5 ms·

>“Shot on iPhone” doesn’t promise “and you can do it too” any more than Stanley Kubrick lighting Barry Lyndon with candlelight means anyone with candles can mak

• drexlspivey 3y ago
  > anyone with candles can make Barry Lyndon Anyone with candles and NASA lenses
  • m463 3y ago
    I vaguely remember reading about special low f-stop lenses. Here it is: Kubrick was "determined not to reproduce the set-bound, artificially lit look of other costume dramas from that time." After "tinkering with different combinations of lenses and film stock," the production obtained three super-fast 50mm lenses (Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7) developed by Zeiss for use by NASA in the Apollo Moon landings, which Kubrick had discovered. These super-fast lenses "with their huge aperture (the film actually features the lowest f-stop in film history) and fixed focal length" were problematic to mount, and were extensively modified into three versions by Cinema Products Corp. for Kubrick to gain a wider angle of view, with input from optics expert Richard Vetter of Todd-AO. The rear element of the lens had to be 2.5 mm away from the film plane, requiring special modification to the rotating camera shutter. This allowed Kubrick and Alcott to shoot scenes lit in candlelight to an average lighting volume of only three candela, "recreating the huddle and glow of a pre-electrical age." In addition, Kubrick had the entire film push-developed by one stop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lyndon#Cinematography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lyndon#Cinematography
  • astrange 3y ago
    Very good lenses are more accessible than they sound; there are decent cheap f0.95 mirrorless lenses out there, and even if you want an expensive one you can rent it. Just don't drop it.
    • drexlspivey 3y ago
      Kubrick used f/0.7 in 1973
      • foldr 3y ago
        That's only about half a stop brighter. The increased sensitivity of digital sensors more than makes up for that.
  • Clamchop 3y ago
    Light sensitivity of modern digital sensors is far superior to any film, especially for the quality delivered. Like, really far. You won't be able to get every characteristic of that lens, such as the absurdly shallow depth of field, but you can get close with a much less exotic (but still rare) lens around f/1. People were admiring how closely you could reproduce the look of the candlelit scene all the way back when Canon inadvertently kicked off the low-cost ciné phenomenon with the EOS 5D Mark II. I think most know that the major barrier to making a movie proper is the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars spent on everything else. Even ignoring paying for talent, the outrageous budgets of even lower-tier films are widely publicized. But many are also tickled pink to make something out of ordinary life that has some of that Hollywood look.
  • throw0101a 3y ago
    > Anyone with candles and NASA lenses It isn't the 1970s anymore: Robert Eggers was able to shoot candle-list scenes for The Witch without NASA lenses: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtb0qAu-Hjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtb0qAu-Hjc * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witch_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witch_(2015_film) The entire movie cost US$ 4M, which was less the $6M for Wiseau's The Room.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • offices 3y ago
      You and I have watched the same Youtube video
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]