Anamorphic Movies

[Chris D Walker]

There seem to be so much more films this year that have been shot in anamorphic and I wanted to know what people here thought of them. On Thursday I finally got to see Friday the 13th on Blu-ray (there wasn't a single print of this within 100 miles of where I live so I had to wait for the American import months later) and last night saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (out a week earlier here than in the States?) so this got me onto this topic.

 

I single out anamorphic over how it's such an 'unusual' format to go though a DI process, where Super35 is the predominant format. And I personally really like the anamorphic look.

 

Friday the 13th: I really enjoyed this film and loved the look; really flash for a Jason movie. Though, on Blu-ray you can tell where they pushed the film a bit too far as it looked soft with high distorted colours.

 

Star Trek: Flares, flares everywhere. A decent film which had a sharpness and polish in its cinematography that made it all the more impressive.

 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: Orci and Kurtzman wrote Star Trek, yet they also wrote this near-incomprehensible, head pounding two-and-half-hours of alien robot ass-whooping. Don't get me wrong, it was good but it should have been way shorter and less 'in your face'. This is one one the films that has made me think that people shooting anamorphic today are doing it in way different to how it was done more than 10 years ago; I can't explain why but the frames have changed.

 

He's Just Not That into You: I haven't seen this but thought it was interesting for a multiple-character piece genre film to go 2.39 anamorphic.

 

Confessions of a Shopaholic: Similar to what was said about 'He's Just Not That into You'.

 

Duplicity: I didn't watch this on the premise that Julia Roberts is in it. $15 Million a movie? What a terrible waste.

 

If I've missed any please add to the list.

 

Thanks to any and all who read and/or reply.

[Guest Tim Partridge]

This is one one the films that has made me think that people shooting anamorphic today are doing it in way different to how it was done more than 10 years ago; I can't explain why but the frames have changed.

 

 

Can I just jump in with this sweeping statement:

 

I agree with you and furthermore think that the art of wide angle masters (even mediums), especially in anamorphic, has more or less disappeared. I also don't think the big budget films are as lavishly art directed as they use to be.

 

When most films are shot anamorphic these days I cannot help but feel we get a series of cramped close ups on long lenses, often with an "intimate" handheld look close up which in my opinion works against the format. It's apparent the films aren't thoroughly designed for anamorphic either, hence the reason to shoot wide open on cramped long lenses. The overall effect I find is ironically too television for my tastes. The Dark Knight is a big example for me. I am a big Tony Scott fan, but I think the main submarine set bulk of the film Crimson Tide was one of the first major anamorphic movies to set the trend for scope looking small*. I have read they even took the walls out on the submarine sets to allow for telephoto shooting. Just look at Das Boot made fifteen years earlier which embraced wide angle lenses and the look is much more cinematic. The films that Michael Bay has made in anamorphic to me look cinematically indistinguishable from super35, the horizontal blue flares aside (and even the most memorable of those for me, such as for the space scenes in Armageddon, were achieved in post).

 

I really like the work David Mullen especially has done with anamorphic, because I feel it is more in line with the very formal way anamorphic use to be framed and even lit. I prefer that David Lean and Gordon Willis kind of look to say a Michael Bay kind of look. I am sure Roberto Schaefer's intended anamorpjic lensing of Quantum of Solace would have been a knock out too, given how cinematic he made super35 look for that film.

 

 

 

*Crimson Tide is a brilliant film regardless, and I think Scott's anamorphic framing and photography of Revenge, True Romance and Spy Game is thoroughly cinematic and not TV like at all.

[David Mullen ASC]

These days you can't avoid shooting tight close-ups unfortunately, and then you can't avoid the editor using them in favor of your wide shots. Certainly "The Dark Knight" had its share of big wide shots, some shot on IMAX.

 

Compare the action scenes in "The Dark Knight" shot in IMAX to what Michael Bay has apparently done for "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen", some of which was also shot in IMAX. There's a big difference in style and intent. "The Dark Knight" occasionally overindulges in tight moving shots at wide apertures, but there are a lot of other sizes in the movie too.

 

It's not really an anamorphic versus spherical Super-35 issue, this use of wider shots to allow the viewer to feel the "scope" of the image, it's just a compositional attitude... the main issue being that anamorphic tends to hold up better than Super-35 in wide shots due to the larger negative, but conversely is harder to shoot close-ups on due to the shallower depth of field.

 

A good movie to look at is "Wyatt Earp", shot by Owen Roizman -- there was a conscious choice to use less-tight close-ups (except for key dramatic moments) and more medium and wide shots, for a more "epic" John Ford-ish feeling.

 

People use anamorphic for different reasons, some more for the shallow-focus and odd lens flares, others for the larger negative for sharper wide shots.

 

As far as anamorphic in small spaces, like the submarine in "Crimson Tide", that's more of a wide-angle versus telephoto issue. Compare "Crimson Tide" to "Das Boot", mostly shot up close with wide-angle lenses, with the camera not breaking the "fourth wall", not shooting from outside the space looking in through a removed wall. Are wider-angle shots up close more "claustrophobic" than telephoto close-ups with more compression? It's somewhat debatable either way. Wide-angle lenses tend to make a space look bigger than it actually is, but conversely, you "feel" that the camera is physically closer to the actors, inside their space -- telephoto lenses compress space, making it seem less expansive, and allow the subject to seem to be surrounded by objects in the space due to compression of foreground and background, collapsing the space. So is that more claustrophobic?

 

My gut tells me that if the camera has to be in the space with a wider-angle lens, up close to the actors, it's more like what a documentarian would have to do in a submarine, so it feels more "honest" in a way. But if you're not careful, it can have a distancing effect if you can move the camera close enough to whoever becomes the focus of the shot.

 

But long-lensed anamorphic movies often become more about the modernist compositional effects of the 2.40 frame, where you can play more with negative space, and less about the "CinemaScope" effect (or more accurately, the "Cinerama" effect... immersive you-are-there wide-angle shots.)

 

You can see some of this modernist abstraction in "The Parallax View" (DP Gordon Willis), which uses both wider lenses and long lenses:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Tim Partridge]

I have to roll my tongue in after looking at those Parallax images...

 

It's not really an anamorphic versus spherical Super-35 issue, this use of wider shots to allow the viewer to feel the "scope" of the image, it's just a compositional attitude... the main issue being that anamorphic tends to hold up better than Super-35 in wide shots due to the larger negative, but conversely is harder to shoot close-ups on due to the shallower depth of field.

 

 

I think the shallower DOF of anamorphic is the issue here in relation to using long (often telephoto) lenses with that format. I don't think Tony Scott's intention was to make Crimson Tide look like a TV movie, in fact I think the move for anamorphic was probably intended to bring in a sense of the cinematic, like Hunt For Red October or something. With all of the mega compressed mediums posing as wides and then multiple cramped close ups of the actors, where most of the frame is blurred out because of the anamoprhic DOF, the look ends up going the direction of television. How can you justify shooting anamorphic that way? I don't think they gained anything visually shooting Crimson Tide the way they did that they couldn't have achieved using super35 on a film set in such an inherently claustrophobic set. Even in terms of dramatic dialogue scenes between actors, much of it seems to be shot in compressed shot reverse shot close ups rather than using the anamorphic frame to do cinematic two shots. It just seems really odd, like they just thought 2.35:1 anamorphic in itself would somehow make it a film for the cinema (especially as we all know Tony Scott mastered anamorphic in many of his other films).

 

Das Boot was shot spherically, but I think the attitude was much more cinematic, so I agree to some extent it's a compositional attitude. Using a more squarish 1.85:1 aspect ration helped the claustrophic submarine environment too (and they had interesting two shots).

 

I remember seeing the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies at the cinema and also thinking how much it looked like a TV show, shot mostly on longer lenses in close up (tight mediums as wides, etc), very shallow DOF, to the point that I could barely make out any of the art direction or locations (which must have cost a fortune). I think it's kind of ironic though that the last Bond film (Quantum of Solace) was shot super35 but with obvious aspirations to be a real anamorphic epic (and John Holland mentioned here that Schaefer wanted to shoot with the Hawks originally).

[David Mullen ASC]

It probably says something that Tony and Ridley Scott have switched to Super-35 mostly (ignoring "Matchstick Men") which facilitates their use of long zooms in low light with multiple cameras anyway.

 

Roberto was telling me the other day that the main issue with anamorphic on QoS was the short post schedule -- it was one of those problems where the efx people say "you can shoot anamorphic if you want... but we can't guarantee we'll make our deadlines then... but it's your decision..." sort of a passive-aggressive deal-killer! We chatted about how much influence all the Bond pictures had on the look of QoS but he said they mainly studied the first three Bonds (Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger), which was interesting to them, that 60's aesthetic and glamour. Also interesting is that none of them were 2.35 -- the first scope Bond movie was "Thunderball".

 

While I like the photography of "Crimson Tide" and don't think it looks TV-ish (mainly because it's widescreen) just because it uses a lot of close-ups... it's interesting to me how much that aesthetic (70's British commercials into 80's features) has now revolved back into TV with the Bruckheimer shows, making "Crimson Tide" seem more like modern TV in style.

[Guest Tim Partridge]

I think that's especially true now that non-drama shows like the BBC's Top Gear are shot like 70s/80s British commercials, and subsequently their directors are apparently being hired to shoot commercials on the back of the look they are actually borrowing from the old commercial world!

 

That's interesting about Schaefer's Bond, thanks for the information. It is interesting that he wanted to apparently use the Hawks, given their resistance to flaring and other obvious characteristics of anamorphic lenses. I wonder if he would have shot 1.66:1/1.85:1 (ala Ted Moore) had that been an option.

 

I can see an obvious move from Ridley Scott into super35, but Tony Scott has kind of gone back and forth with his formats. I think he is a bit more complicated now that he is so experimental with film stocks in his films (and all of the cross processing/double exposures/DI tricks/handcranking and now HD meshing). Tony Scott started spherically and has been jumping into anamorphic at inconsistent moments ever since, whereas Ridley Scott clearly moved from classical anamorphic territory now into modern super35.

[David Mullen ASC]

I think Tony Scott's last anamorphic movie was "Spy Game" (2001) whereas Ridley Scott's last anamorphic movie was "Matchstick Men" (2003).

[Shawn Martin]

Tony Scott started spherically and has been jumping into anamorphic at inconsistent moments ever since

His first movie was anamorphic, his next two were Super 35, and the eight after those were all anamorphic. He's only been shooting Super 35 (with other stuff mixed in) continuously since "Man on Fire" (2004).

 

I wish he would go back to anamorphic, but it probably won't ever happen.

Edited June 22, 2009 by Shawn Martin

[Satsuki Murashige]

Great posts, guys!

 

A good movie to look at is "Wyatt Earp", shot by Owen Roizman -- there was a conscious choice to use less-tight close-ups (except for key dramatic moments) and more medium and wide shots, for a more "epic" John Ford-ish feeling.

David, it's funny that you mention Roizman and "Wyatt Earp" - I asked him about this at last year's Cinegear and he said that he had looked at "My Darling Clementine" while prepping "Wyatt Earp" and had hated it! I think his exact words were, "it's so old fashioned, I didn't see anything in it that was relevant to what I was doing." I thought that was very strange...

 

About Ridley Scott: I was watching the behind the scenes of "American Gangster" where he was talking about the extremely short shooting schedule and that he needed to get something like 50 setups a day, which was a major reason for using multiple cameras and zoom lenses. So in that sense, his choice of spherical over anamorphic is not surprising at all. "Matchstick Men" was a much smaller film and felt like a single camera show, and I suspect the two factors are related. You would think though that if any director in Hollywood could argue for a longer shooting schedule, it would be Ridley freakin' Scott!

 

About "The Dark Knight": I don't agree with Tim that it was full of television-style coverage at all. There are plenty of wide composed shots and long takes, especially for the stunt work. But I do think it was cut too quickly, which meant the wide shots didn't stay on screen for very long. But that's a criticism that could be leveled at pretty much every Hollywood film these days. (Oddly, I saw "UP" recently in 3D, and that film felt "properly photographed" and edited with more thoughtful focal length selection and framing than most other films I've seen recently).

 

About "Crimson Tide": I think the choice to use long lenses was by design, and I think it works for the film. It's not supposed to feel like a gritty documentary and I doubt the sets were designed for that anyway. There's not a lot of z-axis camera movement, but more x and y-axis dolly and jib moves. The use of colored lighting is also a heavily stylized choice. Somehow, the design kinda felt like a German Expressionist film, very Murnau-esque. Love the dutch shots too.

 

About wide angle vs. telephoto photography generally, and which is "easier" compositionally: I'm of mixed attitudes about this. I started shooting 35mm stills early in my cinematography education and only had a 50mm lens to begin with, so I learned to compose everything with it. Then I got an 18mm super-wide lens, and at first it seemed like I could pretty much point it anywhere and get a good composition. Looking at my prints later though, I found I had a much better ratio of good to mediocre/bad photos with the 50mm than the 18mm. The 18mm wasn't good for everything after all, and care had to be taken whether or not to include foreground elements, depending on whether I wanted an obvious wide-angle look or not. Instead, I found that the 50mm could be made to look wide or telephoto depending on the compositional elements, the camera position, and the focal distance. Later, when I got a 75-205mm telephoto macro zoom (which I rarely used because it was big, heavy, slow, and full of fungus), I found that I got a much higher number of mediocre photos and fewer bad ones, but less good ones as well. The fungus acted like a built in diffusion filter, which created some interesting artifacts.

 

Now, with a much wider array of lenses at my disposal when shooting a film, it's ironically often harder to find an artistic criteria for focal length selection. The more mundane criteria of getting a particular shot size in a given space, while framing out undesirable elements that can't be art directed for want of time or money is more often the reason I choose a particular lens over another. I suspect this is also the case on big budget films to some extent, the basic problems of filmmaking never really go away. I think the wide lens by its nature usually necessitates more "design" on the part of the filmmakers of art and space, composition, camera movement, blocking, hitting of marks, focus selection, previsualization of editing and transitions, etc. So it's just easier to avoid all that, blur out the background, and simplify compositions to a single element or subject.

 

Now, you could just as easily design a film with long lenses in mind and make it work well, but it's really a matter of the previsualization and design that goes into the film in the first place that will make it seem non-arbitrary. The quality of the story content is whole other matter...

[Daniel Porto]

(Oddly, I saw "UP" recently in 3D, and that film felt "properly photographed" and edited with more thoughtful focal length selection and framing than most other films I've seen recently).

 

For WALL-E they got Deakins to come in and give them a masterclass at lighting.

 

I always believed that the guys at PIXAR are some of the best directors going around... but that being said they wouldn't need to compromise as much as a director who sees a big fat rain cloud starting to come over when he/she is trying to create a hot summer day.

 

Directing is compromise and I think a lot of that compromise is non-existent at PIXAR especially with how they ALWAYS destroy the box office.

[John Holland]

Sorry i may have got lost here !! but what has Wall-E got to do with shooting and composing for anamorphic !! And Roger , hates anamorphic !!

[Daniel Porto]

Sorry i may have got lost here !! but what has Wall-E got to do with shooting and composing for anamorphic !! And Roger , hates anamorphic !!

 

Just off topic a bit... i was just saying that perhaps deakins one of the reasons why pixar's are 'properly photographed'... Pixar made UP

[Guest Tim Partridge]

His first movie was anamorphic, his next two were Super 35, and the eight after those were all anamorphic. He's only been shooting Super 35 (with other stuff mixed in) continuously since "Man on Fire" (2004).

 

I wish he would go back to anamorphic, but it probably won't ever happen.

 

I must admit that I have never seen a widescreen copy of The Hunger!! Thanks for the correction.

 

Please correct me if I am wrong, but all of Scott's 1990s films were anamorphic, were they not?:

 

Days of Thunder

Revenge

Last Boyscout

True Romance

Crimson Tide

The Fan

Enemy of the State

 

The remainder are spherical:

 

Top Gun (although apparently planned to be anamorphic)

Beverly Hills Cop 2

Man On Fire

Deja Vu

Pelham

 

(and counting the short films:

 

BMW The Hire

Agent Orange)

 

I am assuming Ram Challenge is spherical, if we are counting that too.

 

 

I really like the exterior sequences from Crimson Tide, especially during the "Roll Tide" in the rain, which are incredibly cinematic (actually quite theatrical with the dripping sparks). It's really just the interior submarine majority of the film that leaves me cold with a TV feeling of close up ping-pong. Even similarly contrasty navy ship interiors from Top Gun have much more of a feel for the big screen. I never quite got the primary colour motifs in CT either, which just seemed to be what Wolski had contributed to all those music videos he shot in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Seemed more MTV than Murnau, to me. I do agree that the dutch work is very inspired.

 

I definitely feel that even with the preference for telephoto lenses, most of Scott's other anamorphic films (the most recent Spy Game included) escape the television reminiscent close ups of Crimson Tide.

[Ignacio Aguilar]

David, do you happen to know why Ridley switched to Super-35 just for BLACK RAIN?; all of his previous 2.40:1 films had been anamorphic, as were his next films until he switched back again to Super-35 for GLADIATOR. DP John Mathieson said he wanted to stay away from the classic look of the old Roman epics and opted instead for faster lenses to shoot in low light levels (I believe stated Ridley originally wanted to shoot it in anamorphic). Plus BLACK RAIN's DP Jan de Bont has always been a big anamorphic supporter, both as a cinematographer or director.

 

Anyway, I believe both Tony and Ridley nowadays feel more confortable using Super-35 just because it allows them to use faster zoom and telephoto lenses, without the need of lighting for deeper stops. Not even a big anamorphic fan like Dan Mindel conviced Tony to go back to anamorphic on DOMINO.

 

Tim, you should watch THE HUNGER framed at 2.40:1. I still think it's Tony's best film and Stephen Goldblatt most beautiful work.

 

I like CRIMSON TIDE's cinematography, but it feels too distant to my tastes. Probably due to the use of telephoto lenses. While I've never been a fan of Jan de Bont's lighting, I feel more involved watching THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER because the camera actually is inside the set, very close to the actor's faces, and not 30 feet away behind a removed wall section. As for DAS BOOT being more cinematic and claustrophobic, I really agree, but it's quite funny since they had already in mind when filming to release it as a TV-series. Since the set was so small, it may have helped them to shoot in a more squarish format as 1.66/1.85:1.

 

Nowadays, in my opinion, most directors and cinematographers who chose anamorphic are just after its artifacts, not its better quality for 35mm release prints, or because it's better suited for landscapes, big vistas and putting more actors into a single frame. They just want the cool distortions, lens breathing, flares, etc. and that's why the older glass is so popular these days. All of which I find very nice, but anamorphic can deliver much more than that.

[David Mullen ASC]

The colored lighting in "Crimson Tide" served more of a narrative purpose, to help remind the audience which part of the ship they were in when intercutting a lot of sweaty close-ups -- radio room was blue & green, missile room was red, etc.

 

I don't know the reasons for Super-35 for "Black Rain" -- I recall reading that when they were shooting it, Jan DeBont wasn't even sure if ultimately it would be released in 1.85 or 2.40, which seems crazy. Maybe it was a project that Scott took over from another director. Or maybe he simply wanted to try out Super-35 on it -- after all, at the time, it seemed too good to be true, scope without the bother of anamorphic lenses. On the "Legend" DVD, Scott mentions the problem of getting enough stop to use anamorphic zoom lenses. And the Scott brothers really have developed a directing style based around quick focal length changes using the zoom on multiple cameras.

 

Super-35 made sense for the "Pelham" remake (amazingly though the original was shot in a lot of available light in anamorphic on 100 ASA stock!), though there was some repetitive partial snap-zooms on people, one too many on the SWAT leader at the mic.

[Peter Moretti]

"The Lives of Others" makes great use the anamorphic format, IMHO.

 

If anyone else has seen it and would care to comment on the film in that regard, I'd be all ears.

[Guest Stephen Murphy]

Someone should write a book on modern anamorphic cinematography.

[Shawn Martin]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but all of Scott's 1990s films were anamorphic, were they not?

You're right, they all were.

 

One thing I remember about "The Last Boy Scout" (in regard to the format) was that they got this big 'scope flare off a switchblade being flicked open. I'd never seen anything like that.

 

And about "Black Rain", De Bont says in the September '89 AC that the decision to shoot Super 35 was made before he came on. I remember reading somewhere that Howard Atherton (who got a credit for "additional photography") was actually the first DP, but he quit during shooting for some reason; and De Bont was his replacement.

 

Anyway, because I forgot to answer the first post in my original reply, here are some more of this year's anamorphic films that I know of:

 

State of Play (+ HD)

The Soloist

The Proposal

Cheri

G.I. Joe

My Sister's Keeper

Inglourious Basterds

Coco Avant Chanel

Whip It

 

All of them are Panavision, except for "The Proposal" which was shot with Hawks.

[Guest Tim Partridge]

Thanks for the Black Rain info, Shawn.

 

 

 

Nowadays, in my opinion, most directors and cinematographers who chose anamorphic are just after its artifacts, not its better quality for 35mm release prints, or because it's better suited for landscapes, big vistas and putting more actors into a single frame. They just want the cool distortions, lens breathing, flares, etc. and that's why the older glass is so popular these days. All of which I find very nice, but anamorphic can deliver much more than that.

 

I think that's a pretty spot on assessment.

 

I really dislike it when anamorphic is used on lower budget productions where the sets are not purpose built or there is no significant control over the locations, so the geometry of the sets works against the anamorphic frame and you end up with lots of empty dead space in the compositions. The locations are so physically tight that by necessity much of it goes super cramped on tight lenses, and you end up with the actor's face surrounded by bokeh and dead space. I think a lot of John Carpenter's lower budget films suffer from this, particularly (and I can hear the gasps of uproar as I type) Halloween. I think Halloween would have looked a lot better and served the story more effectively in 1.85:1, given the intimate, real suburban locations and the claustrophobia of the drama. I find it really awkward how much dead space is in the frame throughout the film, and it just feels like they didn't have the money to properly art direct the compositions, in my opinion. I really find the tension is drained when you see this excess space that isn't visually coordinated and doesn't help the story, hanging next to Jamie Lee Curtis in moments of intended suspense.

 

I think John Carpenter's anamorphic work was really good however when he had the money to compliment the format, such as with Big Trouble in Little China and The Thing.

 

Even Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter I felt suffered badly from the anamorphic dead space issue given the vertical nature of the UN building location they filmed in. Compare it to something like The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, where the sets are built around the format, and, as Nacho says, anamorphic just does so much more. I just think anamorphic is an inherently lavish and expensive format, where everything on screen has to be designed around the camera, because it's such a specifically sized frame. Not to forget the need for a greater amount of light...

[David Mullen ASC]

"Dead space" or negative space isn't necessarily a mistake in 2.40 compositions. You see effective use of "blankness" in the modernist compositions of Gordon Willis in his anamorphic movies ("Klute", "Parallax View", "Paper Chase", "Manhattan".)

 

 

 

 

 

I've always liked the use of space in this scene in "Superman" -- the somewhat excess emptiness on Ma Kent's close-ups (rather than use an OTS) suggests their impending separation:

 

 

 

Anyway, ability to play with empty space, to emphasize "blankness" or the lack of something in the frame is one of my favorite things about the 2.40 ratio. It's a very modernist ratio, awkward compared to 1.66-1.85, and that awkwardness is what is interesting about it. Both imbalance AND symmetry become stronger compositional statements in such a wide aspect ratio. I don't necessarily see a problem with low-budget filmmakers working on locations using the 2.40 ratio -- either you have an eye to compose for it, or you don't, whether or not you build sets for that ratio. I don't think a lot of sets were built for "The Paper Chase".

 

I think Kubrick once said that the only sin in movies was being boring. The only mistake in low-budget films using 2.40 is being boring with their compositional choices, indifferent to the aspect ratio. But the same is true for big-budget movies.

 

The big problem with modern movies is simply that the cutting is too fast -- what's the point of an interesting composition if it's only going to be flashed for a millisecond? Compositions sort of demand that you can absorb the balance of the frame, at least, the memorable ones do. Directors today go for volume, making all their impacts through cuts rather than composition.

[Peter Moretti]

Personally, FWIW, I love dead space as well; esp. if the alternative is space filled with props to just "dress up" the set.

 

But what you're talking about is a choice. What Tim is saying is that to really take advantage of more than just the odd lens flare, you have to gear your production design around the anamorphic format.

 

Now it's of course possible that what he's calling anamorphic deadspace was intentional. But Tim seems to make a very valid point.

[Satsuki Murashige]

"The Lives of Others" makes great use the anamorphic format, IMHO.

 

If anyone else has seen it and would care to comment on the film in that regard, I'd be all ears.

Here ya go: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?sh...=22577&st=0.

[Keneu Luca]

About Ridley Scott: I was watching the behind the scenes of "American Gangster" where he was talking about the extremely short shooting schedule and that he needed to get something like 50 setups a day, which was a major reason for using multiple cameras and zoom lenses. So in that sense, his choice of spherical over anamorphic is not surprising at all. "Matchstick Men" was a much smaller film and felt like a single camera show, and I suspect the two factors are related. You would think though that if any director in Hollywood could argue for a longer shooting schedule, it would be Ridley freakin' Scott!

But that means he has to argue with Denzel freakin' Washington and Russell freakin' Crowe about rescheduling their other freakin' projects and plans. ;)

[Guest Tim Partridge]

 

 

I think Kubrick once said that the only sin in movies was being boring. The only mistake in low-budget films using 2.40 is being boring with their compositional choices, indifferent to the aspect ratio. But the same is true for big-budget movies.

 

I would hardly call the farm on that still "dead space". ;)

 

I am with you on the poetry of deadspace when it is used purposefully for dramatically punctuating effect with full control (like the Superman close up example), but on something like THE INTERPRETER, HALLOWEEN, SUPERMAN IV or THEY LIVE, in my opinion, it just looks like a lack of money or art direction (or both), when the dead space is in every other shot and mostly containing uncoordinated colours and shapes (in and out of focus) or bokeh. What kind of a DP/director would shoot a film for the extra cost of anamorphic, only to have the vast majority of it amount to empty dead space throughout? That's not really efficient filmmaking; hardly money on the screen but mere indulgence.

 

That element of compromise you can get with a more square-ish aspect ratio, tightening the compositions when you cannot afford a desirable location/art direction just isn't as flexible with anamorphic, in my opinion. Even the croppier super35 reacts better to compromise. I don't accept that anamorphic is a format that can bend for uncoordinated locations, as a viewer I feel it reflects in the look of the films I mentioned above particularly (PAPER CHASE, even though not shot on purpose built sets was at least coordinated and designed on a decent budget).

[David Mullen ASC]

I guess I'm not comfortable with your implication that 2.40 should be left to the domain of people with decent budgets who can design sets for that aspect ratio. To me, it's an interesting compositional challenge that has certain unique rewards -- if I can get sets built to enhance or take advantage of that extreme horizontal shape, even better, but I'm not going to dump that aspect ratio just because I'm doing a mostly all-location shoot.

 

You also have to keep in mind that CinemaScope was developed as a poor-man's Cinerama to some extent, i.e. an immersive filmgoing experience. A movie doesn't constantly use that "Cinerama effect" except occasionally, but to some extent, it's not really about composing elements within a 2.40 frame all the time, it can be about the wraparound effect of surrounding the character with an environment and moving through it.

 

So even an indifferently composed 2.40 movie may still create a greater sense of involvement for the audience when projected on the big screen due to peripheral vision being engaged. A good example of the Cinerama effect is the opening of "Road Warrior" -- after the 4x3 b&w prologue, the camera pulls out of black to reveal the engine block on Mel Gibson's car, and then cuts to a groundlevel POV shot with the camera racing down the highway. In those types of shots, composition is relatively less important.

 

So in the case of "Halloween", I can see that in a big movie theater, using 2.40 anamorphic for those Steadicam shots around the house would create a greater sense of place and be more immersive for the viewer than a 1.85 movie.

 

Of course, on a TV screen, that is lost and what you are left with is judging the compositions.

 

Besides, you don't compose a frame constantly to show off how much money was spent on art direction. If the most dramatically effective shot involves emptiness, blankness, etc. then that's how you compose the shot. And the truth is that 2.40 allows you to emphasize that aspect of emptiness so it's not a waste of money to use it.

 

Early CinemaScope directors sort of became flummoxed by the wide frame, trying to fill it or block parts of it up (look at "Lola Montes") but after that, a more sophisticated sense of the aesthetics of the wide frame developed, where emptiness could be used as a compositional device. This is particularly true for landscape films where a lone figure on a horizon could seem even more isolated and alone by the use of the barren space around them.

 

Or look at "THX-1138" and the use of empty white spaces. The awkwardly wide frame can be useful for visual abstraction.

 

I think the key is to not think of a blank space as "lacking" something to balance against the main subject -- the blankness itself is the object you are balancing in the composition.

 

I had this frame lying around... but look at this shot from "The Elephant Man":

 

Now obviously this shot could be cropped to 1.85 and look correctly composed, but what the wider frame gives you is more blackness around the sides, which creates an interesting feeling, especially on the big screen, to be surrounded by black, just as being surrounded by white in "THX-1138" is interesting.