While I enjoyed all aspect of the movie "Under Fire", I particularly appreciated Nick Nolte's portrayal of a photographer. Rarely does one see an actor handle a camera and lens the way a photographer really does. Nolte is the exception. His cameras and lenses and how he uses them are quite accurate. At the time of the movie's release, I recommended it to budding photographers. I still do.
shareAs a fairly serious photography, I agree entirely. This has always been one of my favourite movies - I'm really surprised it isn't more popular than it seems to be.
And being a bit of a Nikon fanboy, it gets extra points! :D
This movie was sponsered (maybe not official ) by nikon, nick nolte may have gotten an course of some kind.
and also here nikon fan, extra points.
It's on Starz Action again tonite (12midnite pacific time), for what it's worth, Leica got a mention in the end credits, but I don't think Nikon did. Matthew Naythons was technical advisor on the film. He was a photojournalist in Nicaragua at the time of the war. I think that's why the film nails the whole journalist life in Central America.
jack
My father owned a photo store at the time being,
The store was an official nikon dealer.
The got free tickets for the movie from nikon then, and all the camera's i saw in the movie are all nikons so.
Still cant find the movie thought here, whent to movie stores and even tried downloading it but cant find it, think i better order it.
i thought he did very well.
sharei wish someone would have schooled one the extras holding a video camera in a scene on the roof of the hotel. He gripped the carry handle on top of the camera with his right hand while he was shooting, which is a big no-no. The right hand works the zoom rocker switch, while the left hand focuses the lens barrel. Both hands on the lens.
share[deleted]
I am a freelancer and agree with you. A very good film and Nick Nolte is doing a good job.(Canon fan).
By the way, watch Tamarindo and St. Peter Ording by hypertypers on You Tube.
I thought he shot film like a movie actor shoots submachine gun bullets. There's only 36 frames, at most, on a roll, and he was shooting like a fashion photog with unlimited packs of rolls, and an assistant to load them.
shareWrong. Commercial rolls, yes, they contained 36 frames per roll. But professionals wound their own rolls, up to one hundred frames. I did anyway.
shareWait, I think I remember film, back in the days...
shareI guess so but I still think using 5-6 frames for one photo was excessive. He did that a lot when it wasn't really neccessary.
shareYeah, isn't that something we tend to forget quickly?
I used to go on six week excursions with 120 rolls of film (4320 shots) and use them all up. And somehow I don't recall spending half my time loading the camera, but I must have been. During "events" - such as weddings - you even kept an eye on the counter so you wouldn't end up reloading when the minister said: "You may now kiss the bride."
Nowadays, of course, you have a multi-gigabyte chip in the camera that will hold thousands of shots with lots of megapixels. So, no reloading any more, ever, in the middle of things. If for nothing else I love "the digital way" for that.
Back to Nolte - that's right. For me it wasn't something I actively noticed when I watched the movie. But in retrospect I have to admit there was an irritation missing. It usually bugs the h&ll out of me when someone is completely clumsy with a camera - and that irritation wasn't happening here. Good show, Nick!
What did irritate me, a little, was that yellow tape right above the "Nikon" logo. Now, it is true that many a professional user of a tool such as a camera might find a good reason to stick something on or fix something loose with a bit of tape, and as such this might well constitute a nice touch of realism. But it also tends to attract your eye to the general area on the screen where you can read about Nick Nolte wielding a "Nikon." So, naturally, now I wonder if that was the actual purpose of having that bit of yellow tape there.
Wasn't the yellow tape sort of a reminder which camera was loaded with black and white film ? He wields several camera's, and can't spare the time to check which camera holds b/w and which has color film.
In those days, camera's had a small frame on the back to hold the top of the carton in which the film was packed. When loading the camera, one would rip off this piece of carton and put it in the slider on the back, so you'd know what film was in the camera. Yeah, this is old school speaking.
his car is awesome too.
'The only mystery in life is why the kamikaze pilots wore helmets.'-Al McGuire ✈
Though I had seen and enjoyed this movie many times in the past, I recently watched it again with a friend who is a well known professional photographer/photojournalist. It was his first time seeing it and he loved it for the accurate portrayal of his profession (and as a movie).
Not only was it an accurate portrayal, but the photos he's depicted taking are simply beautiful. He's convinced they must have had some sort of rig where they mounted a Nikon, or something, to the side of the camera to get the shots they did. He doesn't think they just rendered the frames shot for the movie as photos, they didn't have that quality to him.
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Brude
No wonder, Nick Nolte handled the cameras so well. I found an explanation in an interview with the director Roger Spottiswoode that was linked in another thread:
I gave him some cameras that belonged to my photographer friend Matthew Naythons, who had first taken us to Nicaragua. A lot of the incidents in the script were based on Matthew’s experiences during the Sandinista revolution: the actual hand grenade scene was something he had witnessed, as was the bus attack. So Nick had these cameras Matthew actually used in Nicaragua and a number of other wars, plus several hundred rolls of film, and while he did 48 Hrs., he kept them in his trailer and practiced with them when he wasn’t on set. By the time we started shooting -- and 48 Hrs. went a month over schedule -- he literally had a weekend off before starting Under Fire — Nick could sit there chatting with you, shoot a roll of film and reload those cameras without even looking at them!share
http://tinyurl.com/3evd877
http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2009/04/roger-spottiswoode-hollywood-interview.html
Very cool.
share