Arri-news 2014

The fact that the Master Anamorphics are so fast at T1.9 was also significant. I like to shoot wide open and to use very little light, so for all of our day interiors, night interiors and night exteriors we were shooting at T1.9. In the past the limitations of anamorphic lenses have to some degree dictated the aesthetics of anamorphic films, but that isn’t the case anymore. The Master Anamorphics are liberating because they allow you to shoot and light a scene in whatever way you like, without restriction. At the time only three focal lengths were available; was that restricting? I was trained in an environment where we didn’t have a lot of resources, and I’ve shot films before where we only had one or two pieces of glass, so I wasn’t really worried about being restricted with focal lengths. I was more concerned about having enough glass for situations where we needed to shoot with two or three cameras. It would have been nice to have had the 100 mm or 135 mm, which weren’t ready at that time, but again it added to a framing tension that ultimately helped the visual language of the film. You shot through a fairly brutal winter, didn’t you? It was the coldest, snowiest winter in decades, and we shot right smack in the middle of it. Mother Nature put the Master Anamorphics under extreme test conditions, but not one lens barrel got sticky, and the ALEXAs never gave up on us. In fact the cameras and lenses did better than the crew; people were bailing out just because it was so cold! “The 35 mm Master Anamorphic was incredible in the way it held detail right into the corners.” ARRI NEWS 23