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Why didn't Vista Vision ever catch on?


Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

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The success of 3-camera Cinerama and "This Is Cinerama" in 1952 started a wave of widescreen and larger format camera systems. But Cinerama was an independent production company showing travelogue movies in a few converted theaters that could project three 6-perf 35mm prints side by side on a curved screen.

1953's CinemaScope (20th Century Fox) was first response to Cinerama and relatively easy to implement since it used standard 4-perf 35mm camera film and print stock, though at first there was a special Kodak print stock made with smaller "CS" perfs being used in the prints in order to fit four stripes of mag sound on each side of the image area. But you could use regular 35mm projectors in theaters, they just needed the anamorphic projector lens. This was soon followed by the practice of showing standard 4-perf spherical Academy prints with a mask in the projector to create a wider aspect ratio like 1.85.  Decades later, these two methods -- 4-perf 35mm anamorphic and 4-perf 35mm matted widescreen spherical -- were the only widescreen formats to still be commonly used.

In 1954, you had Paramount introduce VistaVision, 8-perf 35mm spherical. But their plans for theaters to convert to showing 8-perf 35mm prints never came to pass. The 1948 Supreme Court degree in the U.S. vs. Paramount Pictures case forced the studios to divest themselves of ownership of movie theaters (this was overturned in 2020.)  This made it harder for new exhibition technology to become widely implemented. In some ways, this perhaps was a good thing because in the early 1950s some studios were talking about transmitting TV signals to some movie theaters as a cost-savings approach -- that never got off the drawing board apparently.

So Paramount made a deal with Technicolor Labs to make reduction prints from 8-perf VistaVision to 4-perf 35mm spherical using the dye transfer process (which involved using optical printers already). They made great prints but it was not a dramatic effect for the audience. In some ways, this was the beginning already of the end for VistaVision because the improvement wasn't visible enough for the average moviegoer.

In 1955, Technicolor developed some 1.5X anamorphic lenses for VistaVision (which has a native 3:2, or 1.5 : 1. negative) so that 2.35 CinemaScope prints could be made. This format was called Technirama.

In 1955, 20th Century Fox tried to create a better version of CinemaScope using a larger 55mm negative, called CinemaScope 55, but they only shot two movies on it, which most people saw in regular CinemaScope.

Then also in 1955, Michael Todd left the Cinerama Corporation and decided to create a rival that he called "Cinerama out of one hole", meaning a single camera and projector. He worked with American Optical and Kodak to come up with the 5-perf 65mm camera format along with 70mm prints, all using spherical lenses.  This was a dramatic enough improvement for audiences over CinemaScope that theaters were willing to add 70mm projection. Panavision copied the 5-perf 65mm spherical format, calling it Super Panavision.

This in turn gave the studios a new release format to work with -- Technicolor started releasing 8-perf Technirama movies in 70mm, calling it Super Technirama. MGM put a 1.25X anamorphic lens on a 5-perf 65mm camera to create a 2.7 : 1 image that could be released in 3-projector Cinerama theaters, or 70mm theaters using an anamorphic lens. They developed this was Panavision, calling it MGM Camera 65 in-house but it soon was relabeled Ultra Panavision.

But by 1960, larger formats were on the decline. You saw some 65mm productions scattered through the 1960's but Paramount killed VistaVision as a cost-savings measure. See:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingvv6.htm

 

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8 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

there was a special Kodak print stock made with smaller "CS" perfs being used in the prints in order to fit four stripes of mag sound on each side of the image area. But you could use regular 35mm projectors in theaters, they just needed the anamorphic projector lens.

Theater owners needed to invest also in special non-magnetic sprocket rollers for the projectors, aperture masks, sound readers for the COMMAG prints, pre-amplifiers and amplifiers, a curved wide screen, if it were to be done correctly, loudspeakers behind the new screen plus in the auditorium. With regard to the image aspect ratio, its presentation, and sound reproduction CinemaScope has suffered more than any other wide-screen system. VistaVision Motion Picture High Fidelity was too complicated for a gain that got zeroed by the improvement of film stocks.

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15 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Thanks for the write up David, 

Sad it was killed off. I'm happy that filmmakers are thinking about it again, but from my understanding, they'd still rather shoot 15P due to the workflow being more set in stone. 

Sad indeed.  The fact that it's 35mm makes it more attractive to use than 65mm.  Also more in the way of black and white stocks if desired.  I wonder if anyone is considering using it for VFX again,  with the superior colour film we have now.  Another point in its favour:  as it moves horizontally it has potentially finer registration than normal 35,  at least in the vertical.

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For the most part, the impulse to shoot film has been for a retro look since digital easily provides clean, high resolution photography. Once 35mm digital came along by the end of the 2000s, the impulse to "improve" film dropped to near zero.

I wanted to shoot VistaVision for the movie "Big Sur" ten years ago, at least for the non-San Francisco scenes (which I thought of shooting in 2-perf, the help pay for the VistaVision sequences and to create a visual difference when Jack Kerouac travels from the city to the woods.)  But the producers said we had to shoot digital, so that idea was dropped.

The biggest problem with VistaVision, unlike 5-perf 65mm, is the lack of modern self-blimped cameras for shooting dialogue scenes.

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6 hours ago, Doug Palmer said:

Sad indeed.  The fact that it's 35mm makes it more attractive to use than 65mm.  Also more in the way of black and white stocks if desired.  I wonder if anyone is considering using it for VFX again,  with the superior colour film we have now.  Another point in its favour:  as it moves horizontally it has potentially finer registration than normal 35,  at least in the vertical.

It's not really used anymore sadly, mainly because there weren't any small sync sound models. 

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7 hours ago, Doug Palmer said:

Sad indeed.  The fact that it's 35mm makes it more attractive to use than 65mm.  Also more in the way of black and white stocks if desired.  I wonder if anyone is considering using it for VFX again,  with the superior colour film we have now.  Another point in its favour:  as it moves horizontally it has potentially finer registration than normal 35,  at least in the vertical.

I think ILM was still using vista vision through episode 1 (or so it appears from several bts photos). But digital compositing got so good and the grain got finer on the stocks it just wasnt necessary. The mid 2000s also gave us the 435 Advanced and Xtreme, which was basically the ultimate film vfx camera. 

Damn it now Im wishing Arri had made a 435 VV camera. that would have been cool, though probably minimally used. Its still too bad their 3 perf 250fps version never made it out of the prototype stage. 

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48 minutes ago, Robin Phillips said:

I think ILM was still using vista vision through episode 1 (or so it appears from several bts photos). But digital compositing got so good and the grain got finer on the stocks it just wasnt necessary. The mid 2000s also gave us the 435 Advanced and Xtreme, which was basically the ultimate film vfx camera. 

Oh it's been used on films way after that. The Jurassic World Series used it, they made a big stink out of it in the AC article. Nolan has used it a few times for effects shots as well. It's just in the last few years, high res digital has been more normalized and the VFX teams don't need the high res VV material anymore. Just shoot the visual effects shots on an 8k Red ya know? 

48 minutes ago, Robin Phillips said:

Damn it now Im wishing Arri had made a 435 VV camera. that would have been cool, though probably minimally used. Its still too bad their 3 perf 250fps version never made it out of the prototype stage. 

It would have been super cool if Arri made one, but no market really. 

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1 hour ago, Doug Palmer said:

That and the noise seems to have been its main drawback.  Duvets are not the ideal solution ? though I see they worked on Ellston Bay.

And that was just a short film made for fun. They could ADR the entire thing and nobody would be the wiser. 

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17 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Oh it's been used on films way after that. The Jurassic World Series used it, they made a big stink out of it in the AC article. Nolan has used it a few times for effects shots as well. It's just in the last few years, high res digital has been more normalized and the VFX teams don't need the high res VV material anymore. Just shoot the visual effects shots on an 8k Red ya know? 

It would have been super cool if Arri made one, but no market really. 

I need to pester some people then. I know on the first JW there was some 435 miniatures work, more than I expected. Josh Livingston had the old ILM kuper out for it. Love that stupid crane of doom. Sounds exactly like the carbon freezer in Empire Strikes Back lol

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I spent 20 years shooting motion control and VFX and got very familiar with VistaVision. It was pretty popular from the late 80’s up to the mid 00’s. The same advantages that drove it in the 50’s were very applicable to its use in visual effects .

Back in the day Vista had a logistical edge because unlike the 65mm, formats, labs in any big city could develop your dailies, and unlike early anamorphic lenses, the flat Vista lenses produced much more flattering results on actors at moderate and close distances.

In the FX world of the 90’s You got a larger negative, but it still used 35mm film, which meant that you could use the same stock and labs as the rest of the units were using. Also the lenses were spherical. If you were  working on an anamorphic show, you could have VFX plates with much less distortion.

But since only one studio used it, there were very few VistaVision cameras ever produced, probably less than 20. 

The camera at the top of the page is one of Greg Beaumont’s VistaVision conversions.

Greg was the in-house camera engineer up at ILM for many years (I think he’s still an active partner at 32ten).

He built a couple of Vista cameras for ILM over the decades, but IIRC he had a side gig and built about a half-dozen of these “BoCams” on his own. They were used extensively in VFX work throughout the 80’a and 90’s

Greg rehoused the original 1950's Mitchell movements in a new reflex body. The BoCams used Arri-III mags and were driven from below with what looked like a modified Cinema Electronics Arri-II base. They were good, simple cameras and ran well. If they had one weakness it was that the motor in the base seemed a little short on grunt sometimes, and without big batteries you could get into problems with rapid camera motion causing the film reels to drag inside the 1000’ mags which, in fairness, were probably not designed to run on their sides.

Mitchell made a small handful of ‘real’ studio cameras, the “elephant ear” models you see in the old behind-the-scenes still from Hitchcock movies. 

They also built about 3 lightweight ‘butterfly’ models. Coming in at a svelte 17 lbs these were intended for MOS action shots. Rumor has it they were commissioned for the chariot races in Ben Hur.

Additionally, Mitchell converted another handful of the old three-strip Technicolor cameras to shoot Vista, basically removing the complex technicolor movement and replacing it with an 8-perf unit. 

When I first heard of this it sounded crazy, but with only one strip of film to handle, the original boxes had plenty of space for the 90 degree turn, and all the other film-handling infrastructure was already done. I got to handle one of these Technicolor conversions at Bray studios in Ireland. It was BIG.

I think very few of the original cameras survive. On the plus side, most of the small fleet got to shoot again in the 80’s and 90’s, but on the minus side, most of these cameras lost their original form, with the only movements being preserved and rehoused in “modern” bodies.

Greg Beaumont did (I think) about 6 BoCams, while Doug Fries did two or three conversions.

( I got to rebuild the electronics on one of the Fries VistaVision cameras last year, I wrote up the story on Hackaday…

     https://hackaday.io/project/186456-vistavision-camera-electronics-rebuild   )  

ILM also did 2 or 3 reflex conversions they called VistaCams or something similar. I don’t know how efficient they were (they were some of the earliest conversions) but they were really cool since they had a neat fiberglass clamshell design to keep them small.

ILM also famously modified a Nikon F3 with a registration pin in the gate and 30’ film back to shoot Vista-format plates inside small miniatures.

Some of the other effects houses modified Stein cameras. The Stien cameras were really unique in that they were early stereo cameras from the late 20’s, and they used a unique 8-perf vertical pulldown that stacked two 4-perf frames on top of each other.  If you turned that on it’s side… Vista.

And then there was the W7. And I mean THE W7, since there was only one. It was built from scratch by Jeff Willliamson of Wilcam, for high-speed work and could crank at 100 FPS, so it worked on every single disaster FX film for two solid decades.

Edited by Steve Switaj
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There was one stab at making a modern sync sound VistaVision camera that I know of, built by an Australian company called Rotavison in the 90.

It was a true fresh build, from the ground up.

I played with one once, It seemed like a really solid system, but I never did see one “in the wild” so I don’t know if they ever sold any.

It was really advanced, though, it did 72FPS and came with a selection of accessories that rivaled the contemporary 4-perf models.  It used its own proprietary lenses, and included a drive mechanism in the body for remote focus and iris control. 

Like I said, I never saw one used, but considering the small fortune it must have cost to build up the prototypes with all their accessory systems, I hope they sold some somewhere

Rotavision pg 2-3 small.jpg

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2 hours ago, Steve Switaj said:

Greg Beaumont did (I think) about 6 BoCams, while Doug Fries did two or three conversions.

( I got to rebuild the electronics on one of the Fries VistaVision cameras last year, I wrote up the story on Hackaday…

     https://hackaday.io/project/186456-vistavision-camera-electronics-rebuild   )  

 

And then there was the W7. And I mean THE W7, since there was only one. It was built from scratch by Jeff Willliamson of Wilcam, for high-speed work and could crank at 100 FPS, so it worked on every single disaster FX film for two solid decades.

Very cool electronics rebuild project!

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9 hours ago, Steve Switaj said:

More Rotavision.

Because obscure old cameras cameras that nobody has heard of are... well cool.

Some of us have definitely heard about this one. It was designed and built by Bruce McNaughton who was the force behind Aranda Film, a little company based here in Melbourne that did extraordinary work with motion picture cameras. Many of the 2 perf conversions floating around the world were done by him. Among many other achievements he converted “unconvertible” cameras like the Arri 16St to Super 16, and designed 65mm camera systems. He should be more famous than he is. 

9AF38F7A-3132-4648-B080-E7512C815A8E.jpeg.00d79439a1855f8df9257f240aabc395.jpeg

There were only six Rotavision cameras made. One of them is now at the Sydney Powerhouse Museum. The museum website lists some of the films these cameras were used on, including Babe: Pig in the City and Queen of the Damned:

https://collection.maas.museum/object/562249

I’d love to know where the other five ended up.

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1 hour ago, Steve Switaj said:

Dom;  

What it the big blue camera?

I'm not sure, some kind of VistaVision rig I guess. Bruce used to post on here, I'll shoot him a message and see if he wants to chime in. 

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24 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

VistaVision cameras were either designed with "butterfly" magazines so the horizontally-running film could go straight through, or "elephant ears" magazines which requires a twist to turn sideways.

Yes, the blue camera in question has a butterfly mag and is a VistaVision camera made by Bruce McNaughton.

This site won't let him log on for some reason, so he asked me to post his reply to Steve's question.

3 hours ago, Steve Switaj said:

What it the big blue camera?

 

"The blue camera was my first VistaVision model.  I was asked to shoot a film for World Expo 88 in 70mm.  As 70mm camera, film stock, processing and editing equipment were all difficulties associated with a 70mm production in Australia, I decided that VistaVision was a sensible alternative.  It would be printed on to 70mm at the final stage.

I had never built any film equipment in my career as DOP/Film Producer but I designed and built this quite basic camera for the task.  No bells and whistles. 1000 ft load, pellicle reflex.  I used Canon FD lenses.  There were a truck load of special effects required and the compositing of all of the VV elements was carried out at Pacific Title.  They had to build a special printer for the task and the interneg was also produced in the VistaVision format.

The 70mm final 6 track magnetic striped prints were made at Technicolor (horrible closed mind management) and were stunning on the Expo screen.

During my time spent whipping the Pacific Title team into action I spoke to a few locals and made the decision to make a REAL VistaVision camera, with all the features already mentioned in posts on this forum.

The six red cameras were used on many US productions but the project fell foul due to lack of support in my Burbank office and I could not continue without proper representation.

Bruce McNaughton

The Aranda Group Melbourne"

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