Thank you, David. The only silly thing to me about this thread is the idea that professionals can never make mistakes. Well, I suppose the second silly thing was my new camera theory, but you have a real explanation. Thanks!

Don, if we can trust the Lee's Movie Info numbers (and I don't know whether these are trustworthy) then Miami Vice is an unqualified failure at the box office. But I think DVD sales are a better measure of success for many movies now, so I agree, time will tell.

As long as movies are made by human beings, they will have flaws in them because no one is perfect.

But in the case of "Miami Vice", at times it so aggressively discontinuous, mismatched, that you have to believe that it was part of a general plan of attack and style, because a professional crew like that could have created more seamless work had they been instructed to do so, so while an occasional problematic shot could have been just a plain mistake, I think a greater proportion of them were part of the design of the movie to make it look rough, unsmooth, jarring, whether or not you or I agree it was successful.

Actually for the most part, I liked the mood of the movie and its hyper-digital aesthetic -- no, it wasn't particularly original except that it was for a multi-million dollar movie and not an episode of reality TV. But that in itself was a bold choice.

I wasn't so enamoured for the really poor shots, though, that looked like DV or surveillence camera stuff in terms of quality, but the "sharp-but-noisy" night stuff was fine for me, just like I liked the gain-boosted scene in "Collateral" in the empty office at night with the city lights silhouetting the actors.

Definitely good info David, nice to know that directors at all levels can be overly demanding.

Zach, you have a number of good points, but I think you missed mine. I wasn't trying to idolize Michael Mann or Dion Bebe, I merely meant to bring up the fact that a lot of people here claimed their work on Miami Vice was sloppy and amateur... I wanted to say that they had done very nice work on other projects, so it would be unfair to say that their skills were lacking in general. It is completely legit to say that one does not like the application of their skills on this project, as you have.

When it comes to creativity, there really aren't rights or wrongs. The idealistic thing is to think that society does not create norms. I would never argue that society does not, by popularity, do exactly that. But to say that a norm of society is inherently right is, in my opinion, very closed-minded. Institutions like MoMA aren't important because someone is trying to tell us what is right and wrong with modern art. MoMA is important because it opens a dialogue that we must consider things not normally in our confort zone. Art is curated into collections of contemporary art because it is important, not right. If we are never exposed to collections that are/were provocative, we would never evolve creatively. And my point is that this idea applies universally among creative endeavors.

As an example again, Pollock used a combination of known techniques to create work that was uniquely his. I don't mean to compare the merits of Pollock vs. Bebe, so let's not start that. But in a broad sense, Bebe and Mann using known "cop film" style moves with new technology and their own motivations IS their own work. Does it look like anyone else's out there?

It is never wrong to form an opinion. My point is that to form an opinion, it is sometimes nice to consider a number of aspects beyond the immediate and easy. Forming opinions about craft is a far different affair, and in my sometimes inflammatory responses I was trying to open the discussion about this movie beyond a simple dissection of craft. I don't know why they chose to use cuts between noisy and clean shots, and I could never speak for the artists based on my opinions. But more importantly is the consideration that like much of modern/contemporary art, what we like and what is important in the evolution of visual elements may not always be the same pieces. Like it or not, the visual style of Miami Vice is a departure from virtually every other movie made on that scale. It may not be the most successful use of that particular visual language, but the fact that it ventured into creatively different waters is important...not right or wrong.

the fact that it ventured into creatively different waters is important...not right or wrong.

i think the point that some of us are trying to make is that it is not creatively different waters. the style that mann chose is the same style that thousands of amateur student films have been using for the past 10 years. i know because i've seen and made alot of them. just because he applied that aesthetic to a big-budget film and chose it willingly does not make it anymore creative. he simply made a stylistic choice and executed it, in my opinion, poorly. i say poorly because his 'film' happened to take on alot of negative characteristics of those amateur films! BAD ACTING (mann's responsibility), BAD DIALOGUE (mann's responsibility), TOO LONG/BAD EDITING (mann's responsibility).

and i also think that creative choices can very much be 'right or wrong' when they're related to a commercial product, which miami vice is. if a furniture designer created a chair with a giant rusty spike in the headrest, it could be considered a work of art if it was sitting behind glass in an art gallery somewhere. but if that same designer mass-produced the chair and forced people to sit in it, then his 'creative decision' could most definitely be called 'wrong.' i would not say that miami vice transcended its product placement for 'captain morgans' to become of art. however, i would say that 'heat' and 'the insider' are 'works of art'. just as some chairs are indeed works of art.

its as if a great painter has all of a sudden discovered a box of crayons for the first time and gone, 'wow, these are great.' now most people grew-up drawing with crayons and consider them inappropriate for painting a serious picture, but this guy (to the horror of alot of his peers) applies them to everything he creates from now on. what's worse, he abandons alot of what he's demonstrated he knows about what makes a good piece of art..
..i'm not saying you can't create a work of art with crayons, because its been done.. but most of time what you draw just ends up looking silly. and when you spend a $million dollars copying the 'visual style' of a 3 year old.. er...

Very very well said Eric. I agree with you all the way. I am wondering though how you make a movie look this bad. This isn’t sarcastic. I am really wondering what settings u would use on ur camera. If you are using 24p how do u make it look like 60i. Is it a shutter speed thing? I film shorts using an XL2 and I have tried to make my video look like this but still be 24p and havnt been able to. I know how to make it look like film but I cant make it look like video LOL.

..i'm not saying you can't create a work of art with crayons, because its been done.. but most of time what you draw just ends up looking silly. and when you spend a $million dollars copying the 'visual style' of a 3 year old.. er...


So, according to you every movie of a certain budget needs to look sharp, crisp, or a certain way??? I hope you're not a cinematographer, you're closing your options with that.

I think what both Mann and Beebe did is extremly good, maybe because this is a video forum, but all the cinematographers I know all over the world, including me, loved the film's photography as much as Collateral, even if they are very different. If you don't like the movie, hey it's your right, but judging aesthetic decision as mistakes is not very intelligent, specially if both are a lot more talented than you and most, if not all people here, David is the only one at that level.

I have to say that I did like Collateral better as a HD film that Miami Vice.



They were totally diferent, on collateral, even if it was shot on HD and the night sky is somewhat similar, the look was achive dwith very soft light, and low contrast, on Miami Vice the style was lot diferent with hard contrats, single source un softened sidelighting, pushing the HD with gain, etc... They are totally diferent.

"miami vice... i didnt experience anything. when the guy zooms.. he zooms when people are walking... nothing is going on. whereas if he zoomed really quickly when something was going on in a scene.. added some grain there.. in the dark.. yeah.. id buy it. but the guys were walking down the road and the zoom was stuttering. whoever shot those scenes should watch the news more often.. that way he'd know when to zoom in and when not to. when ure watching news or some documentary.. the camera man see's something exciting... he wants to see more so he zooms in as if he really wants to see whats going on.. THATS Experience."

Have a look at Serenity and the Firefly series... a perfect use of zooms within a shot is done manually as well as digitally... with deliberate "hunting errors"
this is what makes these shows FEEL real... but it seems that the inadvertant behaviour of camera operator was "too staged" in this regard for this movie and they advertantly tried for this and because of their concious effort in including these kind of shots, they felt "strained"

As for the colour grading.. it seems that Mann has watched too many CSI Miami episodes.. theyve toned CSI down now, but to me, the "Bad Boys 2" colour scheme was far more impressive for this harsh "environmental" look and vibe.
Miami Vice as art? No.. it was never that.. sure enough it was a serious TV show.. despite its tackiness... but in the end filmaking IS an artform, so IMO its all relative to the viewers perception

Eric, when it comes to that analogy of the chair, I think once again you're disproving your point. A chair with an iron spike, which is INTENDED as art, will never be shoved down the throat of the consumer. Sure, an artist could mass-produce a piece like that, but even then it would not be wrong. It might not sell well, but it wouldn't be wrong. Irresponsible, maybe, but again I think you're trying a bit too hard to draw an impossible line of correctness between creativity that you like and do not like.

One point you make which needs to be addressed is the point about creativity and commercialism being immisible. Do you own an ipod? Do you own anything in your home that ventures outside of strictly utilitarian design to be slightly "nice" looking? Something can be mass-marketed and at the same time visually interesting and different.

Take the chair again. You say you have no problem with a chair made under the premise of "art," a chair that has a rusty spike. Let's say you mis-calculated, and all of a sudden MoMA contacted you to add the chair to their gift shop catalog. The chairs sell 10,000 copies each month, and people display them in their homes, calling you the next coming of art. Was the chair wrong to begin with? Is it wrong now that it's a commercial success? Let's say you made the chair for K-Mart instead of your own art. K-Mart realized that it could appeal as a chair, but they could sell it better in their decorations department...as art. So now you sell a million every month. Curators from galleries start calling you and wanting you to appear with your brilliant piece. You intended the chair as a commercial success, eventhough you put some creative thought into the design of it. But people found brilliance in the design of your spiked chair, they flipped out. Would you argue with them?

Are you familiar with an artist named Andy Warhol?

Everyone has an opinion about what visual elements work and do not work, and that carries across any medium. Peter makes some good points about his experience with the movie. He disagreed with the choices, and to some extent I agree with his points. I know it sounds like I thought the movie was perfect, but that's not at all true. It certainly had flaws, but I think the importance of it goes beyond whether they pulled-off the look flawlessly or not. That would be an argument about craft, which I choose not to entertain. To draw a line in the sand and say certain things are right and certain things are wrong... well it's a bit closed minded. Peter's right, Miami Vice was never intended as art. But in the most recent iteration, the visual look took a HUGE departure from what has been done on the big screen. Sure, Eric may have inadvertantly perfected this look years ago on student films, but sadly most of us probably haven't seen those.

My point initially about looking from an art perspective was to engage dialogue more critically than "it was crap, I could have done better." A urinal never knew it would revolutionize the art world, but in 1964 Marcel Duchamp changed the face of contemporary art thought using just that. I don't mean to draw a direct parallel to Miami Vice, but occasionally people present work that is so far different from the accepted norm that it creates more than just a stir. I think already, box office numbers aside, Miami Vice has created that stir within the industry.

This is a great thread, but I think it's still missing one thing: can anyone on here who liked Miami Vice offer a detailed explanation of what worked for him/her in this movie? There are a ton of detailed posts in this thread criticizing the film for its look, editing, performances, story and about everything else outside of production design and catering. I reviewed the older posts, and I don't see anything positive about anything except the look, and some of those posts are guarded (i.e. the closest they come to offering positive comments is saying that Miami Vice is different or will be influential, not that it's a good film). Can anyone offer a fresh perspective from the positive side (or at worst a rebuttal to the negative posts that deal with things other than the look)?

I agree with Jaron (and I think Don was getting at this too) that Miami Vice might be important in the long term. It did look different than anything I've seen in a theater, and I think other Hollywood types could apply its lessons without spending $135 million or whatever it cost to produce this. I could see it showing up in film history textbooks as a turning point or the start of a movement in mainstream cinema, but I still don't imagine many people looking back on it fondly as anything but a different-looking movie. The shots of the private jet in front of the clouds were gorgeous, but did they have any meaning beyond that? Reviewing this thread makes me think I would have been more excited by watching Beebe's month worth of test footage than the final film. I'd like an argument that says I'm wrong.

I was thinking about this because I watched the French Connection again this week, and it took me about 2 seconds to realized that Miami Vice is a direct descendent of this movie in terms of theme and aesthetic (if anyone on here has not seen the French Connection, it's a movie about undercover narcotics officers who blur the line between cop and criminal, and William Friedkin and his crew shot it with a bunch of faux documentary techniques that were then novel in Hollywood, if not in France and elsewhere - there, and I didn't even have to ruin the ending). The French Connection works for me because it has an overall story, performances and an editing style that fit with its look. It has a ton of handheld camera, shaky tracking (the commentary says it's an operator in a wheelchair) and even zooms - just like Miami Vice (and about every cop show I see). But the French Connection edited that doc-style footage with heavy use of ellipsis, which made it convincing for me. It's always a little disorienting, as if the camera op and the editor are always trying just as hard to find where Doyle and Russo are as I am while I'm watching - and Friedkin would have you believe that they were. It also had writing (or maybe improvisation, or maybe story editing) that matched the overall aesthetic. Doyle never explains what he's talking about when he's badgering suspects about Poughkeepsie or what it means when he tosses a straw hat in the back of his undercover car. This feels wildly different than Colin Farrell explaining to every five minutes how drug trading works or what it means that his phone is jammed. I think this is a fair comparison because the movies are so similar in their concept.

That said, I buy into the faux documentary look of the French Connection because it fits as a whole, and I don't buy into Miami Vice one bit. Can anyone explain why it works? Can anyone offer an explanation of how cutting noisy shots with clean shots makes an effective statement beyond "this will remind you that you're watching a movie?" Please, someone speak out in favor.

If you're going to be so dismissive of the positive comments & justifications made to date, then why should anyone take the time to further elaborate and debate this with you?

Part of the problem with discussing the HD aspect as a whole is that the photography, good or bad, is not coupled with a good movie, which flavors every discussion. If someone doesn't like a movie, they have a very hard time thinking objectively about the cinematography. With a classic like "The French Connection", it's easier to say positive things about how the photography contributed to the whole. But when you're not talking about a solid script to begin with, then it's very hard to talk about how the photography "worked" when the movie didn't "work", even though the reason it doesn't has nothing really to do with the photography.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be dismissive of the positive comments. They were just all about photography and nothing else. I just wondered whether anybody thinks it actually works as a movie or whether they were just impressed with the photography. You may have just answered that.

I’m still wondering how you make 24p look like 60i. I am making a movie in 24p and I want to add a news scene in the middle and have it look like Miami Vice videoish look. I am wondering what shutter speed they probably used to get the 60i motion blur and movement. My argument as to why I don’t like the photography is because it doesn’t feel or look like the show. And when you are turning a VERY popular show into a movie you have to keep most of the same elements that made the show popular. Sonny wasn’t badass enough, they didn’t wear cool clothes and it took itself to seriously. Of course they couldn’t wear the clothes they wore in the show because they would be out dated, but they should have gone for a nip/tuck sort of look. Comedy was a big part of the show. I mean come on Sonny had an alligator as a pet because he was a gators fan. Big screen adaptations are never as good as the show, that’s just a fact. How bout we develop some creativity again and stop saying “this was popular 20 years ago, lets turn it into a movie” or “this is a cool comic book, lets turn it into a movie” or my favorite “this was a good movie before, lets make it again even though people could go out and rent the better original for cheaper then they would pay us to see our new one that’s isn’t even as good.”

Zach - good parallel to French Connection...I watched it again a few days ago and never thought to compare them, but you're right, they are similar in many ways. David is absolutely right too, it's a lot harder to speak objectively about a movie which is not destined to be a classic.

As for Miami Vice, I think I'll have to watch it again, perhaps a few times to see if I still enjoy it. Maybe my excitement about the visual side distracted me from the movie itself. I recall that the acting was...forced to put it politely.

Alan - part of the 60i look has less to do with the frame rate so much as the amount of motion captured per frame. Video is essentially an "open eye." Each video frame is comprised two fields of 1/30th of a second each. There is no "shutter" in video, the sensor sees the lens essentially all the time. When shooting 24p video to emulate film, the sensor sees 1/2 of the frame rate. In film, it's a 180 degree shutter ANGLE, meaning that 180 out of the 360 degrees of a circular shutter path, the film is exposed. In 24p, the equivalent is a shutter SPEED of 1/48th or 1/50th. To get that "live" look, try essentially opening the shutter then entire duration of the frame, 1/24th of a second. You'll see that the motion in the frame appears a lot less "filmic" and a lot more TV-like. Also, you'll gain a full stop. Conversely, to get a saving private ryan look, or more stroboscopic look, try closing the shutter down so that more motion happens while the "eye" is blind.

" turning a VERY popular show into a movie you have to keep most of the same elements that made the show popular.".."Big screen adaptations are never as good as the show"

some work - some don't ...
TV shows or remakes carry allot of baggage with them ...

looks like Mann decided to update it ... Miami Vice was his creation back then and maybe he was tired of the that look ( clothes, film etc) as in been there - done that ... but if you look at Manns over the years he's always pushing the limits ... which does create allot of talk about the script, acting, cinematography , wardrobe , audio, production design, editing - all area's of production !!! most movies just generate talk in 1 or 2 area's ...

"Miami Vice played to a racially and ethnically diverse audience divided almost evenly between male and female -- but a whopping 62% of the moviegoers were aged 30 and older. (Must have been the lure of that familiar theme music...) "

well there's the box office PROBLEM "62% aged 30 and older " .. where's the 13-19 year olds ... guess doesn't appeal to them ...
which now i wonder about the AGES here on this thread - do the 30 and above crowd think the over all movie is OK and the younger crowd is going into fine detail of dislikes ...
i can't knock the cinematography .. i found it different, some interesting ..some pushing the limits .. i was slightly entertained . but then i'm in the above 30 crowd - make that about 1.85X the 30 crowd

seems there are 3 ways to look at it ?
does one look at miami vice by itself and you either like it or don't ..either works or doesn't work for you ...

or does one look at it and compare it to other movies out there today or in past and judge it against them .. is there a "standard " to judge/compare against ?

or does one look at it as another painting/piece from mann and compare it to his other movies over the years - is he doing the same thing , is there a growth in his productions ... seems if one thinks Manns a "artist" then one should look at it as a painting - you can like the whole painting and you can dislike certain area's of a painting or you just dislike this painting ?
maybe the next opening will be better , different ?

I liked it a lot. The visual style, while weird at first, really helped push the envelope in terms of perception, and helped accomplish some very tense moments. The story kept me interested throughout it all. It was more "in your face" reality show like than typical hollywood dramatic musical montage with guns ablaze in all directions, not that there's anything wrong with either when they are well accomplished. It reminded me of another really great film I saw recently... "The death of Mr. Lazarescu", although that one is much more real looking, to the point where I wasn't sure if I was watching a performance or a documentary.

I’m 18 and I didn’t like any aspect of the movie but I really disliked the documentary style they shot with (as I have said a few times before). My cinematographer is also 18 and he loved the look and the movie although aside from the look he could not tell me why. So I have found that many people my age are also evenly split about liking it and disliking it although its leaning towards more people disliking it. I’ve made a point of telling my crew to never use infinite focus lenses and always use 1/24 shutter unless otherwise told to avoid the Miami Vide look. This has caused some dispute between me and my Cinematographer but hey I’m the director so its all my call.

Alan - if you're shooting 24p at 1/24 shutter speed, it will look VERY video-like, like certain scenes in Miami Vice. If you want the "standard" 24p look, more like film (at 24fps), shoot at 1/48 or 1/50. And I'm guessing that "infinite focus lenses" aren't much of a choice so much as a result of the cameras you're using. 1/3" chips will focus just about everything unless you're very careful about shooting at the very long end of the lens and with a TON of space behind your subject. Don't kill the DP if he/she can't achieve shallow DOF with 1/3" cameras, it's a limitation of the chips, even 2/3".

I agree, shooting 24P at 1/24th creates such a smeary look to fast motion that it resembles interlaced-scan photography almost -- a very UN-film-like effect since a film camera cannot shoot "shutterless" at 24 fps. I'd only use it in an exposure emergency or for shots with almost no motion. 1/32nd or 1/48th would be better for a film-look at 24P.

Life is ironic isn´t it? The Miami Vice TV show was shot on film and the Miami Vice film was shot on video :)