When I saw the look of the Panavision super 70's I fell in love with the smooth color rendition and low contrast vintage image with those bright saturated colors. However, being a mere mortal these lenses are impossible to get being an indie filmmaker. But I am curious what the closest lenses to these are?
Ever since I was a film school student I dreamed of being a Quentopher Nolantino flick receiving a widespread release in 70mm. People say to me that a person being an ultrawide aspect ratio is Impossible and I’m fucking retarded but I don’t care, I’m beautiful. I’m having a plastic surgeon install film reels, anamorphic lenses and a 2.76:1 aspect ratio on my body. From now on I want you guys to call me “The Hateful Eight” and respect my right to mindfuck and entertain needlessly. If you can’t accept me you’re a pleb and need to check your film privilege. Thank you for being so understanding.
2015 - The Hateful Eight
2016 - Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One
I'm building a prelim gear list for a show, DP wants Primos. I was looking at the list online to make sure I remember the exact focal lengths, and I saw there's a 125mm? I've worked with Primos about a dozen times, and I've never heard of or seen a 125mm, the set always goes from 100mm to 150mm. On the spec sheet, the 125mm seems to be conspicuously missing some pieces of data.
What's the story here? Does this lens exist? Is it just rarer than the rest? Is it a piece of shit not worth using for some reason? I'll ask Pana, but I'm hoping to fire off the gear list to the DP tomorrow and I don't want to wait until Monday.
This recent development is interesting to me. I’ve worked in and around the union for nearly 20 years. We use to have conversations about when 65mm would be used more widespread again outside of VXF.
Then in 2014 when the Arri 65 was announced, everyone was excited because the sensor size pretty much matched the 65mm frame size. Finally, we could get back to that grand scale of storytelling.
However, outside a few big budget Disney produced blockbusters during it’s first 3-4 years (Marvel and Star Wars), I rarely hear about any theatrical productions utilizing the system anymore.
With the advent of the Arri LF & Mini LF, productions seem to be gravitating towards those setups now if large format ARRI is used.
But the biggest surprise to me, is that post 2019, with Avengers: Endgame, MIB: International, Cats, and Joker being the last big budget theatrical releases using the ARRI 65 camera, the camera making strides in the industry is the Panavision DXL2.
It came to prominence with the release of Midsommar and the praise that film’s cinematography received (which should have been nominated for an Oscar). After that, Black Widow used it, with another Marvel production The Falcon and the Winter Soldier released a few month’s prior also utilizing the system. I found this strange since Marvel has always preferred (outside Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) Arri.
Since the DXL2 uses a RED Monstro sensor, and because most DPs and crews have complained about the complexity of RED’s interface and learning curve, is this because Panavision made better use of the sensor in their setup than RED?
