The Bourne Inspiration
Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 4:28PM 
In response to the subway short trend, Eric Escobar blogged about a scene in The Bourne Supremacy that he finds rebelliously inspirational. That struck a chord with me, as I too have a Bourne scene that inspires me. It’s the Waterloo Station scene in The Bourne Ultimatum.
In this scene, Bourne outwits CIA operatives while guiding a reporter to safety. It was shot in London’s busiest train station without disrupting thousands of commuters and travelers. That’s right, it’s the ultimate subway short!
What’s amazing about this scene is that it follows the DV Rebel rulebook to the letter. They used a minimal crew and natural light. When out among the general public, the only props we see are cell phones and a syringe. It’s only when the action moves to a stairwell that the guns come out. A sniper gets involved, and his footage too is shot separately from the actual station (a wee bit of greenscreen work connects the two). All of this is intercut with people in a room full of monitors. There’s nothing in this scene you couldn’t do yourself, without permits.
For The DV Rebel’s Guide my editors went to great effort to secure the rights to use the kitchen scene in La Femme Nikita as an example of an approachable DV Rebel action scene. But as the Bourne films show us, such scenes are abundant. For every Bond chase with flipping cars and helicopter shots, there’s a gritty, tense mano a mano battle that requires nothing more than hard work and great choreography.
I think this guy’s got a power window on his face.
And color correction. The Bourne sequels are great examples of the hidden gift to the DV Rebel that lurks in many a DVD—the supplemental materials feature deleted and alternate scenes prior to their DI color correction (see Color Makes the Movie). It’s easy to see how the vérité footage, often shot without immaculate control over lighting, becomes more cinematic and pointed thanks to the DI. Color correction adds style, but it also helps tell the story by subtly altering the lighting. Again, this is 100% Rebel-compatible—with readily available tools such as Magic Bullet Looks, Colorista, Apple Color and Adobe After Effects (plus the DV Rebel Tools), you can often color-correct your way to high production value—and you’ll be in good company doing so.
A pre-DI shot from the deleted scenes
That same shot is in the film, color corrected
Reader Comments (13)
Actually I think the reporter isn't 'guided to safety' he gets shot in the head.
Great movie, I've got it on HD-DVD (remember that?) and watch it whenever I get a chance.
Awesome post again, Stu.
My TIFFs are rendering right now, then I'll need to put the music to it, but the HMC Subway short will be up tonight. Jack Bauer is going to get in the way a little, but what can you do. My S.S. is very just thrown together considering I have nowhere near real time editing in HD. Forget "fps", I'm looking at SPF, about 5 seconds per frame. So the edit is just meh, and I didnt want to do any relighting - but since Colorista and MBL took so much light out of it, I boosted the entire thing by 1 stop. I wanted it to be as close to actual low light performance as possible, but it did turn out darker than the original.
Anyway... it'll be up this evening.
Uhm, spoiler much Rocket Boy? :)
I have it on HDDVD as well, and thankfully it's a dual-format disk so I could grab these screenshots. The disk is worth having for the Dan Bradly 2nd unit supplemental goodies alone.
Can't wait to see your stuff Brian. Remember, there's no prize for fastest color correction.
I just watched Bourne 3 this weekend, at a hotel in HD up close. It looked great, and I got lost in the story (again) quickly - usually I tend to scrutinize shots and the like.
Brian, I'm very curious to see your piece when posted. Did I read you were coming from AVCHD to TIFF? I've been going to 10-bit ProRes for that workflow. Do you need 16-bit or something? Just wondering why the TIFF route.
As much as I love the film, it's just a bit too shaky for me, it's hard to watch at times. Totally spot-on in regards to the simplicity of setup and shots. I just saw Quantum of Solace this weekend, too (gotta see it again), and noted that the fighting styles and shots are quite similar (lots of close-range, tight quarter fights).
Did anyone else notice a lot of blown-out highlights everywhere? Not sure I'm recalling that correctly. Deliberate? Avoidable?
Remember, there's no prize for fastest color correction.
:(
It takes 5 seconds to display a NON-CCed frame, 10+ for Colorista and MBL. Sadly, this is far too painful for me to take my time on. In addition to that, I dont want to CC the poo out of it. Part of me wants to just put up the "raw" footage - but then I also want to try to make it look it's best.
BTW, the TIFF render on 3:50 vid was 4.5 hours. I JUST started the h264 for Vimeo. (Which is why I'm yapping and not giving a link to the vid.)
:(
Brian,
what are you using (not) to edit this footage. I have Pinnacle Studio 12 (I know, I know, but it was a $100 upgrade that came with Magic Bullet Looks included, so...)
And even though it gets nowhere near real time, I can edit the AVCHD footage from my Canon HV100 without too much problem natively.
I haven't seen much better performance from CS4 or f.e. Edius in regard to AVCHD right now.
Maybe something to look into?
I'm using TMPGENC to convert it to other formats then edit that in... I was going to say Premiere, but since it's so far from realtime, I'm just bypassing Premiere and editing in AE. And for the record, my problems aren't with AVCHD, it's with HD in ANY form. AVCHD would just be that much worse. It's not a matter of software, it's a matter of needing a new computer.
(still rendering)
HD makes me sad.
:(
why arent you using premiere? i love it.
i work with tiff sequences or psd sequences straight from afx and can edit in real time.
i usually start my sessions by dragging all my footage straight down onto the timeline, hit return and mooch off for a cup of tea
by the time i get back the whole thing has had preview files created. so i just delete all the shots off the time line and edit away. each file that hits the timeline from then on is in real time.
...and can edit in real time.
IF your computer can handle it. Mine cant.
I was up until 4 rendering and rerendering... I let a final render go at 4 and woke at 7 to find that it was horrible. To get a decent low compressed picture, it came to 550MB which is too high for Vimeo, but getting it down to 250 made it look like crap. I'm just too busy to play with this forever.
HMC Subway Short
http://vimeo.com/2338166
I uploaded an SD version since I'm only alotted one HD upload per week, and wanted to see how this looked before using that spot. Just watching on QT, though, the downrezzed version is even darker than the full rez.
This is not indicative of the original footage - if anything, it's just indicative of my poor handling of it.
Shot on Saturday night, Nov 22, on the LA subway from Universal City to Union station.
HMC150
720p/24p
1/48, Usually wide open unless I accidentally bumped it.
Stock Sc. File 6
5600 WB
No gain, except at the payphone.
Horribly edited and rendered on a severely underpowered machine. Minor Levels in Colorista and a modified "Ultimatum" setting in MB Looks set to 60% in the timeline.
(I reserve the right to revisit this when I get a semi-decent computer.)
Hey, I have that same Oakley computer bag!
It's awesome. I just wish they made an awesome camera bag like this. I'd get me one for my SLRs and video.
Strangely, it is about 10x more bag than storage space. My bag prior to this was a Gap bag at 1/5 the price and thought the Oakley would give me more room. Not so much.
Dexter carries the bag also, so we are in good company.