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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Soderbergh is a wild man...

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Dean Bull said:
It's amazing soderberg is even working in hollywood. By definition he should have been crushed by the machine long ago.
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Maybe, but Soderbergh is smart. He brings his films in fast and under budget, and he directed Ocean's 11-13, all of which made lots of money. And Hollywood loves money. So who cares if he's a little experimental? All of his experiments (Schizopolis, Full Frontal, Bubble) cost almost nothing, relatively. And his experiments help him to pioneer new ways of working on the bigger films. It's a good thing he has going.
 
I personally subscribe to Soderbergh's guerilla, ad hoc and experimental shooting style. Besides being fully and truly independent, his vision as a director and auteur are never compromised as a result of his not doing things by the book. I love it!

I think all aspiring filmmakers should take a page from his book. There's a lot of learning there...
 
Ruairi Robinson said:
So hold on a sec... the camera has been panavised...? is that a permanent irreversible change, or can you switch back to PL mount?
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So I am guessing that a PV mount must have been made since the difference in FFD is too small for a physical adapter to work (57.15 mm vs 52mm).
 
Here's a question with a cynical tone..

Here's a question with a cynical tone..

So, Soderbergh and his crew get a budget approved to make these movies. There's lot's of cash allocated for Camera rentals and all kinds of necessary gear. Now that Soderbergh is shooting with the RED and the production cost is therefore considerably lower, who pockets that "surplus" money, who's got a big grin on his/her face?
 
Ruairi Robinson said:
So hold on a sec... the camera has been panavised...? is that a permanent irreversible change, or can you switch back to PL mount?
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Once "Panavised" you can change back any time you want, but you can never leave.

Did Red cook up an electronic de-squeeze for the LCD / EVF ?

Matt Uhry
 
explosive said:
why doesn't the foreground image warp at all? Or this property only in the highlights?
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The first anamorphic lenses for CinemaScope had a problem; when you started to focus close, near minimum, the amount of squeezing looked less than 2X -- but since anamorphic projection has a constant 2X unsqueeze, the result was that these close-focus shots (usually close-ups of actors) looked slightly fat, stretched horizontally. They called it the "anamorphic mumps".

Panavision solved that problem by some clever gearing inside the lens so that as you focus closer, rather than have the subject in-focus not get enough squeezing, it remains constant -- but the compromise is that what goes out of focus (the background) gets too much squeezing, more than 2X. So with the constant 2X unsqueeze of projection, now the out of focus background looks slightly skinny.

The more light you use and stop down the lens, the more depth of field you have, which means the background goes less out of focus and therefore looks less squeezed. This is why some people say that you should try and shoot at an f/4 at least in anamorphic.
 
jaadgy akanni said:
So, Soderbergh and his crew get a budget approved to make these movies. There's lot's of cash allocated for Camera rentals and all kinds of necessary gear. Now that Soderbergh is shooting with the RED and the production cost is therefore considerably lower, who pockets that "surplus" money, who's got a big grin on his/her face?
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Generally, no one "pockets" the savings. It just goes elsewhere, whether it means renting a camera crane more days or getting a more expensive location or having more extras in your crowd scene or hiring an extra camera crew for an extra day of second unit shooting, or building another set, buying more costumes, getting more digital efx in post, etc. There is always some department that can use the extra cash.
 
Jim, can we see some of Soderbergh's footage? Just kidding. Well, not really. Yeah, I'm kidding.
 
jaadgy akanni said:
So, Soderbergh and his crew get a budget approved to make these movies. There's lot's of cash allocated for Camera rentals and all kinds of necessary gear. Now that Soderbergh is shooting with the RED and the production cost is therefore considerably lower, who pockets that "surplus" money, who's got a big grin on his/her face?
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Without even looking at or being familiar with the budget on this particular picture, I can pretty much guarantee that Soderbergh didn't choose to shoot with Red for monetary reasons. The amount of money allocated to the camera department - and film stock, for that matter - represents a very small part of the overall budget. The production cost is not "considerably lower" on a studio picture, or even a decently budgeted independent production, for that matter.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
The first anamorphic lenses for CinemaScope had a problem; when you started to focus close, near minimum, the amount of squeezing looked less than 2X -- but since anamorphic projection has a constant 2X unsqueeze, the result was that these close-focus shots (usually close-ups of actors) looked slightly fat, stretched horizontally. They called it the "anamorphic mumps".

Panavision solved that problem by some clever gearing inside the lens so that as you focus closer, rather than have the subject in-focus not get enough squeezing, it remains constant -- but the compromise is that what goes out of focus (the background) gets too much squeezing, more than 2X. So with the constant 2X unsqueeze of projection, now the out of focus background looks slightly skinny.
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So, in a lens flare, is the flare actually occurring behind the anamorphic element, to account for why lens flares in anamorphic films are always 2x wider than they are tall when projected/unsqueezed?
 
yevlar said:
So, in a lens flare, is the flare actually occurring behind the anamorphic element, to account for why lens flares in anamorphic films are always 2x wider than they are tall when projected/unsqueezed?
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Yes that is a correct way to describe it. And why to avoid it unless you want it to be that wide.

Rosco

P.S. Mr. Mullen continues to make this forum a must read...
 
one point about anamorphic hasn't really been made... and i consider it the true greatest advantage of the format... it just simply looks amazing (usually). that whole 'suspension of disbelief' thing that film seems to do better than video, probably because it's less representative of real life and more stylized in a (usually) pleasing way. and anamorphic is even more stylized. i can't imagine 'apocalypse now' would have been as effective or immersive if shot spherically. though for some reason the DP (Storaro) now won't shoot anamorphic, preferring a cropped alternative for wide screen.

david m, love your idea of there being 1.33 anamorphics!

another reason folks recommend that you shoot f4.0+ with anamorphic is that the lenses tend to be wildly inconsistent. many are quite old (especially those panavision c-series), and tend to be weaker or have soft spots when shot wide open. most c-series are a bit funky even with film, so i'm curious to see how they look with less-forgiving HD (though the handful of good c-series lenses are among the best anamorphics ever made). and also curious about how they viewed the takes on set. panavision, which i guess owns several Red cameras now, does have on-board SD monitors that unsqueeze.
 
David M.--

Thanks so much for taking the time to post. With so much conjecture going on, it's great to have a bonafide ASC giving examples and throwing down some knowledge.

Please keep posting!
 
As these frames from "Logan's Run" show, you have two anamorphic flares, the flattened red oval, which is actually a circular red ring around one of the uncoated spherical elements in the lens (it's only an oval because the image was stretched 2X horizontally for correct viewing -- on the negative, it's a circle but the image contents look stretched vertically), and the blue horizontal line, which is due to the light spreading across the curved surface of the cylindrical (barrel-like) anamorphic front element. The red ring is less common these days due to modern lens coatings internally.

logansrun8.jpg


logansrun9.jpg


The anamorphic lenses used in "Logan's Run" were Todd-AO 35mm anamorphics made by Dr. Richard Vetter; my impression is that a lot of the elements were made in Japan, maybe by Shiga (anamorphic elements) and Nikon (spherical elements).

All of this does bring up the question: which anamorphic lenses are Soderberg using? PL-mount anamorphics like by Hawk, JDC, Technovision, Elite? PV-mount anamorphics by Panavision?
 
David Mullen ASC said:
The main advantage in 35mm is that you use a larger negative area than Super-35 cropped to 2.39, so the image is finer-grained and more detailed on the big screen, all else being equal (same stock, same exposure, etc.)

Optically, though, anamorphic lenses are more distorted than spherical lenses and produce artifacts that increase the more wide-open you shoot them (stopping down increases depth of field, which then hides a lot of the anamorphic lens oddities.) Out-of-focus backgrounds get more than the 2X compression so look skinny, stretched, and as you rack-focus, you can see the optical compression/squeeze change, creating "breathing." Out of focus points of light become ovals instead of circles. Bright lights hitting the lens will create a blue horizontal flare.

Though most of these artifacts are common to prime anamorphic lenses below 200mm, which normally have a large cylindrical anamorphic element in the front; zooms and telephotos tend to be adapted spherical lenses with a small cylindrical anamorphic element in the back, so you don't get the breathing or the blue flare or the ovals... but out of focus lights can become square-shaped sometimes.

Also, there is less depth of field with anamorphic photography since the 2X squeeze makes all lenses behave more like wide-angle lenses (a 40mm anamorphic lens "sees" the same horizonally as a 20mm spherical lens) and thus you typically use longer focal lengths in anamorphic photography (you'd use a 40mm lens in anamorphic versus a 20mm lens in Super-35 cropped to 2.39).

Here are two shots from a movie I shot in anamorphic called "Akeelah and the Bee" that show some of the lens flare characteristics of anamorphic lenses:

Here is a frame from "Bringing Out the Dead" which shows the points of out of focus lights becoming ovals instead of circles:
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Damn David, your posts are so friggin' intelligent. I love reading what you have to say about cinematography, and find myself ferreting out your comments here. I've always been fascinated by camera technique, and would like to learn more, but quite honestly, your level of knowledge and experience is intimidating. :) The second I start to feel like I know what's going on, I only need read your posts...then it's back to crying silently in my darkened room.

E
 
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