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Ignacio Aguilar

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Everything posted by Ignacio Aguilar

  1. I've just seen Richard Fleischer's The Boston Strangler (also shot by Richard H. Kline, ASC) and there are a lot of zooms too. David, did the article on Camelot talk about specific lenses used on that film?
  2. Some films on which I remember zoom shots: -Sergio Leone's Once upon a time in the West and Once upon a time in America. -Michael Mann's Manhunter. -Ridley Scott's The Duellists. -Luchino Visconti's The Damned, Death in Venice and Ludwig. -Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut. -Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. -Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. -Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter.
  3. Thanks for the info, Adam. The film seems to have been shot in very wide apertures -thus the shallow focus most of the time- and maybe that also contributed to the overall softness. I agree with you. The last Samurai also was incredibly sharp too.
  4. I saw The Interpreter today. I wasn't impressed by Khondji's cinematography at any level. I don't know if the film went through a 2K digital intermediate (that's my guess, though I could't detect any digital artifact), but this is one of the softest anamorphic shows I've ever seen in a long time, with only a few outdoor shots looking really sharp. It's quite grainy film and only the typical anamorphic artifacts caused by wide-open lenses make it different from the average Super 35 look.
  5. That would be great. Alien is one of my favourite films in terms of cinematography and Dragonslayer was stunning too. Being a fantasy film, it had a natural yet dreamy look.
  6. I will watch the film only for this. It's funny, but today I noticed the same thing on Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice (1971) on DVD! The difference is that Visconti used the zoom almost for the entire film, so when he needed the extra speed of a prime lens those shots ended up being much more sharper and contrasty than the rest of the film. According to www.joedunton.com, Khondji used again their JDC anamorphics, as he did for Evita (1996).
  7. I saw it today on DVD. Together with Visconti's own "The Damned / La caduta degli dei" this must be of the films with more zoom shots ever. Visconti was a focus puller's nightmare. Since the film didn't show the typical anamorphic artifacts like out of focus ovals (the out of focus points of light were spherical or even squares) I would say that the lens was a rear mounted anamorphic zoom. Any thoughts about this film? Anyone knows the exact lens Visconti used? My guess is that it was a Cooke 50-500mm T/5.6, because of the softness, poor resolution at the end and the light levels required. Some shots were done with primes and even on DVD they look much sharper and show better contrast!
  8. Great post, Tim ;) I believe that the main reason Peckinpah had to use Coquillon on STRAW DOGS instead of Ballard was just that the film was set in England and he felt that Ballard -a classic american cinematographer- wasn't the right DP for that project. In fact, Ballard worked again with Peckinpah the following year on two films: THE GETAWAY and JUNNIOR BONNER. Many music videos look stunning, but as Tim has said, on films you have to take into account the context of the scenes. For example, the dark, underexposed look Gordon Willis gave THE GODFATHER may not be my favourite cinematographic style, but it was exactly what that film needed. Some of the best photographed films ever followed that rule. The best cinematography is not always the coolest...
  9. That's interesting. If Watkin was rating the stock much slower the blacks wouldn't become deeper? Dante Spinotti used the Agfa stock during the night cave scene lit by torches on The Last of the Mohicans, but the AC article doesn't tell too much about it: "Film stocks are often given credit for bringing out colors or enhancing a visual style, but in this case Spinotti applauded Kodak's 96 for saving valuable hours of time. "The combination of the 96 and Du Art let us shoot for at least an hour and a half longer each day than we'd have normally been able to do," he says. Agfa XT 320 stock was used in cave scenes, where a different approach was required to render the interior a blue-gray, moonlight hue. Spinotti did a lot of pushing with his stocks. When the forest got dark too quickly and scenes still remained to be finished, he pushed the 96 with surprising results: the two images, straight and pushed, turned out to look very similar. He was trying to reduce the use of 96, because he felt "the rendering on the greens was not as good with the slower emulsions such as the 48, but it did have an extra edge of sensitivity to it." Spinotti usually rates at 800 ASA, but he found he could push to 1000 without any radical changes in the image."
  10. Thanks again, Tim :) That's true. Most of the film -except the candlelit scenes, of course- have a pretty decent depth of field. I haven't seen the film in a very long time, and I was surprised by the amount of film grain the DVD shows. Nothing too bad, but more that I would have expected for landscape photography. Then I remembered the story about the Agfa stock used on this film. That stock probably helped Watkin to do his high-contrast lighting and to avoid any diffusion on the lenses. The overall look is quite soft and low-con. He probably convinced Pollack not to use anamorphic lenses, since he hated them. It's not my favourite Watkin film, BTW. On the interiors he uses more fill light than he usually did in other films, although he still lights the rooms mainly through the windows (his trademark). Anyway, I find those scenes more interesting than the landscape cinematography, mostly shot by a second unit.
  11. Anyone knows why David Watkin shot most of the exteriors for this film on this medium speed, low contrast film stock and most of the night scenes on Kodak 5247 (125 ASA)? It seems contradictory. I know that Chris Menges used that same Agfa stock on The Mission, but only for the candlelit scenes and some telephoto shots, while the rest of the film (including day interiors) used the 5247.
  12. I haven't seen M:I-2 and Wild Things since both were released theatrically, but I thought back then they were really good looking films (specially the awful Cruise vehicle). Dan Mindel is credited as DP for the next Tony Scott's film. While I liked their previous efforts, I would rather see Paul Cameron again doing the job. What about Jacob's Ladder and Kimball? I've never seen that film.
  13. I had never seen it before, but Adam Frisch said that it was Kimball's best work, so I checked it out. I was impressed :) As usual, many outdoors shots used grad filters: There was some single source lighting... ...and some great Madeleine Stowe's close-ups: But what impressed me the most was the incredible amount of smoke that they used on most interiors, always with the lights coming through the windows: Anyone knows what film stocks were used on this one?
  14. More single source lighting; The Duellists (DP Frank Tidy, BSC):
  15. Some examples that I like: One from the Heart: the colored light Vittorio Storaro used for the sunsets. The opening shot from A Clockwork Orange, lit by practicals: Kubrick and practicals, again. The bar sequence from Eyes Wide Shut: The final scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Probably the most impressive stuff Vilmos Zsigmond ever shot. The light and shadows of Freddie Young on Doctor Zhivago: And finally, the great David Watkin and his high contrast, single-source lighting on smoked sets; Hanover Street:
  16. It was, indeed (Kodak 5245, not 7245). It was very sharp and fine-grained on the big screen, IMO. I agree with you, but considering that the same film stocks could be used for 65mm photography, 65mm is still superior than 35mm. I can't wait to see Terrence Malick's The New World, which was shot both in 35mm anamorphic and 65mm (by Emmanuel Lubezki) according to most sources.
  17. I remember more backlit shots on The Hunger with the faces of the actors in shadows... Plus, the light coming throught the windows on the wide shots on that film show more smoke that what I see on Top Gun. But, as you say, The Hunger was a horror movie :) The sequence that I love on The Hunger is the homage to Barry Lyndon, with Catherine Deneuve playing the piano with period costumes. Scott even uses the same music Kubrick used on his film. I have only heard yet the first two minutes of the commentary. Scott says he was fired from Top Gun three times. The second one had to do with the way he initially dressed McGillis :D Now I want to see Tony Scott's Revenge...
  18. I finally saw Top Gun. It's a great work by Kimball. The grad shots are more saturated than in The Hunger and the image has less contrast. It seems that they used less smoke on interiors, too. I love the way Kelly McGillis was lit :)
  19. Saw it again yesterday on DVD. I think that Roizman pushed the film one stop, because it has the typical grain structure of pushed films of the era (Roizman's "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist", for example). But Roizman himself, in the book Masters of Light, says that he didn't want to push a certain scene because he was happy with the clean look of the film, so I don't know if the film was pushed or not. Maybe a few shots were flashed, too. The cinematography itself is excellent, with lots of very low-light situations shot wide open. It shows how great Roizman was. Just compare this with his own French Kiss or Wyatt Earp and you will see completely different styles (and equally good).
  20. Thank you all :) It was pushed to 1600 ASA, actually.
  21. I'm interested on what lenses did Kubrick use on his last three films. I guess he used the Zeiss Super Speeds (f/1.4), but I don't know what zooms were used on that films (Angenieux?).
  22. Very informative, David. I didn't know you can use two splits in the same shot. I saw ST:tmp for the last time around the time I came out on DVD. Most of that shots with diopters are well done enough that you didn't notice them. What I disliked was the use of hard lights inside the Enterprise cause I had expected a softer lightning for a 79' sci-fi, but it seems that they first goal was to achieve deep focus. The Hinderburg (1975), directed by Robert Wise and shot by Robert Surtees had some great split-diopter shots too.
  23. Maybe it was too innovative for the Academy. Remember that films like 2001 (Geoffrey Unsworth), The Godfather I & II (Gordon Willis), Alien (Derek Vanlint), Blade Runner (Jordan Cronenweth) or Seven (Darius Khondji), which were very innovative at their time and very influent the following years (or decades), weren't recognized by the Academy at their time of release. I would have loved to see Man on Fire on the list, but I knew it was very unlikely.
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