Jon Fauer ASC
www.fdtimes.com
March 2011 Issue 40
The Journal of Art, Technique and Technology in Motion Picture Production Worldwide
MADE IN FRANCE AFC Micro Salon Angénieux 75th Anniversary Impressionism Birth of Cinematography April 2010
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On the Cover
Art, Technique and Technology Film and Digital Times is the journal and guide to technique and technology, tools and how-tos for Cinematographers, Photographers, Directors, Producers, Studio Chieftains, Camera Assistants, Camera Operators, Grips, Gaffers, Crews, Rental Houses, and Manufacturers. It’s written, edited, and published by Jon Fauer, ASC, an award-winning Cinematographer, Director, and author of 14 bestselling books (over 120,000 in print—famous for their user-friendly way of explaining things as if you were right there on location with him). With inside-the-industry “secrets-of the-pros” information, Film and Digital Times is delivered to you by subscription or invitation, online or on paper. We don’t take ads and are supported by readers and sponsors. Foreign correspondent: Oli Laperal, Jr. Foreign Translations: Pierre Souchar, Nina Liberman, Jeffrey Reyes. Marketing Guru: John Johnston. Webmaster: Jon Stout. Contributing photographers: Dorian Weber, Yousef Linjaw, Jacques Lipkau Goyard. © 2011 Film and Digital Times, Inc.
March 2011 Made in France Issue 40 On the cover: Philippe Parain, President of Angénieux, operating an Eclair Cameflex CM3. J.P. Beauviala, Head of Aaton, is pulling focus. They’re riding Loca-Films’ 1961 Oldsmobile Sky Rocket “Voiture Travelling Americaine” at the 2011 AFC Micro Salon. For the past 11 years, most of the French film industry has shut down for two days to attend the Association of French Cinematographers’ (AFC) annual gathering and trade show at the French National Film School—La fémis, (fondation européenne pour les métiers de l’image et du son). La fémis is located in the old Pathé Film Studios on rue Francoeur in Montmartre. On February 4 and 5, 2011, more than 2500 directors, producers, cinematographers, camera assistants, electricians, grips, film crews, rental house staff, and students filled the studios, hallways and theaters of La fémis.
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Bernard Chateau, key grip and camera car expert (above), was the wizard who modified the impeccably-preserved 1961 Oldsmobile Sky Rocket guarding the entryway to La fémis at this year’s AFC Micro Salon. Bernard Chateau modified four “American Travelling Cars” for Jean Riviere’s Loca-Films. With a 394 cu in (6.5 liter) 325 horsepower engine, automatic transmission, improved hydraulic suspension by Citroën (very smooth), the Bernard Chateau Oldsmobile Sky Rocket was used on Blake Edwards’ The Great Race (1965), Alex Joffé’s Les Culottes Rouges (1962) and Gérard Oury’s The Brain (1969). But, before reporting on the Micro Salon, let’s go back further in French film history—to December 1895.
The First French Cinema On December 28, 1895, ten short films were projected on a screen in the Salon Indien at the Hotel Scribe in Paris. These were the first motion pictures viewed by a paying audience in France. The Salon Indien was a billiard room in the Grand Café, which occupied the Scribe’s ground floor at the corner of Rue Scribe and Boulevard des Capucines. The show cost 1 Franc per person. It was not an immediate suc-
cess. Only 33 people arrived. However, word spread quickly, and soon more than 2,500 tickets were sold each day. In December 2010, the Hotel Scribe celebrated its 150th anniversary and the 115th anniversary of the screening. High-tech, internally LED-lit champagne glasses were a fitting tribute to the inventors of the cinématographe. The brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière would have approved, since lumière means light.
The first Lumière screenings were held in the Grand Café, on the Boulevard des Capucines in 1895.
Left to right: Auguste and Louis Lumière
On December 9, 2010, the Hotel Scribe celebrated its 150th anniversary. The hotel’s skylit atrium restaurant is fittingly named Café Lumière. Historic photos from the Institut Lumière line the walls. Champagne and cocktail glasses were lit with waterproof LED fixtures. www.sofitel.com
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Light
Paris may be the City of Light, but the day after celebrating 115 years of cinema, I’m racing to get to Lyon by magic hour to participate in one of the world’s great festivals of light: the annual Fête des Lumières in Lyon. We have to backtrack to December 8, 1852. Sculptor JosephHugues Fabisch’s long-delayed statue of the Virgin Mary was finally ready for unveiling at the Basilica of Fourvière, overlooking the city of Lyon. As the archbishop blessed the new statue, the heavens protested with howling wind as thick clouds unleashed torrential rain. Plans for fireworks and flares were abandoned.
Right: Antoine Lumière (1840 - 1911), father of August and Louis. Born in Haute-Saone, France, Antoine apprenticed to a Parisian sign maker, taught himself painting, learned photography from Nadar, and set up a small portrait studio in Besançon. In 1870, the family fled to Lyon, ahead of the advance of the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian War. Below: Une noce chez le photographe (A wedding party at the photographer) Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret Oil on canvas. 1879 47.25 x 32.25 inches Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
However, by nightfall the weather cleared. The inhabitants of Lyon lit their windows, houses, churches and statues with thousands of candles. Long lines formed at stores to buy more candles. Newspapers the following day carried letters of complaint that workers had not been informed about the festival—and so it became a four-day festival of lights. The tradition continues today. The Fête des Lumières in Lyon attracts more than 4 million visitors. Prominent lighting designers from around the world compete to illuminate and animate water, air, public spaces and more than 200 buildings. In 1862, ten years after the first Lyon Festival of Lights, Auguste Lumière was born. His brother Louis was born in 1864. It is certain that the two brothers were influenced by the celebration of light in Lyon as they grew up. August and Louis Lumière were born in the middle of the Second French Empire (1852-1870) of Napoleon III. 1862 was a turbulent year. France invaded Mexico after President Benito Juárez stopped repaying his European debts. The American Civil War was in full force. Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck delivered the ominous speech that every high school student is expected to refute in their modern European history essays: “The great questions of the day will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions...but by iron and blood.” After August and Louis were born, their father Antoine set up a small photographic portrait studio. It may have looked like Dagnan-Bouveret’s painting of a wedding party in a photographer’s studio, at left. To feed his growing family (three sons and three daughters), Antoine built a small factory in Lyon to make photographic plates by hand. It was, at first, a struggle.
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Lumière Success in the family enterprise arrived in 1882 when the boys designed a way to mechanize the process. Louis invented a new, faster dry photo plate, “Etiquette Bleue” (blue label). In 1884, the Lumières employed a dozen workers; a decade later, 300 employees were making 15 million plates a year. Lumiere’s etiquette bleue was second only to George Eastman’s Kodak. By 1894 the Lumières were one of the wealthiest families in France, with villas and summer estates connected by one of the few telephone systems available. Antoine was living well beyond his means. Once again, the family needed income from a new invention. That invention, the Cinématographe, would be introduced the following year, 1895. We often think of inventions as arriving spontaneously, but the reality is more like a thick cloud of competing talent and knowledge. The Lumière family commercialized a technology that was emerging in the currents of a concurrent global arena. Herbert and McKernan’s Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema catalogs the inventors on the brink of cinema: Le Prince, Marey, FrieseGreene, Muybridge, Demeny, Skladanowsky, Latham, Jenkins, Armat, Acres, Rudge, Edison and many more. It was very similar to asking, “who invented the search engine or social networking?” Louis and Auguste Lumière were in the right place (Lyon, 300 talented workers, vast resources) at the right time (Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Photography). They were the first in France to successfully implement a marketable technique from the nascent technology. Model of the Lumière factory in the Monplaisir district of Lyon. The famous shot of the workers leaving the factory was filmed at the gate seen in the bottom part of the picture, above.
Above: Antoine Lumière’s villa in Lyon. Auguste and Louis lived in a similar villa next door (unfortunately demolished several years ago). It was a closely-knit family: the brothers married two sisters who lived across the street. Below: Lumière summer villa in La Ciotat, Provence, designed by Antoine and completed 1893, with 40 rooms on 200 acres with private harbor and vineyards.
The factory received large shipments of glass used to make the photographic plates—amounting to 6 or 7 tons of glass daily. The glass was cut into 60 cm widths, bathed in acid, and then coated with an emulsion of gelatin, silver nitrate, and ammonium bromide.
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Lumière and Impressionism Auguste and Louis Lumière were born at the inception of Impressionism: 1862-1864. These were the years when art was about to be democratized along with the society it often depicted. Subject was taking precedence over style. Style was influenced by technology (railroads, paint in tubes, photography). Impressionism emerged as a reaction against the conventions and constraints of classical academic art, as exemplified by the biennial, and later annual, juried exhibitions of the Grand Salon sponsored by the government (see Castiglione’s painting at right). By the mid 19th century, as Ross King writes in his book The Judgement of Paris (Walker & Company, 2006), if you were a French artist, everything depended on the Salon. “Inclusion gave the official stamp of approval and smoothed the way for sales and commissions. Exclusion spelled professional death, underscored by the red ‘R’ (‘Rejected’) stamped on the back of canvases that did not make the cut.” Édouard Manet, who had been born into an affluent family, sought approval of the establishment while simultaneously provoking it. Manet understood that the academy valued historical themes and classical subjects, carefully finished. Manet and the Impressionists painted scenes of modern society in a style that critics called “unfinished” or “sketched.” We might call it a documentary style.
Giuseppe Castiglione View of the Grand Salon Carré 1861. Oil on canvas. 69 x 103 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris
below: Édouard Manet Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe 1862-1863. Oil on canvas. 208 × 264 cm Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Rebecca Rabinow notes, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, “Manet submitted paintings to Salon juries throughout his career. His hopes for continued early success were dashed at the Salon of 1863. That year, more than half of the submissions to the official Salon were rejected, including Manet’s own. To staunch public outcry, Napoleon III ordered the formation of a Salon des Refusés. Manet exhibited three paintings, including the scandalous Déjeuner sur l’herbe. The public professed to be shocked by the subject of a nude woman blithely enjoying a picnic in the company of two fully clothed men, while a second, scantily clad woman bathes in a stream. Critics recognized that this scene of modern-day debauchery was, to a certain degree, an updated version of Titian’s Pastoral Concert.” Even the aspect ratio (1.25:1) of the two paintings was similar. Perhaps what upset the critics most was the flat and contrasty front lighting, rescued only by the dark jackets worn in the painting by Manet’s brother-in-law, Ferdinand Leenhoff, and his younger brother, Eugène. An early Film and Digital Times edition from 1862 compliments the brush strokes and the composition, but decries the lighting as less subtle than the six o’clock news, with its light source mounted directly above the camera’s lens. At this time, Claude Monet, destitute and evading creditors, must have noticed how much faster photographers could produce images. A painting for the Academy might take years to complete. Monet realized that his atmospheric palette, impressions of light, could be completed in one day on location, not in an expensive studio. By painting the same subject repeatedly, at different times of day and under various lighting conditions, he could create paintings at a prodigious rate, almost as quickly as rival still photographers. With rapid brush strokes, Monet and his fellow Impressionists could capture the qualities of light as it illuminated familiar scenes of train stations, cities, and the activities of a rising middle class in its pursuit of leisure. Impressionism, with its themes of light and moment, relied on portability—concepts that were not lost on the Lumières in 1895. 6
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below: Titian (previously attributed to Giorgione) Pastoral Concert ca. 1510. Oil on canvas.110 × 138 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris
Lumière Cinématographe
Claude Monet. La Grenouillère, 1869. Oil on canvas. 74.6 x 99.7 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
Famous scene of workers leaving the Lumière factory. This was the first short film shown at the Grand Café on December 28, 1895.
Below, left: The Lumière cinématographe used 35mm film, single perf on each side of frame. Below, right: views of the portable cinématographe. www.institut-lumiere.org
Below, left: Antoine Chavanon, operating a cinématographe as a projector. It was simple: open the back and shine a magic lantern beam onto the moving film. Right: Denny Clairmont peeping into an Edison Kinetoscope at the Institut Lumière.
Lighter, smaller, faster. The Lumière cinématographe possessed the same qualities essential to motion picture cameras today.
films. They were documentaries with roots in Impressionism’s subjects and style: workers leaving the factory, a train arriving in a station, a family dining together, street scenes of Paris.
The Lumière films were shot with small, light, portable cinématographe cameras, documentary style, mostly on location. The Lumières’ cinématographe was a versatile and practical instrument: the tiny box not only could shoot the movies, but it could also be used as a contact printer and a projector as well. To screen the film to a large audience, the only additional item needed was a bright light source—usually the lamp housing of a magic lantern. Edison’s early films were shown one person at a time on “peep show” Kinetoscopes. Equipment was big and heavy, at first shot in Edison’s big and bulky Black Maria studio—a huge building on tracks that rotated to catch essential sunlight because early emulsions were so slow. The first films of Thomas Edison and William K. L. Dickson showed Fred Ott sneezing, magicians, politicians, dancers, and scantily-clad women. Louis Lumière personally shot over 30 of his company’s short
Louis and Auguste quickly realized that exhibiting films to large audiences would be more lucrative than merely building the cameras. They trained camera operators to travel around the world making and exhibiting short films. From 1896 to 1905, more than 1400 Lumière films of 50 seconds were shot on location around the world. Impressionism influenced the democratization of art and its appreciation not only by nobility but also by the growing middle class. But with its images projected multiple times per second, cinema soon became the medium destined to become the most widely viewed art form of all time. The audiences at the Grand Café in 1895 attended the birth of the French film industry, which would grow to become one of the most influential worldwide. In 2010, 200 features were shot in France, 60% on film (argentique), 40% digital (numérique). Mar 2011
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Angénieux 75th Anniversary
December 13, 2010. On a cold and windy morning, with snow clouds blowing over the hilltop of Saint Héand, more than 300 guests from France and around the world arrived at the Angénieux factory to celebrate the company’s 75th anniversary.
François Rochebloine, member of parliament, and Philippe Parain, President of Angénieux
Angénieux President Philippe Parain gave a welcoming speech to the large audience of dignitaries, staff, colleagues, and prominent cinematographers assembled in theater. He began with a history of the company founded by Pierre Angénieux, followed by screenings and a 3D film produced specially for the anniversary event. Next, Denis Rouden, AFC talked enthusiastically about his experiences as a cinematographer using Angénieux lenses on his many feature films, including Le Petit Nicolas and Largo Winch, a big budget action thriller just released. Denis was followed by Denny Clairmont, President of Clairmont Camera, one of the first motion picture rental companies in the US to become a regular and long-time customer of Angénieux zoom lenses. We then assembled in front of the newly constructed factory addition. With perfect timing, the great gaffer in the sky lifted the clouds and enveloped the crowd in beautiful backlight. A ribbon was cut. The new Angénieux logo was revealed. After lunch, we toured the factory, new showroom and new studio. Having visited Saint Héand two years ago, I was impressed by the increase in space, improved production capacity, and many new high-tech machines—all of which spell faster delivery time and consistent excellent quality.
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Angénieux 75th Anniversary
Above, left to right: Dominique Rouchon-Picariello with Denny Clairmont, inaugurating Angénieux’s new studio. A commemorative plaque on the wall reads: “The Pierre Angénieux Studio was opened on December 13, 2010 marking the 75th anniversary of the brand by Mr. Denny Clairmont, President of Clairmont Hollywood.” The studio will be used by Angénieux development teams to test the lenses in true operational conditions and to help create new products. Below: the new Angénieux showroom displays the full line of the company, showing the breadth and synergy of its large range of products.
Angénieux at Micro Salon It was like a reunion one month later in Paris at the 11th annual AFC Micro Salon. New equipment was introduced. The Optimo 24-290 mm zoom has newly designed, high precision focus scales, with 70 marks in feet (available now) and 77 marks in meters (coming soon). With improved calibrations and more intuitive increments, the new rings are helpful tools that provide improved accuracy and response for focus pullers everywhere.
Above: each lens is tested in the lens projection room during the manufacturing process. Below, left to right: Bernard Angénieux, Pierre Angénieux’s son, former Angénieux International Sales Director; and Bernard Philibert, current Mayor of St Héand, and former Angénieux service manager.
New 2x and 1.4x Extenders now fit the entire range of Optimo lenses (but not the Optimo DP lenses). Optimo zooms have been enjoying great success on 3D productions—including the matched Optimo DP 3D package. For more information: www.angenieux.com email:
[email protected] Below left: New 1.4x Extender on Optimo 24-290. Right: New 2x Extender on Optimo 24-290 zoom.
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2011 AFC Micro Salon
At the 11th AFC Micro Salon in Paris, Angénieux continued their 75th anniversary celebration.
Jean-Noel Ferragut, AFC — my hero of the Micro Salon, who year after year helps make it happen.
The Association of French Cinematographers (AFC) office at 8 rue Francoeur, 75018 Paris. www.afcinema.com
EXT. LA FEMIS - NIGHT. The Micro Salon runs for two days, from 10 am to 8 pm.
Transvideo and Loumasystems provided complimentary digital subscriptions to Film and Digital Times via laptops at their booths...
...of course, some attendees had to rely on their kids to navigate the online sign-up process.
Sony SR-R1 Memory Recorder with 1 TB memory Card.
Sony F3 camcorder with PL mount adaptor and Angénieux Optimo DP (Rouge) Zoom.
Fujinon’s four new PL mount Premier zooms: 14.5-45 T2; 18-85 T2; 24-180 T2.6; 75-400 T2.8-3.8
Fujifilm demonstrated their new Eterna Vivid 250D Kodak showed their new Vision3 200T 5213 film and film and screened scenes shot by cinematographers screened examples of Super 16 degrained, 35mm Phedon Papamichael, ASC, Kramer Morgenthau, ASC, 2-perf, 3-perf, 4-perf, and 4-perf 4K scans. and Dion Beebe, ACS, ASC.
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Left to right: Jean-Marie Lavalou, Loumasystems; Eric Garandeau, President of Centre National du Cinema; Marc Nicolas, Director of La fémis; Nicolas Pollacchi, Loumasystems.
2011 AFC Micro Salon
Thierry Perronnet, ex Kodak European Marketing Director, receiving an autographed Aaton a-minima from Jean-Pierre Beauviala.
Marc Galerne, K5600 Lighting, Inc. France. The Alpha 2.5K/4K and 18K HMIs have a flat ceramic reflector, allowing you to aim the light straight down without danger of over-heating.
An American in Paris: Pat Caputo, President of The Rag Place flew in from Hollywood to demonstrate the company’s technical fabrics for the motion picture, television and theatrical businesses.
Stefan Karle of DOP Choice, with snapgrids for softboxes, butterflies and frames.
L: Philippe Ros, AFC. R: Rip O’Neil of CST with his new gray scale and color chart. CST supervises the quality of sound and images, for cinema, television and other media. www.cst.fr
Les Zellan, Cooke Optics; Dominique RouchonPicariello, Angénieux; Philippe Parain, Angénieux; Jacques Delacoux, Transvideo.
David Morphy of Key Light with Kino Flo Spirals— compact fluorescents with Kino Flo phosphors that screw into household lamp sockets.
How do you shoot a chase sequence through narrow streets of Montmartre? With Jean Pierre Goy’s Travelling Motorcycle and remote camera head.
New Cartoni Maxima for cameras from 0 to 50 kgs.
ARRI showed Alexa’s latest updates: In-camera Wine, champagne, mineral water and sodas were playback of QuickTime clips from SxS PRO cards, served continuously, along with breakfast, lunch and in-camera audio recording, new optional smooth dessert snacks of madeleines and florentine cookies. viewfinder display mode, EI 3200, single frame grabs.
At the end of Day 2, Jean-Noel announces, “C’est dans la boîte.” It’s a wrap.
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Loumasystems Jean-Marie Lavalou and Nicolas Pollacchi, principles of Loumasystems, said, “Louma 2 is riding the 3D wave.” Actually, it may be the other way around. 3D rigs are riding Loumas because these sophisticated telescopic cranes seriously reduce setup time and are increasingly de rigeur when you’re shooting in stereoscopic 3D. The Louma 2 arm is very rigid and stable, even at high speeds. Advanced software, which they call Shot Assist, helps the camera operator keep an object centered without back-panning, even when the crane is pivoting on an arc. Bob Richardson, ASC, used two Louma 2 cranes in London almost nonstop on Martin Scorsese’s 3D movie Hugo Cabret. The Louma 2 was also used on recent 3D productions that include Pirates of the Caribbean 4, a Shakira video clip (at the last soccer World Cup), Carte Noire commercials, and many other projects. The emergence of new digital cameras such as Red, Alexa, Sony, and others might raise questions about why such a robust crane system might be needed. Although these cameras are compact, they are not necessarily lightweight (an Alexa Plus with viewfinder is almost the same weight as an Arricam ST body) and they are often used with the same heavy zooms as used in 35 mm along with all kinds of accessories that can make the total package often as heavy, if not heavier, than a film package. Remote cameras are usually equipped with a gaggle of miscellaneous accessories (monitors, video signal converters, Cinematography Electronics Cinetapes, lens motors and boxes, etc).
Above and below: Louma 2 with Pace 3D rig, Cooke 5/i primes, Alexa cameras, Transvideo monitors, Preston controls on Hugo Cabret. Below, right: Louma 2 at Micro Salon.
Once you double up on everything for 3D, any doubts about an equipment weight-loss program is quickly swept aside. When you then add a new 3D rigs from Binocle, Pace, P+S Technik, Element Technica, 3ality, Paradise, E3D, whose weights vary by configuration, the total payload is between 35 kg and 55 kg. Gone is “the cat on the shoulder” concept of handholding an ergonomic, lightweight camera. Lavalou says, “With such weight and accompanying paraphernalia, 3D movies desperately need a crane and remote head to transport these new monster rigs. The Louma 2 is the only telescopic crane that can steadily handle such heavy loads both conventionally underslung or top mounted (perched). In addition, with its real-time tracking compensation, it provides smooth straight line tracking style dolly shots from a telescoping and pivoting arm without moving the crane base, which can save valuable production time.” www.loumasystems.biz
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www.louma2.com
Transvideo at Micro-Salon 2011 As it has every year, Transvideo presented new products at Micro Salon—especially for 3D production and wireless image transmission. It’s important to note that Transvideo has been working in 3D for more than 20 years, including Imax 3D.
3DView A 2007 meeting with stereographers working with HD-SDI cameras led to the development of Transvideo’s CineMonitorHD 3DView Monitors. It began with a challenge. Previously, setting up rigs and cameras had been difficult, often requiring the use of calculators, tables and complex measurements. Transvideo president Jacques Delacoux said, “The proliferation of proprietary solutions, some of which were more mystifications than reasonable approaches, did not simplify matters, while limiting access for many. “Based on the CineMonitorHD platform, 3DView verifies the synchronization of both cameras, and facilitates adjustment of the rig to control the cameras and optics in real time. The work of the stereographer was simplified with this revolutionary tool.” Eastwood par Eastwood, by Michael Henry Wilson French edition, with Transvideo Wireless Monitor on the cover
Transvideo’s cooperation with Alain Derobe, Stereographer, Cinematographer, and developer of the “Natural Depth” concept was important, and led to the development of many innovations. Among these is Transvideo’s calibrated and superimposed grid, which is essential in creating a pleasing and balanced stereo image when the size of the target screen is known. This is important because watching 3D on a monitor will not yield the same results as on a 25 foot wide screen. When you look at a monitor, you are usually a few feet away, and your eyes converge at a greater angle than they do when looking at a theatrical screen that is 20 or 30 feet away. That’s why Transvideo’s simple grid system works consistently for all 3D screen sizes.
Above: Nadège Deschamps and Jacques Delacoux, President of Transvideo. Below: Les Zellan, Jacques Delacoux with birthday patiserrie, and Geoffrey Chappell; with birthday candles on the Transvideo Titan HD transmitter antennas.
Transvideo 3DView Monitors provide the choice to work with “false-colors” to provide a simpler analysis of the depth of a scene. This is deliberate, because WYSIWYG 3D does not exist when filming in stereo on location. The illusion of depth is easier judged by color fringes on each side of the objects, the position of the screenplane, and of course the separation distance. A direct view in 3D can distract the stereographer from simultaneous supervisory adjustments of the rig. Some recent 3D films using Transvideo equipment: Pina and If the Building Could Talk (dir: Wim Wenders, stereographer: Alain Derobe), Hugo Cabret (dir: Martin Scorsese), and Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (dir: Rob Marshall). New Transvideo website: www.transvideo.eu
News from Micro Salon •
3DView Evolution: A new 8’’ replaces the 6”, and from 10’’ includes HDMI and reclocked HD-SDI + patented genlock analyzer.
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3DView “S”: Synchronizer to work with DSLRs or cameras with output preview from non-synchronous sources (10’’, 12’’ and 15’’) + patented genlock analyzer.
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New Transvideo Monitor supports for DSLRs and other cameras—a clever new support with quick attachment (shown at left). Mar 2011
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16:9 2-Perf Film with 1.3x Anamorphic Lenses At the Micro Salon, J.P. Beauviala explained an innovative way to shoot 1.78:1 (16:9) format on 2-perf 35mm film. JP’s illustrations made it understandable (to me, at least) for the first time. Here’s the scenario. You want to shoot in 1.78 format on film. It’s a simple drama about three horses. You could shoot Super16. Its native format is 1.78.
Super16 1.78
But the image area is a paltry 80 square millimeters. And you agree that the larger the image area, the better the picture.
80 mm²
You could shoot on 2-perf 35mm 1.78 format with regular lenses and a masked gate.
35mm
The image area is a little bigger: 144 square millimeters. But look at all that good negative area you’re wasting.
2-perf 1.78
Well...you could use all the negative and shoot with spherical lenses in 2.40 widescreen. However, your intimate drama cries out for 1.78.
144 mm²
To the rescue: 2-perf cameras like Aaton Penelope or Arriflex cameras with 2-perf movements, and Hawk V-Lite 1.3x Anamorphic Lenses. Take full advantage of the entire 2-perf 2.40 frame by vertically squeezing the 1.78 image. Your image area is now 216 square millimeters.
35mm 2-perf anamorphic
How does that work? With anamorphic lenses, normally the image is squeezed horizontally. But what if we were to squeeze the image vertically? Squeeze a 1.78:1 image vertically to fit onto a 2.40:1 format. Do the math: 2.4 ÷ 1.78 = 1.3.
216 mm²
Hawk V-Lite anamorphic lenses come in both 2x and 1.3x anamorphic squeeze ratios. Even better, Hawk V-Lite lenses are designed to be rotated 90 degrees. Lens technicians can easily remove four screws and rotate the anamorphic assembly. Suddenly, instead of a horizontal squeeze, the lens has a vertical squeeze.
35mm 3-perf 324 mm²
Up to now, no one has fitted a 2-perf camera with a vertical anamorphic finder—but it shouldn’t be difficult. At the very least, it isn’t terrible composing 1.3x vertically squeezed images with a regular finder.
Illustrations courtesy of Aaton
The beauty of this process is that the unsqueezed image is the equivalent of 3-perf Super35, which has an image area of 324 square millimeters. And you’re using much less film.
Left: Aaton Penelope with Hawk V-Lite anamorphic. Above: V-Lite lenses, photo courtesy Vantage Film.
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EMIT at Micro Salon Ben, Trevor and Andrew Steele are the characters behind EMIT, the well known Parisian company that has been supplying the motion picture community for over 25 years with almost everything imaginable for film and digital production. Among the brands represented are: Abakus, Betz Tools, Chrosziel, cmotion, Cooke, Easyrig, FGV Schmidle, PAG, Panther, P+S Technik, Ronford Baker, 16x9 Inc, Transvideo, ZEISS HD, and many more. At Micro Salon, EMIT displayed: Cooke 5/i T1.4 primes, Cooke Panchro T2.8 primes; P+S Technik Weisscam HS-2, SI2K-3D, 3D rigs, 16Digital SR Mag; Handgrips, and FreeStyle Rig Evolution; Ronford Baker Heads and Slider; 3D-Ready 8 channel Aladin by Chrosziel; Wireless HD 3D Titan system from Transvideo; Tristar Dolly by Panther with Hi-Low Turnstile; Betz Rig with new joystick Zoom Control; PAG Li-ion L190 14.8V-190w Batteries; Tiffen DFX V2 Software; MTF Adaptors, and all kinds of accessories. EMIT’s website is newly redesigned: www.emit.fr Left to right: Ben, Trevor, and Andrew Steele of EMIT
Jeff Lawrence, Managing Director of Ronford-Baker, and Christian Betz, head of betz-tools gmb
The Cooke Look, “One Look, Three Speeds.” Rear view: Geoffrey Chappell and Les Zellan
Tino Liberatore, now with Panther
Les Zellan, Chairman of Cooke Optics, with Trevor Steele
P+S Technik 16Digital SR Mag, Transvideo Monitor
Ken Pollitt, President of Abakus at the EMIT booth to demonstrate probe and 8mm lenses
Mar 2011
15
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16
April 2010
