35 mm shooting questions.

[elvworks]

(thanks for your time, input and insight)

 

Question 1. From what I understand, you can shoot anamophoric 35mm or super 35, but is anamorphic lenses ever used with Super 35, and if yes, why?

 

Question 2. If you shoot anything else besides 35mm, you will have to transfer to a 35mm print. But what happens when you shoot in 35mm and copy it to tape for offline editing. Don't you still have to make a print to 35mm anyway once you're done editing, hence incurring the cost of a 35mm print?

 

Thanks for filling in the missing pieces of the puzzle for me.

 

All the best, :D

Rick

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> Question 1. From what I understand, you can shoot anamophoric 35mm or super 35, but is anamorphic

> lenses ever used with Super 35, and if yes, why?

 

Others may be able to better answer this, but not as far as I'm aware, no. You'd end up with a wider-than-widescreen frame, even if any anamorphic lenses even cover S35. One big plus with shooting anamorphic is that you don't have to do either an optical or digital anamorphic reduction to end up with a scope print, as you do when shooting flat Super-35 for a scope finish.

 

> Don't you still have to make a print to 35mm anyway once you're done editing, hence incurring the cost of a

> 35mm print?

 

Yes, but if you have shot 35mm in a conventional (four perf, non super-35) format you can simply cut the negative and make prints from it (or more usually via an interpositive and internegative.)

 

On the other hand, if you have shot super-35, you have to do either an optical or digital reduction to anamorphic (or possibly 1.85, if you knew you were doing a DI anyway, perhaps, and wanted the extra neg area). If you have shot super-16, you're doing an optical or digital blowup. If you've shot video, you're scanning it out on a laser recorder. All these pathways cost lots more than just cutting 4-perf 35mm academy neg, notwithstanding that the total cost may be cheaper, and most of them at least arguably don't look as good.

 

The simplest way to make a 35mm movie, it seems to me, is to shoot flat academy neg, then cut that neg and print it in the manner that's been conventional for the best part of a century. The equipment is available, the focus pulling is reasonable, the optical quality is reliable, the post is a well trodden pathway which is less likely to lead to complicated and expensive screwups!

 

Phil

[David Mullen ASC]

Phil pretty much covered it.

 

Basically while one could put an anamorphic lens on a Super-35 camera, there would be no point. Regular 35mm anamorphic already uses the Full Aperture height nearly, so the only difference is that Super-35 uses the soundtrack area on the left edge of the frame. No real point or advantage of using that extra bit on the left since it creates a non-standard aspect ratio (2.66 : 1).

 

As far as needing a 35mm print, one could of course shoot 35mm, transfer it to video, and stay in video after that, like for TV. So I'm not sure I understand the question. If you want a 35mm print for projection, you have to somehow end up with a 35mm neg or IN in a standard projection format ('flat' for masking to widescreen during projection, usually to 1.85 -- or 'scope', with a 2X squeezed image on the print, to be unsqueezed by the anamorphic projector lens, to 2.39 : 1.)

[elvworks]

Phil Rhodes, David Mullen, you guys are awesome. Thanks for answering my questions.

 

I outlined my plans on another thread, if you have the time, I would most want to hear what you have to say.

 

Here is the link:

 

http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=11855

 

 

 

Regards, :D

Rick

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Whenever I shoot anamorphic these days (which isn't often, sadly) and the end product is TV, then I do it super-35. Not because I need to, but it's simply nice to have that bit of leeway at the edges so you can pan the image and recompose it slightly in telecine. Why waste any negative if you have to? I stick a regular Big TV groundglass (silent, super-35 centered 4X3) in and off we go. In fact, unless you're contact printing anamorphic and going through a DI, why not shoot it super-35 centered?

 

It's a bit like people sticking a N16 gate in a S16 camera when they want 4x3 - pointless.

[David Mullen ASC]

In fact, unless you're contact printing anamorphic and going through a DI, why not shoot it super-35 centered?

 

Well, doing that locks you out of the option of contact printing for a very slight advantage over regular anamorphic. Like I said, anamorphic already uses almost Full Aperture / Super-35 height, so all using a Super-35 gate does is give you a tiny bit of excess side information. Sure, if this is for TV and you own a Super-35 camera, why not, but it's really not much of a difference over regular anamorphic one way or the other. You don't gain anything by using a Super-35 center except some minor side-to-side adjustment.

 

Here's a comparison:

 

[elvworks]

Thanks for the interesting replies. :D