HBO Max has released the first trailer for Meryl Streep and Steven Soderbergh’s highly anticipated film “Let Them All Talk.” The film was entirely shot by Steven Soderbergh himself on a production unit of the RED Komodo. How did it perform?
Soderbergh: The iPhone filmmaker
Director and cinematographer Steven Soderbergh loves to be the first to try new cameras even on expensive productions shooting feature films. For instance, Contagion (2011) which is one of the most-watched movies in the COVID era, was shot on the RED One MX. Before that, Soderbergh filmed all of The Girlfriend Experience (2009) on a Red One camera, which has retailed for $4000 for that time. Furthermore, Soderbergh filmed the entirety of Unsane (2018) on an iPhone 7 Plus with its 4K digital camera using the app FiLMiC Pro. He then filmed the entirety of 2019’s High Flying Bird on an iPhone 8. Lastly, Soderbergh was the first to shoot a feature film (Let Them All Talk) entirely on the new RED Komodo. Have a look at the BTS still above taken during Let Them All Talk production.
The independent style
Starring Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, and Dianne Wiest, and written by Deborah Eisenberg, Let Them All Talk is a story of a celebrated author (Meryl Streep) who takes a journey with some old friends to have some fun and heal old wounds. Her nephew comes along to wrangle the ladies and finds himself involved with a young literary agent. According to an Indiewire article, this HBO Max comedy was shot in just about two weeks and was largely improvised by its cast. Wiest revealed the film was shot with no equipment (“The only equipment was sound equipment”). “Soderbergh held the camera in a wheelchair and just rolled along. None of the lights, and the trucks, all that stuff that goes into making movies, there’s none of it. There was Steven and this new camera (RED Komodo paired with a Leitz SUMMICRON-C glass)” added Wiest.
“Let Them All Talk” is set for release on Dec. 10. Watch the first trailer released by HBO Max:
Final thoughts
Soderbergh indeed needs to be admired for implementing the independent style in high-end productions. Utilizing low-cost equipment to make something from nothing demands pure creativity. Now, just think about all the independent filmmakers who do the same. Shooting with minimum lights, unpolished script, and with no set luxuries and extras due to a limited budget, while still managing to tell the story properly. This is what filmmaking is all about. That’s the reason why independent filmmakers are the most talented professionals in our industry.
I’m all for the one man crew camera/director/etc. approach, as Mr. Soderbergh is going for, but grading wise it’s a mis. It seems that although RED has all the potential of being as good as ARRI etc. few succeed to use the colorscience correctly so we have an image that looks like a movie and not like a modern TV-soap series. Even some youtube Komodo test footage looked better to be honest.
I highly recommend to read about what DOP Yedlin has to say about this: http://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/index.html
As i watched the trailer, I speculated on whether this project was colour timed? I realize the crew may have been small but apparently there was no attempt to “control the light”. The red sensor always seems to shift the image to yellow, brown and magenta without keeping an eye on “practicals” and lighting choices. In fact the quality of the image became a distraction. “Let them all Talk” doesn’t appear to shine a favourable light on the virtues of capturing on the Red Komodo.
This just goes to show that which camera we choose does not really matter very much. The audience this production is meant for largely will not care and might night even notice.