Spaghetti westerns

[Marc Shap]

Anyone know what glass was used on some the old popular spaghetti western films, like "Duck you sucker" AKA Fistful of Dynamite or jengo. Im assuming some old panavision anamorphic. Anything you can tell me abut this style of filmaking as far as visualls, is greatly appreciated.

 

Best,

marc

[Dan Goulder]

Anamorphic was not used. Those movies were shot in Techniscope, which utilized spherical lenses, specifically Angenieux zooms, combined with slow film and lots of light.

[Marc Shap]

Anamorphic was not used. Those movies were shot in Techniscope, which utilized spherical lenses, specifically Angenieux zooms, combined with slow film and lots of light.

 

What was the Aspect ratio?

 

marc

[David Mullen ASC]

What was the Aspect ratio?

 

marc

 

The CinemaScope aspect ratio of the day, 2.35 : 1.

 

2-perf is 2.66 : 1 Full Aperture (half of 4-perf Full Aperture, which is 1.33 : 1, so it makes sense) but since 2.66 : 1 is not a 35mm projection format, they only use a 2.35 width of the 2.66 negative (now they'd use a 2.39 width.)

 

See:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingts1.htm

[John Pytlak RIP]

What was the Aspect ratio?

 

marc

 

At the time, it was likely 2.35:1. Today's scope ratio is 2.39:1, as Standard SMPTE 195 (projected image area) was modified slightly since then.

[Marc Shap]

Anamorphic was not used. Those movies were shot in Techniscope, which utilized spherical lenses, specifically Angenieux zooms, combined with slow film and lots of light.

 

 

Do you know which Angenieux Lens specifically, Zoom focal lengths, vintage, speed, etc..? And anything else you can tell me that was used, to create that look, filters, processing ,etc?

 

Thanks

marc

[David Mullen ASC]

The Angenieux zooms used would actually work against the sharp style that Leone wanted, but he wanted to be able to zoom too, so they used lots of hard lighting and deep stops, which partially compensated for the softness of those old zooms (probably the 25-250mm). But occasionally you see a shot in overcast weather shot wide-open on the zooms and it's not sharp (like in "Once Upon a Time in the West", as Charles Bronson lies there after he was shot on the train platform in the first scene.)

 

He would have used the standard Kodak color neg of the time, 5251 (50T) from 1962 to 1968, and then 5254 (100T) from 1968 to 1975-76-ish (there was some overlap with 5247.)

 

I'm sure processing was normal except in some low-light emergency.

 

Original prints used the Technicolor dye transfer process, though these new transfers use scans of the original negative.

[Leo Anthony Vale]

He would have used the standard Kodak color neg of the time, 5251 (50T) from 1962 to 1968, and then 5254 (100T) from 1968 to 1975-76-ish (there was some overlap with 5247.)

 

'A Boy and His Dog', (not a spaghetti Western, but shows influences particularly in the first half) was release

printed from a CRI. The DVD says transfered from "an archival CRI", but it exhibits wear and tear & was released a year after "Godfather II", the last American IB movie.

 

 

 

Original prints used the Technicolor dye transfer process, though these new transfers use scans of the original negative.

 

Not always. 'Once Upon a Time in the West' used a 4-perf I/P.

 

"Lowry was provided a color-corrected high-definition digital master by Paramount, scanned from an interpositive taken from the camera negative."

 

'Working with a Techniscope film image brought its own challenges. "Because of the size of the frame, it's invariably quite grainy -- twice as grainy as it would have been otherwise. The interiors were particularly grainy because they were shot with really high-speed stock," Lowry explained.'

 

Nah. But it makes me think they were using an old 5253 I/P.

 

From: http://www.videography.com/articles/article_5330.shtml

 

The transfer of 'The Ipcress File' that TCM runs seems to be from a print.