To The Wonder

[JohnBarlow]

New film from Malick

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1595656/

 

Interesting use of Scope on a Steadicam, pretty much all deep focus.

 

Some of the Steady shots are a bit glitchy surprisingly.

 

Efficient use of cheap sets, eg new home building plots, car lots, cheap hotels, open spaces, looks like it was shot quickly and for pennies.

 

Worth a watch, to see what can be done for next to nothing.

 

 

 

[Sean Cunningham]

The listing of anamorphic is an error, or it might be for an isolated part of the film because this is, like Tree of Life, a mixed media film.  But the primary process used is spherical 35mm with some sequences shot in 65mm.

 

Deep focus, using wide primes and shooting at optimal times of the day are part of his dogma for the last two films.  He uses steadicam but a lot of the BTS shots of the cameraman that I saw had him in an Easyrig, or equivalent.  It's not actually a stabilizer so that could account for glitches in the movement.

 

He used a lot of locals.  Locations were scouted, particularly interiors, for how natural light played throughout the day.  It's an available and practical light film.  They didn't use movie lights.

 

http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/April2013/TotheWonder/page1.php

 

...they occasionally used some bounce but in every scene they placed actors relative to natural light or practical lights and it's just that beautiful. 

[JohnBarlow]

Thanks for the link I was searching for better info on the movie. The IMDB have got it wrong about scope.

 

When watching I was reminded of the C lenses used in de Palma's Mission to Mars http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183523

 

 

I guess I can be fooled between deep scope and deep spherical

[Sean Cunningham]

Once it's wide enough, yeah, if you're at that kind of depth, it should be really difficult to tell the difference.  The cues just aren't there.

 

I'm a fan of the look achieved with purposely shallow DOF, even the Tony Scott style of shooting a wide master on a 250mm from a quarter mile away, but seeing Malick's "tone poems" I can't deny the jaw dropping gorgeosity of the natural world, natural light and wide-open depth to capture as much of it as possible.