Lenses used in The Royal Tenenbaums

[Mr. Macgregor]

Hi all.

If anyone has seen The royal tenenmabums you will quickly notice the huge barrel distortion. This is obviously made on purpouse (director trademark), and does not only appear on ultra wide angle shots, but even in medium shots. So i was wondering if anyone knows what lenses were used or if the DoP uses some kind of attached wide angle adapter (maybe very old anamorphic lenses?). :lol:

[Max Jacoby]

There was an article in the AC when the film got released. It's mostly shot on a 40mm Primo anamorphic lens.

[Paul Bruening]

Recently, my wife and I have been enjoying older scope movies on our movie wall/Infocus projector. With this presentation system, we've begun to really notice lens distortion in some otherwise big budget, top of the line movies. It takes awhile to teach your brain to catch the whole list of weird things that anamorphic lenses can do to reality. Now that we are on the lookout, we see the weirdness quite often and rare back in laughter at some of the stretching and warping that pops up.

 

With all that said, ironically, people have come to associate that warpage with the big budget splendor of these movies. The joke is really on us because we almost have to subtly distort our images to que that big budget reaction in the veiwer, now. I really hate that since I have commited to 2 perf and some nice, flat lenses.

[Leo Anthony Vale]

Recently, my wife and I have been enjoying older scope movies on our movie wall/Infocus projector. With this presentation system, we've begun to really notice lens distortion in some otherwise big budget, top of the line movies. It takes awhile to teach your brain to catch the whole list of weird things that anamorphic lenses can do to reality. Now that we are on the lookout, we see the weirdness quite often and rare back in laughter at some of the stretching and warping that pops up.

Ages ago I read a book about Escher which points out that sort of perspective in many Escher prints and that it is more similar to human visual percecption than the standard rectilinear perspective.

The book also had a late medieval painting with "widelux" perspective.

 

The negative lenses in eyeglasses for myopia exhibit curvilinear perspective. So that anamorphic distortion is like seeing with glasses.

 

The lab I was at had to make a new textless end title for 'Trapeze'. It was optically printed from a new I/P

from the background neg to add the fade out.

When the MGM person who ordered the new E/T saw it, she noticed the anamorphic distortion and flipped out, blaming us for adding fish eye distortion in the optical printer.