Jarin Blaschke

Thanks guys. I need to convince A24 to make prints! What's interesting about exposing and grading black and white is that you make day scenes brighter than you normally would, since it's your only tool to strengthen transitions between night and day. This is not fully portrayed by this first trailer, which has a very high number of shots from our "dusk" and "dawn" scenes. This film was much different than the Witch. This time, the night scenes around the "lantern" that look so dark in the movie were nearly blinding on set. It also has a proper black and often good highlights, unlike the low-con look of "The Witch." We may continue to stay rich in contrast for our next color film as well. Shall see. Harris Savides had such a profound influence on so many of us cinematographers. For me, the soft look and unending highlight scale stuck for a long time. Jarin

What I saw as far as greater tonal separation with 5222, held up as a 4k scan and as a traditional print. With the old 5231, the differences would have been even greater still. For the digital version, highlight, mid tone and shadow values were matched between the two films, and still, local contrast was much better separated with 5222. Jarin

I shot a test with these films10 days ago, and found the opposite: In my 4k scanned findings, 5219 has much less grain than 5222. Also, 5222 had clearly more contrast. 5219 showed more grain on the print, but tonal separation was still weaker. Jarin

Also, I just discovered that Tri-X is a superior negative film. Rate at 80 or 100 and "pull 1". From what I can tell from a simple, 3 shot test, sharpness, grain and tonality all surpass double-X. J

Hi - an update: For the test I shot 7222, exposed at 160 and developed "normal" and 7266, warned about high-contrast, exposed at 80 and developed "-1." The Tri-X results were superior in sharpness, highlight tonality and grain. Contrast was actually normal and comparable between the two. I saw the results both as prints and in a 4k DI suite at Fotokem. It's unclear how much the results were improved by the stock being Tri-X, and how much from the more moderate development. The "normal" developed double X footage showed signs of overdevelopment (especially poor highlight separation) that the 35mm Double-X did not. I can share the results after the resulting film is finished! Jarin

If you really want to try something different, try using Rodinal as a developer. Sharper but much grainier, especially in Super8.

A classic, much loved slide film that commercial photographers kept alive until the mid 2000s was EPP. EPN was an even older film that stuck around. The colors of both are much more natural/accurate and the look less slick than Velvia or Provia. Kodak and Fuji had 400 speed slide film, too. EPJ was a 320-speed tungsten stock. PRN was a great Kodak negative stock. It was the latest until the Portra films arrived. J

Well perhaps this isn't the place for this (Maybe Photrio forums is more like it), but yes, buying expired film on eBay will do it. To me, buying a mid-speed film that expired in the 1st half of the 90s might be the best balance between seeing a noticeable difference and not too dangerous. I've shot and processed 126 film that expired in the 80s and there was definitely a lot of speed loss. Very thin negatives. The older the film, the slower you need to rate the film. This is the wild card method, as you don't know how the film was stored all these years and the results are completely unpredictable. High speed film goes off faster of course and is more risky. However, grain structure of vintage films is much different than those of today and can't be replicated. Just make sure that it's still a C41 film and not made for some earlier process. You could go thew harris Savides route, take a contemporary film and bake it at a low temperature, but you'd have to test it a bit to find the working ISO speed and baking time/temperature that gives you the look you want. Another technique might be to slightly underexpose a fast film while shooting through a colored filter. When printed back to normal, it will induce color crossover. For example, If you want red shadows and cyan highlights, shoot through a somewhat strong cyan filter. If the shadows are thin, they will exhibit red when you correct back halfway. Alternatively, Adox makes a film called Color Implosion that is designed to look "old" or "vintage" with, according to them, color layers that are "collapsed." Do a search on this film. It may be too "70s" for you, or it may be perfect. J

Hi Robert: Do you also advise exposing Tri-X at ei 100/125 if developed as a negative? Is the latitude really still as limited as reversal? Can't one develop to whatever gamma they want and thus avoid that problem? I am actually living in Los Angeles now and it looks like we will shoot in Nova Scotia in April and May. Nonetheless, I am looking for a good lab that might be open to changes to the film developer, and if a suitable lab cannot be found in Canada, perhaps there is enough of a cost savings in sending to Rhode Island instead of Burbank. If you write me at jarin@jarinblaschke.com, I can tell you what I have in mind. I am in the early stages of testing candidate developers by hand, keeping in mind a replenishment scheme, the need for constant agitation and the eventual soup of 700 liters at one time. -J

Dom: Thanks for all that info! I will have to ask Panavision about high speed options. From "The Witch" I know they have a later, Super Baltar 1.4 35mm lens. Our film takes place in the late 19th Century, so no lenses will be a literal match. However I've seen rehoused early Baltars and Cooke series 1s that I like a lot for this film. The focus fall off is fast, the highlights glow in a lovely way and there is a petzval quality to the bokeh toward the corners, including some nice vignetting (at least to me)in 1.33 and 1.2 aspect ratios. The Panchros go at least as wide as 25mm, and the Baltars (pre-"super") go as wide as 18mm, and as long as 152mm. They are all T/2 to 2.5, at least after they've been rehoused. Apparently they are "inverted telephoto" designs up to 35mm, and double gauss for the rest. I will probably use Cooke series 3 for most 25mm shots, because the earlier lenses cross over from "personality" to real dogs. There is even noticeable quality difference between 35mm and 32mm. I've heard the Baltars are single coated, and the Cooke S1s must be as well, because they have a little more contrast than the Baltars. Soon I will be looking at a triplet at Panavision. I will have to ask about Tessars, as they are very lovely portrait lenses in large format (5x7" and 8x10"). J

Spherical aberration, barrel distortion, even ghosting, sure, but I'm baffled how breathing could be a desirable trait in a lens! Nonetheless, vintage zooms will do this like crazy. Certainly every 60s or 70s zoom I've ever received from Panavision, spherical or anamorphic.

Thanks. I've come to know vintage lenses pretty well, but am not nearly as familiar in the realm of diffusion. I don't think we have much need for it in our film, save for a few special shots. Could you venture to guess what kind of diffusion is used in the opening of Institut Benjamenta, particularly the bucket pouring at 3:32 and the close up at 3:57? I'm not a diffusion guy, but that lighting and diffuse glimmer/shimmer off the water is really transportive:

I just wondered if it was Zeiss, since it was a German movie. Probably around the time of Series 0 Panchros and before the (original) Baltars? M is one point of reference for a film I'm about to start. The optical effects are quite beautiful in the film, and for homework I just wonder what lenses made the images, although now it seems Sasaki may deliver something very very close for us. I'm excited. What is that Russian film? It looks like another 1.2:1 aspect ratio movie (Like M) from before standardized sound. Looks like that Tessar is from a view camera. A 4.5 aperture is a pretty fast lens for a 21cm lens, but Tessars have a reputation for being great portrait lenses (In the large format world). J

Hello: Can anyone identify the lenses used, or likely used for the production of Fritz Lang's "M" (1931)? Presumably something from Zeiss? Old Tessars? Any film technology historians out there? David? Thanks! -Jarin

Well, my interest is in trying Tri-X as a negative before reaching for a somewhat obscure film. We will need 350,000 feet, which would be another issue. No anecdotes of TriX as a negative, eh?

I'm about to test this in a couple weeks, but in the meantime, does anyone have any anecdotes (or images!) regarding how, when processed as a negative, Tri-X 7266 looks compared to Double-X? I'm desperately grasping for a way to shoot true black and white film, while avoiding the mush that is Double-X. Thanks. -Jarin

Right, Super Baltars are not T1.4. They are indeed T2.3. . . Except for a very rare, extremely limited production 35mm lens that Dan Sasaki put in our hands- a Super Baltar 1.4. Dan is impossibly busy and sent the lens without much explanation. The rehousing was similar to a Panavision SS lens and seemingly no one else at Panavision knew what it was. Our other high speed lens was a detuned super speed 50mm and we had an other unknown vintage lens curated by Dan as a zoom for a few zoom shots. It was a one-off and the 40 year old motor could not properly function while lightly tilted up or down. Otherwise, the Cooke Series 2 32mm shot about 80% of the movie, the 25mm shot maybe 10% and the 40mm shot 5- 10%. There are two or three shots made on the Cooke S2 50mm. J

I agree with satsuki. Going forward, one of the key inputs of a cinematographer is during scouting, and finding the right locations for the scenes to happen. But building depth and altleast simple dimension within a frame should be possible within all but the tiniest locations. Otherwise you can shoot somewhere else, if even the adjacent room. Conversely, the photography and location should always work in tandem. I just shot a key scene to a film in a windowless, pasty, tiny, beige interrogation room with the door closed. I decided to only further emphasize what it already was. The shots are flat and monotone. I decided this tells a stronger story than fighting the room and ending up with something here nor there. There are many other scenes in the film that are very dark and/or deep and rich and the contrast between scenes will work to our advantage in this case. For example, Deakins does effective pedestrian flatness mixed with rich contrast very well in Prisoners and Sicario, two films I couldn't help but think about when prepping this film. (Also, Willis and All the President's Men). J

For me, maybe because I'm a little precious with composition, a finder that takes the camera lenses is *essential* for marking the position of virtually every shot in the film. I also use the dolly a lot, and not using the finder to mark 1,2, 3, etc. position before laying track would be a giant mistake. I think most people are much less rigid in their approach, but this is what works for me!

It is low contrast from a grading point of view, but the blah-ness is primarily from the flat, shallow, evenly background and not building contrast in blocking, lacking layers of light and dark. It is teated as all one layer and without dimension. The wall is close, without texture, a similar tone to your subject and lit flatly. One option would be to nearly eliminate light from the wall and light subtly from behind the blinds. Another would be to still cut or reduce our character's light from the wall, and then put a light source near the wall to introduce fast fall-off and a range of tones across its surface. J

In my tests I've found very visible squeeze differences between a primo anamorphic and an E Series anamorphic lens. The E Series definitely rendered the face wider in a medium shot. With such differences between lenses of the same manufacturer between the 80s and 90s, visible in a medium shot, imagine differences between different manufacturers 30 years prior when comparing close-ups. J

Miguel: As to the scenes you posted, yes, they were all shot exclusively by some sort of flame. Triple-wick candles, supplemented by a cluster of tea-lights can serve you as wide as a medium shot, if you are fine with a -1 1/2 stop to -2 exposure, which felt right for our dim interiors. Such is the case with the medium shot in "Scene 4." Sneaking the source right up to the edge of frame, there was actually enough light to use our usual lens, the T2.3 Cooke Speed Pancho, and not the rare 35mm T1.4 Baltar used for other wider candle-lit shots such as in "Scene 1." That shot of the kids around the candle in the garrett may be my favorite in the film. I'm a fan of omnidirectional, fast fall-off light sources and will use bare bulbs in contemporary pieces for the same effect. The campfire in the woods is an effects department gas flame. The flame was ridiculously high to light the scope of the shot, so I had to put William in front of it. A long gas flame slinky lit the hearth in scenes 2 and 4. Seeing the shot of the twins here, it shocks me how I screwed that up. Why did I hide the extra tea lights off frame right? They all belong behind that block of wood in the center of frame. Instead, Mercy's light is pasty and flat. I'm shooting a 1.85 film right now, reiterating how perfect I find the 32mm focal length... I almost need a special reason not to use it... -Jarin

For me, it's nearly any Tarkovsky movie and Woody Allen's "Manhattan."

I'm strangely pleased that the look of the film is as divisive as the rest of it. Rob wanted the film to feel visually oppressive, and we were constantly chasing the weather to keep the exteriors gloomy. There is less done in the grade than you think- that is real gloom. However, the cyan color and "under exposure" startles even me when I see it on a computer out of context, as opposed to settling in to the world in a theatre where you mentally recalibrate to what you're looking at over the 90 minutes. Another circumstance to remember is that of the wild variation in projection quality across a wide release. Sadly our darker scenes must surely be scarcely visible when projected from ill maintained projectors. It will be even worse across TV screens and computers which are "calibrated" all over the place. There is great pressure to grade things safely in the middle of the tonal range for this reason, and the lack of standardization in presentation is severely limiting the expression of craftspeople who do what we do. Nonetheless I took a little bit of a risk in sticking to my guns rather than play it safely toward the middle, where it wouldn't look like our movie. As far as 1.66, we just find it more pleasing and harmonious to compose, as well as more timeless. I consider 1.85 as a frame a very contemporary arrival to the arts in general, and always gives a tinge of the contemporary when you look at an image within that frame. So 1.66 was not supposed to evoke another kind of cinema, quite the contrary- we hoped to help move an audience to a time before cinema in a subtle way. And it was a pleasure to compose, too. J

As I am working with someone with the same award, I have to inform you that it's not really a $15,000 award per se, it's for a specific basic package with a GII and a set of lenses, rentable up to a certain limit of time, perhaps a few weeks. If your shoot is only a weekend, you can't upgrade in order to rent $15,000 of equipment in that time. I'm not really sure if Panavision would appreciate or even allow a back door sale of the award anyway. Jarin