1 The Director of Photography – an overview

182 Practical Cinematography
Figure 20.9 The 65 mm negative
and a 70 mm print
Figure 20.10 The layout of the
Super 35 frame
is then optically expanded using a de-anamorphosing lens in the laboratory
printer to produce a 70 mm release print. It is quite common for a
film shot on a 35 mm anamorphic system to have a few release prints
made on 70 mm for the premieres around the world and still make the
majority of general release prints as 35 mm anamorphic prints. Clearly,
this makes for a considerable cost saving.
It is also possible to take the reverse route and shoot on a 65 mm
negative, make the premiere prints on 70 mm stock and still make the
general release prints as 35 mm anamorphic prints, though the cost
savings using this route are nothing like as great.
Super 35
65 mm Camera Negative
70 mm Release Print with Sound Tracks
This much-vaunted format, where you get a larger than Academy
frame and can use existing spherical lenses, is effectively a return to
the old Silent layout. With modern film stocks it is quite possible to
print a 2.21:1 section from the middle of the frame and send it to the
cinema either as a squeezed anamorphic print or enlarge it to 70 mm.
The advantages in cost savings at the time of exposure are somewhat
offset by the cost of optical printing to the delivery format.
For the camera operator, Super 35 can be a nightmare. In Figure 20.10
you can see what ought to be a simple two-shot, here composed correctly
for the inner frame, which is 2.21:1. If, as many a producer may
wish, another copy is struck for television, here shown by the larger
rectangle with curved corners, the composition becomes a nonsense.
The claim that you can shoot full frame and choose any aspect ratio
later, from a compositional point of view, is clearly erroneous.