Baraka - What was the equipment list?

[LeeFordParker]

Lee, thanks for that great post with so much deatail. I have heard a lot about you from Grant Wakefield. Your timelapse work is flat out amazing.

 

Are you working on a DSLR moco rig right now? If so, can I get in line to buy one? :)

 

Thanks for your compliment, by the way. Also, I happened to know that someone suggested I had something to do with the design of the BARAKA motion control system. I did not. I know how to use it, but I did not design it. I don't remember who did. Someone not normally associated with motion control, ie, it was not Kuper.

 

Yes, I am designing a new head, a mini-Pirouette, as I think I said above. I hope it to weigh in at 5 lbs and be small enough to leave the camera attached to it, making shot setups easier and faster. I am making it powerful enough that it will work for RED, which is much heavier than a DSLR. At the moment, I'm trying to figure an easy way to add ROLL to the head without adding a lot of weight.

 

But the honest truth is that I am and want to remain, a cinematographer, not a motion control system builder. I've been motivated to build this tool because nothing like it existed when I started. I have always loved the power of silent film. I've always been interested in photographing the night sky. I was inspired by KOYANISQUATSI. So, when Mark and Ron came to ask about getting a 65mm camera(s), I made it possible for them to have a camera.

 

Ron's BARAKA motion control system was close, but no motion control system ever worked in the outdoors without great effort and problems. Ever used a laptop in full heat of the desert sun? I have. It sucks. So I made that one of my design parameters.

 

And there was nothing like it until Mumford's system came along.

 

I spent two years writing the software to add features to MocoMan like key framing, 8 axis, goto frame, goto beginning, goto end, shoot same move at any frame rate, totally programmable eases in/out for each axis, saving moves so you can morph one move into another, move expansion, move reduction, etc.

 

Most importantly, MocoMan will preview your move in real time.

 

My system will also RAMP, so you can do varispeed in timelapse, and with my camera motor, RAMP from 1 frame per two weeks to 120fps. In short, a real motion control system in a handheld computer designed specifically for working in harsh environments - cold, heat, wind, rain.

 

MocoMan is not even in the same country as a Mumford. Yet, all the people now into digital timelapse sort of hope for this level of pricing. A two axis Mumford head would weight 12 lbs and, until he adds his node sync feature, you cannot synchronize the action of the two axis easily. You have a 3A motor drive capability and I think 4 or 5 deg per second top speed. As you may know, the Mumford head is heavy, slow and somewhat complicated to get EXACTLY what you want. For most DSLR timelapse shooting its totally workable and very, very affordable.

 

The head I'm building will go to 10A continuous. It turn 120 deg per second and weigh only 5 lbs. To achieve this, the parts alone will cost more than twice what a two axis Mumford head would cost.

 

Just the parts, not my time for design, building or programming.

 

My system will have to cost at least 4x a Mumford system, or approximately $8,000 per head. There isn't much money in it unless I do the volume of sales like the RED, and I don't think much of a line will form made up of DSLR timelapsers.

 

But if you want to help me out by helping to finance the development, by buying the first one, I'm willing. This how I financed the development of MocoMan. There's only one other like it in the world, a cinematographer who shoots stock for IMAGE BANK. His system is PAN TILT DOLLY BOOM SWING IRIS FOCUS ZOOM.

 

Who knows, if I can get a few people lined up, I could afford to do it.

 

IMHO, PAN and TILT are nowhere near as important as dolly. Lots of timelapsers now add PAN TILTS ZOOMS with After Effects. Dolly, Boom, Swing and pulling focus or any extreme moves, such as 360 deg pans, etc, are the only things you can't achieve if you use DSLR to produce 1080p stock footage.

 

If your shooting the next BARAKA, you want all the image size you can get, so PAN TILT ZOOM should be done in camera, not in post.

 

After Effects and similar programs have drastically reduced the demand for motion control. This is one of the reasons I am struggling to survive with MocoMan. The other reason is that 70mm production has also be drastically reduced, at least for those interested in producing movies like BARAKA et al.

 

And, how many features like BARAKA have been made since 1992? SACRED PLANET was the closest. Financed by DISNEY, it did so poorly against HARRY POTTER, I don't think it even got a theatrical release in Europe. Not very inspiring results for a major distributor who were all hoping for returns like EVEREST in 1998. But that was only popular because someone called his wife by radio before he died.

 

If you are still interested after all the downside, maybe you're someone I can work with. I would also recommend you consider both a dolly system and a lens control system, which I am also working on downsizing. BOOM and SWING is possible, but not good in the wind. I've shot in winds about 35mph with my system without problem (the temperature of the wind was 125 F, and I drank 3 gallons of water).

 

Why don't you post a link to your work?

[Tom Lowe]

Lee, the mini MocoMan sounds amazing.

 

An early reel of mine (with only After Effects motion) can be seen here:

 

www.timescapes.org

 

We have a nice little timelapse discussion forum there as well, which is how I met Grant Wakefield and learned about your work.

 

Here is a more recent panning shot I took a couple weeks ago using the Mumford rotary head (it's very short)...

 

http://www.vimeo.com/1204672

 

As of now, my plan is to add a second Mumford head - this one dragging a dolly down a track. Then I will have pan + dolly, which will cover about 80% of the shots I want to get right now. Adding tilt would be nice, but I think it might be tough to integrate 3 axes with Bryan's current technology. Although, in theory, it could be done.

 

By the way, one of my favorite shots of yours is that one in the desert moving around the dead tree. Such a fantastic shot.

[LeeFordParker]

Lee you said the AP65 was made for "Patton" which was only one of the 3 D-150 films made were the lenses Todd-AO from the the past ? I seem to remember there was [ cant be ] but something like a 8mm lens ?

 

Yes, there was something like an 8mm. I don't remember the exact focal length, but I remember shooting some shots with if for the CINESPACE 70 demo film. It a fairly small lens as I remember, but it was 180 deg corner to corner on the 70mm frame. It wasn't a Nikkor 8mm, it was something else.

 

Yes, the Cooke zoom lens was made for D150, for PATTON.

 

But, I believe its important to point out that D150 was a projection process, not a photographic process.

 

To the best of my recollection, D150 was what Todd-AO was alway SUPPOSED to be: single strip cinerama on a deeply curved, 150 degree screen. The D150 projection lens made the focusing and distortion correction possible.

 

D150 did not use any custom made lenses any more than IMAX, IWERKS 870, Arri 765 or most Panavision lenses. It is so expensive to develop a good camera lenses that its just isn't possible without a large market for the lenses. I believe that the so called Panavision "Primo" lens is made by Lietz and had a different anti-reflection coat from the Lietz still camera lenses - other than that they are the same.

 

While I believe it is true that PATTON made have been advertised as "photographed in D150", there wasn't anything special above the camera lenses. Most of them were the same BNC mount Cooke lenses used on HELLO DOLLY and may have dated back to SOUTH PACIFIC or AROUND THE WORLD.

 

John, your name is familiar to me. And certainly you know a bit about both Todd-AO and the AP65. I did some tests for David Lean with the AP65 way back when at Pinewood in London. The DP for the tests was the 2nd unit DP on RYAN'S DAUGHTER. Did I work with you on that? Or did you used to work at FILM EFFECTS OF HOLLYWOOD?

 

 

Lee

[LeeFordParker]

An early reel of mine (with only After Effects motion) can be seen here:

 

It's a good reel. I had seen it and forwarded it to Grant after he'd put some stuff on Vimeo for the first time.

 

I saw the other too. It must be high altitude to get such a multitude of stars. And no moon!

 

But why are you drawing 7A! Were you running a heater?

 

MocoMan with PAN TILT DOLLY FOCUS dragging an IMAX camera draws 2A average(@ 24v)!

[Tom Lowe]

Haha, I don't know how I blew a 5-amp fuse. I had the camera, the mumford head, and both mumford controllers running through that fuse to my DC 12V source, which I think is 7 amps.

 

Yeah, that Mt Whitney portal campground is about 5,000 feet or more. The only town nearby is Lone Pine (and Bishop about 40 or so miles away) so it's nice and dark up there when no moon is out. I shot 2 nights ago at Holcomb Valley in Big Bear but the light polution from Riverside was ridiculous. I don't think I am going to shoot up there anymore at night.

[David Mullen ASC]

I recall the AC articles on D150 around that time, for "The Bible", mentioning some new lenses constructed by Dr. Vetter, particularly the 150 degree super-wide-angle lens that was the successor to the Todd-AO "bug eye" lens -- and where Dimension 150 got its name. It wasn't just a projection system but a camera lens + projection system that was another attempt to refine Todd-AO into becoming what it was intended to become, the replacement of Cinerama with its 146 degree view.

[David Auner aac]

My system will have to cost at least 4x a Mumford system, or approximately $8,000 per head. There isn't much money in it unless I do the volume of sales like the RED, and I don't think much of a line will form made up of DSLR timelapsers.

 

Hi Lee,

 

good to have you on the boards. A friend and myself are currently focusing more on time lapse and we're currently developing a case for DSLRs to put out in the weather for a year or even more. It will be designed to run on 12V to be able to run off battery packs and or solar panels. It will include the camera, computer and internet access, heater/heatsink and a rain deflector. But it's good to hear you are doing work on a moco head, because we very thinking of starting to develop one as well. So we might get a couple of people together who are interested in such a design! care to share some of your ideas? Need input? Feel free to contact me off list as well (you'll find my info on my homepage)!

 

Regards, Dave

[John Holland]

Lee i was involved in some tests with the Panavision 65mm Panaflex at Pinewood at that time as a very lowly camera assistant. The Dp ,was his name Denys Coop BSC ?

[LeeFordParker]

I recall the AC articles on D150 around that time, for "The Bible", mentioning some new lenses constructed by Dr. Vetter, particularly the 150 degree super-wide-angle lens that was the successor to the Todd-AO "bug eye" lens -- and where Dimension 150 got its name. It wasn't just a projection system but a camera lens + projection system that was another attempt to refine Todd-AO into becoming what it was intended to become, the replacement of Cinerama with its 146 degree view.

 

David,

 

I know you are a very well respected DOP and I've seen you contribute to a lot of sites like this. I will only explain about camera lenses to clarify what I said.

 

What I meant is that there was nothing intrinsically different about most of the "D150" camera lenses in the set - that I was aware of. Any lenses sharp enough and with an image circle large enough to cover the aperature could have been used. The back focus of the lenses needed to create a sharp focus across the entire negative area - that same as an medium format camera lens.

 

This is not the same as a process like, for example, CINEMASCOPE. CINEMASCOPE used lenses with an anamorphic squeeze that needed to be unsqueezed by the projection lens according to the exact same ratio. D150 used 65mm negative in the Academy standard aperature of 2.21:1. All lenses were "flat" lenses, ie, they did not incorporate any type of anamorphic squeeze.

 

I worked as the Manager of the Todd-AO camera department for 7 years. Much of this time was dedicated to trying to get the Industry to shoot features in 65mm again. I succeeded to the extent that I got BARAKA to shoot with our cameras, I helped get both SHOWSCAN and IWERKS started. I directed and shot the CINESPACE 70 DEMO film at 30fps, which I'm sure you have seen. We premiered the film at the ASC when it was finished. We arranged special screenings for Ron Howard who was considering FAR AND AWAY as a 70mm project and for Alan Daviau and Steve Spielberg, who were considering EMPIRE OF THE SUN. We arranged to shoot test for David Lean's last film NOSTROMO.

 

I handled all of the equipment in the Todd-AO inventory at one time or another. I must say honestly, that, while the lenses may have been specially made for D150, I do not recall there being anything special about them with respect to their relationship to a 150 degree deeply curved screen.

 

However, I am perfectly willing to admit I could be wrong. Most of the lenses I worked with on the Cinespace 70 Demo, SHOWSCAN, IWERKS et al, were modern medium format lenses, Hasselblad, Mamiya, Pentax, and some 35mm still camera lenses with back image areas large enough to cover the 65mm aperature. And we were calling them Cinespace 70 lenses.

 

The 8mm lens, or whatever focal length it was, mentioned in my post to John Holland, was the so-called 150 degree lens - as it was 180 degrees corner to corner diagonally, making it approximately 150 deg horizontally. It was not the Kowa lens used by CINEMA 180(almost all of the effect sequences of BRAIN STORM) and it was not a Zeiss 30mm lens. I do not know the maker of this lens nor do I know its origin. It was the only lens I saw while at Todd-AO capable of 150 degrees horizontally on the 5perf frame.

 

I do know that it was a Fisheye lens with the same characteristics of the Ziess 30mm lens used for OMNIMAX. Technically, it fullfilled the design parameter of 150 degrees horizontally. This was similar to the first Todd-AO lens created for OKLAHOMA, the so-called BUG EYE lens, which I recall was 120 deg, and the 2nd, smaller lens, created for AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, which I recall was 135 deg. Because these all lenses had fisheye distortion, they weren't used a lot in the final productions of any of the films mentioned.

 

The major difference between the Todd-AO that Mike Todd started and D150 process finished by Dr. Richard Vetter, was the theater projection lens and the theater screen. Although I haven't been there in a while, the old Egyptian Theater used to have a D150 screen. To my recollection, it was as deeply curved as the screen down the street at the CINERAMA DOME. The D150 projection lens made it possible to focus the flat release print image onto a wide and deeply curved surface. I believe the Egyptian still uses the D150 lenses.

 

As you probably know, one of the major downfalls of many of the great new image processes was the lack of lens choice. CINERAMA and OMNIMAX are spectacular experiences, but, for a Director and DOP used to the idea of telling a story using different focal length lenses, a single lens process can be intimidating. I was a consultant on a simulator ride at Paul Allan EXPERIENCE MUSIC PROJECT in Seattle. The simulator ride sat in front of a dome screen on to which an 5perf 70mm image was projected. The DOP shot the tests with a Panavision, and when they saw the distortion created by the dome screen, I was called in to look at what could be done. I explained that a fisheye would induce distortions that would be corrected by the dome - thus making it LOOK normal - just like OMNIMAX. I bought a test shot with the Mamiya 24mm fisheye for IWERKS to show them.

 

After looking at the test, the Director said, "But this means I can only use one lens. How can I make a film with just one lens?"

 

What to say in answer? Make the screen flat, keep the dome use and use one lens or live with the distortion. These are the only choices.

 

I believe that it was Dr. Vetter's genius to utilize standard production lenses (read standard production practices) and create the D150 effect as a stand alone theater experience. I believe this to be the success of D150.

[LeeFordParker]

Hi Lee,

 

good to have you on the boards. A friend and myself are currently focusing more on time lapse and we're currently developing a case for DSLRs to put out in the weather for a year or even more. It will be designed to run on 12V to be able to run off battery packs and or solar panels. It will include the camera, computer and internet access, heater/heatsink and a rain deflector. But it's good to hear you are doing work on a moco head, because we very thinking of starting to develop one as well. So we might get a couple of people together who are interested in such a design! care to share some of your ideas? Need input? Feel free to contact me off list as well (you'll find my info on my homepage)!

 

Regards, Dave

 

Yes. Always interested in a good challenge. I once shot grapes growing during two seasons, a period 1.5 years, in 3D. I worked with Richard Hardy, an expert in timelapse shooting of plants. We built a studio over two grapevines at Mondavi's in Rutherford, in Napa Valley. We grew the grapes indoors - a first. Since the vines were Robert Mondavi's Private Reserve Cabernet vines, we had to insure each plant for $1,000,000. The longest single shot was 3.5 months, two 400' rolls of 35mm 5247 in 100 + F heat, with one frame every 1/2 hour. The shot came out perfect! We had to put voltage stablizers on the lights or we'd see the power grid fluctuations. The 2nd year we grew the plants 24 hours a day, so we wouldn't see the plant's dark period aspiration. I put together a device that turned an NTSC video image into a fax signal, so we could look through the video tap via the phone line in Los Angeles - a first for 1990!

 

The film was for a client of Iwerks. It played in England at the Denbie Wine Estate in Dorking for nearly 8 years. I still have the 70mm 3D camera plates if anyone's interested in shooting 3D.

 

A few years ago, I was involved in the design of project intending to film the building of the FREEDOM TOWER, the 1776 story building said to replace the World Trade Center. I was engineering several pan/tilt heads, one of which was going to shoot a 7 year motion control tilt up! 1 frame per two weeks! All managed via the internet, including exposure control and real time through the lens viewing. The film was going to be shot with a combination of 15perf 70mm and DSLRs cameras. The Production company was English, the Director a Scot living in France.

 

Still waiting for money, but not holding my breath ;-)

 

Anything to push the edges of the envelope.

 

 

Lee

[Tom Lowe]

Lee, I heard about that 7-year tilt timelapse shot on the rising skyscraper... that sounds like the greatest shot ever! I hope someone will fund it. Maybe NYC city itself?

[David Mullen ASC]

I didn't mean to imply that the D150 lenses were special or unique; I know they were ordinary spherical lenses and I believe Vetter probably only had a couple assembled from scratch especially for the D150 process (particularly the 150 degree one) and filled out the rest with available optics used for Todd-AO, etc.

 

All those 5-perf 65mm movies used an oddball collection of lenses. "2001" was a Super Panavision movie but Kubrick used all sorts of lenses made for Todd-AO and medium-format cameras just to achieve some of his shots, especially the high-speed lenses he collected to shoot the low-light stuff ("2001" has some of the most shallow-focus 65mm photography I've ever seen, particularly in the EVA pods.)

 

I don't know where Vetter got his glass, but I believe some of his Todd-AO 35mm anamorphics used Nikon elements, but that may have just been the later high-speed anamorphics that came out in the 1970's.

 

The Cinerama Dome still has a D150 screen, but the Egyptian is now the American Cinematheque and has a flat screen. The Dome originally had a ribboned Cinerama screen; I think they swapped it to a solid D150 screen in the late 1960's.

 

I had one of my movies screened at the Cinerama Dome, a 35mm anamorphic movie... boy, after years of hoping to see a movie I shot play there, I actually hated what the curved screen did to the black levels in the print because of the cross-reflection. Waller was right to use a ribboned screen for Cinerama. Cross-reflection is also why I don't like OMNIMAX -- any daytime scene becomes washed-out from all the light bouncing around the curved surface.

 

D150 was an idea to refine 65mm Todd-AO to become what it originally was intended to become, a replacement for Cinerama with a single camera + lens creating a super wide-angle view (Michael Todd's dream of "Cinerama out of one hole".) Trouble with Todd-AO was that the bug-eye lens created that had a similar view to the three 27mm lenses used by the Cinerama camera was horribly barrel-distorted. Look at these shots in "Around the World in Eighty Days":

 

 

 

 

compared to these Cinerama frames:

 

 

 

 

 

So Vetter mainly concentrated on building a new wide-angle lens with less barrel distortion as the centerpiece of the D150 system, which also included replacing the ribboned Cinerama screen with a cheaper solid curved screen.

 

But obviously filmmakers shooting in 5-perf 65mm always ended up exploiting the fact that they weren't limited to a single focal length, as Cinerama was. So the super wide-angle D150 lens didn't get much use afterall. You can see a few shots in "Patton" where it was used. And it still had some barrel distortion. As I said, most "D150" movies ("The Bible" and "Patton", don't know what else) ended up using the same lenses used in Todd-AO movies.

 

There's some D150 history here:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingto13.htm

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingto14.htm

 

Anyway, it's good to have someone with first-hand knowledge posting here, Lee!

[LeeFordParker]

Lee i was involved in some tests with the Panavision 65mm Panaflex at Pinewood at that time as a very lowly camera assistant. The Dp ,was his name Denys Coop BSC ?

 

I looked Denys up. Its says he died in 1981, so it couldn't have been him. For some reason, the name Ernie Day is familiar, he's listed as a Camera Operator. This was 1989.

 

I shot an 870 feature about the Lake District, called LOST KINGDOM for RHEGHED CENTER, south and west of the round about of the M6 and the A66, near Penrith.

 

Unfortunately, its the only theater in the world where it can be seen. Not a huge career booster!

 

But I fell in love with England and hope to be back soon. I came to London several times during the production of LOST KINGDOM, to check out if our 870 camera would work on the Libra mount and to try to find out how to get the CAA to allow an 870 into the air over the Lakes.

 

I finally succeeded with the aerials, helicopter, camera mount and weather came at the last minute for an amazing two week aerial shoot. I ended up with the re-made Tyler Scorpion on one of Fred North's helicopters flown up from Paris. The CAA wouldn't allow the camera on any British helicopters/mounts.

 

The pilot was only the ferry pilot, but the weather was good NOW and we couldn't wait the week Fred wanted us to. He couldn't speak English very well. My french was better so I had to give direction in French. An American DOP flying in a French helicopter making a movie about England in bad french. "Lentement! Lentement!"

 

The Cumbrian accent was so bad, the French pilot couldn't understand what Air Traffic Control was saying, and they couldn't understand him. I had to laugh because I had to translate between the two. "I don't know what it means, but he just said 'Runway 24 Left' "

 

The pilot had a wicked sense of humor. He'd fly really close to towers and wires (his speciality turned out to be landing on oil derricks off Madagascar, and he wanted to stay in practice) If anyone in the helicopter screamed upon skimming a wire or tower, he go even closer the next time! I warned the Director of this, but he forgot. He only went up with us that once. But he never touched a drop of any kind of alcohol. A Frenchman who doesn't drink wine? He was the MAN!

 

We skimmed the surface of Wasswater - one the lakes they used to practice bombing runs for the mission upon which the old movie THE DAM BUSTERS is based. The real footage was taken by my very dear friend, DOP Barry Gordon (and the first OMNIMAX DOP) during the actual raid in WWII. I rolled the camera and felt his hand push away the clouds and covers the lens, giving us the light, keeping the shot crisp and clean. We used it for the title sequence.

 

Well, you seem to know a bit about 70mm to know about the 8mm. That was surprising. If you ever get up north, go check it out. It's still playing after 10 years. It's kinda slow, but pretty to look at, especially in 70mm.

 

 

Hope to meet up with you in London soon.

 

Lee

[LeeFordParker]

I had one of my movies screened at the Cinerama Dome, a 35mm anamorphic movie... boy, after years of hoping to see a movie I shot play there, I actually hated what the curved screen did to the black levels in the print because of the cross-reflection. Waller was right to use a ribboned screen for Cinerama. Cross-reflection is also why I don't like OMNIMAX -- any daytime scene becomes washed-out from all the light bouncing around the curved surface.

 

Yes, I agree totally. Deeply curved screens suck. OMNIMAX sucks for what it does to black. And how the contrast problem is "solved" is by painting the screen GRAY! Something like 2 stops down! Not only do you loose the blacks, but your white is gray. And I didn't like what the D150 screen did to the CINESPACE 70 DEMO. We always used Todd-AO STAGE A to screen it.

 

I remember Dick saying the TODD-AO 35 anamorphic lenses (THE GETAWAY) were made in Japan, but I don't remember who did them. I don't think it was Nikon, but we had a good relationship with NAC(now Westrex). It could have been them.

 

But, from what everyone has said over the years, they were the sharpest anamorphics ever made. I think Ed DeGuillio snapped up the Todd-AO 35's when Todd sold them off. And I remember a big rental house in Italy had bought a set from Ed. And made the fortune renting them that Todd never did.

 

I also remember this huge piece of glass, a rectangle, about 18" across. It must have weighed 30 lbs. It was some kind of "wide angle" adapter. Supposedly, Kubrick used it in front of the Zeiss 0.7 lens to get wide angle. And it was used for some effects shot in LOGAN'S RUN. But once in a while we'd get a call for "The Vetter Lens", and this is what they were referring to. I don't know what happened to it.

 

I gave one of the Bug Eye lenses to Steve Spielberg along with the only remaining original Todd-AO camera barney. I sold one to Rorbert Harris, who sold it to Marty of the WIDE SCREEN Museum. The 3rd was given to the ASC museum, but don't know if it is still there. I bought the 4th. I also bought one of the two lenses made for AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. The other I sold to Mehran Salamati of now of HOT GEARS, a fellow DOP. The Bug Eye lens is about 50 lbs with lens mount. You mount the camera (35 lbs) to the lens. Amazing, there is a handheld skiing shot in MIRACLE OF TODD-AO. A miracle alright.

 

I don't know how these things work, but it seem as though I'm way off the topic of BARAKA equipment list. ;-)

 

BTW, Marty's WIDESCREEN MUSEUM is the best source for the history of large format I've ever come across. He really covers the stories from every angle and sorts through all the BS and sales hype to get at what really happened when. If anyone is interested in all this, and hasn't been there yet, I highly recommend it.

 

Long live 70mm!

[Jim Carlile]

Actually, I think the only real authentic D-150 screen was at the Pantages, where Patton opened. Down the street at the Warner Cinerama was where 2001 had just closed after about two years. Comparing the two, the "Cinerama" screen was more deeply curved, and there was a tremendous amount of horizontal distortion. It looked like everything was mounted on top of a small planet, it was that bad, especially noticeable during the early Dawn of Man sequence.

 

Patton on the other hand had no such distortion, and my understanding at the time was that the D-150 projection lens actually distorted the image upward to compensate for the effect of the curved screen-- that that was the whole idea, and that D-150 was essentially a projection system that was tied into a big P.R. effort that never really panned out.

 

AC had a good article about the whole thing when Patton came out, much about Fred Koenekamp's experiences with D-150 and the handheld camera they developed-- I don't think it was used much beyond the parade sequence in North Africa.

[John Holland]

Lee you are talking nearly ten years later than the 65mm tests i was just about involved in at Pinewood .Ernie Day was a very good Operator working on some of the most famous films ever made including all of Leans most memorable . He then became a DP and to very honest he wasnt anywhere near as good a DP as he was an operator , he died a couple of years ago . Next time you get to London please let me know would be great to meet for a beer and a chat . take care john .

[LeeFordParker]

Lee you are talking nearly ten years later than the 65mm tests i was just about involved in at Pinewood .Ernie Day was a very good Operator working on some of the most famous films ever made including all of Leans most memorable . He then became a DP and to very honest he wasnt anywhere near as good a DP as he was an operator , he died a couple of years ago . Next time you get to London please let me know would be great to meet for a beer and a chat . take care john .

 

You're talking about 1980 or so? What picture where your tests for?

 

I really don't remember the gents name, but Ernie Day sounds the most familiar. He was very nice, and very experienced with lots of great stories. I can only vaguely remember stories about shootin the storm sequence of RYAN'S DAUGHTER. About how he stayed 6 months in Dingle, drinking with the locals, waiting for the right kind of storm waves. I'd say he was in his late 50's in 1990. It's totally possible he said his was the operator, but he was the DP of the tests and I just assumed he was the DOP of the RYAN'S DAUGHTER storm sequence. We were shooting composition tests for NOSTROMO. I was there for 10 days, as the "consultant", but I just wanted to do anything for the chance to hang out with David Lean and watch him at work, even if we all didn't do much but tell stories.

 

As you know NOSTROMO was never made, and Todd wouldn't have rented cameras for the show anyway, as we didn't have a camera for shooting sound. Well, we did... but that's a story I wish I could forget.

 

You can get my contact info from my website http://www.MocoMan.com, send me a regular email with your contact info, and Iwill definitely give you a call next time I'm there.

 

Lee