Shawn Martin

It's not 3D. Next month's AC says they shot on the Red MX. They apparently used the Epic too but the article doesn't mention it. It looks terrible. I saw one of the early trailers in the theater (the one that makes it seem like some romantic movie at first) in both 35mm and digital, and what really struck me is how slimy and greasy the leads' faces looked in closeups.

I don't watch SVU, but I felt the same way about Criminal Intent when it switched to video (the F35 I think); it was one of the reasons I stopped watching. Digital always seems to wreak havoc on skintones and faces - especially women's faces. Everybody looked like they were made out of yellow plastic. It's sad that people actually think looks like this are "good enough".

It was 35mm. I remember reading a Kodak brochure about Cannes that listed this, and I think it said 5219.

Probst said it was the Red (and Hawk V-Series anamorphics) here. It looked like the Red to me.

They were JDC anamorphics, out of their (now Panavision's) rental house in Wilmington, North Carolina. The movie was shot in Wilmington.

I saw it on Wednesday, in regular 35mm, luckily in a really big theater. A lot of theaters around here seem to have installed the digital projectors in all their biggest houses and leave the 35mm in the smallest ones, which sucks. Anyway, what an ugly, stupid, anticlimactic POS this is. It's just as bad as the second one. So many awkward and nauseating scenes that stop the movie cold, like that thing in the bathroom or the Russian bar standoff. The cutting from HD to anamorphic and back again was very glaring too. The gliding parts were very well done, though. What I liked most about them were the shots right behind the guys as they fell straight down; that's what really sold it. Some of that car chase is OK too, where the cars getting knocked around got some serious airtime. I noticed that a few shots were actually taken from Bay's movie The Island.

Deakins was interviewed in British Cinematographer and he said 5217 and 5219. Kodak says that here too.

You bet! So was the straw in my soda. I forgot to mention that this guy was seriously pissed off, too - the way he was shouting wasn't like "Wow it's Ben Grimm!", but "I'm gonna **(obscenity removed)**in kill you Ben Grimm!" He was moving that bottle like he was winding up for a fastball.

When I (against my better judgment) went to see the first Fantastic Four, there was an older, drunken, possibly retarded guy near the front row who stood up with a bottle of whiskey and shouted things like "BEN GRIMM, BEN GRIMM!" at the screen over and over again. A couple of ushers dragged his ass out. Everybody was laughing. The woman who was with him, his wife I guess, looked so embarrassed.

I saw it in 2D, in digital. I couldn't see the point of 3D either. Nothing looked like it would have been suited to it. The movie itself was OK. Basically, if you've seen the trailers, you've seen the movie. Some parts were awful, like where Thor screams to the sky in anguish after trying to lift the hammer--pure comedy gold. Really embarrassing stuff. I regret watching it in digital. I picked that showtime because it was the theater's biggest screen (after their fake IMAX). Of course I've seen plenty of movies digitally, but throughout I was thinking "All this looks like is a big TV", and I don't go to the movies to watch TV. The scene after the credits looked like a crappy reshoot. Very purple and video-looking. It wasn't even anamorphic like the rest of the movie.

Elswit has signed on to shoot the new Bourne movie with Tony Gilroy, so that's probably why he's not available. I can't imagine who Anderson will get to replace him.

Their website seems to be fine: http://www.slowmotioninc.com/ You just have to click on the "Continue to..." link in the bottom right corner. That takes you to the main site. I emailed them a little while ago, to ask if their Elites were used on a particular film, and Anatoly responded that they were. Nice guy. And the film in question was "Jolene", which will be out on Blu-ray soon. I know that crazy Greek movie "Dogtooth" also shot on them.

I believe this was shot entirely on 5219. There's a really good article about Seale in next month's AC, and in it he mentions shooting this in anamorphic, and that the "11:1", which he says is "f4.5", was crucial to an action sequence. In brackets it says this lens is the 24-275mm Primo zoom, but that's a spherical lens, and is T2.8. I think the writer made a mistake, and Seale was actually referring to the 48-550mm. And I remember seeing some photos of them setting up to film Angelina Jolie at an outdoor cafe--I haven't seen this so I don't know what was happening storywise--the lens looked very much like one of the newer zooms.

This was the cover story of, I think, the May 2005 AC. Arri cameras, Cooke anamorphics from JDC and Technovision. 5212 and 5229. Apparently it was the first movie to shoot on 5229. I never went to see this in the theater because it just didn't look very interesting, but I saw it recently streaming on Netflix, luckily in the correct ratio. It's got a look that's very "direct", I guess is the way to describe it; not overly-stylized, like you said. Slick without really being slick. I really liked the lighting of the night scenes inside Sean Penn's apartment.

I thought they did too, and since Clairmont was credited for the cameras, I emailed them through the form on their site. I was surprised to get a response from Denny Clairmont. He said he didn't know anything about them using HD and that that look might have been done in post. Obviously that could just mean someone else's camera was on the chopper. Narnia was F23, and Little Fockers was 35mm. Arricams, if I remember correctly.

They also used Vivid 500, according to a Fuji brochure I read the other day. That makes sense.

According to Fuji's site, it was shot on 160: http://www.fujifilm.com/products/motion_picture/filmed_on/north_america/#h2-2 Maybe they used higher-speed Kodak stock(s) for some parts.

On IMDB there's a publicity still of the director using a viewfinder with an Arri Master Prime.

I know they used some Nikon zooms. They might have been the same still lenses that Oliver Wood had Arri convert to use on Bourne Ultimatum.

I saw a 35mm print on Friday, and thought it looked a bit out of focus too. I also couldn't tell that anything was 65mm. Did anyone else notice the (apparently) bad bluescreen work when Dicaprio and the warden were talking in the jeep? The background shows that they should be in sunlight - it's coming through the trees all around them as they drive - but it's never shown hitting them. Anyway, the AC article says that the 65mm stuff was shot with Arri 765 and Panavision System 65 cameras, and that they both broke down during a cold night and only a bit of the footage is in the movie. And the tech specs section at the end of the article (but not the article itself, for some reason) also says that the Arri D-21 was used. I wonder if it's a mistake.

"The Secret Life of Bees" used them along with Cookes from JDC.

I also saw it in 2.40 in Real-D. I'm not sure of the whole story behind this, and sorry if it's brought up elsewhere here, but apparently theaters (some or all, I don't know) showing it in 3D got a memo about Cameron wanting it to "fill as much of the screen as possible"--in flat, the 3D effects are supposed to jump out past the black bars, I guess. Auditoriums with top masking were to show the flat version, and ones with side masking, the scope version. G-Force did something similar, if I remember correctly. The one I saw Avatar in had top masking, but was still 2.40. They were sent the scope drive by mistake, and just decided to play it. About the movie itself, I liked it, even with the one-note story, weak parables, cliched dialogue and predictability. The CG was big and epic and very good, but nothing really "revolutionary" or "changing the face of movies forever" etc. The 3D was pretty cool--at one point I reflexively tried to brush some falling leaves out of my eyes. Some of the mouth movements of the Navi were spotty and video game-like. The Sigourney Weaver avatar was really weird and "wrong"-looking the first couple of times it was shown. There was one awful part near the end, a closeup of the colonel's face while he was inside the robot suit. It (his face) was pasty green and looked flat and completely fake. The sound mix was fantastic.

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.

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.

Death Proof was 3-perf Super 35 on Fuji 8573. You're thinking of Robert Rodriguez' part, Planet Terror; that was shot with the Genesis.