Yeah, he is very close. Occasionally we would just run into an issue of physics [when trying to replicate the animatic]. Actually, when I say occasionally, I mean daily. (laughs) If you are working in the live action world then you can happily compose a shot like this without any real problem regarding how much focus you’ve got, because your characters are going to be three or four feet from the camera. But when your characters are three or four inches from the camera, then it’s a whole different ballgame. You’re working at the minimum focus point of the lens and the only way to get anything resembling an acceptable depth of field is to wind the aperture right down to the bottom, and even then it’s never going to be quite as good as you want. So we do occasionally split shots into planes of focus and shoot the foreground elements against greenscreen and then shoot the midground elements separately and then composite the whole lot together afterwards.
But Oliver also says that they tried to achieve as much depth of field as possible in-camera, and notes that for stop motion you can easily use a much slower shutter speed than if you're shooting video or motion picture film, so that can help compensate for the high f-stop you need to achieve deep focus.
well, yes you can compensate a high f-stop with more lights or with longer exposure, But as he said, it's never all that good to just stop all the way down, there are optical performance issues with lenses and the exposure that occur because you're stopping down. And as he indicates, they're operating well outside the sweet spot of the lenses in terms of focusing distance and also of aperture.

And having been personally disappointed by some very expensive glass, I can attest that stopping down to the minimum aperture is usually a bad idea that will give you poor image outcomes even if you've otherwise compensated light levels and exposure lengths.

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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#242 Post by Leo Realism » Thu Sep 27, 2018 10:11 pm

Kirkinson wrote:
Thu Sep 27, 2018 5:59 pm
They definitely did some compositing:
Filmmaker: If you’re on a 20mm, the dog on the right of frame must be pretty close to the lens.

Oliver: Yeah, he is very close. Occasionally we would just run into an issue of physics [when trying to replicate the animatic]. Actually, when I say occasionally, I mean daily. (laughs) If you are working in the live action world then you can happily compose a shot like this without any real problem regarding how much focus you’ve got, because your characters are going to be three or four feet from the camera. But when your characters are three or four inches from the camera, then it’s a whole different ballgame. You’re working at the minimum focus point of the lens and the only way to get anything resembling an acceptable depth of field is to wind the aperture right down to the bottom, and even then it’s never going to be quite as good as you want. So we do occasionally split shots into planes of focus and shoot the foreground elements against greenscreen and then shoot the midground elements separately and then composite the whole lot together afterwards.
In digital still photography this technique is called focus stacking. The depth of field of any lens is thinner the closer the focus. In macro photography, focusing so close to reproduce small subjects at a 1:1 ratio restricts the depth of field. Stopping down to the minimum aperture of a lens results in loss of sharpness due to diffraction - not to mention that at such very close distances it's still not enough depth of field. What's more is that sharpness lost to lens diffraction is more of a problem with the recent proliferation of very high megapixel sensors. In macro still photography it's therefore become common to composite images focused at different planes to get the subject in focus.

This is probably one of the few aspects where stop motion is less work than shooting live action.

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whaleallright
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#243 Post by whaleallright » Fri Sep 28, 2018 4:32 pm

the compositing also aids the stop-motion effects, because different animators can work on different parts of the frame at the same time. one can be animating, say, the lapping water at the edge of the island, while others can be animating elements in the sky (like the flying airplane), still others the characters on the ground. then those elements, separately animated, can be brought together. this obviously requires a lot of careful coordination (digital helps a lot here too), but it permits different animators to work more efficiently.

btw the book on this film is finally out. someone really screwed the pooch (pun definitely intended) on this one. i'm sure they had plenty of pre-orders, but surely they would have sold twice as many books had it come out when the film opened, when it was still in theaters, or even at the moment it was released to home video. it looks like a fantastic book, though, and i was pleased that it gets even deeper into the weeds on Anderson's visual approach (including stuff not exclusive to his stop-motion work) than the previous books in the series, I think.

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domino harvey
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#244 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 16, 2018 3:52 pm

Spoke Art's annual Wes Anderson-inspired original art exhibit and limited edition print collection is all about Isle of Dogs this year

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mfunk9786
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#245 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:32 pm

If you keep scrolling there's some other stuff (of varying qualities) too - tempted by that print of the Tenenbaums' house

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domino harvey
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#246 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:33 pm

Those are holdovers from previous years' exhibitions, but yes, you can find other, older limited prints that haven't sold out yet for other films in the same link

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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#247 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:35 pm

OH. Well I'm not rushing then

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domino harvey
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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#248 Post by domino harvey » Sun Nov 25, 2018 12:06 am

Watching this after so many months of internet thinkpieces and long-winded negative examinations of the utter minutae of its perceived ills is as good an example as any I've ever encountered of why I need to start dialing down internet usage and exposure to as close to nothing as possible (perhaps this is what Godard envisioned when he had Leaud and Berto opine for a return to zero in Le gai savoir). I went in with the lowest of expectations, not just because so few here or elsewhere seemed enthused with the film, but also because I place Fantastic Mr Fox near the bottom of Anderson's oeuvre. But this ranks near the top for me, and I found it a pure expression of entertainment via a strong forward-driving plot momentum, propulsive soundtrack, and of course maximum sensory overload. It was cute without being saccharine or reverential, the story was compelling and well-structured, and ultimately it felt like one of those wonderful weird kids' adventure novels from the sixties that Suzy would have loved in Moonrise Kingdom.

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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#249 Post by nitin » Sun Nov 25, 2018 12:56 am

I also think it’s one of his best (only Tenenbaums is his outright great movie for me but Rushmore, this and The Darjeeling Ltd all would sit on the next rung). As usual there is plenty to criticise, but I would argue even more to love. I get that for some people it will be the opposite (it certainly works that way for me for Moonrise Kingdom) but this seemed to get hit with criticisms that were less about the film and more about ‘other stuff’.

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Re: Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

#250 Post by swo17 » Sun Nov 25, 2018 1:33 am

I'm more or less with domino though I also like my brother's suggestion that Paddington 2 is the better Wes Anderson film

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