How This Epic Was Shot in 5 Different Formats: The Brutalist

This video is sponsored by Squarespace, the easiest way to create a beautiful website. Your average movie is shot using only one camera or format. This is often done for practical purposes as well as to maintain an aesthetic standard and look across the movie. Nowadays, this camera is often a digital cinema camera such as an Alexa 35 or Mini LF, a Sony Venice or a Red V Raptor. Brady Corbez the Brutalist mixes this up, firstly by mainly shooting on film instead of a digital camera and secondly by shooting on a host of different analog formats from VistaVision all the way to Betacam tape. Rather than only sticking to one gauge of film such as 35mm, the Brutalist was photographed on a range of different film gauges. This is the physical size of the negative which gets exposed to light and records images. The smaller the piece of film is, the lower the image resolution or clarity will be, while the larger the size of the negative, the cleaner and higher res it will appear with less visible film grain. The smallest piece of film used on the Brutalist was 8mm, followed by 16mm and Super 16 with most of the movie shot on some variation of 35mm capture. I say some variation because although the size of Kodak's 35mm film stock is the same size, different cameras are able to expose smaller or larger surface areas of this film. Most motion picture film cameras pull the film down through the gate vertically, where each frame is exposed to light. Depending on the camera and how they are set up, 35mm film frames can have a recording height of 2, 3 or 4 sprockets or perforations tall. DP Loll Crawley selected four different 35mm cameras to shoot the Brutalist on. The Arricam ST which is better suited for larger studio style builds. The Arricam LT which can be configured into Steadicam or lighter builds. The 235, a very lightweight option which he used for handheld operated shots. And a special Arricam 435 to achieve a specific effect which we'll get to later. These cameras were set up to capture a combination of 2, 3 and 4 per footage and were paired with Cooke S4 prime lenses. However, the variety of formats didn't stop there. Although their main film stock was 35mm, they also used a different type of camera and format to capture large portions of the movie called VistaVision, which created much larger negatives. It's like full frame 35, so it's pulling the film through horizontally, much like a stills camera would. VistaVision uses 35mm film, but maximises the size of the negative by moving the film horizontally through the gate instead of vertically, to create frames that were 8 perforations long, about twice the size of standard Super 35. If you look at these VistaVision cameras you can see that the magazine which holds the film stock is orientated in a horizontal configuration to pass it laterally through the gate, unlike regular 35mm cameras with their vertical magazines and film pull down. Shooting on this larger VistaVision format resulted in a higher resolution and wider field of view shots than traditional Super 35, which in the world of still photography, is called full frame. To fully cover this wider frame, VistaVision cameras need to be paired with lenses which are full frame or larger. In the case of the Brutalist, they used a set of modified Leica S lenses which were designed to cover medium format stills cameras and therefore could cover the 8 per frame without vignetting. Now that we know what VistaVision is, why did they decide to shoot on this vintage format? Before we get into it, I need to take a moment to thank today's sponsor, Squarespace. Setting up a website may seem a tad intimidating, but what I like about Squarespace is that they make the design process super simple and intuitive for your average person like me. You can build a beautiful personalized site by selecting options recommended for you by their Blueprint AI. You can easily integrate your video work into libraries or organize images from your portfolio into galleries. Check out squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch your site, go to squarespace.com slash indepthcine to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Now that we have an idea of the kinds of tools or formats Crawley and Corbett had to work with, let's take a look at how they used them in different situations and scenes. One of the main justifications for shooting on VistaVision is in the name. It excels at capturing the width of vistas. The biggest draw of the VistaVision was the field of view and so when we're filming vistas or the architecture of Laszlo Toth, even portraits like the moment when Laszlo steps off the bus to meet Attila, his cousin, you get this intimacy but you also have this wide field of view. When the same lens is put on a Super 35 camera and a VistaVision camera, the larger negative size of the VistaVision will give the image a wider field of view which sees more of the world, even if the focal length is unchanged. This let Crawley shoot wide shots without needing to use extremely wide angle lenses which would distort the edges of the frame and bend straight lines. Instead the lack of visual distortion fed into the naturalistic and realistic visual tone by presenting the world closer to how the human eye sees it, without distortion. However, this isn't to say that this was always the case. For example, in certain scenes where they wanted to use the camera to put the audience more subjectively in the shoes of the character. Such as in an intoxicated hedonistic scene at a jazz club, Crawley used the lighter Super 35 Arri 235, which was light enough for him to operate handheld, with a super wide angle lens to increase distortion and introduce a more frenetic camera language. In the scene he also employed another Super 35 camera to create a unique effect. Lester Dunton of Dunton Cine provided the shoot with a custom Arri 435 35mm camera, which instead of shooting in regular 24fps mode, he put in maintenance mode, which technicians would normally use when fixing or altering the camera, and shot with a mistimed shutter. This created strips of highlights which looked like vertical flares, further warping the visual language into an uncomfortable intoxication. Another effect that these different formats had was subtly reflecting the time period. VistaVision came about in the 1950s. Using this vintage format, which they framed with a 1.66 aspect ratio with more height, evoked the 50s and 60s time period which the format was known for, and which the story took place in. A lot of the movie takes place during the 1950s, so it seemed to make perfect sense that we were using a camera system from that time. That was the thinking. It's perhaps relevant to note that although most of the film's promotional material seemed to focus on VistaVision, a fair chunk if not most of the film's running time seems to utilise 3perf or 4perf 35mm capture. It's unclear what the exact reason is for this, however I suspect it may partly be a practical choice. From saving on the costs of film stock by shooting 3 or 4perf instead of 8perf, which would also have given them more recording time on a single magazine for dialogue scenes, to perhaps needing the smaller camera body size for things like car rigs, steadicam or handheld. When the story later progressed into the 1980s, Corbair switched formats to the medium of the time. They shot parts of the section on the uglier digital Betacam tape to differentiate the 80s TV footage from the earlier 50s and 60s VistaVision film. They also used some snippets of documentary style footage which were acquired on the smaller Super 16 Arri 416 cameras with Zeiss Superspeed lenses. A more practical reason for shooting VistaVision as opposed to a larger format such as 65mm film came down to cost as well as availability. 65mm film is much larger than 35mm and comes with an increased price tag for buying and processing the film. Since they were operating on a relatively low budget of approximately $10 million, shooting in large format as opposed to VistaVision would have shot up costs. Additionally, rental companies seemed hesitant to part with their limited supplies of large format film cameras in case a big budget shoot approached them, which they could get more rental for. The rental companies kind of didn't want to let them go to a lower budget movie in case a bigger budget movie maybe came along. I mean I can completely understand the economics. Essentially the VistaVision there was less demand on the cameras. The brutalist choice of formats and cameras is a classic example of how filmmakers can use different tools to create images with a different feeling or practical signifier in different situations. All of these mixed medium format choices subtly aided and supported the storytelling to create a visually compelling epic. Thank you to all of you for supporting the channel, especially those on Patreon. Otherwise, until next time, thanks for watching and goodbye.