Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[Jason Comparetto]

seriously

[David Mullen ASC]

General film question: What percentage of movies made in the last 15 years were shot on Super35 film? Rough estimate of course.

Trouble is that you'd have to divide the list into before D.I.'s and after D.I.'s. Once D.I.'s became the norm and not the exception, thus eliminating the need for an optical printer blow-up using dupes from Super-35 neg to projection format 35mm, there was a huge increase in the number of movies shooting in Super-35 for movies intended for both convention "flat" 1.85 and anamorphic 2.40 cinema prints.

This was about four years ago, the tipping-over point where D.I.'s stopped being the exception. So the decade before that, you had to optically convert Super-35 neg to whatever your final projection format was going to be, giving more impetus to shoot in a standard 35mm projection format to begin with, i.e. sound aperture, not full aperture.

Before the era of D.I.'s, most people shooting for 1.85 projection shot standard 1.85, and maybe half the people shooting for 2.40 projection shot with anamorphic lenses rather than Super-35. It varied over the last two decades, but you could roughly say that half the movies released were 1.85 and half were 2.40 and half of that half were Super-35, so one-quarter roughly.

But once D.I.'s become commonplace, there was little reason to not shoot full aperture (Super) even for 1.85 movies. And Super-35 for 2.40 was less grainy now due to avoiding dupes and optical printing, reducing one of the prime arguments for anamorphic.

Not to mention that one of the odd backlashes against digital was an embracing of grain, so cropping & enlarging a smaller negative was in vogue for awhile. So some people shot anamorphic less for the larger & less grainy negative and more for the optical artifacts.

Now I'd guess that 3/4 of movies are shot Super-35 (4-perf and 3-perf now -- 3-perf was less popular before D.I.'s except for TV) for either 1.85 and 2.40 prints, leaving 1/4 shot in standard 1.85 and anamorphic 2.40.

But those are all rough impressions. Worldwide, there is probably less 2.40 anamorphic production compared to Hollywood (and India.) But due to D.I.'s there has probably been a worldwide increase in 2.40 Super-35 movies.

[Jason Comparetto]

<insert random trivial pursuit question here> What percentage of elves leave Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings? AND, why?

[Jason Comparetto]

I just noticed that David answered your question, Kamalettin. David, you're far too generous with your time. Thank you

[Felix K.]

I think Kemalettin had a pretty decent question which got a even more decent answer from David. Are we all a bit tired and need to sleep?

[Tom.Wong]

David, I know you've said before that certain things are "pretty much all the same to you" lenses, sometimes even cameras. The DI really takes care of the look for you, and the timing is so powerful these days that sometimes you lose your control over what the end product will look like. I know how this happens a lot, and with the huge progression in technology, we are at, and moving towards where the post production will be controlling just about a huge portion of our sound and picture on a computer system.

how do you feel about this, do you think it benefits you as a filmmaker and DP? Or do you feel like you will hit a point one day where nothing you shoot anymore will ever look the way you intend it to because of the level of manipulation in post? Do you feel like the technology is depreciating the craft of shaping and controlling, what you can get direct into camera, or do you think it's helping you by taking limitations off, such as not needing so much light...

[Kemalettin Sert]

Whats wrong with my question ? i didnt ask who will win world cup
Thank you David you are #1
One more question
First D.I used in movie is O Brother, Where Art Thou am i right? (not only in hollywood im talking about worldwide)

[Jason Comparetto]

Felix, its a wonderful question. Its just that there are already enormous databases compiled with that information. http://www.imdb.com/SearchTechnical?PCS:Super%2035

David contributed some other wonderful information, so made the most of it.

[David Mullen ASC]

"O Brother Where Art Thou?" (2000) was one of the first, it's a bit vague because around that time, there were movies that went through a D.I. for large sections such as "Pleasantville" (1998), just not 100% of the movie. And technically "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" (1999) was all scanned from 35mm anamorphic and output back to film, thus was a D.I. done by ILM.

And what about a movie like "Breaking the Waves" (1996) which was shot in Super-35 but went through a PAL intermediate before being filmed-out? Technically that was a digital intermediate.

And then there was the 1993 all-4K digital restoration of "Snow White", which was technically a digital intermediate as well.

[Kemalettin Sert]

Thank you so much again David :)