Wanted to share this interview I did with the DP of A Quiet Place. https://bit.ly/2HhXML7 Shot in upstate New York on Kodak 35mm film, using Panavision anamorphic lenses for the day scenes and Arri Super Speeds for the night sequences.
shareWould you mind giving a little explanation of those processes? Why would a DP use Panavision of Arri Super Speeds for those circumstances? Is Panavision used to do really big wide shots?
shareFor this movie the lens switch had to do with how the lenses perform in low light situations.
The cinematographer said she likes to shoot with Panavision anamorphic lenses at around a stop of T5.6. If you open the aperture up any wider she doesn't think the older anamorphic lenses perform as well (the C series lenses used on this movie date back to the late 1960s).
Lighting a big wide night exterior of a cornfield to a T5.6 would've been very difficult and required a huge amount of light, so for those night scenes she switched to the Arri Zeiss Super Speeds because they perform better when shooting in an aperture range of something like a T2.0.
Thank you for your detailed reply, I appreciate it. I remember seeing movies that said they were filmed in Panavision and I guess I associated that with very wide shot films. I thought they stopped using Panavision years ago. You seem like you are, yourself, a cinematographer since you are very knowledgeable about the cameras. I hope you will write a bit about that here on the boards. That kind of information is so invaluable. Plus, people like me would love to read what you have to offer.
sharePanavision cameras and lenses were used for a lot of widescreen movies starting in the 1950s - so I'm sure you've seen a ton of classic flicks shot in their widescreen formats.
I'm not a cinematographer, but I do work in the camera department on smaller movies and I interview a lot of DPs. If you follow the link I put in the original post, you can find this interview column I write for Filmmaker Magazine. It's mainly cinematographers and there's close to 100 interviews on there at this point.
Thank you for your suggestion. Your interview was very interesting. I had no idea she used 35mm! I thought everything was digital these days. That movie did look wonderful. I especially liked the still photographes you included in the article. The red light bulbs were so scary in that scene. Also, your blog is incredible. All those photos and movie posters! I could spend hours looking at those! Excellent way for a movie fan to fall off the radar.
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