Lens choice

at figuring that the height of the ceilings and the tunnels and stuff like that was the way to go. But Roizman had an idea. So what he did is he took two movie cameras to a train station, put them next to one another, and one had a non-anamorphic lens, which is a widescreen lens. And then he had another camera with an anamorphic widescreen lens, and he shot...

27:33 · jump to transcript →

Just footage of people going about their day in the New York City subway and then screen them the next day for everybody and everybody saw them and they all agreed that the widescreen anamorphic look was much, much more impressive and they all went with it without any discussion at all. And, you know, I...

28:00 · jump to transcript →

That is so prototypically New York. Everybody's pissed because they've been inconvenienced. Now, I should also mention, Roizman wasn't really known for shooting anamorphic at the time, so this is kind of a new thing for him, but he actually returned to it with another film that I think would actually lump in with these, which is Three Days of the Condor, right after this.

29:19 · jump to transcript →

Francis Ford Coppola

beginning with words that I thought were very apt for the film that I was about to make, which was, I believe in America. And the idea being starting very close on this man's face. In those days when we made the film, this was high technology to be able to do a pullback so slow. I remember they brought this computerized zoom lens and they programmed it to pull back for, you know, whatever it was, three minutes.

2:57 · jump to transcript →