Ignacio Aguilar

I swear that the print that I saw was really sharp except for some sporadic shots (specially close-ups on telephotos). Perhaps the projectionist had the image too much focused or I need to remove my contact lenses :D Anyway, Mindel claims in the AC article that no longer there's a difference between a anamorphic prime lens and a rear adapted zoom and I disagree: the zoom shots were a bit softer and less contrasty. Was he using the Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm?

Perhaps the darkness of the night also helped, but the Super 35 footage during the windmill helicopter sequence also was indistinguishable. I believe that some of the anamorphic lens flares may have been added in post to achieve a greater consistency between the spherical and the anamorphic shots. My congratulations for Mr. Mindel, who has done a great work with this flick succeding with all these technical challenges and keeping a very slick look through the various locations were the film was shot. His high-contrast approach for the whole film and the HMIs Plus Green gelled for some sequences were really eye-appealing. But the best part of all was the sharpness of the wide-shots, thanks to the Primo anamorphic lenses. I believe Max would be happy watching this; it's anamorphic at its best!. Too bad that the film relied too much on long-lenses, which was expectable considering the TV background of the director but was a real pity if you consider the crispness of the landscape or other wide shots. Even the D.I. (by Company 3) was great to my eye. Of course, it's just a popcorn movie and it's not trying to reinvent the wheel, but it's really well done and has its good moments (I enjoyed it a lot more than "M:I 2").

To date, the Bond franchise had been one of the biggest supporters of the anamorphic format and with "Casino Royale" being photographed in Super 35 some of us feel like witnessing the end of an era. Being said that, I don't think there's anything wrong with the Super 35 format; while I'm very fond of the sharper & cleaner look of anamorphic I think Super 35 offers a nice way to get a 2.35:1 image without using anamorphic lenses. If the new "Indiana Jones" film ends up being done, I would love to see any of the DPs listed by Adam and David doing the job. But I have to say that I would kill to see Vilmos Zsigmond working again for Spielberg. Plus his 1996 film "The Ghost and the Darkness" shared that old-fashioned quality with the "Indy" films. It won't happen, but it would be really nice!

The print I saw was fairly sharp (indeed, it was sharper and less grainy than "V for Vendetta", which used Cooke S4 lenses and was shot mostly on 5218; I saw it at the same movie theater), but it seems that for "Basic Instinct 2" they used some nets behind the lenses (there were halos around light sources) and some kind of DNR tool during the DI stage to soften Sharon Stone's facial strokes and that caused very bad skin tones. The black levels didn't match too well between scenes, either. By the way, the additional photography was credited to the late Adrian Biddle.

I can't edit my own post; of course I meant "without an apparent reason to avoid anamorphic" :)

If I'm allowed to give my opinion, anamorphic films tend to look better than those filmed in Super 35 in similar conditions (light levels, film stock, etc). The image is far more detailed and finer grained. Plus anamorphic has deeper blacks and the color seems to be richer to my eye. On the other hand, DIs and the new film stocks have improved a lot the look & quality of spherical films blown-up to Scope. But as a whole, I see the Super-35 vs. Anamorphic debate quite similar to the 1.85 vs. 2.35:1 or even 1.85:1 vs. Academy. Each format (even 8 and 16mm) has its strenghs and weaknesses and IMHO choosing the best for each project is just part of the role of the filmakers. There are lots of details to take into account while choosing between Super 35 and anamorphic (considering your budget is high enough to shoot in 35mm 2.35:1): the light levels the cinematographer will be able to use, the possibility of getting enough matching sets to shoot action scenes with multiple cameras, focus pulling, etc, etc. Even a genre could suggest the format (periods may suggest a softer look and sometimes anamorphic films look almost too sharp, etc). For example, Conrad Hall liked spherical lenses because he used to work at T/2. That aperture would be a nightmare to work at in anamorphic and he would have had to rise his light levels, thus changing his lighting style and the film's look. That's why it was better for him to use spherical lenses. I don't see anything wrong with his approach. Super 35 was just the format that fitted him. Though I tend to prefer the look of anamorphic, in Conrad Hall's case I prefer the lighitning of his spherical works over the films he shot anamorphic ("Harper", "Professionals", "In Cold Blood"). Perhaps he could have shot "American Beauty" or "Road to Perdition" using anamorphic lenses and both of them would still look as good, but the fact that these gorgeus looking films were shot in Super 35 doesn't mean (again, IMHO) that it's a superior format. Hall just took advantage of the format's strenghs. What dissapoints me as a viewer, for example, is a Western with lots of daytime scenes and landscapes shot in Super-35 with apparent reason to avoid anamorphic lenses. That's the tipical case where I think anamorphic -and its sharpness- is better suited. And so on (Sergio Leone's deep focus Techniscope Westerns may prove how wrong I am, or perhaps César Charlone would argue with us about spherical 16 vs. spherical 35mm..., but then, I believe Super 16mm was the right choice for "City of God". The movie wouldn't be the same if they had shot it using big Panavision cameras with Primo anamorphic lenses). Lenses and formats are just tools to do film photography, and since everyone has its own tastes and preferences we can call cinematography an ART and not just technique ;)

Yes, that's what he said in the Alien Quadrilogy DVD documentaries. But the 1979 AC issue convering the filming of "Alien" says that Ridley operated the "A" camera most of the film while Vanlint handled the "B" camera and the whole lighting process (I remember some talk about Vanlint being worried about the amount of fill he was using, the 3/4 backlighting, his first contact with anamorphic, features vs. commercials, etc) and a lengthy explanation (by both of them on their respective articles) on why the initial approch of using practicals ended up being very flat looking and was abandoned in favor of a set-up by set-up lighting. "Alien" is one of my favourites and IMHO "Dragonslayer" also is a great looking film :)

Though I find Emmanuel Lubezki's "The New World" the most exciting piece of cinematography this year, I'm happy with Dion Beebe winning the ASC & Academy awards. I didn't like the film itself too much, but his work (and John Myhre's production design) was really beautiful and a real challenge from a technical point of view, since he was shooting anamorphic at very wide apertures, sometimes even with long lenses. Beebe has teamed again with Michael Mann for "Miami Vice", and I can't wait to see the results! :)

This has been an endless debate for years... A few years ago I had the chance to see restored 35mm prints of his last three films framed at 1.85:1 and IMHO the films look much better that way. Kubrick composed with 1.85:1 ratio in mind, as seen in the book "The Stanley Kubrick Archives", which shows some prep material for "The Shining" handwritten by him where he tells his 2nd unit something like "the frame is 1.85:1. You obviously compose for that, and protect for TV 1.33:1".

Bill Fraker was also Spielberg's DP of choice for "E.T." (in the AC article about the making of the film he said Fraker could shoot really well at a very fast pace) but was busy at the time and had to decline. Later, "E.T." was also offered to Vittorio Storaro and then, finally, to Allen Daviau.

Some months ago I started a topic about Heretic: Exorcist II, in my opinion one of the best works by Fraker (together with "1941" -including the miniature work- and the additional scenes he shot for "Close Encounters").

I think this is an amazing film. Terrence Malick has done it again, though this time he has directed a more intimate story than "The Thin Red Line", in the mood of his early works. But I understand why most of the public will hate it. Anyway, the film looks, literally, hand made. Everything looks incredibly real -production design, costumes, cinematography- and Lubezki has achieved some gorgeus images when you consider he has been using (mostly) available light. The camera movements are so elegant and fluid that you almost forget at times that you're watching a movie. "The Thin Red Line" also had those virtues, but John Toll was after a more "polished" look and used a more epic approach through cranes, etc. to the battle scenes, while Lubezki seems to have been more interested in a rough naturalistic look, almost documentary at times. Can't believe yet that the ASC overlooked it! :blink:

"The Heretic: Exorcist II" (DP William A. Fraker) also had some impressive exterior shots of an African desert done inside a soundstage, though they were after a more theatrical, expressionist approach: click.

Trust me, John, it was spherically lensed... "North Country", the other film Menges shot the last year, also was Super-35 and Fuji Stocks, though it did use a D.I.

Saw it today. I've enjoyed it quite a lot and I think that it deserved more attention than it has had. I also liked solid Menges' work (both landscape and the more intimate interiores, very natural looking with very nice colors from the Fuji stocks), but I've been dissapointed with the lack of sharpness and graininess of the print that I've seen. Perhaps it was just a bad one, but nowadays I'm used to watch much better image quality from a Super-35 negative. Any info on why Menges didn't use anamorphic on this one? Very few scenes take place in low-light situations, and Menges has been favoring that the format in the past (for Sean Penn's The Pledge he even used an anamorphic zoom for most of the film). To my eye, the film was blown-up optically and there were no credits on a D.I, but I haven't found an article about it yet.

The article didn't mention either why they chose the Super-35 format (to date, all the Kaminski-Spielberg films have been 1.85:1, except "Minority Report", which also was Super-35) or why the Cooke S4 lenses were used for this picture...

At first I thought they were going to shoot it in Super 35, since Andrew Lesnie was fired from MI:2 due to his slow shooting pace while using anamorphic for the first time (he was replaced by Jeff Kimball). Plus here in Spain there was a rumor about Cruise forbidding director Alejandro Amenábar and DP Javier Aguirresarobe [AEC] using anamorphic for "The Others" (2001) -which he co-executive produced- because of the delays MI:2 had had in Sydney with Lesnie.

To my eye the trailer clearly shows the classic out-of-focus ovals (instead of circles) associated to anamorphic lenses.

I love too how Kurosawa used his frames (take a look for example at the telephoto opening shots of "Ran"!) and once again I agree with Tim on his thoughts about deep focus. I strongly believe that any photographic style & technique should be taken into account, but as much as I like shallow depth of field in anamorphic in a 1970's film (f.e. "The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3") because it was the exception to the rule, I would love to see again a hard light & deep focus film on the big screen. If back these days some DPs managed to shoot a whole film with anamorphic zooms (T/4.5, at least) and 100 ASA stocks, why that style can't be achieved anymore? My guess is money rules today more than ever...

Yes, of course. I should have used the word "tends" instead of "inherently".

It's a combination of factors. Since the CCD is smaller than 35mm on HD cameras, you tend to use shorter focal lenghts to cover the same angle o view (the opposite also comes true with film formats larger than 4-perf 35mm). Short focal lenghts have inherently more depth of field than telephoto lenses, so that's why you end up having more depth with HD than 35mm. To avoid this, one should try to use long lenses whenever is possible and NDs to open up the iris, since deep stops also increase the depth of field. Hope it helps.

I also think that stuff was the best of the film together with some telephoto shots a la Lawrence of Arabia. I liked the nights, but the overall overexposure of the day scenes (70-80% of the footage) was too much for my taste and ends up with very flat and desaturated images (though it was Deakins' goal). Nothing to complain technically, but I think that a more conventional look would have helped without being so distracting. That's why I still enjoy Doug Milsome's cinematography for Full Metal Jacket much more.

I haven't seen the Rossen version, but the IMDB says that it was shot here in Spain and it was pretty common back these days for American productions to use Spanish DPs for 2nd units. For instance, Manuel Berenguer did second unit for Krasker on "El Cid" and for Freddie Young on "Doctor Zhivago" and "Nicholas and Alexandra". He also co-photographed "55 Days at Pekin" with Jack Hildyard and "Kings of Kings" with Franz Planer and Milton Krasner. Berenguer then became the first Spanish DP to join the ASC as was hired as 1st unit DP on a few Andrew Marton films (including the original "The Thin Red Line") and the 65mm production "Krakatoa". Krasker also used a Spanish DP for the 2nd unit of "The Fall of the Roman Empire", Cecilio Paniagua, who later did 2nd unit again for Fred Koenekamp on "Patton".

I believe a 1.66:1 Hard-Matte was used on those films most of the time. Over the years, I have seen a few times the spherically-shot Bond films ("Dr. No", "From Russia with Love", "Goldfinger", "Live and Let Die" and "The Man with the Golden Gun") framed at 1.33:1 on TV and I believe those films never exposed the full negative while shooting, since some info was always lost at the sides of each frame as if some Pan and Scan had been applied. I recall that I even did once a side by side comparison between the 1.33:1 and o.a.r. presentation of "The Man with the Golden Gun" and the later showed more info at the sides and a bit less at the top and the bottom.