For theatrical release, to shoot ‘anamorphic’ or ‘spherical’ is a technical decision the Producer must make. Put simply, ‘going anamorphic’ involves photography with anamorphic lenses which squeeze a wide scene area onto a narrow film format. The film is subsequently projected in the theatre using a complementary anamorphic lens which unsqueezes the image to give a picture on the screen which is almost 2.4 times as wide as it is high. Television, and other forms of electronic presentation, be it for the normal 4:3 format, for the later 16:9 format or for any other video screen shape that may be dreamed up in the future, is achieved by extracting an appropriate width image from the anamorphic original at the time the film is transferred to video tape.
Going ‘spherical’ means photographing the film in a normal manner with an image which is a little more than 1 1/3 times as wide as it is high (1.37:1) and from this losing a great deal of the top and bottom of the image for 1.85:1 Widescreen presentation in the theatre. In this format almost all of the original image is used for subsequent television and video presentation.
A third alternative is to go ‘PANAVISION SUPER–35’. This involves photographing the film with spherical lenses across the full with of the film, including the sound track, to give the largest possible 35mm image area in the first place. From this a normal interpositive is made and from this, in turn, optical printing is used to make a series of internegatives to suit each and every presentation format. This can include 70mm and anamorphic negatives from which theatrical release prints can be made, 1.85:1 for Widescreen presentation, 4:3 and 16:9 for television and video, and even 16mm if required. With the modern generation of fine grain filmstocks and improved optics image quality is not an overwhelming problem from this format and it has the advantage that the tele–cine transfers can be made directly from the original without the need to “pan and scan” the original picture composition.
Counting the Costs
So far as the PANAVISION equipment is concerned, whether the production is to be shot Anamorphic or Spherical, the camera rental cost is the same.
While anamorphic lenses cost more to rent than spherical, the chances are that fewer will be taken, if for no other reason than the range of focal lengths is limited compared to spherical.
Straightforward Academy format for 1.85:1 release has its additional costs as higher sets and more ceiling pieces will be required and with Super–35 an important consideration is the additional cost of making the optically printed internegatives. Both of these costs help to offset the additional costs of anamorphic lenses.
