Indiana Jones 4: Panavision anamorphic, Super 35, or HD?

[Saul Pincus]

With INDY 4 ramping up, does anyone on this board have a sense of what's actually happening with regard to format? Is anyone in the know?

 

Saul Pincus

Edited June 16, 2007 by Saul Pincus

[David Mullen ASC]

Just wild rumors at this point.

 

I heard that Kaminski was over at Panavision a few months ago doing tests on the Genesis, but that could have been for anything, a commercial, his own curiosity, etc.

[Guest Stephen Murphy]

Just wild rumors at this point.

 

I heard that Kaminski was over at Panavision a few months ago doing tests on the Genesis, but that could have been for anything, a commercial, his own curiosity, etc.

 

according to imdb its anamorphic - not that they're super accurate but it would be great if it were true.

[Phil Rhodes]

Surely it's a natural for anamorphic?

 

It's highly appropriate, and it's not like a show that size cares much for the currently-small cost differential.

 

Phil

[David Mullen ASC]

Some people who have worked for Kaminski and Spielberg have told me that Spielberg hates anamorphic and felt he was pressured into shooting it by the DP's of the 1970's and 1980's that he worked with. Now this may be camera assistants' own dislike of anamorphic filtering back through their perceptions.

 

I've never met more people who didn't like anamorphic than camera assistants. I get more "why in the world would you shoot with anamorphic lenses?" from them than anyone else.

 

Although many DP's today also have that attitude. I talked to an ASC DP who has shot many famous anamorphic movies and I mentioned that I shot a recent anamorphic film and he said "Why would you do that? Audiences can't see the difference and Super-35 is so much easier to shoot."

 

In the ASC, you meet a lot of people who fall down on one side or the other on this issue.

 

Considering Kaminski's and Spielberg's preference for spherical lenses, I'm not sure why they'd go back to anamorphic (and I think Kaminski has only shot one anamorphic feature, "Tall Tale").

[Guest Tim Partridge]

I wonder if we'll ever see another anamorphic Bond movie now.

 

In my opinion Spielberg's best stuff visually came from that "pressured" photographic approach.

[timHealy]

Just for fun I was watching the widescreen version of Raiders last night on DVD and kind of felt that many of the shots seemed like they were using too short a millimeter lens for most shots. There was too much distortion on the fringes.

 

Now though I love widescreen aspect ratios, I myself have never shot anamorphic. So there are probably some realities that I have not experienced personally. It just kind of looked like I would have preferred a longer lens for most shots.

 

But who am I to second guess the decisions of the artist 25 years later .... heheheheh. I still love the movie and can watch it over and over.

 

Best

 

Tim

[Max Jacoby]

I've never met more people who didn't like anamorphic than camera assistants. I get more "why in the world would you shoot with anamorphic lenses?" from them than anyone else.

Same here.

[Andy_Alderslade]

Same here.

 

But I thought you were really into your anamorphic?

[Max Jacoby]

But I thought you were really into your anamorphic?

I meant all the focus pullers that I know. The one exception is of course the one that I always use, he loves it.

[Andy_Alderslade]

I meant all the focus pullers that I know. The one exception is of course the one that I always use, he loves it.

 

Is he into extreme sports by any chance?

 

;)

[Luc Allein]

We just shipped out their package two days ago. It's not digital, all film cameras. I work at Panavision and I have been begging for months to try to camera PA on this. If there's one movie in my life I could work on, it would probably be this one. (Unless they ever make Mad Max 4) I couldnt get on, they already had two camera PA's. Much to my chagrin.

 

I think they took out 8 or 9 cameras, mostly Platinum and Gold cameras.

 

 

*Im still kind of lost on the whole anamorphic vs super 35 thing, I thought you needed anamoprphic to achieve super 35? Aren't all Panavision lenses anamorphic? I know what anamorphic means and all, I just get lost on anamorphic and non-anamorphic lenses and why they choose to use them or not.

[Chris Keth]

We just shipped out their package two days ago. It's not digital, all film cameras. I work at Panavision and I have been begging for months to try to camera PA on this. If there's one movie in my life I could work on, it would probably be this one. (Unless they ever make Mad Max 4) I couldnt get on, they already had two camera PA's. Much to my chagrin.

 

I think they took out 8 or 9 cameras, mostly Platinum and Gold cameras.

*Im still kind of lost on the whole anamorphic vs super 35 thing, I thought you needed anamoprphic to achieve super 35? Aren't all Panavision lenses anamorphic? I know what anamorphic means and all, I just get lost on anamorphic and non-anamorphic lenses and why they choose to use them or not.

 

Anamorphic will achieve the 2.35 aspect ratio by squeezing the picture horizontally onto a squarish negative area. Special lenses with an element to squeeze the picture must be used. Super 35 will get the same aspect ratio by cropping the top and bottom, taking advantage of less negative area but using spherical (regular) lenses)

[Max Jacoby]

Is he into extreme sports by any chance?

 

;)

Yeah, like shooting on 65mm ;)

[Saul Pincus]

We just shipped out their package two days ago. It's not digital, all film cameras. I work at Panavision and I have been begging for months to try to camera PA on this. If there's one movie in my life I could work on, it would probably be this one. (Unless they ever make Mad Max 4) I couldnt get on, they already had two camera PA's. Much to my chagrin.

 

I think they took out 8 or 9 cameras, mostly Platinum and Gold cameras.

*Im still kind of lost on the whole anamorphic vs super 35 thing, I thought you needed anamoprphic to achieve super 35? Aren't all Panavision lenses anamorphic? I know what anamorphic means and all, I just get lost on anamorphic and non-anamorphic lenses and why they choose to use them or not.

 

Thanks Luc.

 

We seem to have established it's film. (Best news for this particular project, IMHO.)

 

Next query: true scope or S35?

Edited June 21, 2007 by Saul Pincus

[John Holland]

I it must be anamorphic , if it was S35 ,sure Kaminski would have gone for Arricams .

[Andy_Alderslade]

I it must be anamorphic , if it was S35 ,sure Kaminski would have gone for Arricams .

 

I'm not hearing about this in any of the major London studios, has Speilberg abandoned shooting in the UK?

 

....and to think they gave him a knighthood for it, Yeesh!

 

:P

[John Holland]

Looks that way yes nothing being shot here on this one .

[Daniel Smith]

Shoot in on 35mm!

 

It wouldn't be the same otherwise. It needs that cine feel.

[Saul Pincus]

I it must be anamorphic , if it was S35 ,sure Kaminski would have gone for Arricams .

 

Indiana Jones.com posted a few fleeting snippets of day#1 EPK today ? you can clearly see they're shooting film.

[David Mullen ASC]

Indiana Jones.com posted a few fleeting snippets of day#1 EPK today ? you can clearly see they're shooting film.

 

Yes, it looks like a 35mm Panaflex on the hood mount, and perhaps a 435 on the remote crane, but the lens looks too small to be an anamorphic lens. Can't really tell though.

[Patrick Cooper]

"Super 35 will get the same aspect ratio by cropping the top and bottom, taking advantage of less negative area but using spherical (regular) lenses)"

 

I think the name 'Super 35' is misleading. It was because of this name that I used to think that Super 35 relied on a similar principle as used in Super 16 where they widened the gate horizontally to get a 'wide screen' format (now I realise this is not the case and not really practical because of the soundtrack.) And of course the other film format which incorporates 'Super' in the name (Super 8) has a considerably larger frame size than regular 8mm. So Super 35 seems to be the exception to the rule here regarding shooting formats that use the name 'Super' in that you end up with a smaller (narrower) frame size. Out of curiosity, is the height of the 35mm frame used in anamorphic photography close to the height of a 35mm still frame?

[David Mullen ASC]

Super-35 does use a wider gate than standard 35mm (Academy/1.85/anamorphic) because it exposes picture information in the soundtrack stripe area. But that hardly makes up for the amount of vertical cropping needed to get 2.40.

 

Super-35, Super-16 and Super-8 are all different. In 16mm, the sprocket rows on one side are removed when making a sound print, to put the soundtrack there. In Super-16, you use single-perf negative stock to expose a picture out into that missing perf row, so you can't make a contact print with a soundtrack. In Super-35, you always have perf rows on both sides and the soundtrack goes inside the perfs, so in Super-35, you expose picture into the soundtrack area. In Super-8, they made the perfs themselves smaller (since regular 8mm perfs are the same as 16mm and 35mm, i.e. unnecessarily large) so they could enlarge the picture.

 

Here is a diagram I made for a director explaining anamorphic vs. Super-35 cropped to 2.40. The text refers to optical printing, not a D.I., for the blow-up. You can see that the anamorphic format doesn't use a strip on the left for the soundtrack area:

 

[Hal Smith]

Here is a diagram I made for a director explaining anamorphic vs. Super-35 cropped to 2.40.

Regular anamorphic uses the Academy camera aperture? So all one needs is an anamorphic lens, no need for a special gate? If that's true, then there's some REALLY bad information floating around.

[David Mullen ASC]

Regular anamorphic uses the Academy camera aperture? So all one needs is an anamorphic lens, no need for a special gate? If that's true, then there's some REALLY bad information floating around.

 

No, anamorphic uses the Academy width but the Super-35 (Full Aperture) height. An Academy gate would have thicker top & bottom framelines. Here is another diagram I drew, exaggerating the thicknesses a little. "B" is Academy and "D" is Anamorphic:

 

 

It makes sense since Academy is 1.37 and Anamorphic 1.20 with a 2X optical squeeze.

 

Of course, most cameras shooting anamorphic don't use an anamorphic gate, just projectors showing anamorphic. Most expose Full Aperture but have the lens centered for Academy/1.85/Anamorphic (Sound) and your groundglass shows you the anamorphic projection area. So your gate would be "A" but your framelines would be "D".