Pawlak looked at nearly all the anamorphics available at the camera houses and shot tests with many of them to give Cretton an idea of the look they could get. “We started discussing the option of newer anamorphics,” says Pawlak. “Almost doing the opposite of working with older glass and vignetting, we thought we’d go cleaner and let the production design bring it together. Destin was cautious about not having things distort too much.” Pawlak came across the ARRI/ZEISS Master Anamorphics. “I put them on the camera and right away looked at a 40mm, which is pretty wide, and was astonished to see there was no distortion or bend in any of the lines or horizons,” he says. “Every line was straight, and the bokeh is really nice. It clicked, and I thought, here’s an anamorphic lens that Destin would be comfortable with. It was the perfect lens I was hoping for to subtly tell the story anamorphically.”
After testing, Pawlak was even more certain that the ARRI Master Anamorphics were the right lenses. “I noticed they were sharp and very fast, which was great because we were shooting in low light,” he says. “The Master Anamorphics gave me a great base to start with, and I started exploring different stops and filtration to see all the different looks and how far I could push it, and find the spot on the lens that gave me the look that I could almost dial in. The Master Anamorphics really helped Destin be comfortable with shooting anamorphic.”
Pawlak says he knew before he chose the lenses that he’d shoot with ALEXA. “I prefer it over any other camera system,” he says, noting that the Montreal-based production had two ALEXA XTs from MELS. “I can pick up an ALEXA body, go and shoot with it and know exactly how it will handle things.” In addition to the ALEXA XT, the production also had a Mini, which Pawlak says he “really loved.” “The Mini is very versatile,” he says. “I had a couple of sequences where I’d run around with the camera in the backpack, up stairs and through doorways, and it was really light. It could be whatever I needed.”