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focus on film
Thanks to advancements in film stocks and digital intermediate technology, the 2-perf Techniscope format is enjoying a renaissance.
Previously best known as the format Sergio Leone used in spaghetti Westerns like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 2-perf slashes raw
stock and processing costs in half compared to conventional 4 perf 35 mm formats. It doubles the shooting time of a roll of film, and
brings high-quality, widescreen images to the screen. Here are three recent projects shot in this format.
Techniscope 2
format revival gives indie filmmakers m
The Colonel’s Bride
Neil Lisk says that shooting on film was important to him and
the director, Brent Stewart, from the project’s inception. “Brent,
who self-financed the film, is a very visual director, and he felt he
could not shoot it any other way,” says Lisk. “The 2-perf format
was a way for us to make that happen.”
Lisk found short ends of KODAK VISION3 500T 5219 film,
and a great rental deal on a Russian-made Kinor 35H camera. His
relationships at Filmworkers Club in Nashville, where they shot,
also kept the budget lean.
The story looks at a retired Army colonel who, as a way of
making up for his sins in Vietnam, decides to get a mail-order
bride. The script describes the opening shot as “a long stare.”
“That was an important cue,” says Lisk. “Our visual style
developed from there. We decided to shoot the film almost
entirely with one lens, no camera movement, and nothing to
1 Neil Lisk on the set of The Colonel’s Bride. (Photos courtesy of Ryan Zacarias)
distract from what was unfolding before us. I think it was a really
effective and refreshing way to make a movie.”
There were a couple of scenes in tight spaces where the
filmmakers went into more conventional coverage. The only
other exception was the final shot of the movie, which is an
extremely slow push-in on the bride.
“That shot is so much more powerful because we hadn’t
moved the camera before that,” says Lisk. “The audience
responds emotionally and is really on the edge of its seat, and
they’re not quite sure why.”
The decision to shoot 2-perf made the short ends last twice
as long as they otherwise would have, which fit nicely with
the “long stare” aesthetic. Despite Lisk’s tiny lighting package,
which included one 1,200-watt HMI, two Kino Flo fixtures, and
a couple of Fresnels, he was controlling the lighting in every
shot, sometimes by bouncing existing light, closing the blinds or
putting up a solid.
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2-perf
s more options
Blocking was complicated by the use of
the static frame. Finding the perfect angle
was sometimes thorny. “We tried to maintain
energy to the shots by creating movement
within the frame,” says Lisk. “Of course, when
someone walks toward the camera, their
height within the frame shifts, and suddenly
they are cut off at the eyes. It’s not something
you normally consider, but in our case it was
a real creative puzzle.”
Shooting 2-perf enabled the filmmakers to
achieve their vision on film. “The first time I
saw dailies, it blew my mind,” says Lisk. “We
made this film for the price of a decent used
car. We were a tiny film, and we didn’t have
a lot of money or equipment. We had bright
windows and dark interiors, and I couldn’t
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believe how everything was there on the film.
If I put my exposure in the right place, I was
getting what I had seen with my eyes. That encouraged me to
take more risks and shoot more instinctively. From experience,
I know that we never could have gotten the same result had we
shot digital. The latitude is just not there. In our film, there is
poetry to the images, and softness, and color quality that would
have otherwise been lacking.”
Sympathy for Delicious
Sympathy for Delicious was directed by Mark Ruffalo, best
known as an actor in films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind, Blindness and You Can Count on Me. “The project had
been planned as an HD movie,” says cinematographer Chris
Norr. “While we were in prep, Mark kept saying wistfully, ‘I wish
we could shoot film.’ Finally, I said to him, ‘You know, there’s no
reason we can’t shoot film.’ It’s a budget choice. I knew we could
shift things around and make film work.”
Norr, Ruffalo and one of the producers took a tour of
Panavision, where Andy Romanoff explained the 2-perf option,
which they immediately embraced.
The story concerns a wheelchair-bound homeless man who
finds he can heal people, and uses that faith-healing power to
become a rock star. The cast includes Ruffalo, Orlando Bloom,
Juliette Lewis, Laura Linney and Christopher Thornton.
“I am into darkness,” says Norr. “For the idea of healing, I
referenced paintings by Caravaggio, and I often lit with a natural,
warm ray of light and lots of darkness.”
In some scenes, the filmmakers re-created Caravaggio’s
compositions, placing the actors within the frame to echo the
placement of the painter’s subjects in famous paintings.
2 Orlando Bloom in Sympathy for Delicious. (Photo by: Sam Urdank)
focus on film
Norr used older Panavision Super Speed and Ultra Prime
lenses. He chose KODAK VISION2 Expression 500T 5229, 100T
5212 and 200T 5217 films. “To me, the 5229 is very painterly,”
says Norr. “There is a softness, especially in dark scenes, which I
really love.”
Norr says that shooting film allowed him to work more quickly.
“I’m not a producer but when you account for the time saved, I
can’t see 2-perf costing more than HD,” he says. “We definitely
used less lighting equipment, and we shaved a few days off our
shooting schedule because we were able to move so quickly.”
“The latitude of the 5229 allowed me to light by eye,” he
says. “One of our main locations was a loft with a large wall of
bay windows. We would shoot towards it as much as possible,
pushing light through the windows as the only source of light
in day scenes. With darkly painted walls, I placed exposure two
stops down on the actors’ faces. The film still held lots of detail in
the highlights in the windows, and an incredible amount of detail
in the shadows – up to minus six stops of underexposure. I could
light without any fill. This looked moody but very naturalistic.
This same situation on HD would have required lots of fill light to
balance the windows from clipping, and the windows still would
have blown out in an unnatural way.”
“My advice to filmmakers considering 2-perf is, ‘Use it!’” says
Norr. “It gives you 35mm depth of field, better lens and camera
choices, and less grain. Compared to 4-perf, 2-perf will give you
twice the runtime per magazine, meaning fewer re-loads. Also,
2-perf is greener, with less wasted film between the frames.”
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focus on film
Black Field
Paul Suderman had collaborated with director Danishka
Esterhazy on three short films when she asked him to
photograph her first feature Black Field. The shorts had been
done in a variety of formats: 35mm, Super 16, and digital video,
specifically the RED One camera.
“Danishka’s shorts were highly visual with plenty of great
images to shoot,” says Suderman. “We both felt from the
beginning that Black Field should be shot widescreen and on film.
It would have been unjust to shoot her great script on video. The
period of the story, and the need for film’s greater overexposure
latitude and ability to hold details in the sky, also argued for film.
Also, I just felt subjectively that film was right for this project
– and what is filmmaking, if not subjective? We fought hard to
make Black Field on film.”
The 2-perf Techniscope format was a perfect
compromise. “The extremely small budget seemed
to argue for a video format, and that worried me
immensely,” says Suderman. “We budgeted out
other formats, and in the end we were able to
shoot film because of the 2-perf format.”
The story, partially inspired by the Gothic
novels of the Brontë sisters, depicts two
sisters on an isolated, remote farm
in the 1800s. Suderman says that
Esterhazy’s evocative script sparked
his imagination. “Even on my first
read-through, I imagined some
scenes that ended up being very
close to what we ultimately filmed,”
he says. “It helped that the story took
place in a place that I love - the prairies
of Canada, where huge skies and flat
land combine to create an austere
landscape. We used that barren
landscape to amplify the sisters’
loneliness and vulnerability.”
The filmmakers knew that the 2-perf
format’s widescreen aspect ratio would
work well with the empty panoramas.
3 Sara Canning as Maggie and Ferron Guerreiro as Rose in a scene from Black Field. (Photo by: Rebecca Sandulak)
“Another benefit was the ability to shoot two close-ups in one
frame,” says Suderman. “When the two sisters are threatened
by a stranger to their farm, they instinctively stand close to each
other, visually underscoring their relationship.”
“We used that barren
landscape to amplify
their loneliness and
vulnerability.”
Although Suderman had never used the Techniscope
format, he had no qualms about adopting it. He used
KODAK VISION3 500T 5219 and 250D 5207 negatives.
“I care most about lenses and film stock,” he says. “I was
thrilled with the VISION3 stocks. The 2-perf negative
area is smaller than other 35mm widescreen options,
so the finer grained stocks really came into their own. I
thought the stocks looked really tight. We were able to get
our dailies in 1080p MPEG2 files, so I immediately could
see how fine the grain structure was.”
The approach was to tell the story as simply as
possible. The tools were a Panaflex GII camera, Primo
lenses, a tripod and a dolly. “We eschewed the use
of cranes or zooms, and tried to let the actors bring
their characters to life in front of the camera, rather
than bringing attention to the camera movement,”
says Suderman. “We felt that shooting a close-up
on a 40mm with the camera closer to the actor
helped the audience feel more involved in the scene,
as opposed to using a 100mm or 150mm from 12
feet away.”
Black Field premiered at the 2009
Vancouver International Film Festival.
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