American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 76

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A Clash of Titans

Left: Batman uses the Bat-Signal to lure Superman to Gotham. Right: The rooftop
battle between superheroes was filmed on a raised stage at Michigan Motion Picture Studios
in Pontiac.

the close-ups. The depth of field on
Imax cameras is already minimal, so
when you add a diopter it makes my life
as a focus puller incredibly difficult." To
ease the situation, a system was sometimes employed in which A-camera
operator John Clothier would work off
a video monitor, while Coe would look
through the camera's eyepiece and pull
focus with a Preston remote.
Fong's anamorphic lens package
included two complete sets of modified
Panavision C Series anamorphic
primes, from 25mm up to 100mm, as
well as 135mm and 180mm E Series
anamorphic primes. In the zoom category he had a 40-80mm AWZ2 (T2.8)
for crane work and a 70-200mm ATZ
(T3.5), as well as 11:1 48-550mm
(T4.5) and 3:1 270-840mm (T4.5)
anamorphic zooms - the latter of
which is known as "the Hubble" because
of its size.
ASC associate member Dan
Sasaki, Panavision's vice president of
optical
engineering
and
lens
strategy, describes the process by which
the anamorphic primes were tuned to
Snyder and Fong's specifications: "Larry
wanted a C Series look but with a
different tonality, so we did three things:
designed a custom flare, gave the lens a
76

April 2016

unique appeal, and baffled it for usability in any type of lighting condition.
We've never produced a lens quite like
this."
According to Sasaki, a piece of
raw, polished glass will transmit light,
but still reflect greater than 20 percent
of the light back out. This unwanted
reflection is mitigated with lens coatings, which use constructive interference to increase transmission by
cross-canceling the light coming into
the lens with another reflection.
"By experimenting with the
thickness of the coating layers on key
internal elements, we were able to
control the color of the light that gets
reflected out and the color of the light
that's transmitted, so we were able to go
from the standard C Series blue-purple
flares to a more striking red-blue, which
Larry responded to because those also
happen to be the colors of Superman's
costume," Sasaki explains.
Fong also wanted the lenses to
handle strong backlight in close-ups,
while maintaining the texture associated
with C Series lenses. By experimenting
with element spacing in the spherical
portion of the lenses, Sasaki was able to
achieve a good contrast with a soft rolloff. Another aspect of glare control is in
American Cinematographer

the baffling. "In an ideal situation the
cinematographer wants light to go
through the lens without any random
reflections, and when we design a lens
we do it with an eye toward ideal conditions," says Sasaki. "But we also know
that in real life, light sources are everywhere, so we use baffles to control the
random light reflections that weren't
accounted for in the original design. It
can be as simple as painting the exposed
edge of a lens element, or something as
complex as a metal fin inside the lens
that deflects away the light we don't
want to go through."
Sasaki reveals that over the years,
many of Panavision's classic lenses have
evolved to match the current language
of the motion-picture industry. "If you
look at a C Series anamorphic lens that
was developed in the Seventies, it will
look nothing like that same C Series
lens in use today," he remarks. Fong's E
Series prime elements were re-spaced to
achieve a closer match to the modified
C Series anamorphics, but the zoom
lenses were left in stock form, as were
the Imax and System 65 lenses.
"Panavision went above and
beyond [with] all of our crazy requests,"
recalls Fong. "They even went so far as
to paint all our camera bodies and

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2016