Chris and I have been editing and doing a lot of the visual effects and it seems strangely appropriate to our Victorian theme that we’re doing so with what are increasingly ancient tools. The whole show has been cut on Final Cut 7 and most of Chris’ more complicated and beautiful effects shots have been put together in Shake. These are both tools that, in their wisdom, Apple have discontinued.

Each time one or other system falls over we share a nagging dread. Mainly this is prompted by the automatic post-crash question of “do you want to inform Apple to help fix problems…” which always provokes a grimly bitter laugh. What would be the point?

Who knows, hopefully Apple will soon bring out a major upgrade to FCP X and bring it at least half a step closer to being the radical reinvention of the nature of non-linear editing that they boasted it would be when they released what instead turned out to be a souped-up edition of iMovie. That day still seems some way off though. As to Shake, the future is clearer and blacker. Apple bought it, Apple ate it. There are still rumours that it will rise again phoenix like in the guise of a new super-powered compositing tool currently codenamed Phenomenon. But this still sounds more like the plot of the next X-Men reboot, doubtlessly with a naked Michael Fassbender staring as the mysterious and deadly FCPX… Sadly what seems more likely is that the tool, once used to help Apple crowbar their way into the market, will remain condemned to gradual obsolescence now the market is less interesting to a company whose main profits come from selling telephones.

Alexander Graham Bell with a top secret mock-up of the iPhone 5.

All I know is that the digital age has ushered in an interesting conundrum. In the past most technology became outdated because it was superseded. The barge was bettered by the steam train which itself only became a relic due to the invention of a better technology. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this steam-powered Final Cut 7 I’m using, though since it’s not been updated for some years it is starting to feel the strain of dealing with brand new video formats, hence the crashes.

A true Apple Zealot would probably tell me that this is precisely why it has been hung out to dry. That FCPX’s ground-up rebuild was the only sensible way to ensure they could create a platform that would be stable for the next decade of advancements in video formats. I’m already at the edge of my technological comfort zone so to that I argument I can only shrug and mutter that be that as it may, it’s still a shame FCPX wasn’t born in better shape, most especially a shape less like that of a major player turning its back on the industry.

But hey-ho, bah and-indeed humbug. Just remember that when you watch The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff This Christmas do remember that it was lovingly hand carved on a genuine Victorian non-linear editing platform and composited using exactly the same node-based technology that a 19th century Shake compositor would have used.

Buy the The iPhone 4 SLR Mount at the Photojojo Store!

Whilst some of you may coo with lust at this, I imagine most people share my initial response of utter derision. Ungainly, unbalanced and cumbersome are just three words that instantly spring to mind. However Ashley, the smartest Blaine in the box, was quicker to see the potential.

“A DSLR is a mobile computer. iOS devices are amazing mobile computers. Many other devices have “converged” into the iPhone (MP3 player, cheapo stills & video cameras, slide viewer, DVD player, phone etc)…

…Upload to Internet, tether to laptop via WiFi, apply filter processing whilst shooting, geocode shots, record accelerometer motion & compass direction whilst shooting video, monitor feeds from other cameras whilst shooting video etc etc etc… (most of this just quick ideas off the top of my head).

And certainly an iPhone based DSLR doesn’t have to be horribly unbalanced as this alternative prototype suggests…

However, besides the lens, there are two other vital things that a DSLR camera has that an iPhone doesn’t. The camera in the iPhone has a sensor that’s 4.54mm x 3.39mm. The sensor in the Canon 5D is 36mm x 24mm. Almost more importantly a DSLR shoots onto SD memory cards which are easy to swap over. Once one card is full you replace it and continue shooting, with a full-up iPhone you’d need to either stop shooting and wait for the footage to download or have two iPhones…

Though none of this is to argue with Ashley’s basic point, plugging an even better handheld computer into the back of a DSLR is nothing but a bonus. Rather than attaching lenses to my phone, what I’d really love to have is a dock for an iPhone to connect direct to the DSLR.

That way you’d lose none of the image quality or comfort of shooting whilst gaining all the many benefits Ashley imagines. With a powerful wireless device connected directly to the DSLR it should be possible to stream the image live to other iPhones. So everyone with an iPhone would have their own monitor in the palm of their hand. Similarly all the meta data created by the camera could automatically populate out into the script supervisors continuity notes. The DP would be able to call up storyboard images and compare them frame for frame with the real thing.

Can I have that for Christmas please?

ShotList first caught my eye because I’ve recently been struggling with an old-school Movie Magic schedule produced by my production manager. A few details of the shoot had changed and there were also a couple of sequences that we wanted to film later than scheduled for creative reasons. As ever with a schedule, what started out as a couple of tweaks soon left us chasing that metaphorical bubble in the philosophical wallpaper and before you could say “print it out and attack it with scissors” we were printing it out and attacking it with scissors.

There’s something clunky about a computer screen when it comes to rearranging production strips, something unnatural. Once everything was off the desktop and onto the table top things got a lot easier. So the thought of an app that would enable me to recreate this fingertip shuffling process in the digital realm made me very excited.

And in principle it still does. However, like the DSLR Toolkit, ShotList is still in first release stage and has a lot of growing up to do. Similarly, as with the DSLR Toolkit, the developer, in this case Peter Johnson of SolubleApps, is responsive and keen for feedback from filmmakers so the app can quickly grow. This is all very positive as there is a great deal of potential for ShotList to become an essential tool.

It already has some cracking ideas behind it. You can store storyboard frames/location photographs and associate them with each scene in the schedule. You can email updates from within the programme. You can save the whole project to a dropbox for ease of sharing with your crew. And of course in the middle of it all, you can, as I hoped, rearrange your filming plans with the flick of a finger. Beautiful.

There are though two big things that currently stop it being truly functional. The first is that there’s no import or export function. The second is that there’s no import or export function to or from anything. So, in my earlier situation I’d have still been printing out the schedule on real paper, cutting it up with real scissors, sticking it back together with real sellotape and then getting my real brother to retype the whole damn thing into his real computer. This is frustrating because, as I said before, as soon as you start having to retype digital data you know that there is a problem with the workflow.

I mention the import/export problem twice just to underline that what I would never consider doing ever is retyping the information my PM sent me into the app using my iPhone touch screen keypad. On the SolubleApps site Peter talks about using the app either for small shoots or to make a day-by-day “to-do” list for a bigger production, so clearly they don’t imagine anyone would input an entire six-week shoot direct into the app. But I really can’t see myself even typing up a morning’s schedule using only my iPhone. Perhaps if I had the app on an iPad it’d be different but whilst I think of the iPhone typepad as an exceptionally responsive and easy-to-use keyboard for a display not much bigger than a business card, it’s still a tiny fiddly thing and a film schedule is a lot of typing, each scene is a lot of typing. Again I come back to my second fundamental principle – if you’re ever retyping digital data something has gone wrong.

As I said at the start being an app is not enough. Mirroring existing technology or processes on the iPhone is of no value if it doesn’t bring additional benefits. What’s also strange about the current design of ShotList is that it seems to imagine the production process ending when someone shouts “Cut!”

The real smart work of the Movie*Slate app is that the shooting notes you create in it transfer directly into the edit. How much better would that be if the notes started out in the schedule? Yes the Movie*Slate input system is well designed and full of handy short cuts for instantly throwing in common details like “close up” or “tracking” or “interview” but considering most of these notes will pre-exist in the form of the shooting schedule this is still really just extraneous retyping.

The process of making a film is about the flow of information from the mind of a writer into the mind of a director into the working day of a camera crew and on into the edit suite. A wireless, digital, paperless way of passing this information seamlessly through that chain would be blissful.

I don’t want to damn ShotList too much. Like I say, this is the first release and it does represent a solid start. Regular updates are planned in the coming months and apparently import controls will be coming, depending on take-up levels and the accessibility of each particular file format.

I do though have to say that £17.99 is far too expensive for an app without these features. When fully functional I really can see this being an essential piece of kit and something that would justify that price tag… if my PM could do a schedule in MovieMagic and I could put it into ShotList, fiddle with it, send it back so she can change it again, then send it to the crew who then add in camera details, time code and shoot notes before once more beaming the information over to the editor who drops it seamlessly into the edit programme… well I’d gladly pay double for that! For the time being though I think that encouraging people to try it out with an introductory price closer to the DSLR Toolkit’s £4.99 would make much more sense.

Having the schedule and storyboard linked and updated on my phone is a very tantalising prospect. Being able to update everyone’s schedule at the touch of a button is very very tantalising. Being able to reorganise data with my hands is gorgeous. This app has a lot of promise and a potentially very bright future. If it was cheaper I’d tell you to buy it early and help shape the direction it takes, sadly as it stands I don’t have to remind you that you can still pick up decent scissors for £3.

Perfect huh?

Though one thing that did confuse me was the original music… I really genuinely thought it was this piece of loveliness by Ludovico Einaudi…

As the name implies, this app sets out to give you a wide selection of different tools which it hopes will be invaluable to your DSLR filming. As with Movie*Slate there’s a digital Slate and an exportable Shot Log, but the Toolkit also features a View Finder, a Depth Of Field calculator, a Spirit Level and a handy guide to Daylight times.

The Slate and Shot Log are less impressive than Movie*Slate. To be fair, slates are slates and whilst at first I thought it a problem that this one only ran “time of day” and had no timecode support, this is actually more than fair enough for a product designed for the DSLR, which generally don’t make their timecode accessible to other devices anyway. True, Movie*Slate has a clever way of sending LTC Timecode into a DSLR via an audio cable but I can think of only a few occasions when this will be more useful than syncing in post using pluraleyes. Let us not forget price either – Movie*Slate is £11.99 with an additional £29.99 in-app purchase of a timesync pro module to really master timecode. DSLR Toolkit is £4.99 so only offering time of day and knowing that most people will be syncing using the native audio seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The Shot Log is less excusable though. At the moment this is uneditable. A list of slate numbers and timecodes, especially time of day timecodes that don’t bare any relation to the timecode on the footage… it’s a lot less useful than the Movie*Slate offering. Hopefully this is something that will really start to improve across the next few releases (already the developer is promising export to .rtf and .xls as well as the ability to rate favourite takes, which is often all you actually need do on set).

Three of the four remaining features, the DOF Calculator, the Daylight times and the Spirit Level are less controversial. Even if I do already have dedicated apps for the last two, having them all in one place probably means I’d stop using the other apps. (Though Sun Scout does give a funky augmented reality display of where the sun will be throughout the day, enabling you to pan round the room and see exactly what you’ll be getting in a couple of hours time…)

It’s great to have all these things in a single place but the really unique feature is the view finder, which is a cracking idea. It offers an instant glimpse through a superbly comprehensive list of DSLRs and a wide range of lenses, all of which you can change with the flick of a finger. Want to see what the frame would be like at 50mm instead of 35mm? Just scroll it up and have a look…

Comparing it with our own 5d and 7d suggests it’s very accurate. Though it is a shame that currently the lenses on offer never get wider than 35mm. Whilst that’s set to change in future releases, this size is the iPhone basic – so sadly any increase in lens size is of course only possible using a digital zoom effect, which does significantly lower the quality of the image.

Also, as my brother pointed out, part of the very joy of the DSLR is that, as cameras go, it’s hardly an inconvenient size. Yes the iPhone is always in my pocket but we both struggled to think of occasions when we’d need a frame perfect view of a location or setting and wouldn’t have a DSLR with us. Possibly if you’re sizing a shot on set and changing your mind it’s quicker to flick the dial on the iPhone than to remount a new lens… Or if you’re the assistant preparing the next set-up whilst the camera is busy somewhere else… there are uses but perhaps not as many as first I thought.

But then I’m lucky, Chris and I are DSLR devotees and we have two camera bodies and a full set of prime lenses (and yes you can hire them if you ask nicely) If you don’t have round the clock access to the DSLR you’re planning on shooting with, if you want to get the feel of different lens sizes in your own downtime, if you want a tool that will help you visualise your film before you’ve really had time to get in sync with your camera then this is a great little purchase.

For a 6th of the price of the fully-featured Movie*Slate, the DSLR-Toolkit offers a diverse range of gadgets which are well suited to someone making their first few films. The developer, Richard Savage, is also responsive and keen to shape the app to suit the needs of his market. If you’re thinking of buying or borrowing a DSLR that’s you, and I urge you to get hold of it and tell him what else you’d like in the kit.

Geeky because I’ve been turning my attention to the ways that my iPhone could start becoming one of the most important filmmaking tools I own. I’m not just talking about its capabilities as a camera, with or without the new 35mm lens adaptor.

I’ve been playing with two new apps over the weekend, the DSLR Toolkit and Soluble’s production scheduling app Shotlist, neither of which are designed to capture images but both of which hope to become essential purchases for every filmmaker.

Reviews of those are coming shortly but they are both brand new releases whose developers are well aware that they still have a lot of ground to cover. First of all I thought I’d best touch upon the grand-daddy of iPhone filmmaking apps, Movie*Slate from Pureblend.

This is the one you might have seen in the advert but I have to say it more than lives up to the hype. The big mistake that a lot of developers make in this field is imagining that filmmakers are just after new toys, but despite appearances to the contrary this isn’t actually the case. It is not enough for an app to mirror existing technology but in a format that’s a bit smaller than is quite convenient. Despite rumours about the idiocy of iPhone owners, most people won’t actually buy your app just because it is an app. (OK this argument sounds shaky after reading this…)

There are lots of clapperboard board apps on the market. It’s a simple idea, slate information in big text on the screen, a beep and a flash to give sync and away you go. So far so much of a gimmick. Is typing the information into your phone any less fiddly than the real world version? No. Is a real clapper board more satisfying to use? Of course. Will a real clapper board run out of battery halfway through a shoot? You get my gist.

But Movie*Slate is a stone cold killer because of all the other stuff that it does. It has the simplest note taking interface I’ve yet found. It’s easy to enter all the set-up info at the start of the take and easy to populate this information across slates, keeping data entry to a minimum. Better still it’s easy to enter shot information after the take, easy to circle takes, note down shot size, weather conditions all the rest. Most importantly of all it’s super easy to export this information into a variety of formats, not least straight into Final Cut.

Movie*Slate is also great at communicating with other iPhones. For instance, the information above is usually the job of two different people, the camera assistant and the script supervisor. If both have Movie*Slate on their phones they can sync and share the information.

The whole point of working in the digital age is that the technology should allow for large amounts of information to be rapidly duplicated and shared. As soon as you’re retyping something you know that there is a problem with the workflow. The Move*Slate shot log export function is a damn fine example of how good this technology can be. Now rather than giving the editor a stack of folded pages with scribbles on, I can email shot notes and know that they will go direct into the edit, automatically linked to the footage.

There are sadly though still some limitations. One of the features that at first caught my eye was the ability to make notes as photographs and as sound recordings. Anything that cuts out typing on the iPhone is a winner in my book and I liked the idea of being able to make notes on a take just by dictating them into the iPhone. So far though I’ve yet to find a way of including this data in the export (it gives a note that the file was referenced but I can’t see how it could send the actual file over…) not being able to export this stuff does limit it’s value.

I’d also love to see the app make use of the metadata created by the camera. The notes automatically include geo-satelite information about where the shoot is taking place, but this comes from the iPhone. They’re worked out some very smart ways of syncing timecode between the app and the camera but as far as I can see the camera assistant still has to manually input a lot of the metadata about the shot that the camera creates automatically.

But I’m picking nits. This is a great app which takes the moderately convenient idea of a clapperboard on your iPhone and turns it into an amazing tool for allowing a group of people to share their notes on the day’s shooting.

Granted, as internet meme’s go the resubtitled Downfall is pretty tired but this was nicely done and reminded me a lot of some of my dearest editor friends in recent weeks.

What I found most interesting though was that as the clip goes on Hitler rants about “craft” and how FCPX will somehow open up the floodgates to kids with DSLRs and this will destroy cinema as we know it. For once it seems like this clip has been retitled by someone who hasn’t forgotten that Hitler was a madman and generally his opinion about stuff is wrong.

The ever eloquent Mr.Ducker is also not unaware that there is a savage irony in an internet full of FCP editors suddenly bemoaning Apple for releasing software that doesn’t “feel professional”. If we’re running with the Nazi metaphor, it’s like Hitler being outraged at Stalin’s attitude to Jews.

As Guy points out, AVID editors have long been bemoaning FCP for being callow and a threat to “The Craft” of editing, in much the same way that a great many Steenbeck editors have always bemoaned any sort of digital editing. Indeed it’s much the same response that my brother got when he excitedly blogged about the “light field camera” which creates an image you can refocus in post. “fixin it in post feels like cheatin. part of bein good filmmaker is knowin what to focus on, when to pull focus etc ON SET.” tweeted a good friend of ours.

Let’s be clear, from what I’ve seen of FCPX there’s a lot to dislike but one thing it won’t do is “flood the market with…a million more plugin addicted auto-everything DSLR shooters and iMovie hacks that can’t be bothered to read the fucking manual” and it won’t do that because it doesn’t really work yet. The reason everyone is so up in arms is not because this is “software that does all the work without requiring any skills” but simply because Apple have junked a perfectly functional tool in favour of day-glo rubber hammer with a squeak in it. This is nothing to do with “craft”.

FCP 7

FCP X

Far too often when people talk about “craft” they confuse the skill of making something with the ability to use a tool. Of course being able to point your auto-focusing DSLR at the sunset and throw that footage into any iteration of FCP is not the same as being an amazing filmmaker. The same is true though of shooting that sunset with a 35mm camera and editing the rushes with a razor blade. Yes the celluloid root is harder and employs more people but only someone simple imagines that complexity automatically confers class.

The craft that a great editor brings to a film is not a technical ability to operate a machine. I promise you, the fact that he could use an AVID was definitely the very last reason Chris and I asked Guy to edit the short piece of silliness which I think the BBC are releasing online next Monday.

If FCP X develops into a tool that genuinely can input and output in a professional environment then I will gladly embrace it. If something in the redesigned interface enables a million more people to more easily express their ideas visually then I will embrace them too. There have always been too many people who have been able to master a complicated tool but have never found a truly inspiring use for it.

Thanks to Adam Jeal for the links…

Apple's Peter Steinauer demoing Final Cut Pro X at an NAB event. (Credit: Adam Bedford/Twitpic)

After years of anticipation, finally Apple have announced an update of Final Cut Pro, their non-linear edit package which, 12 years ago, was the first digital cutter that really combined affordability and stability. More than any other innovation, FCP is what ushered in the digital age of filmmaking – with amateurs like my brother and I finally able to cut our digitally originated films on our home computers in a way that was easy and effective.

In recent years though FCP has gone off the boil. FCP Studio, which bundled the main editor together with a series of high powered additional post-production tools (a sound editor, a grading suite, a compressor, a motions graphic tool and so on) felt like a good idea but even in its second iteration it felt clumsy. Color is a great programme, but it doesn’t recognise FCP’s native picture filters so you largely had to chose between grading in Color or sticking to your FCP know-how (and wealth of third party filters). Soundtrack was packed full of all the Logic filters which was great, but it’s always been buggy as hell and getting really good quality sound out of it was often far more time consuming than it should be.

Most of all though there was a basic intellectual problem with Final Cut Studio. It was designed to mirror the workflow of the professional. If you’re working with a budget then naturally you employ different people to edit, to grade, to sound mix and naturally these functions take place in different buildings using different machines. Building this separation into Studio made it feel more grown-up, made it feel more pro… but it was always baking in a series of frustrations and limitations which you don’t mind if you’ve money to spend and experts to work with but which seem bizarre if you’re just after software that enables you to make a film in the simplest, most efficient, most 21st Century way. Instead of one programme that could be used in whatever way you needed, suddenly we had six and a dictated workflow. It was like buying a cheap Canon DV camera and finding you still needed to send the rushes to Technicolor to get them processed.

Joy of joys, Apple have seen the light. Not only are Soundtrack and Color going to form an integral part of FCP X but the decision to have a single product marks a deeper change in outlook. For years FCP struggled to become a grown-up, to become an equal to Avid, a serious pro edit platform. To gain this appearance Apple took some pretty cynical steps… they launched FCP Express, a cheaper, less good version of the package that created the idea that there needed to be a divide between the budding amateur software and that of the pro. This enabled them to push up the price of the full fat FCP. By the time Studio 2 was launched a new version would set you back the best part of £1,000. This price tag said in big grumpy terms that it was PROFESSIONALS – go play on iMovie kids, Daddy is working.

The release of FCP X not only sees all the programmes drawn back together but it sees the end of Final Cut Express and the retail price crashing down to $299 (and doubtless a rather cheeky £299 over here), comparable to the original FCP 1.0 which, if memory serves, cost us £199. This can be read in one of two ways, either Apple are giving up on the Pro market, or, and this is how it feels to me, they no longer have anything to prove. Fincher’s Oscar losing film “The Social Network” is only the most recent high profile movie to be cut on FCP, its a platform that no longer has to dress up and use long words in order to be taken seriously. With this new found confidence hopefully we’ll see a return to an edit platform that rather than seeking to dictate how you work, simply enables you manipulate your material in whatever way works best for you.

More details from the launch cut and paste from http://news.cnet.com

Apple tonight took the wraps off Final Cut Pro X, a new version of its professional video-editing software that the company says is a complete rewrite of the 12-year-old platform.

Final Cut X is a 64-bit application written in Apple’s Cocoa. It sports a new interface, as well as features to speed up the editing process, including background rendering, full use of multicore processors, and Apple’s Grand Central Dispatch system, as well as the option to make edits as footage is being imported.

Apple says the tool will be available to users in June as a direct download for $299, replacing the $199 Final Cut Express, and coming in at a steep discount compared with the company’s $999 Final Cut Studio suite…

…Among the new features is a tool that detects when are people in shots, as well as what type of shots they are (close-up, medium, or wide angle), two things Apple added to the most recent version of iMovie. That’s not the only iMovie carry-over. Apple has also brought “skimming,” the feature that lets users preview the content of a clip just by moving their mouse across it.

New organizational features include a way to manage clips with tags that can be applied to certain times, giving editors a way to hunt for specific bits of media in a large library.

Clips can also be compounded into buckets that contain everything from that specific part of the timeline. This lets editors put together a specific sequence and move it around the timeline without worrying about it interfering with other items on the workspace. Joining this is a new way to link up the audio and video tracks so they don’t get pushed out of sync by accident.

For viewing, Apple has also included a new feature called “auditioning” that lets editors create variants of audio and visual combinations on the timeline and pick which one they like later on. This is meant to serve as a way to test out differing edits without having to re-do the work if one is preferred over the other.

On the back end of the platform, the software has absorbed Color and Soundtrack, the tools designed to help video editors make color and audio adjustments. Apple also says Final Cut Pro X has resolution-independent playback, meaning videos of varying sizes can be piped out to the same size screen. That could prove especially important given that the software is now able to handle 4K resolutions, making it more compatible with footage from cutting-edge digital cameras.

The question remains about what happens to the other applications that came bundled as part of studio, short of Soundtrack and Color, which have been built into Final Cut Pro X. In a follow-up with The Loop, an Apple representative said “today was just a sneak peak of Final Cut Pro,” and to “stay tuned.”

> Many producers, with an eye to revenues, will try to
> tell you otherwise – that you can shoot 2D and 3D at the same
> time. I believe they are fundamentally wrong, and their
> thinking that way will produce compromises that will (more
> often than not) hinder the acceptance of 3D. It’s an issue
> that, as 3D techniques evolve, will receive increasing debate.

This, taken from Karel Bata’s long post in Shooting People’s Filmmakers Network in response to my blog on Walter Murch and 3D, is, I think is the real nub of the argument. I was genuinely surprised by the response that my reblog of Murch’s comments received – a couple of comments on my blog, but a deluge on it’s RSS mirror on my facebook. It seems that my normal non-filmmaking friends simply HATE 3D.

This surprised me far more than the fact that Walter Murch is unimpressed by it, though I do think Karel is attempting to dismiss all of Murch’s points with a couple of sweeping statements about him being outdated. There’s no denying that the image is darker and the pace of the edit needs to be slower and locked planes of perception or no locked planes of perception, anything that leaps out of the screen serves to remind me that there’s a screen and I’m in a cinema. It’s all well and good to say that film is always an illusion, of course it is – but the best illusions trick you into forgetting the fact.

However there has, of course, been one almost universal exception to the bilious rants I’ve heard from my friends since I posted about 3D. Albeit often grudging and coupled with caveats about how bad the story was, everyone I know who has seen Avatar says that the 3D is amazing.

I’m genuinely, if only slightly, ashamed to admit that I missed it. I plead poverty and business and hang my head because as a filmmaker I do think it’s wrong of me not to have seen the most technology important film of the past decade.

Like Karel I think it’s plain to see that 3D is not going away and like Karel I do actually think this is a good thing, if only because I know how I would use it and it’s not to make Angelina Jolie’s shiny gold boobs hover disturbingly in front of my eyes – a sight that I never knew would be off putting until I saw Beowulf.

This is a powerful new tool in the filmmaker’s arsenal… like those first hideously gaudy technicolor monstrosities, it is currently being used in a very clumsy manner and I can quite see why most people I know wish everyone would just stop.