American Cinematographer - March 1995 - 11

Orientable
"On

Theo Van de Sande's credits as Director of Photography
include Once Around, Crossing Delaney, Miracle Mile,

Tenderfoots,

had two Moviecam

first unit
Compacts
our

and

an ARRI 3. Our second unit
used two ARRI 3 s all the time,

Wayne's World and The Assault, which won both a Golden
Globe and a 1986 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

sometimes as many as five. Clairmont ARRI 3s have bright, orientable

anamorphic finders. That's

one

of the three

reasons

I went

focus, despite being a modified
spherical zoom! The only other
lenses that didn't change image
shapes in the center of the screen
were the Arriscopes. With all
the other fixed lenses I tested, a

with Clairmont

center-screen circle became

availability
(not the same thing) at Clair¬
mont. There's a big selection there,
including some zooms and long
anamorphics you can't find any¬
where else. And they had enough
of them to equip all our cameras.
And if they said we could have a
certain lens, I knew we'd get it."

an

oval

as

Availability
"My second

ovals, others made vertical ovals."
Distortion
"Like the streaking, this center
distortion was more pronounced
in some of the fixed lenses. In
two

types, it was very noticeable.
In two others (including the

couldn't

see

it in the test

footage.

put the Arriscopes on
the projector, I still couldn't see it."

Breathing
"The

Arriscopes didn't distort,

but they did breathe. Every lens
does that to some degree, includ¬

ing every spherical-it's just more
noticeable with

some anamor-

phics. My test footage of focus
changes on still subjects showed
the Arriscopes changing image
size more than any of the others."
Size

or

reason was

the lens

choice and lens

it went out of focus.

When I

again: their

expertise with Arriflex and Moviecam and now with anamorphic."

Some lenses made horizontal

Clairmonts), it was less so. With
the Cooke and the Arriscopes, I

once

Choices
"Their

Theo Van de Sande

anamorphic Angenieux
excellent, even wide
open. From T4 on down, the Clair¬
mont anamorphics gave us Steadicam shots as sharp as our Arri¬
scope footage. Not quite as dis¬
tortion-free, but they cost us about
half as much to rent and they
weighed four or five times less."
10 to 1 was

Tradeoff?
"I suppose I'm used to seeing
subtle size changes on screen¬

tracking and unobtrusive zoom¬
ing. And in real life, things change
size with distance. But they don't
change shape in real life, or in
center frame through sphericals.
Arriscope circles got bigger, but
they were still circles. If more
breathing was their design
tradeoff for no distortion, I think
they made the right choice."

Discuss

"My third reason for going with
Clairmont, then and now," says
Mr. Van de Sande, "Is that I can
discuss things with Denny and
Terry as filmmakers."

shape?

"But the

Arriscopes were still
my first choice. I was more both¬
ered by test objects in center
screen changing shape than by
their changing size. I've found
that whenever focus shifts sub¬

stantially it's because the action
moves or someone

in the fore¬

ground turns around, that kind
of thing.

The movement masks

the focus

change and the size
can be made to

change-or it
mask them."

CLAIRMONT
CAMERA
4343Lankershim Blvd, N. Hollywood. Phone: (818)761-4440. Fax: (818)761-0861
North Shore Studios, Vancouver. Telephone: (604) 984-4563. Fax: (604) 984-4693
American Cinematographer - March 1995

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