Ignacio Aguilar

Leo, Thanks for the info. Ironically, I've just seen Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972), and I'm surprised because some shots appear to use a Russian anamorphic zoom lens either specifically designed for the anamorphic format or converted by adding a front element, since they show elliptical circles of confusion, as opposed to rear-converted zooms. Nowadays Panavision rents a 40-80mm T/2.8 & front element anamorphic zoom, but I didn't know about this kind of lens back then.

Impressive. This is going to be a gorgeus looking film! Shot number three reminds me of The Right Stuff.

The other day I was watching again The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three (1974), which I believe was Owen Roizman's first anamorphic film, and it seems that he shot it with the same philosophy that he brought to The French Connection and The Exorcist; heavy use of the available light in the real locations, push developing and very wide apertures. Of course, the depth of field is so shallow that a few times parts of the actor's faces seem to be a little out of focus, but I noticed that in spite of the film being a thriller, there's little (if any) camera movement in the form of travellings and tracking shots, only handheld shots with the actors and cameras keeping the same focal distance. But Roizman worked it out by staging most of it with only one actor per shot, because the depth of field is so shallow that the few times that there's some action or dialogue in the background the focus racking becomes a bit distracting. Perhaps adopting that style is the only way to do it... David, have you tried to use some Split-Diopters? (I've read all your posts about this shooting, but I don't remember about it). I love the look of anamorphic films shot at extreme apertures (both wide-open and stopped-down), though I understand that both styles are very hard to achieve.

I've never seen Valmont, but I love the way Amadeus looks. It's not only those small sets and close-ups lit by candlelight, there were also some big sets where Ondricek used VERY low-light levels and needed lots of camera movement with telephoto lenses (like the opera houses), so succeeding in those circunstances when shooting wide-open with anamorphic lenses is a real triumph, in my opinion. I prefer the overall look of Barry Lyndon's candlelight scenes because of the warmer colors and more contrast of the real candles, but Amadeus was gorgeus. I've never seen Amadeus theatrically though, so I don't know if the lenses' performance was OK at those apertures. Barry Lyndon's candlelight scenes looked a bit soft on the big screen, but on the other hand the entire film was pretty fine-grained when you consider that all of it was pushed one stop. Anyway, in my opinion 1984 was one of the greatest years ever in terms of cinematography. Chris Menges won for the outstanding The Killing Fields, but Caleb Deschanel also did my favourite work of his, The Natural.

I've just seen the second part (out of four) of the Soviet film War and Peace ("Voyna i mir", Sergei Bondarchuk, 1965-1967) and there are lots DNF shots in snow, probably more than in any other film mentioned in this thread to date. They're pretty good too.

Some more: Million Dollar Baby - Tom Stern - Panavision Anamorphic. One of the best looking films of the last year, in my opinion. It had a very sharp and clean image. War of the Worlds - Janusz Kaminski - Academy Standard Flat (1.85:1). They didn't use a D.I. for the whole film, but there were lots of CGIs (which might be considered as a D.I. anyway).

He wasn't going blind, of course. That's a legend. He simply left the film because the shooting got too long and he had another commitment with a Truffaut film in France. He had left the Spanish film Cambio de Sexo (Vicente Aranda, 1976) the previous year, when got the call to fly to Canada and shoot for Terry Malick. Almendros recived three Oscar nominations and other awards after Days of Heaven, so his eyesight was still out of question. Wexler's story is a bit questionable IMHO, since he only shot for a few weeks and the bulk of the film was shot while Almendros was the DP (according to this article, Wexler shot only the last 19 days). I believe that Wexler shot the early scenes at the fundition, but I don't know what else he did. The overall look of the film is VERY consistent, though I recall Wexler mentioning that he had introduced some light diffusion which wasn't in Almendros footage. In the book 'Masters of Light' Almendros talks quite a bit about this film. P.D. Almendros was born in Barcelona, Spain. He was raised in Cuba, but he went on to study in Rome at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in the late 50's. He moved back to Cuba and started to shoot his own films, but they were banned by the Cuban regime, so he moved again to Europe and started to photograph films for directors of the French New Wave like Rohmer or Truffaut. Cambio de Sexo remains as Almendros' only Spanish credit (the film was finished by José Luis Alcaine, one of the all-time top Spanish cameraman, whose career was flourishing back in those days).

I come to the rescue of this post as I've seen Geoffrey Unsworth's The Return of the Pink Panther tonight. Once again I agree with Tim's comments. I have even thought about the look of the James Bond films of that era -specially The Spy Who Loved Me- while viewing the location work in Morocco during the scenes featuring Christopher Plummer! :) Freddie Young did a Bond film; it would have been fun that Unsworth had done that too. Of course this film wasn't an important assignment to someone with Geoffrey Unsworth's body of work, but his mix of studio and soft lighting, and Peter MacDonald's classic yet dynamic compositions and camera movement are a real pleasure to watch. I believe that this film has to be the less foggy-filtered of his "post-Cabaret" era, as the filters really blow overexposed areas only a few times (but I may be wrong, the DVD I've seen was pretty bad).

Freddie used DFN in snow again near the end of Nicholas and Alexandra. The Fearless Vampire Killers also had some DFN in snow, but it was mostly 2nd Unit (I believe) or was used as rear plates.

Those of you interested in matte-paintings should take a look at Albert Whitlock's works, specially on such effects heavy films as Earthquake (for which he did more than 40 matte shots) or The Hindenburg. The late Robert Wise once remarked that he only agreed to shot that film after Whitlock had assured him that he could achieve the illusion of a flying zeppelin via matte-paintings. Whitlock's ASC obituary.

I believe Cameron started to overexpose his high-speed film stocks around the time of Terminator 2, making his Super 35-to-Scope blow-ups less grainy than the average Super 35 photography of the time. I never saw The Abyss theatrically and perhaps that one was overexposed to. I distinctly remember the day exterior scenes of Titanic as being very sharp and detailed, with strong and accurate colors, but that mostly had to do with the fact that they used the slowest film stock made (Kodak 5245, 50 ASA). Plus, his special effects plates used to be shot in large format (8-perf VistaVision).

Thank you for your elaborate answer, David :) I believed that the possibility of shooting in 3-perf Super 35 would make the D.I. more affordable, but I see that I was wrong. Anyway, I'll be very happy to see your images on the big screen, specially if they come from a big anamorphic negative.

Good luck with this project, David. Some time ago you talked about shooting Super 35 and finishing the film with a D.I., but I don't remember if you were talking about this particular project. If so, can you tell us what was the reason behind ending up choosing anamorphic?

David Watkin, John Alcott, John Toll, Nestor Almendros, Geoffrey Unsworth, Caleb Deschanel, Derek Vanlint, Robert Richardson, Vittorio Storaro, Freddie Young, Stephen Goldblatt, Conrad Hall, Vilmos Zsigmond, Robert Surtees, Gordon Willis, Owen Roizman...

Rest in peace, Tonino. I agree with you, Tim. Just take a look at Leone's film that weren't photographed by Delli Colli. While they still have a strong sense of composition, Delli Colli's use of the frame in both The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West is even more impressive. And I believe that he had something to do with the more carefully controlled color design of those films, something very important when trying to achieve deep focus effects and you need to separate the background to the foreground.

I enjoyed the first half hour (before they went to the factory), but I found the rest of the film uninspired and Wonka's background history unnecesary. Some sets were amazing, but I wasn't impressed by the way they were lit. I still think that Burton's style is better suited by someone like Stefan Capzsky or even Emmanuel Lubezki, as they did in the past.

I've seen it again. The first time was a long time ago on TV. I disliked the film back then, but some of its images were still haunting my memory. Now I think that the film is not as bad as I thought back then, but I'm more than impressed with its cinematography. It's a great, stylish work by Bill Fraker. The film features very interesting lighting effects, such as the strobe lights during the hypnosis scenes, or even some beautiful reflections on glasses and mirrors (some of then achieved in camera, others via optical effects & matte shots): But the most impressive stuff are the surrealistic desert scenes, shot inside a soundstage. Fraker has said that he needed almost every arc in Hollywood and very deep f/stops to simulate such a high light intensity: They also had to replicate the house, the exorcism and the street from the first film. I believe that there are some front projection shots in this scenes: The film has also some impressive shots, like those with Reagan (Linda Blair) on the roof: Perhaps it was Boorman who encouraged Fraker to lit the film in a more naturalistic way, with very little fill light (if so), against his usual high-key, low-con trademark style. Take a look at this shot, it could have been done by David Watkin himself. And it's not the only one! The DVD shows some poor blacks. I don't know if this was caused by some nets or other kind of difussion or even flashing, but that's something that I've seen before in other films shot by Fraker. It think that The Exorcist II is his best work, together with 1941. Sadly, the film is so so, which makes it barely known. A final surprise!: ;)

I think that I have said a million times that I'm just GUESSING based on what I have read about the camera and on my previous experience with digital moviemaking. You don't even know either why they ended up choosing the Genesis over film. You're just guessing about that, too. We only know that they shot some tests on film and finally they decided to go "on the opposite direction" with digital. So please, don't tell me what I should state or not. This is an open forum, isn't it? So let me express my OPINIONS freely as long as I don't hurt anybody. I'm not going to argue anymore with you or anyone about this subject, but I want to add some comments by Allen Daviau -who shot the Genesis vs. Film test and is a 5 time academy award nominee- about the new Panavision camera: click to read the article.

I know that they haven't claimed that. I did say that in my opinion the only advantage about shooting this kind of film with a camera like the Genesis would be that they could shoot faster. With the proper care, an anamorphic film should look better but lighting for those lenses and slow film stock -the way Superman - The Movie was shot- is more time consuming. And forget about 65mm, as it would require even more time and light since it uses longer lenses to cover the same field of view, thus requiring deeper stops to achive the same focus. I'm not criticizing Singer & Sigel for choosing the Genesis, I criticizing them for choosing a format that will bring less quality to the big screen. I haven't seen the Genesis in action yet, that's true, but looking into its technical data it's a fact that it won't look as good as a well shot film stock. But it's my two cents, just as Singer & Sigel say the Genesis looks sharper, cleaner and grain free or even George Lucas praised the F-900 over 35mm photography. I have seen a few films shot with the later and they didn't come close to film in any way. I still think that new technology should be applied to achieve what the "old" can't achieve. Digital is great for low-budget films or certain shooting conditions such as low light, but IMHO it's not ready yet for high-budget studio films cause film still looks better.

Yes, it was one of those european Cinemascope clones that raised in the 60's. It was designed and developed in France, as far as I know. The wide-angle lenses had noticeable barrel distortion. BACK TO THE ORIGINAL TOPIC I'm not against digital filming techniques, but I only like them when they're used in such conditions where shooting film wouldn't be affordable. For example, I enjoyed a lot those wide-angle shots of the cab in Collateral on which both the car and the background lights of the city were in focus, because that's something that couldn't have been done in 35mm shooting almost with available light. Or those POV shots of Cruise looking through the windows of the cab and the sky was gray... that's something that I've never seen before; that's technology being applied to achieve new kind of things. Of course, most of the film had digital noise and sometimes the image quality wasn't very good at all, but I think that the approach Michael Mann wanted justified those cons as the film has an unique look. But as a viewer I dislike when filmakers use new technologies simply because it makes their lives easier. Technology should be used IMHO as a way to improve films both technically and artistically and I doubt that this new Superman film will look better on a cinema screen (IMAX or not) just because the Genesis camera let them shoot faster than film would do, which I think that it's the main advantage that this film will found shooting digitally.

Haha, it seems that we are both interested almost in the same subjets ;) I believe Roeg was fired on friday, Berenguer shot with the first unit during that weekend and then Young took over on Monday. Perhaps David can tell us more about it. Berenguer was a pretty good cinematographer. I believe that the helped to develop the split diopters used on King of Kings (Nick Ray, 1961), for which he was going to shoot 2nd unit. Franz Planer felt ill and had to be replaced by Milton Krasner, who shot most interiors while Berenguer ended up doing most of the exterior work. It was a Super Technirama movie and the first production Samuel Bronston did in Spain. Later he did 2nd unit for El Cid (Tony Mann, 1961) and co-photographed 55 days in Pekin with Jack Hildyard when Nick Ray left the production (Ray was replaced by Guy Green and Andrew Marton -the 2nd unit director- began shooting as 1st unit). That lead him to shoot some films for Marton, including the original The Thin Red Line and he even photographed the 65mm film Krakatoa, East of Java, also shot here in Spain. He was a master of the Scope frame, as he proved with his compositions on the spanish film La Residencia -also known as The House that Screamed- (Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, 1969), shot with Franscope anamorphic lenses. Later, he shot again 2nd unit for Freddie Young on Nicholas and Alexandra (Franklin Schaffner, 1971) and even for Lucien Ballard on an awful Charles Bronson vehicle called Breakout (Tom Gries, 1975). He shot too one of the most acclaimed spanish films of all time, Luis Garcia Berlanga's Bienvenido Mr. Marshall (AKA Welcome Mr. Marshall, 1952).

I've never seen it, but the famous Albert Finney's screentest as Lawrence of Arabia might have been shot on 65mm. Geoffrey Unsworth was the cinematographer and it was edited by Anne V. Coates. I believe that Geraldine Chaplin's screentest for Doctor Zhivago was 1.37:1, though. It was shot on the real set by Manuel Berenguer, the second unit cinematographer and the first spanish cameraman to join the ASC.

I'm referring to Sigourney Weaver's screentest for the first film, which was shot on the real sets.

What? They shot that screentest in 65mm? That's even cooler than those Alien tests shot by Brian Tufano [bSC] in anamorphic Panavision! I'm pretty anxious to see the Panavision Genesis in action, but I doubt that the results will be sharper and cleaner than regular 35mm photography. Perhaps if they're shooting with a lot of greenscreens and CGIs in mind and they need a lot of composites the results could be more pleasing to the eye, but I still think that 35mm film had yet to be surpassed in terms of color, texture and resolution. I love Geoffrey Unsworth's work in Superman -specially the foggy filtered Krypton scenes- as much as you do Tim, so Siegel will have to do something very special to haunt me with his images, analog or digital.

Thanks for the info David. I'm reluctant to see this film finished with a D.I. cause I fear that they end up doing it at 2K. It doesn't make sense to shot portions of a film in 65mm and later down-res it to 2K, but we have seen that kind of things in the past. Though I prefer contact printing and traditional methods over a D.I. for anamorphic films in terms of sharpness and flesh tones, I wouldn't mind if they create a 4K master, as you have said. But I doubt it too, since "The New World" is not such a high budget film (25m) and Malick seems to me like the kind of guy against digital techniques.