An interview with Bill Benett

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Paramvir Singh
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An interview with Bill Benett

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"As Good As It Gets"
An Interview With Bill Bennett, ASC

By

Michael Coate

Image


If you spend a lot of time watching movies and television with a critical eye, you probably think you have a good idea of what a high-quality image looks like. Well, think again…because cinematographer Bill Bennett, ASC has just reset the bar!

Bennett, known affectionately by his peers as “The Car Guy” for his extensive résumé of TV commercials featuring slickly-photographed automobiles, recently shot a demonstration film which has been titled “As Good As It Gets.” The six-minute demo, captured in 65-millimeter(!), features breathtaking imagery of two young women trekking through the desert landscapes of Death Valley and the lush forests of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The film also features a drive through Los Angeles.

Originally shown at a film format seminar at UCLA in 2006, “As Good As It Gets” was privately screened on April 11 at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood to a gathering of filmmakers, film-format enthusiasts and a journalist or two.

Among the attendees impressed by the demonstration was cinematographer M. David Mullen, ASC (“The Astronaut Farmer,” “Akeelah And The Bee”). “The simple truth is that Bill Bennett’s demo proves that oversampling works,” Mullen said. “It also makes you realize that we still have the technology to return cinema to the grandeur of 1960s epics like ‘Lawrence Of Arabia’ and ‘2001,’ when movies floored you with their technical quality on the big screen.”

“This looked TERRIFIC!!!,” remarked film historian Rick Mitchell, who also was in attendance. “The detail you could see was breathtaking. Little grain was visible, and I was sitting in the seventh row!"

So could this lead to a new feature shot in 65mm? “Maybe...if some contemporary filmmakers with TRUE VISION can be gotten to see this test film,” says Mitchell.

Following the screening, Bennett agreed to do an interview. The conversation, of course, is no substitute for actually viewing the film, but offers some insight into how and why the demo was made.

MICHAEL COATE, FROM SCRIPT TO DVD: How did you become involved with this project?

BILL BENNETT, ASC: I was having a meeting with Franz Krauz, CEO of Arnold & Richter, the parent company of Arriflex, at their offices in Munich, Germany, in the spring of ’06. During that discussion, he asked me if I would shoot this demo.

FSTDVD: What is the objective of the demo?

BENNETT: During my discussion with Franz, we were talking about what we felt was a continuous decline over the past 30 years of the quality of images seen in the typical cinema, along with the fact that new digital camera and projector manufacturers were claiming that the images from their products were truly excellent.
"It has been many years since audiences have been able to view 70mm images that were shot in the ultra high resolution 65mm format."

Franz and I felt that we needed to shoot some material in the 65mm/5 perf format, using the latest modern film stocks, to “reset the bar” as far as high image quality is concerned. It has been many years since audiences have been able to view 70mm images that were shot in the ultra high resolution 65mm format.

We also wanted to have a source of high quality images to blend into 4k DI [Digital Intermediate] workflow streams, to prove the following: Assuming that you are doing a DI for your movie, and you are shooting in 35mm, you gain a lot more detail in your wide establishing shots if you shoot those shots in 65mm, scan them at 8k or 6k, downsample them to 4k, and blend them into your DI with your 35mm dialogue and close-up shots. We proved that at the November screening at UCLA, where we showed the same scene, shot in both 65mm and 35mm. In wide shots, the 65mm contained much more detail, when compared to the same scene shot in 35mm. In the close-ups, there was not as much of a noticeable difference, proving that you don’t need to shoot your entire movie in 65mm, just the wide shots, then blend them all together in your DI, to achieve a much better audience experience.

Recently, “The New World” (photographed by “Chivo” Emmanuel Lubezki, AMC, ASC), “We Fight To Be Free” (by Kees van Oostrum, ASC), and “The Prestige” (by Wally Pfister, ASC), all used 65mm for some of their wide shots, and incorporated it into their 35mm close-up photography.



Another objective of the project was to provide very high quality images in 8k for testing of digital projectors, DI workflow, compression algorithms, etc. To date, Sony, E-Film, Adobe, and Dolby Labs have been using the material for that purpose, and more are requesting access to the material.

FSTDVD: How were the locations selected?

BENNETT: I spent some time analyzing the wide shots in one of my favorite movies, “Lawrence Of Arabia,” which was shot in 65mm/5 perf. That movie was set in the desert where there was little atmospheric haze, allowing the camera to see for miles into the distance. I also noticed that director David Lean and cinematographer Freddie Young, BSC would often dolly side to side during their wide shots, while choosing locations and prop positions so that there were many layers to the shot leading off into the distance.

I followed that lead, shooting in the [California] high desert locations around Lone Pine, the Alabama Hills and Death Valley, as well as at 10,000 feet up in the Sierras. Like Lean and Freddie, I would dolly left to right during the shot, while choosing locations with many layers of depth, extending for miles off into the distance.
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