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Gregg Toland


Justin Hayward

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Hi,

 

I just watched Citizen Kane for the first time the other day. I was aware of most of the tehcniques that made it so famous: deep focus, low angles, long takes, motivated blocking...ect. Actually seeing it was pretty incredible for me.

 

Directing your eye to what Greg Toland and Orson Welles wanted you to look at with such deep depth of field, while maintaining very nice compositions and blocking, is impressive. It seems it would take many years of shooting to attempt, but Welles was only 25 and I read he had very much to do with the story boarding, blocking, production design...ect. No doubt he couldn't have done it without Toland, it's still pretty impresive.

 

I tend to shoot fully open: not only because I like it, but most projects I work on don't provide me with the kind of light/power or lens choice to acheive that kind of interior depth of field. They usually have little or no money, otherwise they'd get a better dp.

 

I heard Toland tested many different lenses, but does anyone know the stock or stocks he was working with? This was shot well before the 5218 and I'm curious what was the fastest film they had in 1941? They must have used an incredible amount of light. I was surprised the actors weren't squinting.

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I have no idea what ASA the film was back then (I would guess around the 25 - 50 range). No doubt a ton of light was required. I know Toland used for most scenes a cluster of arcs for every place he would normally use just one.

 

Also, remember Welles was a theater director first, thus he already had a firm background in blocking, and set design.

 

I am sure someone else on the board could tell you more specific details of the film back then.

 

 

Kevin Zanit

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From an article in "Sight and Sound" magazine

 

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/archiv...ors/toland.html

 

"Toland would work only with his own equipment, which he had customised to his needs, and with his regular crew. So it was necessary for RKO also to borrow his operator Bert Shipman, assistant cameraman Eddie Garvin, gaffer W. J. McClellan and grip Ralph Hoge, and to rent his Mitchell BNC camera, Cooke and Astro lenses ranging from a 24mm wide angle to a six-inch tele, three camera motors, tripods, panheads, and a mass of mattes, filters and other accessories.

 

Toland used the 24mm lens throughout much of the picture to impart a greater depth of field than was obtainable with the more common longer lenses. The field could be further deepened by using a smaller aperture. To this end he employed the fastest film available at the time, Kodak Super XX (160 asa).

 

His lenses were treated with Vard Opticoat to reduce glare and increase light transmission. Large arc lights which had been designed for Technicolor photography were installed because their penetrating power is greater than that of incandescent lighting. Arc broads and incandescent spots were used together to light some of the larger sets. Lens apertures employed on most productions were usually within the f:2.3 to f:3.5 range; Toland shot his scenes at between f:8 and f:16. The wider-angle lenses became "for all intents and purposes, universal-focus lenses," Toland reported. "

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He also occasionally pushed the Super-XX stock, like in the projection room scene in the opening.

 

When he had to use an f/16 stop, he replaced the iris in the lens with "Waterhouse Stop", a metal disk with a hole drilled into it the precise size for that f/stop. This reduced any softening that might have come from diffraction around the iris leaves.

 

Through most of the 1930's, the main stock used in Hollywood was Pan-X, a 32/40 ASA stock I believe (they used an even slower stock for shooting background plates for rear-projection). Then Kodak doubled the speed with the release in 1938 of Plus-X (64/80 ASA), which everyone jumped at - except Toland, who was more excited by the release of the even faster Super-XX, twice as fast as Plus-X. Most Hollywood cameramen thought it was too grainy but after "Citizen Kane" was released, it become more popular but never as much as Plus-X was. See:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/about/ch...=0.1.4.15&lc=en

 

Coincidentally, the breakthrough in speed with Plus-X and Super-XX also allowed Kodak to double the speed of the b&w stocks used by the Technicolor 3-strip camera. Because of all the light lost by the beam splitter and the filters, the effective speed of 3-strip after 1938 was still only around 6 to 10 ASA (it was around 3 to 5 ASA before that.) "Gone with the Wind" was the first 3-strip production to take advantage of the faster stocks. At its demise in 1955, 3-strip had gotten as fast as around 16 to 20 ASA.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Remembering from film school...

 

Aparently Citizen Kane used alot of Mattes and double exposures, each with different focus points set. The famous shot with Welles in bed, the glass of water in the foreground and the door in the background was shot on 3 separate passes, first the glass, then Welles, then the door. I heard somewhere that no one really knows how often this technique was used, but some have estimated that as much as 40% of the shots in Citizen Kane involve some sort of visual effect, mostly done in camera.

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That composite was done in an optical printer. There are a number of extreme deep focus shots created in post, like Kane clapping in the f.g. while Susan receives her flowers on stage, or Susan standing in the f.g. seeing Kane at the far end of a hallway. Not too many deep focus shots involved in-camera double exposures as they would be time-consuming.

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The earliest film I ever saw a split-diopter shot was Nicholas Ray's "King of Kings" in the 1950's, although there is no reason why that filter couldn't have existed from the begining of photography.

 

The record has to be "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" which uses split-diopters on literally 2/3's of all shots -- obviously there are some so well done that they are hard to spot but there are also a lot of obvious ones. I have the old fotonovel from when I first saw the movie in 1979 and it's made up of frame enlargements from a print, so that's when I first noticed the split-diopter shots.

 

Brain DePalma and Vilmos Zsignmond used them a lot in "Blow Out".

 

There are many other examples.

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I have the old fotonovel from when I first saw the movie in 1979

Anyone else who also have that fotonovel can join David and myself in the Geek Hall of Fame. B)

 

I don't recall all those split-diopter shots off the top of my head. I do remember those lighting bolt "probe-effect" shots when they had to project the film onto an acetate sheet, pinch the frame together until the crew guys with the big light disappeared, and then they re-photographed the frames. That made a nice edging effect that looked similar to a split-diopter.

 

Oliver Stone does split-diopters a lot. "Born on the 4th of July" has a bunch of really extreme ones. For a subtle and elegant example, look at Jack Green's work in "Unforgiven." There's a shot of Clint talking to the scarred prositute after he's been beaten up. She's in the foreground and he's in the background and the only way to keep them both in focus in the anamorphic frame was to slip in a slit diopter on her shoulder. Most people would never notice.

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Boy, do I feel old.

 

Fotonovels were popular in the 1970's, mostly done by one man, Richard Anobile, who copied hundreds of frames from prints into a comic book-like design to tell the story of the movie. Some were oversized paperbacks; others were small books. I believe I have (somewhere) the small-sized fotonovels for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and lord help me, "Battlestar Galactica."

 

There was also one for "Star Trek 2" but it was mostly b&w unfortunately.

 

For years I have searched for the oversized paperback fotonovel he made for "Alien", one of his best.

 

He also did fotonovels of some classic movies like "King Kong" and "Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde".

 

The only bad thing about these fotonovels is that he did not respect the original framing but cut things into differently-shaped panels, like a comic book.

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He also did them for many of the original Star Trek television episodes. And yes, I have them in my library as well.

 

I actually really liked the Battlestar Gallactica fotonovel because it gave me a chance to really study the visual effects up close. Misaligned mattes and rotoscoping lines can really help a teenager learn the process.

 

David, it's a wonder that we're both married.

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If you feel old, I feel isolated! I've never seen one. Sounds like something I'd scoop off the shelf quick. Does anyone still make these? Were the stills on glossy paper? Did they look good? I can think of so many films I'd love to study shot by shot.

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They were usually on glossy paper, but so cut-up that studying framing or editing wasn't really possible. But you could study the lighting.

 

Since they were duped from prints, they were somewhat soft, grainy, and contrasty compared to the way they looked in the theater (or on DVD.)

 

You'd have to scour a used bookstore to find them (there are also rare book online search engines). I remember the "Star Trek" TV show fotonovels but I think I only have the "City on the Edge of Forever" one.

 

Some were better-made than others, which is why I'd kill to have the "Alien" one (and which is why it's now rare.) But the "Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan" one was pretty crappy, in b&w. The "Close Encounters" one was a little TOO chopped-up and covered with dialog balloons.

 

By coincidence, or not, they died out in popularity with the rise of home video cassettes.

 

Try searching online under Richard Anobile and see what you find (I seem to recall some later controversy about him...)

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So I just reached onto my bookshelf and found "Battlestar Galactica: The Photostory," which proudly proclaims on the cover "This is not a book! It is the biggest and best full-color photo-adventure ever!" It also goes on to note that this is from the Universal movie release, and it does in fact contain the scene of the evil Baltar being executed by the Cylons which is not in the TV movie cut as the character returned to be the villian in the TV series. It's fairly silly reading now, but then again we are talking Battlestar Galactica, not Tolstoy. I do see all the poor composite mattes and misaligned rotoscope animation effects for the lasers (excuse me, blasters) that I remembered.

 

It was published by Berkley and has the credit "edited and adapted by Richard J. Anobile." Somewhere back at my parent's house I have a bunch of the old Star Trek TV series, which are probably from Pocket Books since that was Paramount's (Gulf & Western's) publishing arm. I don't think you get any grand knowledge of the productions from these, other than noting some bad lighting and how rough rephotographing a 35mm print can look. More a curiosity factor than anything else, and a chance for David & myself to relive our nerdy youths.

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This got me interested and I've learned a bit about Mr. Photonovel, Richard J. Anobile. Imagine my surprise when I saw that he'd done versions of Ninotchka, the Maltese Falcon and Duck Soup! Apparently he was quite the film historian in the seventies and conducted many interviews with subjects like Groucho Marks. He made one photonovel that caused a stir and perhaps is the controversy David referred to. Here's what I pulled from a UK website:

 

"Back before around World War II, it was not uncommon for movies made in the U.S. to have two almost (but not quite) identical versions. They would shoot the movie with two cameras placed side-by-side. The idea was to generate two negatives of the movie so that after they got through editing the one that would be duped for America's theaters, they could edit a second negative and ship it off to Europe. Usually, the two versions would be identical in cutting and the main difference would be slightly-different camera angles and cropping of scenes. But sometimes the European print would also employ alternate takes from the camera shooting the U.S. version. Chaplin, it is said, edited two different prints of The Gold Rush and they differ in some gags. Several Marx Brothers movies exist in two versions made from different takes, and this is not generally known. Years ago, a gent named Richard Anobile published a couple of books of frame blow-ups and quoted dialogue from the Marx movies, and several British film buffs became incensed. He had, they insisted, slightly misquoted a staggering number of lines. But he hadn't. The prints of Duck Soup that were then widely-circulated in England simply had a lot of alternate lines from the prints circulated in the U.S. Chico especially seemed unable to say any chunk of dialogue precisely the same way from one take to the next."

 

Learn something new every day.

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Apparently Anobile has also written a couple books on "open marriages" including his own three-way marriage between him, his wife, and a third man...

Okay, I guess I didn't read that far in the Google hits. Thank God he didn't make another photobook...

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