Brian Siano

I recall reading that Doug Trumbull claimed that they'd used Nikon lenses for a lot of 2001 shooting, and that they'd kept it quiet so as not to anger Panavision. A quick Google serch came up with this article: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/27/entertainment/et-hal27/2. The two salient paragraphs here say: "In a detailed e-mail on the subject, Trumbull said, "Any claim by Kirk that the Fairchild-Curtis lens was used for the HAL [point-of-view] shots is just not true." He contended that the Fairchild-Curtis image would fill the entire frame of Kubrick's 70-mm movie, whereas the point-of-view shots of HAL are round and have vignetted dark spaces to the left and right of the 70-mm frame. Therefore the point-of-view lens would have to have been smaller." [...] "Though not taking sides, Frewin, Kubrick's assistant, recalls that the director used a 160-degree "mapping lens" borrowed from Fairchild-Curtis for HAL's point-of-view shots and later returned to the optical company. Frewin said Kubrick also used a "normal, commercially available Nikon fish-eye lens" for other HAL shots. The debate underscores not only the respect experts long have held for Kubrick's filmmaking techniques but also the enduring fascination moviegoers have had with HAL." In another interview (http://parallax-view.org/2012/02/11/breaking-new-ground-has-always-been-in-the-medium-itself-an-interview-with-douglas-trumbull/), Trumbull says: "There was a commitment to Super Panavision, they called it Cinerama, but he was feeling kind of frustrated with the lenses available from Panavision for that medium. So we started experimenting with Nikon lenses and he found out that the Nikon lenses, which were designed for the 35mm slide format, actually had a field of image at the back of the lenses that was enough to cover the 65mm film format, which was just a little larger. And so, even though we were forbidden from publicly announcing that Nikon lenses were being used, we were using them all the time. But he was involved with that. And he would shoot shots. We had these Panavision cameras with various different lenses, some Nikon, some not, shooting the Discovery spacecraft for instance, and he would test everything until you were ready to just tear your hair out, because he was so meticulous. The shooting ratio on 2001 was 200-1. That is like way out there. And the difference between a 60mm and 55mm lens was big for Stanley."

I'm doing a shoot in December where someone fires a 19th century pistol (once) in a closed room. The location's an historical landmark, so we really can't use anything like squibs or blanks that might cause damage to anything. So, I'm looking for a digital fix for post-production. Can anyone suggest a website which has a decent selection of gun flashes that can be had for Real Cheap? I'll be using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, if that helps. And if there's a site which offers some smoke to hang in the air after the pistol firing, that'd be wonderful, too. (Sound would be helpful, too, but we may record that on our own.)

I just watched the film tonight-- well, I scrolled through the TiVo recording, actually-- and noticed that a lot of shots made use of trees and other Vertical Objects to disguise the seams. They tended to be shots with something fairly close to the foreground. Still, there were shots where the seam may have been _visible_, but it was pretty smooth for objects both close and far away. That dolly shot into the entrance of the Erie Canal is a prime example. And this really throws me, because... well, lemme see if I can describe this solely with words. Imagine that we're looking down on the three camera lenses, and we can imagine three letter-V fan-shapes emanating from those lenses, marking the edges of their respective fields of view. For the seams in the image to be "seamless," for all objects, nearer to the camera and out to the horizon, the edges of the f.o.v.s of adjacent cameras would have to be very nearly parallel. But I can't figure out how this could be accomplished-- even if I _don't_ take into account the actual presence of camera guts and physical lenses. Those V-edges could never be parallel: they'd intersect at some distance from the camera, and everything beyond that intersection point would grow more out-of-seam the farther away it was. (And objects _before_ that point would appear twice in adjacent panels.) Someone once told me about Cinemiracle, which used a mirror arrangement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cinemiracle_cameras.png) that would solve this particular problem. It might be fun to try with camcorders sometime, if I had three camcorders. But I keep wondering how Cinerama solved this problem. But it doesn't seem possible that they _could_ be.

I have a question about three-strip Cinerama that could use some expert insight. This seems to be the right thread for this. For the life of me, I can't understand how three-strip Cinerama fixed a problem at the seams. If you arrange three camera lenses so that they cover the Cinerama "arc," it seems nearly impossible to arrange them so that the edge of one lies on the same "line" as the other. Let's say you have cameras A, B and C, with B in the middle and A and C shooting across B's field of view, so A is shooting the "right hand" panel and C is shooting the "left hand" panel. You could regard the seams as lines which run from the camera to the horizon, and ideally, the edges of each camera's field of view would lie along or parallel to those lines. But from what I can tell, those lines _can't_ be parallel-- they'd _have_ to cross at some distance from the lenses, which means that there'd be discrepancies before and beyond those crossing-points. Of course, when you watch a Cinerama film like _How the West was Won_, this doesn't happen. The scenery a few feet from the lens is as seamless as the scenery on the horizon. How the devil did they manage this? (I might as well explain why I'm asking. I recently shot a play with my video camera. Following the action was difficult at times, but I've been able to correct for some camera movement in post. It occurred to me that, if I had multiple cameras whose fields-of-view could be mosaic'ed seamlessly, as with Cinerama, I wouldn't have to pan as frantically-- I could combine the three images into a wider images, and reframe within _that_ in the final in a pan-and-scan manner. I know, it's crazy, but I wanted to figure out what'd be involved... and got stuck on this seams-to-the-horizon issue. BVTW, to David Mullen: I remember your excellent notes on alt.movies.kubrick. Good to see your equally excellent notes here!

For a number of projects, I'm working with a prosumer hi-def camcorder (the Panasonic TM700). I understand that this isn't technology at the same level as most of the discussions here, but I'd like to squeeze as much quality and versatility out of it as I can. (Lately, I've been doing a _lot_ of experimentation with the thing.) Of course, I have all kinds of questions, but they're somewhere between Basic How-To questions and questions about advanced techniques. (Such as, How much leeway do I have in adjusting color balances in post? Are there ways of gaming the auto-white-balance for certain effects? That sort of thing.) The kind of questions where I understand the basics, but I could use advice from people who understand the more advanced and detailed stuff. So, could someone recommend a good _reference book_ for digital cinematography?