When to shoot in anamorphic widescreen?

[Mark Collins]

Being a student I haven't shot anamorphic yet, lenses are too expensive.

However, I'm looking forward to eventually shooting with them, since a lot of the stuff I've seen looks amazing with them. The little imperfections with the lenses add a whole look of their own to the film.

 

[Kip Kubin]

Anamorphic Lenses

I can easily tie my love of Anamorphic lenses to the science fiction genre. I don't know if anyone else holds this view but I loved the look of several older sci-fi movies before I knew anything about cinematography. These films led me to research what caused the look I was so fond of...just a few.

Planet Of The Apes
Solaris
Logans Run
Westworld
2010
Close Encounters
Soylent Green

Having said that... 2001, Alphaville, Stalker and Farenheit 451 and many more prove that a lens does not make a captivating film.. the story does.

I do think that there's something to be said for anamorphic sci-fi. And to answer the original post a genre motivation for the use of that type of cinematography.

Test of my new 80mm Square Front Lomo fresh from Russia I filmed the other day...wide open 1.5m....flair, just because.

Thanks Hunter for helping me finally complete my set.

 

[Kip Kubin]

wait, why do you need anamorphics? can't you just shoot 4.5k WS to get the 2.40 aspect? what would the anamorphic lenses do to the image if you were already at that aspect ratio?

The above screen grab, shot wide open, is a good example of what to expect as far as shooting with an anamorphic lens. All my Lomo's really come to life at T4 but I wanted to see what wide open looked like.

You will see smeary areas of the highlights which will be elliptical and the unique flair which runs the length of the stretched part of the image - horizontally.

Once stopped down the smeary quality is greatly diminished.

What you don't see is an increased shallow depth of field...easy to see that even with the Red's slightly cropped sensor if I had a side by side comp with a spherical 80mm.

These would be the visible reasons to shoot anamorphically that were more aesthetic than for the increased resolution that proper anamorphic filming would yield.

 

[Rex Teese]

Agreed!! And if your wondering why it looks lazy it's actually because he just rolls an average of 10 cameras on every other scene, minimum of 4 cameras on every scene. Just shoots coverage now and that never makes for good films.

Anamorphic has only recently become my first choice as I've just now started shooting films that can afford to rent full Anamorphic lens kits for long periods of time! Always used to put a 2.40 matte on most films, even when I was messing around making films as a kid. That scope frame just meant "REAL MOVIE!!" to me even as a child.

I have a dream of one day shooting the worlds first reality tv series on Anamorphics. I try an avoid reality but that would make it so worthwhile.

Do not speak of things that for which you do not know the facts. Ridley does not run 10 cameras on everything or a minimum of 4. He'll run two for standard scenes, rehearse the hell out of it, and then get it in two or three takes. For massive action scenes where he ONLY gets to do it a few times, yes, he'll run more cameras, as any good director would. He is top notch and so are the DP's who work for him, as are their operators. I can't speak for him, but my understanding was that both he and Jon Mathisson, his DP, like Super35 for both it's artistic features and it's flexibility in post production.

Speak your opinion, but do not speak your own opinion as fact. Ridley has more years as a working director than either of you have years alive. Neither he nor Jon started as a PA five years ago, bought a RED camera, and then made business cards with Director/DP on them. They worked hard and paid their dues. More importantly, they worked on sets, watched, listened and paid attention to those that knew more than them in order to learn their craft

 

[Ian Laurie]

Interesting, Less about aspect ratio for you and more about look...

I am not sure I particularly like the look of animorphics, though this is a personal thing... I really don't care for the lens flares. though they work fine as you suggested in sci-fi. I personally love the 2.40 aspect ratio simply because to me it reeks of drama... i am even tempted to shoot a few timelapse on 2.40 with anamorphics to get a ridiculous horizon style shot. just to test.

 

[Jason Madeja]

reading this thread led me to a bit of google which led to this interesting conversation:

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=39734

featuring Mr. Mullen just dishing it out as usual.

 

[Michael McVicar]

Test of my new 80mm Square Front Lomo fresh from Russia I filmed the other day...wide open 1.5m....flair, just because.

Nice...... Gotta love that flair in the eyelights.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

reading this thread led me to a bit of google which led to this interesting conversation:

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=39734

featuring Mr. Mullen just dishing it out as usual.

Thanks a lot for the link. Very interesting, and a great post there by David which has forced me to put The Parallax View right at the top of my wishlist.

 

[Phil Jackson]

Interesting, Less about aspect ratio for you and more about look...

I am not sure I particularly like the look of animorphics, though this is a personal thing... I really don't care for the lens flares. though they work fine as you suggested in sci-fi. I personally love the 2.40 aspect ratio simply because to me it reeks of drama...

Roger Deakins isn't a fan of anamorphic photography either (to put it mildly), it really is a personal thing, though no one can argue with Roger's body of work he can make iPhone video look great. I agree with David that part of the appeal of the 2.40 aspect ratio is its modernism. It really forces creativity of framing and using the frame to direct the viewer, but it kinda seems to be perhaps overused or misused occasionally with too many tight closeups and super shallow depth of field (which in and of itself is fine, but one wonders why shoot an entire 2.40 feature like that especially if the compositions are just conventional).

On the other hand guys like Spielberg primarily shoot 1.85 (only four 2.35 films in the last 20 years - Hook, Minority Report, Munich, Indy 4 -- and only Indy 4 was anamoprhic) so it's hard for me to argue that 1.85 is less dramatic.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I'm baffled by young cinematographers who are enamored of anamorphic. At Technicolor, we did direct tests many times for DPs, and I always thought the anamorphic lenses were softer, had crappier depth of field, weren't as sharp, and had vignetting and lens flare problems. And we're talking Primos, the whole deal. (I could name a few recent projects that were marred by all kinds of anamorphic issues, but I'll get too many people in trouble.)

I think shooting spherical for 2.40 is much wiser today. You can shoot at lower light levels, depth of field isn't as much of an issue, plus you have the ability to recompose shots later on. Spherical is infinitely more flexible, the lenses are much lighter in weight, plus they're less expensive. And the picture is just plain sharper.

Granted, there have been zillions of beautiful classic films shot anamorphically (even recently). But those are generally big-budget projects shot by experienced experts who had a lot of time and money. I don't think that's an option for indie or modest-budget projects, especially those shooting on Red.

Before any of you guys go out and shoot anamorphic on red, contact your post house and do some tests first, under a full range of exposure conditions. Watch them projected on a big screen, and decide for yourself.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

The anamorphic lenses may be softer, but you are using nearly twice as much negative real estate compared to Super-35 cropped to 2.40, so that more than compensates because the degree of image enlargement will be less, and thus the amount of graininess will also be less. If your negative area is twice as large the MTF of your lens can be lower because even if you are resolving fewer lines per millimeter, you are using more total millimeters for the image.

But anamorphic, from a technical standpoint, tends to benefit from higher light levels and being stopped down. Compare many widescreen westerns shot in full sunlight and the anamorphic ones tend to hold more fine detail in wide shots than the Super-35 ones ("Dances with Wolves" and "Wyatt Earp" are good examples). I know you worked on Costner's Super-35 movie "Open Range" Marc but can you really say that the release prints of that movie were sharper, more detailed, and less grainy, than those of "Dances with Wolves"? That movie practically started the 1990's resurrection of the anamorphic format. I felt that Super-35 worked for "Open Range" because it was a grittier, less epic movie that was not as driven by landscape photography, but it would have been a disappointment had "Dances with Wolves" been shot in Super-35, especially if it had to go through an optical conversion to scope through dupes.

Of course a 2K D.I. (the norm these days) tends to blur the difference, anamorphic looks less detailed and Super-35 cropped to 2.40 looks less grainy, so then you are choosing between either more for lens artifacts and flare issues, not improved resolution from the taller negative area of anamorphic because a 2K scan is not going to reveal that.

But if you ever saw Rob Hummel's film format test several years ago, anamorphic was a clear winner in terms of fine detail recorded in wide shots over Super-35 cropped to 2.40.

Now in the case of digital cinema cameras, anamorphic makes more sense if you have a squarish sensor and an anamorphic lens allows you to use more of it for a 2.40 image. With a 16x9 or 2x1 sensor, there are less advantages to a 2X anamorphic lens and fewer problems with cropping a spherical image to 2.40.

I've shot four features in 35mm anamorphic and about four in Super-35, and I can definitely say that from my experience, I expect a 4-perf 35mm anamorphic image, if properly posted, to hold up better on the big screen than a Super-35 picture. I can use heavier diffusion filters, for example, when shooting anamorphic because the bigger negative keeps the grain down and captures more subtle detail. But this all assumes shooting at f/4 or deeper, below that, the fall-off in sharpness and depth of field makes anamorphic look softer than Super-35.

With grain not being an issue with digital cameras, there are fewer arguments for anamorphic, especially when shooting with a 4K or higher camera, unless you want the unique optical artifacts.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Interesting, Less about aspect ratio for you and more about look...

I am not sure I particularly like the look of animorphics, though this is a personal thing... I really don't care for the lens flares. though they work fine as you suggested in sci-fi. I personally love the 2.40 aspect ratio simply because to me it reeks of drama... i am even tempted to shoot a few timelapse on 2.40 with anamorphics to get a ridiculous horizon style shot. just to test.

Anamorphic is all about the look when you're shooting digital.

When shooting on current digital systems, unlike shooting film, anamorphic glass is all about look. With wide-aspect sensors, the use of anamorphic lenses will greatly reduce the amount of usable resolution.

You don't need to use anamorphic lenses to shoot 2.40 aspect. You simply crop. On the RED One, we can just shoot 4.5K.

Anamorphics in the form of 1.33X lenses have come along for digital systems with wide sensors, which give some of the optical effects of traditional 2X anamorphics, but not to the same extent. You also don't lose as much resolution due to the less extreme horizontal compression. Personally, I don't really care for 1.33X anamorphic glass. I think if you're going for the anamorphic look, it's best to go full 2X and get the full look... Go hard or go home I guess you could say. You just have to consider the implications of what the anamorphic compression does to your usable sensor real-estate. A 2X anamorphic lens on a RED One really gives you a maximum usable pixel resolution of about 2768x2304, when shooting for 2.40:1. Or 6.3MP. You're better off to shoot 4.5K and use 4480x1866, which gives you 8.3MP of resolution. The only reason to put an anamorphic lens on the camera is for the anamorphic look.

With Epic having a 2:1 aspect ratio sensor, we run into the same issues, in fact a bit more so.

The upcoming Epic FF35 will be the best solution for shooting anamorphic glass. You don't need anamorphics that will cover the whole sensor, but the larger 3:2 aspect sensor gives you far more usable real-estate to play with. Beyond what 35/S35 motion picture film and typical anamorphic lenses will offer.

Personally, I don't understand the fascination with the anamorphic look. I do like it, and would choose to use it if the film/story warranted. But the current attitude where so many people try to use it for everything seems a bit crazy. It's a lot like the super-shallow DOF craze, only not as many people have access to anamorphic glass.