VOYAGE INTO VINTAGE
Production name: Rumours
Production type: Feature film
Cinematographer: Stefan Ciupek
Director: Guy Maddin, Evan and Galen Johnson
Lens(es) used: Cooke S2 TLS rehoused (1950s Lens set)
Camera used: 2 ARRI Alexa 35, 1 Fuji XH2S
Look you needed to achieve: A brave, surrealistic, vintage 35mm film aesthetic. I reviewed many of Guy Maddin’s earlier films which all have a very distinctive film aesthetic and used a variety of analog techiques and processes to achieve the look. In my preparation with the directors we kept watching films by Bunuel, Kurosawa and Dreyer. Even though it was clear that we are visually making a very different film, I wanted to reflect some of that feeling into my images for Rumours.
Lens testing process: I compared many different lens sets in several test sessions over a long period of time and narrowed my selection down. I started with Bausch and Lomb Super Baltars, Canon K35, Cooke S2 (TLS Rehoused) Cooke Panchro Classic i35 and Kowa Cine Prominars. My main parameters that influenced my lens choice were: optical distortion of faces, especially of the wider lenses (25 and 32) as I intended to shoot the medium shots and close-ups with those; general softness of the lens; focus falloff to the sides of the frame; optical vignetting; contrast softness of bokeh; general contrast; and impact of flares. I shot the majority of my tests on the Alexa 35 in OG. I did the initial test round in a studio/rental house set-up with a mix of test charts, colour charts and a stand in. I then took my favourite two sets into a forest location that I lit exactly the way I was intending to shoot the film.
Why your chosen lens was the most appropriate: The Cooke S2 added a beautiful layer of gentle optical distortion. I loved how it rendered faces with this gentle dimensionality and depth. I also loved the gentle contrast and how the focus fell off towards the image corners. Shooting on the Alexa 35 in OpenGate with 1:1.66 aspect ratio went well into the image circle the lenses were not intended to be used in. The vignetting on some of them went really dark, but with a slight reverse vignette in the grading I brought it ever so slightly back, and it looked beautiful and had a touch of old 1920s vintage glass. I also liked the way the out of focus bokeh got very soft at the corners. Even though through the aging of the lenses, the colour rendition was a little inconsistent between different lenses, I liked the warm/yellow hue it added to the skin. In combination with my colourful lighting and backlit fog these lenses were closest to achieving the surrealist look we wanted for Rumours.
Filters used (if applicable): Diffusion filters Tiffen Glimmerglass ¼ and ½, Black Satin.
Challenges faced and how they were overcome: We had to share one set of lenses between two cameras and couldn’t get another S2 set, so I added Cooke S4 primes (25, 32 and 40) instead and added one step higher diffusion filtration to them and shot those at wide open aperture (versus T2.6-T2.8 on the Panchros). I then crossmatched the vignetting and focus falloff as good as I could in colour grading, and it worked well whenever we needed it.
The low T stop of the S2s was a bit challenging as we shot the majority of the film at night in the forest. And especially on the wide lenses we would end with quite dark frame edges. But the combination of the extra sensitivity of the A35 and an adjusted lighting package for more exposure worked well in the end.
Anything else to add: In the grade we added another layer of image diffusion and halation using the Filmbox & Scatter toolkit and then added 35mm film grain to the image.
Lens lessons this production taught you: I used to be a bit less experimental and often leaned to more modern lenses for my feature films. I had the tendency to define the look of my films more through lighting and grading. I really enjoyed exploring vintage glass and how it can add a lot of character to the image.
