Divinity (2023) // Kodak Tri-X // Feature shot on Arri SR3

[Kamran Pakseresht]

Wanted to draw attention to a film I just saw in theaters - Divinity by Eddie Alcazar - shot almost entirely on Kodak 7266 on a super 16 Arri SR3
 

 

Incredibly stylized film, mixing all sorts of special and practical effects and even stop motion animation. Definitely worth a watch if you like seeing things originating on 16mm. I didn’t know the film was shot on 16 until after I had watched it, and originally thought it was surely shot on digital with grain added in post - but turns out it was just natural grain from the format.

 

here is the IMDb entry for the technical aspects 

Edited February 26 by Kamran Pakseresht

[Jon O'Brien]

There's more than a bit of a nod to David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977). I probably won't see it as it's not my sort of film but always good to hear about features shot on an SR3 and Tri-X.

[Gautam Valluri]

They went with the 7266 with a bit of desaturated 7219 mixed in, exactly like The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki, the finnish boxing film from 2016. I remember reading an interview with the filmmakers back then where they said they bought out the entire European supply of Tri-X from Kodak, and had to even ship some from North America. Could've been exagerrated.

I did get a 122m roll of 7266 shipped from Kodak last year, it took them a few weeks to deliver and it seemed like it was made to order.

The film also looks like it has the Guy Maddin / Bertrand Mandico vibe, which could be a bit much for a feature-length film.

As Jon mentioned above, always a pleasure to see Tri-X and SR3 features.

Also, I remember Jarin Blaschke doing tests of 7266 as a negative during The Lighthouse pre-production. He claimed 7266 at 80 ISO was a far superior 16mm negative than 7222.

[Kamran Pakseresht]

2 hours ago, Gautam Valluri said:

Also, I remember Jarin Blaschke doing tests of 7266 as a negative during The Lighthouse pre-production. He claimed 7266 at 80 ISO was a far superior 16mm negative than 7222.

Curious about that, as far as I knew The Lighthouse was shot entirely on Double-X - here is the a quote from this article about the film choices:

“The results confirmed my hunch, that nothing approached the palette we were after quite like B&W negative film,” says Blaschke. “Rob and I saw that the blottier, murkier qualities of DOUBLE-X better-suited our misty, salty, visually-distressed film.”

 

[Gautam Valluri]

Yes The Lighthouse was shot entirely on the Double-X but Jarin had done extensive tests with 16mm Tri-X as well. There are some of his posts from that period on these forums somewhere.

Understandably, he couldn't share the results with us but he did mention exposing 7266 (Tri-X) at 80 ISO and then developing as negative yeilded much better results compared to traditional 7222 (Double-X).

[Kamran Pakseresht]

Found the thread here.

Really interesting and very cool to see this discussion for such a beautiful film. Here is quote I think you were referencing:

The Tri-X results were superior in sharpness, highlight tonality and grain. Contrast was actually normal and comparable between the two. I saw the results both as prints and in a 4k DI suite at Fotokem. It's unclear how much the results were improved by the stock being Tri-X, and how much from the more moderate development. The "normal" developed double X footage showed signs of overdevelopment (especially poor highlight separation) that the 35mm Double-X did not.