Cinemascope -- Best/Easiest process...

[hueyfilms]

If I wanted to shoot for Cinescope what's the best way to do this?

Do I have to use an anamorphic lens? Or can I crop in post and still get the look, is this a stupid way of doing it?

I really love the look of Hard Candy I think it gives the film a very castor-phobic feel that works.

I'm really interested in doing this.

Thanks

[SF Geek]

You could do either. Crop in post looks like super 35. Anamorphic looks like anamorphic. You can read about the pros and cons on other forums or in books.

[Alexis Hanawalt]

castor-phobic

castor |ˈkastər|
noun
a reddish-brown oily substance secreted by beavers, used in medicine and perfumes.
ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense [beaver] ): from Old French or Latin, from Greek kastōr.

...I think I'm castor-phobic too...

[David Mullen ASC]

"Best-easiest" is almost up there with "best-cheapest" questions, though there is a difference...

Easiest is to use spherical (normal) lenses and crop to 2.40 -- the majority of scope releases in movie theaters are shot this way, maybe only a quarter are shot with anamorphic lenses.

In a film camera, the anamorphic format uses the full height of a 4-perf 35mm frame so are using a larger negative, which gives you less grain and more detail.

That advantage is a little less strong with a digital camera where using an anamorphic lens mainly just gives you some more vertical resolution compared to not cropping.

The main reason people use anamorphic lenses on a digital camera is to get anamorphic lens artifacts -- the squeezed-looking out-of-focus lights, the blue horizontal lens flare, the shallower focus from using longer focal lengths. Here is an example of that squeezed-look that backgrounds get in low-light with anamorphic:

http://www.davidmullenasc.com/apocalypse3.jpg

[Nick Gardner]

castor-phobic

I just assumed he wanted the audience to be afraid of the second brightest star in the gemini constellation.

Nick

[Brandon Fraley]

if you want it to look like Hard Candy, then crop, since that's what they did :)

[Alexis Hanawalt]

if you want it to look like Hard Candy, then crop, since that's what they did :)

Or, for the ultimate test - watch Japon which was standard 16mm blown up and cropped to 2.35 35mm.