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Michael Mann Public Enemies Press Conference

We have a very clear idea of how HD informs the way the contemporary life looks, but obviously we don't have the same idea of how HD can inform this period. What were the challenges of shooting in HD?
Michael Mann: "Well the challenges of it and the reason to do it was because you used the word ‘contemporary’ - that's exactly it. That's exactly the relationship I wanted through the audience, how I wanted the movie to have an affect on the audience, how I wanted it to fall upon you and how I wanted your relationship to be with it is that it is contemporary to you.

In other words I didn’t want to look at 1933, I wanted to be in 1933. I wanted you to feel, 'I'm in 1933. This is real. I get it. I get what it’s like to walk down the sidewalk and go to a movie on July 20th,' - whatever it was - '1934.' What day was it? Remember July 24th? 22nd. Just to feel, 'Yeah, I get what it is to be alive then.' You'd go, like you normally do when you want to go to movies, you'd walk two blocks and you'd go to the movies. Go in and sit down, had air conditioning and you see a movie - just like you do right now. Not like a distant event that happens to characters in period dramas. That's exactly the antithesis of what I wanted the relationship to be. So that's high def."

"I planned to shoot on film until I did a side by side test. And when I shot a side by side test it felt like, 'Okay, I could touch this black Buick in the rain at night.' I knew what that car was like, and that I would feel that I'm completely current and contemporary with that day. And that if you see a new car go by, there's a car out of the future.

That's it."

At what point do you choose the music that you want? Is that something you would think about during the screenwriting process?

Michael Mann: "All the time or as early as possible, you know, because the music becomes kind of a poetic code of waves of feeling and modes of feeling and thinking. It also tells you how people were. And if you can listen to Billie Holiday and imagine having that music reproduced with contemporary acoustics, imagine what she really would have sounded like if it was live or if you could record it digitally, you know, and kind of impute that to it, then you really get a sense of it. So I begin very early on."

"And Johnny Depp started with the guitar, he started with music, and so he is quite a musicologist and has a great knowledge of that period. So he gave me a couple [CDs]. We started exchanging CDs and he gave me a couple of CDs from that period, Bukka White, Kokomo Arnold, some other stuff, and I got very interested in older music. And I also knew that during the New Deal that, I've drawn a blank on his name, did a lot of field recordings so I wanted to get my hands on some of those. Most of those resided at the Smithsonian. And so I got interested in the actual music."

There's a couple of songs that are quite old that are in the film when Dillinger loses Walter at the very beginning and they throw Shouse out of the car and he settles back. What you're hearing is a spiritual called 'Guide Me' that was recorded in 1948 by a group called the Indian Bottom which is the name of a place, the Indian Bottom Association of Greater Baptists or something, something, something. And there's also Blind Willie Johnson, you know, 'Dark as the Night Cold as the Grave," and that's what you're hearing when Dillinger walks through the police station at the end, and we put an orchestral pad underneath it. So it informs a lot of stuff and some of the best scouts that have gotten the music are my kids, my kids and me. I’d get a CD every couple of days from one of my daughters or my daughter's boyfriend or something like that."

You were an early adopter of digital. I'm just sort of curious, where are we today with it? Where is it in the evolution and how much further does it have to go before you think it’s wholly embraced? And when you look at this film, are you getting a hundred percent of what you want or is there still more?

Michael Mann: "I'm not getting a hundred percent and I think one will. The biggest difficulty right now is in exhibition. It's always been the most reactionary part of this whole process, cinema. They are the last folks to see the times are changing. And it’s funny that you said that. That’s the reason we’re running late is because that was a technical, they were trying to wrangle some prints, getting the release prints to look like they're supposed to look. So he has to go back on the photo chemicals; it’s like a trip back into time. We’ll probably have 300 digital prints and 4200 film prints out there. I would like all of it to be digital because every single one will be the same. So we worked with very fine tolerance and color works on you like sound. It works on you in eighty percent of the way. It’s working on you in ways you’re not even conscious of. You can alter mood and all this. And we do this with great calibration and spend a lot of time on it and a certain amount of it is just tossed out because of the crudeness of trying to reproduce this stuff photochemically. Every print is different. The cinema conditions are different, you know?"

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