What kind of flare is this?

[Tom Lowe]

 

?

[Tom Jensen]

 

?

 

It's just your everyday average flare when light bounces back from one element to the other.

[David Mullen ASC]

That's an anamorphic lens flare -- looks more like the reddish one from a Panavision C-Series rather than the blue-ish one from a Panavision Primo anamorphic....

 

That's a frame from "New World" right? If so, then it's definitely an anamorphic flare, only small parts of the movie were shot in 65mm spherical.

 

Here's a more extreme example from "Akeelah and the Bee" (plus a GlimmerGlass diffusion filter), though I'm not sure which lens it was -- I seem to recall it was a Steadicam shot, so this would have been a C-series anamorphic, maybe the 50mm or 60mm:

 

Here's another extreme example from "Logan's Run" (Todd-AO 35 anamorphic):

[Tom Lowe]

Yes, David, you are right. It's from early in The New World.

 

I thought it was particularly striking, with those very long parallel lines covering almost the entire frame. The sun only pops through the leaves for a split second.

 

BTW, have you had a chance to see the Extended Cut of The New World Bluray? My god... It's just stunning.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Anamorphic primes usually have a front cylindrical lens element, the bright light flaring across the coated surface of this vertical cylinder of glass creates that horizontal smear.

 

Oddly enough in "Dune" (also shot in 35mm anamorphic) there are some vertical lines (almost like the flare with an overloaded Genesis/F35 sensor) due to the Lightflex flashing device, which used a curved sheet of clear plastic in front of the lens to basically "stretch" the reflection of the light box on top of the Lightflex unit. The use of curved plastic rather than a flat sheet of glass (as the original ColorFlex device used) allowed the light box and overall unit to be smaller (since the curved surface acted like an anamorphic lens, stretching out the reflection) and cover wider angle lenses without the unit becoming huge (as the original ColorFlex was.)

 

I have the new BluRay of "New World" and it looks stunning.

 

I saw an early release of "New World" before it was recut (shorter?) and released a few months later by the studio and I've always been confused as to the differences, but this BluRay seems more like the original version I saw. But I've only watched the first half-hour so far.

[Tom Lowe]

David, this Extended Cut Bluray is about 22 minutes longer than the "Academy Cut" you saw before its release.

Edited November 2, 2009 by Tom Lowe

[John Sprung]

Yup, anamorphic flare. But you can also get a similar effect with grease smeared horizontally on an optical flat, if you smear it just right.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.