Anamorphic slant focus

[Jason Debus]

Hi,

 

I'm looking for examples of anamorphic slant focus shots. Also if anyone knows of any other anamorphic slant focus lenses besides the Panavision 90mm T4.3.

 

Thanks!

[Nathan Milford]

I'm fairly certain David Mullen used them in Shadowboxer, search for his production diary on the film.. or he'll likely pop up and answer directly.

[Max Jacoby]

The 90mm Panavision lens is the only one that I'm aware of. The anamorphic element is at the back also.

[Jason Debus]

Thanks for the replies Nathan & Max. David's Shadowboxer threads were quite informative, he also mentioned 'Heat' and 'In the Cut' as using the same lens (EDIT: After re-reading it appears that 'In the Cut' used slant focus but was not anamorphic, David and the director liked the fuzzy focus look and used it as inspiration).

 

Here's some screen caps that David posted in the Shadowboxer DVD thread where he used the Panavision 90mm:

 

This was a flashback image, shot on Ektachrome 100D (5285), cross-processed, using a 90mm slant-focus anamorphic lens & 1/4 ProMist filter:

 

A key scene in the woods, shot with the 90mm slant-focus lens, 1/4 ProMist filter (Fuji F-250D), the colors pushed digitally:

 

I used the 90mm anamorphic slant-focus lens (basically the 45mm spherical slant-focus lens converted to anamorphic) to try and hold both of them in-focus.

I wasn't trying to be fancy here -- it was just one of those shots where the actors played it this way and I didn't want to rack back & forth on each person's line of dialogue, nor let one face be out of focus throughout. Sometimes in scope framing, the whole point is to see more in the frame so you get into these split-focus issues.

[David Mullen ASC]

Panavision adapted a 45mm slant-focus to create the 90mm anamorphic slant-focus, so if you are doing an Arri show with Hawks or something, I suspect that you could anamorphize a regular slant-focus lens or use some sort of bellows rig maybe.

[James Steven Beverly]

So does a slant-focus anamorphic eliminate the need for diopters?

[David Mullen ASC]

If you mean split-diopters, they sort of do different things than slant-focus. Slant-focus works better for objects receding on a diagonal plane away from the lens, whereas split-diopters work better to hold two distinct planes that are flat to the lens in focus, especially when the two planes are visually split by a vertical line like the edge of a wall.

 

Also, slant-focus lenses, for a deep-focus effect, work better the more you stop down the lens (to reduce the swimminess of the focus), but split-diopters work less well the more you stop down the lens because the edge of the cut diopter starts to come into focus.

 

Here is a split-diopter shot from a low-budget straight-to-video thriller I did years ago called "Teacher's Pet 2" (aka "Devil in the Flesh 2"):

 

 

An even better example would be a shot in "Blow Out" -- half the scope frame is of a woman walking in the distance, but the other half, held in focus by the split diopter, is a dead fish on ice in a market, behind glass, as a hand reaches in and pulls out an icepick (to murder the woman with.) But I don't have "Blow Out" on DVD to grab that frame. But in this case, you have two extremes of focus, separated by a natural vertical line, the fish case window edge. In my example above, you have the doorjam edge.

 

Here are some slant-focus shots in "Remains of the Day":

 

 

[Guest Glenn Brady]

What about http://www.clairmont.com/catalog/pages/len...ift_lenses.html?

[Max Jacoby]

I played with the Panavision lens last week. It's very flexible, you can not only vary the angle to get the focal plane different degrees away from being parallel to the filmplane, but also rotate it 360 degrees. The only drawback I found is that focus-pulls look very odd, kinda like the image is split in two halves that push together or away from each other as you change focus. But then again with this lens you would not pull focus anyway.

[David Mullen ASC]

That's weird -- the jpeg I put on my website last night from "Teachers Pet 2" won't appear on my Mac laptop, either in the forum post or if I go directly to the URL. It's says that it's not on the server.

 

Yet it appears listed on the server when I use my download programs, and it appears on the two PC's in my house, on both the forum page and the direct URL. But on my Mac laptop, it keeps saying it's not on the server.

 

The direct link is

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/teacherspet3.jpg

 

On my Mac, I get:

 

File Not Found

The requested URL was not found on this server.

[Stephen Williams]

The direct link is

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/teacherspet3.jpg

 

On my Mac, I get:

 

File Not Found

The requested URL was not found on this server.

 

Hi David,

 

On my PC laptop I see the image on the website & on your direct link.

 

Stephen

[David Mullen ASC]

Hi David,

 

On my PC laptop I see the image on the website & on your direct link.

 

Stephen

 

Now it's working on my Mac. Weird.

[Nick Mulder]

this one is pretty cool:

 

 

you can read the sign :blink:

 

(thanks for the stills David)

[James Steven Beverly]

If you mean split-diopters, they sort of do different things than slant-focus. Slant-focus works better for objects receding on a diagonal plane away from the lens, whereas split-diopters work better to hold two distinct planes that are flat to the lens in focus, especially when the two planes are visually split by a vertical line like the edge of a wall.

 

Also, slant-focus lenses, for a deep-focus effect, work better the more you stop down the lens (to reduce the swimminess of the focus), but split-diopters work less well the more you stop down the lens because the edge of the cut diopter starts to come into focus.

 

Here is a split-diopter shot from a low-budget straight-to-video thriller I did years ago called "Teacher's Pet 2" (aka "Devil in the Flesh 2"):

 

 

An even better example would be a shot in "Blow Out" -- half the scope frame is of a woman walking in the distance, but the other half, held in focus by the split diopter, is a dead fish on ice in a market, behind glass, as a hand reaches in and pulls out an icepick (to murder the woman with.) But I don't have "Blow Out" on DVD to grab that frame. But in this case, you have two extremes of focus, separated by a natural vertical line, the fish case window edge. In my example above, you have the doorjam edge.

 

Here are some slant-focus shots in "Remains of the Day":

 

 

 

Thanks you the explanation, Dave, I see what you're talking about from these examples. If I'm not mistaken, I thought I saw Devil in the Flesh 2 on one of the satellite stations, Encore or Starz or something, so your earlier work may be getting some air time!