Ignacio Aguilar

Thanks for the info and the correction. :)

David, I believe that the article is completely wrong about the film stocks... Wasn't EXR 500T (5298) discontinued around the time Kubrick was shooting "Eyes Wide Shut" in 1996 and then replaced by 5279? :unsure:

Adam, how does it compare (as a film) to Malick's previous works?

I agree with Adam, Leone's visual style has been very influential. The light in the Spanish desert is very hard and the sun remains up high for 12 hours, thus requiring that kind of fill in order to get some detail on the faces. Plus, Leone was very fond of deep focus compositions and that's why he was constantly forcing his DPs to put A LOT of light on actor's faces just to stop-down his lenses even more. Working in Techniscope with wide-angle lenses allowed him to achieve those shots, though particularly in "Once Upon a Time in the West" the actors have a "burned" look due to the high amount of light over them. In terms of color, I would say that only "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" was designed with a muted palette in mind, but that fact had more to do with a careful art direction than filters and film stock. As the characters move during the film from the south (brown) to the north (green) there's a gradual (but subtle) change of colors. On the other hand, you can see high saturated colors in both "For a fistful of dollars" and "For a few dollars more".

Shooting Munich: Steven Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski Update the Gritty ?70s Thriller. Really cool, isn't it?

Rest in peace, Mr. Biddle. The European industry will miss you. The last week I went to Sevilla (Spain), where parts of "1492" where shot using real locations (the cathedral and some palaces), and I found really shocking how inventive and good looking was his lighting considering the arquitecture of those places...

Kubrick used 5254 for "Barry Lyndon" pushing it one stop for the entire film. The 35mm print I saw back in 2001 was excellent and very fine-grained for a pushed stock. He also pushed "Full Metal Jacket" one stop and though it had an overall graininess, the threatrical prints were much less grainy than "Eyes Wide Shut".

Don't forget either that the lighting tastes have changed a lot since the 40's and 50's and the front, hard light style is not the rule nowadays. "Good Night and Good Luck" wasn't shot using black and white Double-X (Kodak 5222) because it's grainer and slower than 5218 (color, 500 ASA), and they wanted to use a soft overhead lighting and zoom lenses, which is a completely different approach to black and white.

Don't forget that the current DVD of "Eyes Wide Shut" looks much cleaner than the movie did in the big screen. In my opinion the film had an amazing look that fitted very well the story, but remember that the 35mm theatrical prints were much more grainy than the DVD and had thin blacks. That's why it got a lot of criticism at the time of its release for going to far with the pushing.

I like split diopters a lot, they are a beautiful tool, but in my opinion they can create distracting effects if not used with proper care. The best of the recent diopter shots that I recall was during the night car conversation between Clint Eastwood and Hillary Swank on "Million Dollar Baby". Very tasteful and very well hidden. There were two or three more on that film. Stephen H. Burum, ASC seems to be very fond of them; I distinctly remember a few split diopters shots with the characters around a table on "War of the Roses", though it was 1.85:1. Of course, Brian De Palma has been using them too since his early films ("Carrie", "Dressed to Kill"). The same goes for Robert Wise ("Andromeda Strain", "The Hindenburg" and "Star Trek: TMP"), who edited "Citizen Kane" and fell in love with deep-focus photography. I believe "King of Kings" must be the first film in using them. I have heard that they were developed at that time together by Franz Planer, ASC and Manuel Berenguer, ASC, but I don't know it for sure.

MacGregor, are you Spanish? I've been watching some of your reels and I think that your low/available light, handheld & wide open lenses style is much better suited to an spherical format. If I were you, I would consider shooting in Super 35 with some sharp lenses like the new Zeiss master primes, and then finish the project with a D.I. if it's so necessary. Anyway, you should keep in mind that an optical blow-up of a Super 35 negative to a 35mm anamorphic release print tends to look sharper than a 2K D.I. If shooting outdoors, I would try to use a slow ASA stock, like the (now) old Kodak 5245 (50 ASA) or the new 5201. Using high contrast lighting, that approach should look pretty sharp without looking too grainy. I believe, as Max does, that a 2K D.I. is a waste in most cases for an anamorphic shoot, since the image ends up being marginally better than a 2K D.I. from a Super 35 negative. Also, as previously mentioned, it's a lot easier to shoot at T/1.4 or T/2 on spherical lenses and even so, the projected image from an anamorphic lens at those wide apertures at the end wouldn't be much sharper than that. Plus, the footage from anamorphic would have big optical aberrations tht aren't for everyone's tastes (check, for instance, the night stuff Dante Spinotti did for "Heat", or Robert Richardson's "Bringing out the Dead", shot mostly at T/2.8), though you may take them as part of you desired look.

There's a long interview with the DP on the DVD and he says that he had problems shooting indoors because the film stock was very slow indeed. If I recall correctly, they had to shoot the big ballroom secuences on a soundstage (instead of a real location) because of the huge amounts of light needed to get an exposure with that film stock.

Here are some more shots of that camera while shooting War and Peace: The camera and handheld work is gorgeous. At first, I couldn't believe that a 70mm stock camera could do that 16mm-like shots. The film itself is really beautiful and features large-scale battles with THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of extras. A real must to see, in my opinion.

Since you may easily get an f/22 with a 100 ASA stock in direct sunlight, getting deep stops outdoors with a 500 ASA stock (even if it's rated one or two thirds of a stop slower) shouldn't be a problem even shooting only with natural light. The article doesn't talk about their approach for the night scenes, but the trailer shows some scenes shot at wider apertures (f/2.8-4) with very shallow depth of field, even at dusk. Anyway, if they really went through all the trouble of shooting 65mm I would have expected a 100 ASA film stock to achieve a fine-grain look for the 35mm stuff, as John Toll did on "The Thin Red Line". No, the amount of light needed would be the same, but you would need longer focal lenghts working in 65mm to cover the same angle of view (a 100mm lens in 65mm covers more or less the same angle as a 50mm in 35mm). The longer the lens, it has less depth of field, so to compensate you end up shooting at deeper stops, thus requiring more light.

Perhaps it's unknown yet...

That explains why the depth of field is so shallow and the distortions are so heavy. Anyway, I love the way this film looks, it's very natural and low-key for the era, and it was all achieved by bounced lights (no arcs outdoors) and using natural sources to justify the lighting. This film was a big-budget production, which makes Watkin's approach even more praisable... I think that it's pretty clear why Geoffrey Unsworth enjoyed this film so much...

And don't forget that Charge of the Light Brigade's 2nd unit photography was handled by Peter Suschitzky, who also came from documentaries. Here's a capture form the film, showing the optical distortion from the lenses at both sides of the frame: What would be the maximum (wide) f/stop on those lenses?

It is quite common in films made before the arrival of high-speed film stocks, when it was necessary -in most cases- to use arcs outdoors. If you watch carefully, in those films you can see reflections from the fill light on glasses, cars, windows, etc. Not to talk about shadows against the sun... There's nothing bad about it in my opinion, it was just the way things were done at the time, though sometimes it might be distracting if the effect is very obvious.

From AC article, October 2005:

The trailers are framed at 2.35:1. Since it was shot with spherical lenses that would mean that it has been shot in Super 35 (the second Kaminski & Spielberg film in the format, after Minority Report). I find it surprising, since Spielberg once said that it took him more time to compose in Scope and this film has been shot very quickly ir order to release it at the end of the year.

Cinematographer César Charlone, as he did for City of God, shot most of the dialogue in Super 16mm and the wide shots in 3-perf Super 35, using Kodak 5245, 5246 and 5218 in 35mm and 7245, 7246 and 7218 in 16mm. The whole film went through a 2K DI and printed on high contrast Fuji, so it has more resolution than the HDCAM DI (about 1.4K) they did for City of God. I never saw that film theatrically, but in this film I've found that the 35mm footage stands out too much; it's far more sharper, far more saturated and has much deeper blacks. Since they intercut both formats on the same scenes for covering different angles, sometimes I've found it very distracting and without a real motivation. In my opinion, they should have used only one format or at least tried to match them better.

That would be great... if you don't mind :)

I've just seen for the first time Truffaut's Jules et Jim. Loved that bounced light into the ceiling and the sense of movement throughout the film. Really new at that time. Did I read somewhere (Peter Ettedgui's book?) about Coutard using an Ilford high-speed still film to shoot this?

David, You mentioned last week that shallow focus was a bigger problem when you have famous actors on the set because it is harder to ask them to repeat their performances. I would like to know if working with an actor who also is a director tends to make your life easier when technical issues appear on his scenes. I mean in general, not only with Billy Bob. Thank you.

Yes, you're right. The film was finished photochemically, though the IMAX DMR version used a 4K scan of an IP for the blow-up. Here is the original topic.