Reuel Gomez

Just out of curiosity, I was wondering what the image circle for the Primo Zooms was. Do they cover Red Epic 5K/6K w/o any problems? I know the new Primo V primes are supposed to cover the Epic apparently, but considering there don't seem to be any Primo V zooms in development, you'd probably have to stick with regular Primo zooms (or Angenieux/Cooke I guess)

I just don't believe it. Even still. You can give me all the evidence you want. I'm still gonna believe its a hoax. And yet, it's not. I don't even know the man, I've never even seen any of his films outside of the 3 F&F movies I've seen other than Into The Blue and yet, I'm saddened by his loss. I can't even imagine what his daughter, who is about the same age as me, is feeling. I didn't have the luxury of having a dad who cared for me, but I do have a mother who does. And if I lost her, I wouldn't know what I'd do.

Just curious why the switch was made to the Alexa for Mockingjay, after Catching Fire was done with mixed 35mm and IMAX? And if you're shooting to the internal codex of the Alexa, does that mean that the full resolution of the sensor is being used, or is it recording 1920x1080 ProRes 422?

He's talking about the XR module which is featured in the Alexa XT family of cameras and replaces the SxS card module. The XR module is from Codex.

We have 2 60's for a couple of reasons. One for A camera, one for B camera. Also resolution and flare. The G holds certain highlights better than the C. Also the C60 has a closer focus than the G. Yes, we handheld the Primos. Even the 11-1.

Wow. I would imagine it'd be really difficult to lug around a lens that big. Did you carry more G-Series lenses then just the 60mm?

I wonder how they're going to finish the film with one of the main stars dead.

Dave, why did you use two 60mm lenses on Mockingjay? Also, were you handholding the Primo AL's on CF?

Reuel-

 

Lionsgate released a nice BTS video that you can google. Unfortunately they didn't include any of the BTS footage of the IMAX sequences.

I saw it a couple of weeks ago. One last question, by 30-180mm, do you mean that you guys used all the focal lengths between 30 and 180mm or you selected focal lengths in that range? If so, which focal lengths were used?

Yes on the Alexa. And we are shooting anamorphic C's, E's, 60mm G and the zooms. Not shooting Alexa for time constraints. Everyone was happy with tests of the Alexa. It looks amazing when shot anamorphic. Recording to internal Codex.

On Catching Fire, did you use the 60mm c-Series lens?

Yes.

From what I understand, you guys are shooting with Alexa this time around, I assume for time constraints among other things. Will you be using the same arsenal of lenses as on Catching Fire?

Are you working on Mockingjay Parts 1 &2 Dave?

Anamorphic we had lenses from a 30mm to the 180mm in primes. C, E, primo. Mixed. Zooms we carried the 40-80, 70-200 and a wicked 11-1. Handheld of course. IMAX we had available to us 40mm to 350mm in primes. We didn't really lean in one direction between wide and long lenses. Francis has a tendency to shoot on the wider/closer side but we often would do close ups on 100 or 135mm.

 

The MSM cameras are finicky. Heavy for handheld and steadi. They are just boxy all around. Not very ergo. The film displacement shakes the camera a tad bc of the speed and size of the film moving thru the gate. We set it up as not to hinder the movie in terms of shooting speed. The rest of the film was handheld and we moved fast, IMAX had to be no different. Handholding it and treating the same as a 35mm was a priority.

350mm? That's pretty long. We're you still able to get good sound despite how loud the MSM's were?

Thanks, Dave.

 

What focal lengths did you use on both the anamorphic 35mm footage and IMAX footage? Did you gravitate more toward wide or telephoto lenses?

 

How many lenses in total did you carry?

 

And how does operating an IMAX camera compare to operating a regular 35mm camera?

I kinda hope they do an ASC article on this, but I probably won't be able to read it because I don't have a subscription and Wolf of Wall Street is already set as their cover story for next month.

I saw the movie digitally projected and most of it looked like 35mm anamorphic until they got to the jungle, and then it was so clear, fine-grained, and spherical that I assumed that they had switched to digital, maybe because they needed more sensitivity in the jungle, and I assumed the shallow focus was from using something like Master Primes wide-open. But now I hear that it was IMAX, which explains the super shallow focus and the very clean images. Anyway, it looked beautiful.

I don't know how Jo Willems managed to handhold that gargantuan IMAX camera and how they managed to record good sound but somehow they did.

 

You should definitely check out Limitless. I was very pleasantly surprised by the movie. Good fun.

 

Freya

I definitely will. I just need to find it at FYE first...

I wont be seeing this , but if its anamorphic its not Super 35 .

It was mostly shot in anamorphic 35mm but som scenes were shot in IMAX but some shots were done in Super 35 to crop to 1:44:1 so it could cut in with the IMAX footage better than cutting to a different aspect ratio.

Wow. This was a great film. Much better than the first one. The writing was tight, characters from the last film whose roles were minor in nature are more fleshed out in this film, you really hate not just the villains, but the more armored and armed Peacekeepers (or as I like to call them, "flamboyant Stormtroopers"), the visual effects are by far light years ahead of the first film, and of course, the cinematography is top notch. It almost makes me want to see "Limitless" just for its cinematography. I thought intercutting IMAX and Super 35 wouldn't work out as far as grain goes but I hardly even noticed it. The handheld camera work wasn't very jarring and I think looked much better than it would've if it had just been a whole bunch of studio setups. And I l also liked the fact that they didn't throw a bright light at your face every second to show off those anamorphic flares. Speaking of which, I know they mostly used E-Series, but does anyone know if they used lighter lenses such as the C- or G-Series for the one Steadicam shot in the entire film or did the operater just deal with the weight of the E-Series?

No

Also, M. David Mullen has been very helpful on this forum and he sounds like a great guy to learn from.

I'm not interested in Cinematography as a primary career choice but if it was something I could fall back on, that'd be neat. And besides, even though my goal is to become a director, understanding Cinematography is very important in creating the visual style of the film. But if I had to apprentice under a cinematographer, it'd be Daniel Mindel, ASC. I'm not sure how he is personally, but I love his passion for 35mm anamorphic and his devotion to it as the ONLY medium/format he intends to shoot with. Whenever I see a movie shot in the anamorphic format on 35mm, it has this personality to it, the shallow depth of field, oval bokeh, and, most importantly, anamorphic flares, that attract me to it. I'd love to shoot everything I ever do (professionally of course) in 35mm anamorphic...but let's be realistic, if I were working on an indie movie, the producer would surley be against both.

You could use rear anamorphic zooms like the new Angenieux on 3D rigs but what's the point? The newer front element anamorphic primes still have some distortions that make focus-pulling on 3D rigs difficult, except maybe the 1.3X Hawks, but then you're back to the same question -- what's the point? No anamorphic distortions and flares makes it look like you shot on spherical lenses, and then you are back to the question as to why you aren't using spherical lenses, especially for a 3D rig.

 

The only advantage then becomes the fact that with 4-perf 35mm you are using a bigger negative for a 2.40 image, but with 3D you'd probably be shooting digital. And since most 3D films are finished in 2K and projected spherical cropped to 2.40 in DCP's, I don't see much advantage in being able to use the full 4x3 sensor height on an Alexa recording raw, not if you aren't going for anamorphic lens distortions for a look. And if you really wanted more resolution, then you should just shoot on the sharpest spherical primes on something like the Sony F65 or a Red Dragon. So again, what's the point of using anamorphic lenses on a 3D rig?

For the look. That's what I meant really.

Recently, a lot of cinema lens manufacturers such as Zeiss and Cooke have been unveiling anamorphic specifically for the purpose of being used on digital cinema cameras such as the Arri Alexa and Red Epic which both have sensors that can accommodate a 2x squeeze anamorphic lens. So I wonder, could lenses such as these, and even other recent anamorphic lenses such as the Panavision G-Seres and Hawk V-Lite 1.3x squeeze lenses be matched and used in 3-D rigs for stereo capture? I mean, they clearly don't have the burden of older anamorphic lenses such as of course the Panavision C-Series and Kowa Cine Prominar lenses of older coatings and just generally being unfit for that kind of work due to mismatch between lenses in color (at least in the PV C-Series) and a whole heck of a lot of aberrations, so is there something else I'm missing here as to why they aren't being used in 3-D productions?

I've heard that the Zeiss MP's and Angie Optimo's aren't great matches for one another, but many DP's use these two together all the time. Is there a reason for this?

Not that any of this info would be of any use to me at the moment seeing as how I'm a high school sophomore, but I wondered. Is there a comprehensive list of all the camera rental houses in the U.S.? Big or small? As in not only Panavision, Otto Nemenz, Clairmont, Arri CSC, Keslow, etc., but the smaller ones too?

Rob Vogt told me the other day that they employed Panavision and are using Panavision Primo's for the film. Weird. But anyway, would you happen to know why Mr. Windon used Ultra Primes instead of Panavision Primo's for FF6? Also, will they be using any other lenses such as Angenieux/Fujinon zooms, etc.?

Also, how's Interstellar going? I'm looking forward to seeing it when it comes out. Any idea what series(s) of Panavision anamorphic lenses Hoyte van Hoytema is using on the film?