Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)

[cdnchris]

I remember the gunfight during the bank robbery being very loud in the theater, so I think there is some intent there, but even then the dialogue does seem to be mixed rather low here.

[Zot!]

I recommend anyone who watches movies with 'splosions procure a center speaker. It a game changer for anything with a surround track.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I remember the gunfight during the bank robbery being very loud in the theater, so I think there is some intent there, but even then the dialogue does seem to be mixed rather low here.

I don't know the legitimacy of this, but a projectionist I know who's worked for many directors says Michael Mann has a super high-tech ear piece that balances sound in a way that makes loud sounds quieter and quiet sounds louder. They claimed that's why Public Enemies is mixed in a way that gunshots are loud and dialogue is mumblecore-like. I rewatched Manhunter last night and re-watched Miami Vice a week ago and didn't notice any odd mixing choices. But when he chooses to get loud, it gets LOUD.

[flyonthewall2983]

With regards to the gun battle in this one, he chose to use the natural sounds of the blanks firing rather than overdubbing them later. The way the sound ricocheted off the buildings gave it that more jarring feeling to it.

[Oedipax]

If they went back and fixed those horrible green screen shots in the scene with De Niro and Amy Brenneman looking out at L.A. from his deck at night (it's on the close-ups, not the master in that instagram which looks great), that's some cinematic revisionism I can get behind.

I thought they only used green screen for the scene after they first meet, whenever it cuts to a close-up of either as they stand at her balcony. It does look pretty odd, and the master looks far better, but apparently Mann said they couldn't capture the right bokeh of the city lights in close-up for some reason. However, the scene pictured in that link is a different one, from later on (when she runs out of the house after learning of Neil's part in the bank heist), and I could be wrong but I don't think that one uses green screen -- it looks pretty beautiful.

Yeah, I think it's just their initial meet, in the singles and side angles. The one from Instagram definitely is not greenscreened. I'm just hoping the shots that are keyed from greenscreen will maybe get a fresh pass of keying with 2016's tools rather than what they had to go on in 1995. It'll maybe never look as good as if it had been shot practically, but there's a lot more that could be done to match them better and not be quite as painfully distracting as the current results. But that's assuming they go back to the original scans for those shots (or re-scan them at a higher res).

[beamish13]

I remember the gunfight during the bank robbery being very loud in the theater, so I think there is some intent there, but even then the dialogue does seem to be mixed rather low here.

I don't know the legitimacy of this, but a projectionist I know who's worked for many directors says Michael Mann has a super high-tech ear piece that balances sound in a way that makes loud sounds quieter and quiet sounds louder. They claimed that's why Public Enemies is mixed in a way that gunshots are loud and dialogue is mumblecore-like. I rewatched Manhunter last night and re-watched Miami Vice a week ago and didn't notice any odd mixing choices. But when he chooses to get loud, it gets LOUD.

I've heard rumours that Mann is going deaf, which accounts for the strange sound mixing in his recent efforts.

[warren oates]

I remember the gunfight during the bank robbery being very loud in the theater, so I think there is some intent there, but even then the dialogue does seem to be mixed rather low here.

I don't know the legitimacy of this, but a projectionist I know who's worked for many directors says Michael Mann has a super high-tech ear piece that balances sound in a way that makes loud sounds quieter and quiet sounds louder. They claimed that's why Public Enemies is mixed in a way that gunshots are loud and dialogue is mumblecore-like. I rewatched Manhunter last night and re-watched Miami Vice a week ago and didn't notice any odd mixing choices. But when he chooses to get loud, it gets LOUD.

I've heard rumours that Mann is going deaf, which accounts for the strange sound mixing in his recent efforts.

Beamish is dead on. And he may have heard other rumors too, about how Mann is the most difficult of all directors to work with. So you can begin to imagine how one problem compounds the other.

[Superswede11]

Regardless of Mann's own hearing, there are other crew members who okay the sound mixes. He's been doing this kind of mix for so long (with increasing affect in his latest movies, as noted above) and it fits his impressionistic, present-tense style so well that I have no doubt that it's intentional.

[feihong]

Favoring gunfire over dialogue is intentional, I believe. But the decreasing volume of the overall mix as the film plays is a problem with the current blu ray. It's not merely that as a viewer you have to balance in your mind disparate volume levels. It's that you can't fix on a level and just listen. Or just lower the volume a couple of clicks for the shootouts, for instance. You have to keep increasing the volume to maintain the level.

[flyonthewall2983]

This is a defect that seemed to be true of a lot of Warner DVDs and blu rays, and the Heat bluray has it worse than most; the sound mix in general gets progressively softer over the course of the film, prompting you to continually turn it up. By the end I had my television's volume at about the highest it would go just to hear the dialogue. Then suddenly the guns would fire at deafening volume. It was a huge problem which I hope they get around to fixing this time.

In this case now, "they" is Fox, not Warner Brothers. Fox now has home video rights to many of the titles produced by Regency that were released theatrically by WB.

[flyonthewall2983]

The new 4K transfer will have it's premiere next month, including a conversation with Mann, Pacino, De Niro and others moderated by Christopher Nolan.

[flyonthewall2983]

Deadline and Variety on last night's Q&A.

The Goldwyn Theater might not be the best equipped to demonstrate the full beauty of a 4K presentation, but the new print looked fantastic, with eye popping detail that shines a bright light on the work of cinematographer Spinotti. A particular stand out is how the new print makes clear some of the technical achievements Mann and Spinotti employed to make the city of Los Angeles itself as much a character as the actors moving inside it. “L.A. is a weigh station on the way to somewhere else,” said Mann tonight about the way the city looks throughout Heat. One way that was achieved was to combine then-new computer effects to heighten the city’s iconic cityscape.

For example, in the scene in which De Niro’s McCauley and Brenneman’s Eady talk on a balcony overlooking Sunset plaza, Spinotti explained how the L.A. landscape seen in the shot was filmed on a very low framerate to increase exposure. Meanwhile, De Niro and Brenneman were filmed on location in front of a green screen blocking the actual view, which was added to the background of the shot in post. It’s unnoticeable in previous home video releases but in the new print, it makes L.A.’s nighttime view look like a surreal dream, or perhaps a nightmare. It adds to the sense, as it was said more than once tonight, of how all the film’s characters are in their own way imprisoned in Los Angeles.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Strange. I felt it always looked strange due to the greenscreen effect, but never looking like a "nightmare". I just thought it was Mann's obsession with trying to get the nighttime backgrounds in focus as much as the foreground. He didn't have to do this anymore when he went digital and it allowed him to capture low-light clearly.

[flyonthewall2983]

From the Q&A

"Writing the Film"

"Vincent and Neil"

"The Coffee Shop Scene"

"Eady, Justine & Drucker"

"The Look of the film"

"The Sound and the Music"

[flyonthewall2983]

Blu-ray.com review of the UK disc

[Drucker]

Looks favorable on caps a holic as well.

[flyonthewall2983]

And it sounds like the discs are both region-free.

[flyonthewall2983]

I purchased it on Amazon.co.uk, I had to sign up for a trial membership of their Prime (despite already having one of my own) to do it though.

[ericm]

The ending is a little hammy; I do like some of the "cameos" for sure (Henry Rollins). My favorite piece of trivia: When Kevin Gage went to jail in real life, the others in the prison called him waingro.

[Ribs]

The very snazzy-looking cover for the US rerelease

[Brian C]

That looks like one of those poster-sized photo prints they sell at IKEA. I guess it looks ok on its own generic terms, but it doesn't have much to do with the movie, which I don't think has a shot of the LA skyline in its entire run time.

[DarkImbecile]

That looks like one of those poster-sized photo prints they sell at IKEA. I guess it looks ok on its own generic terms, but it doesn't have much to do with the movie, which I don't think has a shot of the LA skyline in its entire run time.

Maybe not a pure second-unit skyline shot, but the coverage of Pacino's helicopter ride provides more or less the same effect.

[Brian C]

Yeah, ok I guess.

[Feiereisel]

That looks like one of those poster-sized photo prints they sell at IKEA. I guess it looks ok on its own generic terms, but it doesn't have much to do with the movie, which I don't think has a shot of the LA skyline in its entire run time.

I wouldn't hang it on my wall (har-har) and think that the cutout look of the UK cover is more appealing, but mainstream cover art that flouts the standard "cascade of faces" look is a welcome change.

[flyonthewall2983]

I've always liked this one the best, especially the bottom half with Hanna and his partners.