The Clear "Electric" Look in Olivier Assayas' "Clean"

[eoinmm]

David,

I just watched Oliver Assayas' CLEAN (I just butchered his last name btw), and was wondering...what stock is used to achieve that great CLEAR/ELECTRIC look. If you've not seen it, I'd also compare the look to films like Lost in Translation, Code 42 (the one w/ Tim Robbins), Babel (the scenes shot in Tokyo), Three Times (Taiwan) etc. I love the way it captures everything so clear and white and also how it captures night scenes in very urban/neon areas. It looks so great with that nice shallow depth of field...is it PURELY a stock question though? Or are there filters involved as well...

Generally speaking, how would you achieve it?

Here are some visual examples:

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Just looks like sharp 35mm photography using soft but contrasty lighting.

 

[eoinmm]

Really? Must just be personal preference, but I always figured it was a specific stock or processing style since it seems so stylistically different from features that are shot here in the US.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, they are all shot in different styles, but most of them were 35mm.

"Lost in Translation" used a very low-contrast 500 ASA 35mm stock that doesn't exist anymore (5263), so it's not a snappy, contrasty look -- actually more of a soft, pastel, murky look. You may be seeing it on DVD or something. Hardly an "electric" look other than the urban landscape is very neon-lit.

"Babel" used a lot of stocks - the Tokyo scenes were also shot on 35mm anamorphic lenses but cropped to 1.85 -- parts of the movie were shot in Super-16 (the Morocco scenes). The whole thing went through a D.I. which can affect the way the stocks looked.

In other words, the frames you posted look like normal 35mm photography (except the bottom one, which is a little milky) but the movies themselves have different looks separate from each other.