I am slightly obsessed with Vista Vision (above) and Techniscope. The former of course ran horizontally and took up 8 perforations. ILM revisited the format for Star Wars to enable a larger, non-animorphic negative to pull off their effects. But Techniscope goes the other way. Developed by the Technicolour Labs in Rome, Italy, it takes up 2 perforations. The effect of this 2-perf high frame but full width is a widescreen (scope-ish) image that doesnt require animorphic lenses, any normal spherical lens can now be used to shoot (effective) Cinemascope. This isn’t all though. It also doubles the stocks running time. A 10 minute reel becomes 20!
Now 2 perf adapted 35mm cameras are rare. But, thinking this through I realised I can shoot Techniscope on my 4 perf Mitchell! First I make a 2-perf apeture plate that sits in the gate of the camera. This will crop the neg exposure area down to the techniscope AR. Then frame and shoot 2 perf FRAMES, but move the film 4 perf. This would leave a huge gap on the neg if we developed it. Next, I rewind the film (close the shutter and cap lens!) and via a registration notch in the film I then lace it 1 frame out of sync. This would expose now into the gap! Then in the printer a similar process is used to print alternate frames restoring the sequences. This WILL, work, its theoretical now, but there is every reason to believe it will work.
Lastly, if we don’t observe leaving space for the soundtrack and expose using the full width of 35mm then the aspect ratio becomes a healthy 2.62:1!! I would consider this for the UFO/psychic/dream-horror film being planned about the Rendlesham incident as this is planned as a fully SILENT film. AR graphic below.
‘Super’–Techniscope with a 4 perf camera!!
Here is a stunning, well researched document about all the various RAMA Vista Vision cameras that ILM used.
