Reuel Gomez

Steve and crew has employed Otto Nemenz for F7. They are using Alexas and Master Primes. I know this only because I usually am Steve's key 1st AC (since the mid 1990s). I had to pass on this project due to taking the key 1st AC job on INTERSTELLAR. I was still involved with helping him crew this current project. I hear its going very well.

 

G

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.?

Not true !

Oh...

Ultra Primes are PL mount so cant use them on Panaflex ,hence Arricams . Panavision UK did supply the camera equipment for this production.

I heard something about Panavision UK no longer supplying Panaflex cameras due to low demand. Didn't think it was true though.

What's the difference between the "Classic Series" and the Regular/Close-Focus versions?

They are shooting on Panavised Alexa Plus Xts w/ spherical primos.

Neat. Any idea why the last film wasn't shot with Panavision cameras and/or lenses? They instead used Arricam's and Ultra Primes.

Between both the 18-80/45-250 (Fuji) and the 17-80/24-290 (Angenieux) as well as the 15.5-45/30-80 (Fuji) and 15-40/27-76 (Angenieux) which perform better?

Sure they make more money and they have the most international appeal. But they also lose the most money when they fail, so basically the studios are playing a high stakes poker game. A little balance, diversity, and fiscal responsibility would be nice. And a number of these tent pole movies don't necessarily have a long shelf life, people see them once and forget about them.

 

I like big-budget extravaganzas as much as the next guy -- I just stepped out of Target with my blu-ray of "Star Trek Into Darkness" -- but just watching those sorts of movies is like only eating hamburgers your whole life.

 

Yesterday I saw Wong Kar Wai's "The Grandmaster" and it satisfies both the craving for visual spectacle and the craving to see drama and character... That makes it more interesting to me than a "Transformers" movie.

True. I guess I'm just so attached to the big-budgets flicks that I don't really give anything else a chance. I think the only other two films I saw this year outside of the big-budget spectacles were Silver Linings Playbook, Pain & Gain, and Now You See Me.

There should be room for all kinds of entertainment, low and high-brow. I don't have a problem with kid's toys and Saturday morning cartoons being turned into movies, but I have a problem if studios spend so much money on them that they become the majority of what gets made, to the detriment of other kinds of movies, like ones for adults. If spending 200-mil on "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" keeps the studio from greenlighting several dramas with moderate budgets, then it's a problem.

But aren't those the ones that make the most money? Why should the studios sacrifice a big money maker like that for the sake of being different if money is at stake.

From what I understand, nowadays, few, if any music videos use equipment from Panavision. And if I'm not mistaken, even those who use anamorphic lenses don't get them from Panavision. But while I was watching a "making of" video for Linkin Park's "Somewhere I Belong", I swear I saw a Panavision matte box. I know it makes no sense to assume something like that based on a matte box of all things but I digress.

Yeah, They shot mainly on C-series anamorphics.

Do you know if any other lens series (E-, G-Series, Ana. Zooms, etc.) was used?

Why do I keep flashing back to my rant about giant robot movies. A multi-million dollar movie remake about irradiated turtles that are trained as samurai by an Asian sewer rat. Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa. Robert Altman, Charlie Chaplin, Federico Fellini,Howard Hawks, Ella Kazan, Michael Curtiz, Sergei M. Eisenstein, George Roy Hill, F.W. Murnau, James Whale, John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, John Huston, Sidney Lumet, Samuel Fuller, Hal Ashby, Victor Fleming,Josef von Sternberg, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Walt Disney, Fritz Lang, Robert Wiene, Roberto Rossellini, Otto Preminger, Ingmar Bergman,Nicholas Ray, George Stevens, Jean Renoir, Leo McCarey, Cecil B. Demille, Busby Berkeley, Goerge Cukor,Stanley Kramer, John Hughes, Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, Sergio Leone,Joseph Mankiewicz, Vincente Minnelli, od Browning, John Cassavetes, Arthur Penn,Anthony Mann, Michelangelo Antonioni,Terence Fisher, Robert Bresson, D.W. Griffith, Preston Sturges, Georges Méliès and Edwin S. freakin' Porter are SPINNING in their collective graves and the ONLY reason that Spielberg,Lucas, Tarantino, Scorsese, Coppola, Stone, Lynch, Scott, Nolen, Truffaut, Cameron, Carpenter, Cronenberg, Cravin, Raimi and Jean-Luc freakin' Godard are NOT spinning collectively in their grave is they're not DEAD YET!! Is this what we've come to? A remake of a cartoon inspired radioactive travesty? Al I can say is "Oy Vey" which translated from Yiddish to "Woe is me".

No offense, but what's with all the negativity? I understand if you're from an older generation, but most 30-40+ year olds as well as the younger generation (that I just so happen to hail from) remember coming home from school and plopping down in front of their televisions and watching Transformers, G.I. Joe, and TMNT among a whole other slew of things. You shouldn't act as if you are superior to the material or anyone who admires it because all you will get in return is scorn.

I remember reading an interview with Stephen F. Windon, ACS where he stated that he had shown Justin Lin tests with 35mm film, Alexa, and Epic and he preferred film out of all of them. James Wan seems like he wouldn't share that same opinion. And while I'm only basing this on his past work, he and his DP John R. Leonetti, ASC have been shooting on Alexa lately with The Conjuring and Insidious: Chapter 2. And while Stephen F. Windon will be staying on as DP for Fast 7, I wonder if Wan will allow him to shoot film, or have him shoot digitally. There were some set photos released recently, but as per usual, you can't see what they're shooting with.

I've always wanted to do a film based on a certain character that is owned by a big comic book co./movie studio. Despite it being highly unlikely that I'd ever be able to do it 10 or 20 or longer down the road, is it bad to think about it? Is it bad to think about the plot or the costume design or the cinematography even when I'll probably never get the chance to do it?

Recently Panavision have combined E-Series glass with C-Series mechanics. These lenses have better contrast and color rendition than regular C-Series, as well as better close-focus. The first films to use these lenses were ?The Island? and Terrence Malick?s ?The New World? which features stunning deep-focus cinematography that really show off the anamorphic format.

 

 

 

Do these hybrid C- and E-Series lenses have the same weight as the regular C-Series?

All due respect, but I hope this isn't going to turn into a thread about how to change your name.

I wonder if they're using anamorphic lenses on this film. Then this'd be not only the first film in the franchise to shoot digitally, but also shot in 2. 35.

Master Primes and Optimos.

 

And wow, this looks awful. Really can't stand that shiny cheap digital look that makes everything look like a set.

I never saw the first film, but I think that might be attributed to the fact that this is trying to be a big-budget sci-fi film on a $40 million budget.

Anybody know what lenses are being used on this film. I can't tell from the b-roll.

In a lot of BTS footage I've seen of films that used the Gold II and Platinum cameras, they use older mags and for some reason, they look dirty. Kinda weird, especially when it's BTS footage of a movie that was made close to the release of those cameras/mags. Anybody know why this is?

What he means is lens distortion that happens horizontally, not vertically (like barrel distortion). Here's a good example of cylindrical distortion:

 

Exactly.

I hate these conversations. This kind of argument with any other artist wouldn't hold up as well. Would you tell an illustrator that Illustrating digitally is what he or she should be doing. "Hey buy a mac, and make your art digitally. Those paints and paint brushes are expensive, and then you have scanning fees." Isn't that a moot point? If an illustrator has chosen paint, watercolors, colored pencil, charcoal, or whatever inspires that artwork, who are you to question that?

Give this man an award...I'm being serious. Wally Pfister said himself the sane exact thing in an interview two years back.

Marc Webb, who has only directed two films now if you don't count the second Spider-Man film which he is shooting right now is shooting that film on FILM. When Len Wiseman and Paul Cameron wanted to shoot on film for Total Recall last year, Sony made them shoot digitally on Epic. Make sense?

Thanks for the advice guys. I guess I've been getting so hung up on what I want to do and less so on what I'm going to have to do to make it in the business. I've been focusing more on all these formats and cameras and lenses and less on sharpening my storytelling skills now. I'm still going to comment and post on this forum, but I think in my free time, I should probably start trying to teach myself about how to tell a story.

Reuel, you seem particularly obsessed with how big-budget movies are made, as if you will be jumping into one right off the bat. Most people get lucky to have one or two cameras on their first movie and a few days of Steadicam, two or three on the second with a full-time Steadicam, a full-time second unit or c-cam on the third, etc. I have yet to use six sync cameras and two MOS cameras on a show!

I guess it's because those are the kind of films I grew up with and still watch today. I was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome a couple of years back which explains why I have such a narrow-minded mentality when it comes to taste in movies. So it's really just that I hope that one day I'll get the chance to do one, even if it's not my first. I'm just trying to educate myself so if that day ever comes I'll go in knowing what I'm doing.

Say I had four to six sync-sound cameras, all in a particular configuration (studio, handheld, Steadicam, etc.) and two MOS cameras, would that be considered "too much"?