The Return of VistaVision

[Gautam Valluri]

News from the recently-concluded Venice Film Festival is that Brady Corbet's 215-minute period film The Brutalist starring Adrien Brody was shot in VistaVision and will have a 70mm release via DI. The film has a reported 1.66 : 1 aspect ratio.

Paul Thomas Anderson's next film The Battle of Baktan Cross starring Leonardo Dicaprio is also being partly filmed in VV and is expected to have an IMAX 15/70mm release. Knowing Paul's track record, I'm assuming this will be an optical blow up. The film's aspect ratio is reported to be 1.85 : 1.

It's good to see VV back as a main camera and not just for special effects shots but I wonder why the sudden interest in the format, especially since 65mm would probably be within the same budget range for these films, especially for Paul, who's already used it in The Master.

Anyone on the inside know what's up?

[Simon Wyss]

Simple. VV is based on 35-mm. film. The choice of labs and printing facilites is vaster than with wide film. The only bottleneck appears when you want to turn-copy the VV image to wide stock. That certainly is the reason for DI.

[David Mullen ASC]

If you end up cropping to 1.85 on either 5-perf 65mm or 8-perf 35mm, the area used isn't dramatically different -- both formats are about 24mm tall roughly but to get to 1.85 from the 1.50 VistaVision negative, you end up cropping vertically to around 19.5mm, whereas with 65mm you are cropping the sides to 1.85, from about 52mm to 44mm.

(Don't quote me on these figures, they are very rough, I'd have to get exact specs to give you exact figures.)

Stock costs are similar too since you are basically paying for negative real estate, 8-perf is twice as much as 4-perf 35mm (though today for 1.85, you'd probably shoot 3-perf) and 5-perf 65mm is a bit more than double being twice as wide as 4-perf 35mm but also one perf taller so it costs a bit more than 8-perf 35mm.

[Robin Phillips]

in fairness, digital vista vision has been the rage for a while now. but boy would it be fun to slap a set of supreme primes on an 8 perf film body.

[Gautam Valluri]

1 hour ago, David Mullen ASC said:

If you end up cropping to 1.85 on either 5-perf 65mm or 8-perf 35mm, the area used isn't dramatically different -- both formats are about 24mm tall roughly but to get to 1.85 from the 1.50 VistaVision negative, you end up cropping vertically to around 19.5mm, whereas with 65mm you are cropping the sides to 1.85, from about 52mm to 44mm.

(Don't quote me on these figures, they are very rough, I'd have to get exact specs to give you exact figures.)

Stock costs are similar too since you are basically paying for negative real estate, 8-perf is twice as much as 4-perf 35mm (though today for 1.85, you'd probably shoot 3-perf) and 5-perf 65mm is a bit more than double being twice as wide as 4-perf 35mm but also one perf taller so it costs a bit more than 8-perf 35mm.

This is precisely why I'm perplexed. With the costs involved in shooting 8/35mm, I'd might as well shoot 5/65mm.

And reportedly for The Brutalist they did a 1.66 crop of their VV image so atleast  they wasted less real-estate.

Image real-estate and costs aside, I'd still be impressed if they just chose VV for the look only!

3 hours ago, Simon Wyss said:

VV is based on 35-mm. film. The choice of labs and printing facilites is vaster than with wide film.

This makes sense, as the entire developing and scanning process is no different to regular 35mm workflow.

Finally, in the case of Paul Thomas Anderson's film,  I'd love to see how the VV 1.85 cropped image holds up when blown up optically to 15/70mm. I know most of Nolan's 35mm footage up until Interstellar went through the DMR-process for their IMAX prints. I wonder if PTA's film will take that route or if he will insist on an optical blow up as he has done for his recent films.

[Geffen Avraham]

The other thing is that while older VV cameras like the "Elephant Ear" had 2000ft magazines, many currently operational ones like the Beaumont only have 1000ft mags.

This means you can shoot for only 5.5 minutes or so, vs nearly 9 minutes on a 1,000 ft roll of 65mm.

Sync-sound Vista cameras are rare as well, the ones Hitchcock used needed a blimp. I'm only familiar with the Rotavision and Wilcam as far as quiet vista cameras. The 765 and System 65 seem easier to work with...

Edited September 18 by Geffen Avraham