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What lenses and stocks did Leone use?


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Hi again. We all know that Leone shot his western with his beloved Techniscope 2c Arri and used the sorely missed Technicolor dye transfer process.

 

But what in gods name did he use for lenses and stocks I?ve been looking for an answer everywhere. Even Christopher Faryling?s excellent book on the man ?Something to do with death?, has missed this subject.

 

So if anybody knows something about it, I?ll be a very happy man.

 

Thank you.

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He shot with the Kodak color negative stocks of the day -- there was only one available at a time, except for some brief transitions to the next stock.

 

1950: 5247, 16 ASA Daylight

1952: 5248, 25 ASA tungsten

1959: 5250, 50 ASA tungsten

1962: 5251, 50 ASA tungsten (finer-grained)

1968: 5254, 100 ASA tungsten

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products....1.4.22.4&lc=en

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products....1.4.22.6&lc=en

 

So "Fistful of Dollars" (1964), "For A Few Dollars More" (1965), "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" (1966), and "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) probably were all shot on 5251.

 

Boy, he was a busy guy in the 1960's!

Edited by David Mullen
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Being a Leone fan myself, I think he used lenses wider than 25mm in many shots, considering he was shooting in Techniscope. That format (combined with a wide-angle lens) allowed him to do some impressive deep focus shots:

 

For a few Dollars More (1965)

 

sl15.jpg

 

sl26.jpg

 

sl25.jpg

 

 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

 

sl74.jpg

 

sl93.jpg

 

sl94.jpg

 

sl95.jpg

 

 

Once upon a time in the West (1968)

 

sl136.jpg

 

sl137.jpg

 

sl109.jpg

Edited by Ignacio Aguilar
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  • 2 weeks later...
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Some of those could be 25mm shots. He could have also used an 18mm lens, which was coming into popularity with some filmmakers by the late 1950's (Welles used it for "Touch of Evil.") Remember that "Citizen Kane" looks fairly wide-angle and deep focus and it used a 25mm lens for those shots.

 

None of the shots posted look wider-angle than 18mm.

 

In terms of 35mm format zooms, I don't know what was available then that started wider than 25mm.

Edited by David Mullen
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Thanks for the clarification -- I had always thought that Leone needed lenses wider than 25mm to achieve these shots in Techniscope.

 

I've seen a film called My name is Nobody, produced by Leone (who also directed some scenes) in 1973 and it was shot in Panavision. The style was the same, wide-angle lenses and a lot of zooms. But when Leone directed Once upon a time in America he chose 1.85:1 because he was afraid of using anamorphic zooms again and the rise of home video at that time probably meant that the film would end up panned and scanned to fit TV screens.

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Well, Techniscope used the same width of the 35mm negative as Academy/1.85/anamorphic did, so a 25mm lens, let's say, had the same horizontal view as it did in the 4-perf 35mm 1.85 format -- but it lost half of its vertical view being only 2-perf.

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How in the hell could those guys shoot onASA16 at f/3.2???

Shoot at 12fps and tell everyone to move really slow?

 

Really, even at ASA50, that's amazing.

Not all those films were exteriors, I just can't imagine trying to shoot interiors on stock that slow.

How did they do it if they didn't have fast glass?

 

Matt Pacini

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Very big lights (like carbon arcs) generally used -- and shone directly, not softened. Plus most early color photography was shot "wide open" at f/2.8.

 

3-strip Technicolor, when it started out, was an effective 5 ASA or so and "Wizard of Oz" and "Adventures of Robin Hood" were shot this way, mostly with big carbon arc lamps. Then in 1938, new Kodak b&w stocks allowed the process to double its speed to 10 or 12 ASA, and this was used for "Gone With The Wind" (they called it the "fast film"!)

 

By the time it was obsoleted in 1955, five years after Kodak introduced color negative, it had reached an effective speed of 16 to 20 ASA (the first Eastmancolor negative was 16 ASA, daylight-balanced.)

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Now I know why all these old time actors are so wrinkled!

It's from standing around with huge arc lamps pointed right at you.

 

I'll bet they had people constantly telling them to stop squinting, and I would imagine their makeup would be melting constantly.

Oh, but we have it so easy these days!

I'll never again whine about shooting on ASA 50 or 64!

 

Matt Pacini

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Leone shot those films here in Spain, in a place called Almeria. I've been there and I can tell you that the sun is really hot, but he still used a lot of light for exteriors:

 

sl98.jpg

 

That's why some shots show shadows in every direction:

 

sl99.jpg

 

I think Leone and Tonino Delli Colli used even more light in Once upon a time in the West:

 

sl101.jpg

 

Charles Bronson looks "sunburned" on that film:

 

sl135.jpg

 

sl127.jpg

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  • 15 years later...

As David mentioned almost certainly the Angenieux f/3.2 25 - 250mm zoom. And I am willing to bet the Angenieux T4.4 35 -140mm zoom lens as well as Tonino Delli Colli was one of the first cinematographers in history to adapt this zoom lens with the ARRI IIB/C. Angenieux was the lens of choice with all the top Italian directors of the 1960s; Sergio Leone, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Vittorio De Sica and many more.

Edited by Rob Guerrero
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  • 3 weeks later...

After all these years since we started the thread, I would say that Cooke Speed Panchros were the lenses of choice, together with the Angenieux 10 to 1 (25mm to 250mm) T3.9 zoom. The zoom was mostly used stopped down for daylight exterior work, and the primes for night and interior work in lower light levels, a common practice back then.

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