Dan Sasaki, Panavision VP of Optical Engineering
McDonough Brings Anamorphic Look to Fear the Walking Dead
In Fear the Walking Dead, AMC’s spinoff to the hit series The Walking Dead, the zombie apocalypse has just begun to affect Los Angeles. In the six-episode first season, L.A. residents try to survive as the military loses containment and the power grid goes down. Leading up to the pilot, cinematographer Michael McDonough, ASC, BSC saw an opportunity to employ the anamorphic format for a series.
ADAM STONE COUNTS ON PANAVISION TO MAKE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL
A road movie tinged with science-fiction, Midnight Special is a simple story of a father's love for his son that is wrapped in complexity and nuance.
VINYL OFFERS RODRIGO PRIETO A ROCK 'N' ROLL CANVAS
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC was at the camera for Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, a tale of greed and excess in the go-go 1980s financial rackets. This time, the duo went back a decade earlier to present a story set in the music industry of the 1970s, as it evolved from kid stuff into big business. The two-hour pilot for the HBO series Vinyl touches on the entire culture of the period – business, fashion, society, and art are all in a state of flux.
RIDE ALONG 2 GETS THE RED DRAGON 6K TREATMENT WITH PRIMO 70s
The explosion in popularity of the anamorphic format certainly has taxed the anamorphic lens reserves as of late, which left cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen, a die-hard anamorphic and Panavision user, without his favorites for the action-comedy Ride Along 2.
BARRY ACKROYD ZOOMS IN ON THE BIG SHORT
The Big Short dramatizes the 2007-‘10 financial crisis through the story of a group of countercultural whiz kids who bet against the housing and credit markets and won.
Panavision Designs Lenses for Mindel on Star Wars: The Force Awakens
When J.J. Abrams and Dan Mindel, ASC, BSC took on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, they knew they were handling a cultural touchstone. As they did with Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, they wanted to respect the antecedent while making a great, entertaining film for today’s audiences. So when it came to choosing format, lenses and the right look, they began by researching how the original Star Wars films were made.
A DAUNTING NAUTICAL PRODUCTION
Anthony Dod Mantle Counts on Panavision to Survive the Deluge In the Heart of the Sea
In the winter of 1820, the crew of the whaling ship Essex battled a monster – a massive sperm whale driven by aggression and vengeance that wreaked havoc upon them. The survivors then battled storms, despair and each other while trying to hunt it down. This shockingly real maritime event inspired Herman Melville to write “Moby-Dick.” Nearly 150 years later, Nathaniel Philbrick's book on the subject, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, inspired director Ron Howard to bring the story to the screen.
