How This Epic Was Shot in 5 Different Formats: The Brutalist
INTRODUCTION
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 Corbet’s 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 analogue formats - from Vista Vision all the way to Betacam tape.
FORMATS
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’ll 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 two, three or four sprockets, or perforations, tall.
DP Lol 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 Arri 435 to achieve a specific effect which we’ll get to later.
These cameras were set up to capture a combination of two, three and four-perf footage and were paired with Cooke S4 prime lenses.
VISTA VISION
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 Vista Vision 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.” - Lol Crawley, Director Of Photography
Vista Vision uses 35mm film but maximises the size of the negative by moving the film horizontally through the film gate instead of vertically - to create frames that were eight perforations long - about twice the size of standard Super 35.
If you look at these Vista Vision 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 pulldown.
Shooting on this larger Vista Vision 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, Vista Vision cameras need to be paired up 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-perf frame without vignetting.
WHAT IS EACH FORMAT USED FOR?
Now that we have an idea of the kinds of tools (or formats) Crawley and Corbet 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 Vista Vision is in the name - it excels at capturing the width of vistas.
“The biggest draw of the Vista Vision was the field of view. And, so, when we’re filming vistas or the architecture of László Tóth, even portraits, like the moment when László steps off the bus to meet Attila his cousin, you get this intimacy but you also have this wide field of view.” - Lol Crawley, Director Of Photography
When the same lens is put on a Super 35 camera and a Vista Vision camera, the larger negative size of the Vista Vision 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 this 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 it in maintenance mode which technicians would normally use when fixing or altering the camera, and shot with a mis-timed shutter. This created strips of highlights, which looked like vertical flairs - further warping the visual language into an uncomfortable intoxication.
Another effect that these different formats had was subtly reflecting the time period. Vista Vision 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.” - Lol Crawley, Director Of Photography
It’s perhaps relevant to note that although most of the film’s promotional materials seems to focus on Vista Vision, a fair chunk, if not most, of the film’s running time seems to utilise 3-perf or 4-perf 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 4-perf instead of 8-perf, 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, Corbet switched formats to the medium of the time. They shot parts of this section on the uglier digital Betacam tape to differentiate the 80s TV footage from the earlier 50s and 60s Vista Vision film.
Digital Betacam
They also used some snippets of documentary style footage which were acquired on the smaller Super 16mm Arri 416 cameras with Zeiss Superspeed lenses.
A more practical reason for shooting Vista Vision - 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 Vista Vision 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 Vista Vision there was less demand on the cameras.” - Lol Crawley, Director Of Photography
CONCLUSION
The Brutalist’s choices 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.