Is there a practical purpose to shooting 35mm 2x anamorphic lenses on the Alexa 65?

[Edith blazek]

I was reading the asc article on Godzilla king of the monsters where it mentions that Lawrence Sher and the team shot on panavision c series anamorphics on the Alexa 65, using spherical lenses when needed for more challenging effects shots but what would the practical point of using c series (mind you it doesn't say whether they were expanded) on an Alexa 65 for a typical release? I thought it could help for vfx but they used spherical lenses for when they needed more resolution, so was it purely aesthetic? Why go for it with the anamorphic lenses instead of the xt studio they were also considering?  https://theasc.com/articles/royal-rumble-godzilla-king-of-the-monsters

[Dom Jaeger]

Forum member Greg Irwin was 1st AC on this film, so hopefully he chimes in to give a more accurate answer, but I would assume the C series were expanded for use on the Alexa 65 (perhaps one of the first instances of this, now it’s quite common). I believe this was filmed before the release of the Alexa LF, so the 65 was often the camera of choice if filmmakers wanted more resolution. The sphericals mentioned - Primo 70s - don’t actually cover a full Alexa 65 sensor (despite the name), so they would have punched in a bit. Probably also punched in when using the anamorphics. But they certainly got more resolution than if they’d used an Alexa XT.

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, using expanded C-series anamorphics on an Alexa 65 would definitely be for the look, the aesthetics.

Also keep in mind that with a 2X anamorphic being used for a 2.40 : 1 release, only a 1.20 : 1 area of the sensor ends up being used so the C-series would not have to fill the 2.12 : 1 65mm sensor end-to-end. You only need 30.7mm of the 54.12mm sensor to be covered (and that only uses 3.7K out of the 6.5K sensor width -- which is still bigger than using an XT with a 2X anamorphic lens for 2.40 : 1, which is only about 2.6K.)