What are Anamorphic Lenses? – Episode 11

Michael Hall: From ShowHawk Media, this is Filmmaking Footnote with your host Michael Hall. You’re listening to Episode 11. This is the show where we give you the best filmmaking and production information so you can make the best project possible without having to spend a bunch of time or money at film school. Let’s do it.

Hey, what’s up guys? I hope you’re doing well today. I hope you are having a lovely day. You have Michael Hall here, and today we are talking anamorphic lenses. Anamorphic, a/k/a, CinemaScope. In a later episode, we are going to talk a little more in depth about aspect ratio, but in order to talk about anamorphic lenses and CinemaScope, I want to give you a brief background on aspect ratio. Aspect ratio is the length and width of a frame when you are looking a film or a photo. Most commonly, you will see a 4:3 aspect ratio or a 16:9 aspect ratio.

What that means is that you are measuring the length of the frame by the width of the frame. It’s in even simpler terms, it’s the difference between watching an old-school analog television, if you can picture that, it’s a pre-digital television looked like. It was almost a true square, but it was a little longer on the top than it was on the side, and that’s a 4:3 aspect ratio. A 4:3 aspect ratio, that was the first aspect ratio that was used by all in Hollywood. When the television came around in the 1940s and gained a ton of popularity in the 1950s, television manufacturers adopted the 4:3 aspect ratio because they wanted to be able to show films on television in its original format.

The reason that 16:9, and like I said I’ll go into this in a later episode when we talk specifically about aspect ratio, but 16:9 came about in the 1950s when movie studios wanted to compete with television. They saw their sales declining in the 1950s because more people were staying home and watching television, and so, they wanted to give moviegoers a unique experience in the theater. So, they decided to introduce widescreen into American movie theaters because it gave the audience more of an immersive experience, seeing a picture on a huge, big widescreen. It gave moviegoers a unique experience that they were not able to get in the comfort of their own homes. That’s why the 16:9 aspect ratio came about. That’s why widescreen movies started in the 1950s, whereas before, they were just the boxy 4:3 that you see.

That leads me into anamorphic lenses, which is what we’re talking about today. Anamorphic lenses are a unique type of lens used in Cinema, and they were first introduced in the early 1950s because movie production companies needed a way to be able to shoot their films easily in a 16:9 aspect ratio. Before anamorphic lenses movie studios had to shoot with three different cameras and project them from three different projectors onto a screen in order to create a widescreen experience. That wasn’t cost-affective for the production company and it wasn’t cost-affective for the movie theaters because the production companies needed a lot more equipment, and then the movie theaters needed a lot more equipment in order to actually show these films.

That was done for a while and they were really shot this way for big, experiential films, like you would go see an IMAX movie specifically an experience. There’s not very many movies released on IMAX unless you’re Christopher Nolan. Most are specifically shot as an event experience. You think of Everest, the movie shot in IMAX, and that’s an event experience type of filmmaking. There’s very little story involved, you’re there for the experience of the IMAX Theater. That’s where 16:9 truly started as an experience type of film. As these production companies and movie studios realized that people really enjoyed these type of experiences, they realized that they need to become more streamlined in how they shot these films. There was a French inventor named, Henri Chretien, he was based in Paris, and he had invented a new type of lens, which actually took the image and distorted it.

It squished the sides of the frame together so that it distorted the image up and down so that when you shot onto a normal 35mm frame and then projected it onto the wall it would be stretched out in order to create the effect of widescreen. The patent for these lenses was first purchased by Paramount Pictures, and they decided to create a trademark name called CinemaScope. The very first film that was shot in CinemaScope was called The Robe, and it became a very, very successful motion picture for Paramount Pictures. In response other movie studios in L.A. wanted to create similar experiences with their films. So what Paramount Pictures did, was they would actually rent out their lenses to other movie studios in order for them to also shoot in 16:9 widescreen.

Unintentionally, when these movies were shot with anamorphic lenses it created a really unique look to the movies. Like I said, it would stretch out the sides and distort the picture. When you watch a movie that has been shot with anamorphic lenses, one that comes to mind, a filmmaker that comes to mind that shoots a lot with anamorphic lenses, is Wes Anderson. Whenever you watch a Wes Anderson film, look at the sides of the frame. Look at the top left, the top right, the bottom left and the bottom right and you’ll notice that there’s a little bit of a vignette. The picture of the film gets really soft and glossy. A lot of people, when they watch films, they attribute that look as a Cinematic look. In opposition to an anamorphic lens is a spherical lens.

A spherical lens, it’s much crisper when you look at the image. It’s much easier for your eye to actually look at the image of a spherical lens and it’s able to process that much faster. Whereas with a anamorphic lens, since it’s oval, it takes your eye just a little bit longer to process that. It gives it that fuzzy, glossy look that we attribute to films from the 1950s through present day. Now, as technology has gotten better over the years, the need to actually shoot on anamorphic lenses has become less and less important as cameras now don’t necessarily need an anamorphic lens in order to achieve a 16:9 aspect ratio for a widescreen aspect. However, a lot of filmmakers still shoot with anamorphic lenses because it gives that subconscious Cinematic look to moviegoers.

At this point in time, with all of the digital gadgets that we have in order to make films, shooting with an anamorphic lens is really an artistic decision and there’s a lot of great filmmakers and Cinematographers that love shooting with anamorphic lenses because like I said, it really gives that Cinematic look, it does interesting things with light, it makes the frame and the image softer. It gives a lot more depth to the frame, and it just really gives the overall look and feel of classic films that audiences really associate with. The next time you’re watching a movie, take a look at the screen, take a look at the image and see if you can guess if it was shot on an anamorphic lens or a spherical lens. If you have a favorite film that was shot on an anamorphic lens or with an anamorphic lens set, I would love to hear from you.

Head on over to filmmakingfootnote.com/11 and leave a comment. Let me know what you’re favorite film shot with anamorphic lenses is. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great day and I will see you back here tomorrow when you talk about animation. Bye for now.