As mentioned before, David and I had moved to New York almost one month to the day BEFORE they started shooting this. We were disappointed we were not going to get a chance to work on the film while we were still in town. (Johnny Depp even stayed in a hotel in my tiny and random home town.) Having seen the film now, I dare say I’m almost glad my name is not attached.

What happened here? I haven’t seen a film on the big screen look so flat and clearly video since… I want to say 28 Days Later (shot on a Canon XL-1), but even that did not look as flat and grainy as Public Enemies.

28 Days Later. Video-y, yes. Flat, not so much.

It was almost rough enough I thought I was at a sneak months before the release date. So poorly lit and sound recorded I thought I was watching a low budget Indie. Unfortunately, this film will be held as an example of what can be produced out of Wisconsin, since it is the first major release to come from the new tax incentives. I thought the same, and was frankly disappointed. I know there are a lot of pros in Wisconsin that can make a good feature. But, then I took a look at the credits on imdb and every person I clicked on was not hired out of Wisconsin! The Cinematographer and a handfull of Sound Guys worked on L.A. Confidential. The Steadi-cam Op is from Le Vie en Rose. Grips from Road to Perdition, Lighting Techs from CSI, House, 24… These are some seasoned pros. So why is it so technically poor? They had a 35mm adapter with film lenses, but it seems they only chose to use it for about a dozen shots out of the whole film. No-body and no-thing was lit correctly (I think they honestly used natural light in nearly every shot), and the audio mix was non-existent, as well as the pure recording of audio was apparently so bad that they had to amp dialogue here and there just so lines could be heard, which inevitability amps the background noise so you get this sudden burst of sounds like you’ve just popped your ears after takeoff. All of which is totally in contrast to great acting, dynamite cast, great costuming and set design, locations, props, music. I have no specific complaints about the directing, although you have to wonder why Michael Mann didn’t say “Why is it so dark, dialogue so quiet, and shot so needlessly shaky? What is this, Cops?”

In addition to the pure and undeniably low quality footage they were producing, the camera work really stood out. The first shot of the film is wobbly and bumpy like the camera guy was fumbling to hold onto the camera. Immediately I thought, “Well that was weird.” But the rest of the movie carried on with the same kind of bumps and shakes. There’s a scene at a hearing with the FBI where the cameraman appears as though he’s trying to sneak into the room without the actors knowing, but instead trips over his shoelace and has to make a quick recovery. Nothing in this movie is shot POV, nor is there any room for Bourne Identity “Shaky Cam.” ESPECIALLY when you’re shooting in a video camera with a picture that’s so flat and grainy. It makes it look all the more like a reality show. Why not use a tripod? In the shootout at the cabin toward the end of the movie, the cameraman just seemed flustered to get a shot and ended up shooting a lot of nothing. There was a lot of whipping around to action that had already ended.

The Sony F23 LOOKS like a pro camera.

Given the questionable camerawork, I started to wonder whether all the poorly lit shots in the movie weren’t just the fault of the cameraman not opening the iris far enough. But no, even in the outdoor sunlit shots nobody bothered to bounce light onto the actor’s faces. And everyone is wearing big hats that put a shadow on their faces, requiring extra attention all the more. You’ve got to light faces, otherwise the audience’s eye wanders to the next brighest thing, no matter what it is. It’s hard to keep someone’s attention when you can’t see them. Even an edge of light around a silhouette to pop them from the background is necessary at the very least. The lighting in Public Enemies looked as though no one bothered to check the monitor and assumed the camera was picking up the light people were seeing with their eyes. There’s a scene with Christian Bale in their office at the police station with very moody lighting, cigarette smoke and the whole shebang. Definitely a film noir feel, and a decent place to go dramatic. The only problem was that the few beams of light that are illuminating the scene were not lighting anything. Anything the filmmakers would have wanted to draw the audience’s eye to was too dark to make out. I can’t help but wonder, if Christian Bale blows up over someone breaking his concentration on set, imagine what he thought when he saw that in half his scenes, nobody can see his brilliant performance.

Shadows can ruin a moment.

It's just a bit too muddy. It could have really popped.

Boy, I don’t know. This film is just mind boggling. In some ways it gives hope to the Indies out there that want a major release but didn’t think their film was up to the standards of Dreamworks and Paramount. But it also really makes me wonder how something like this got to print. Weren’t they watching dailies and noticing these issues? No high def makeup person? Maybe they were looking for grit, but at least do it for the women. Yeesh! None of the actors they paid good money to be in the film are properly lit? There’s only so much you can, want to, and should have to “Fix in post”. And their sound was certified amateurish. You get a couple mistakes per film: a jump cut for no other solution, bad ADR for a line, but the issues in Public Enemies were from start to finish and I can’t believe no one put a stop to it.

Right down to the editing there are problems. Shots linger on WAY too long after they should. And it’s not even a case of letting it linger for emotion. I’m talking about shots of the sides of empty doorways, blurry over the shoulder shots where the subject of the angle is still standing and we’re looking at their pants. It was obvious that the Editor was trying to cut around mistakes made in production with some of the cutaways to nothing in particular to hide another cut, or using a shot where the faces went dark and then cutting to another angle which was less than ideally composed, so he cuts back to the original dark shot. But there are a lot of really rough and long shots that could just use a trim.

Something tells me there was a lot of compromising and scraping for something usable for this movie. But I just have to wonder what happened.
An article came out today from Studio Daily on the “Tech of Public Enemies” where they talk about the camera. In the article, Michael Mann says he originally wanted to shoot it on film. For God’s sake, follow your gut next time! This movie should have been great. It should have been a contender! Instead, I’ll probably be forgetting all about it in a few weeks. What the hell, Hollywood?