Great Story, Terrific Acting, Terrible Cinematography

I didn't find the cinematography bad at all. Simply because it suited the film. In my opinion good cinematography is supposed to support the story being told which I felt it did in this film.
I'm not saying it was perfect in every single scene or that it couldn't be better, but I wouldn't call it 'terrible'.

On a side note I'm not sure if I agree with Payne's decision to shoot it in black and white. I haven't heard his reasons for doing so, but in my opinion you need a pretty good reason for shooting a film in B&W (and to be honest I think it would have worked better in colour).

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I agree. I generally don't mind black & white - it is useful over colour in creating a certain mood. Here I dearly wanted to see those big blue skies and Nebraskan vistas in colour. The B&W wasted the great settings, making the countryside seem drab. Plus it was ultimately an upbeat movie, and colour would have suited that more.

Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free

Just the opposite. The cinematography was brilliant to me. No problems with lighting, personally.

I'm going to put the arguments about "the way black and white should be" aside for a moment and state that one unforgivable flaw with the cinematography occurs when Woody is driving through the town with his hat on, and the "PRIZE WINNER" words are cut off from the top of the frame.
It was possibly deliberate, but I think that Payne needed to drive home the point that those rural people were completely convinced by not just the truck but the hat as well.



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I'm not too far into watching & decided to look this up before preceding. I have no problem with black & white but not sure WHY they did with this. They are supposed to be going on a road trip in the upper mid-west & I want to see the beautiful scenery & landscape & it's in B&W! I feel we are missing out a lot on what would be so e beautiful scenery.

Like I said I haven't gotten far, seems so far they are all stuck in life & need to change something, maybe that dullness in life is why they chose B&W, maybe I'll find if I keep looking..,,

But right now I'm very disappointed b/c I am a scenery person & am missing out on some I've noticed would have been beautiful shots in color!!

I didn't much like the look either. I had no qualms with the decision to shoot black and white but I didn't like the low contrast look they went for. There's just no richness to the blacks, it's all strangely flat, as if I had the brightness jacked right up (except the whites were pretty dull). Or like it was shot on regular colour stock and then subjected to a dodgy monochrome treatment in post.

That part of the country, whether the highways, rural areas or towns themselves, really lends itself to a cinematic look. It's all big open spaces punctuated with clean geometric elements like fences and telegraph poles etc. And then sprawling, low population towns with their enormous empty roads and big, flat, featureless buildings. They offer a lot of cool framing options. It wasn't as if that aspect of the cinematography was bad, just nothing remarkable.

disagree, the writing, acting and cinematography were all excellent, but the story was unengaging or boring if you will






so many movies, so little time