Alice Brooks ASC and Dan Sasaki on anamorphic lenses and the language of musicals

For cinematographer Alice Brooks ASC, the choice of lenses for any given project is driven first and foremost by emotion. In this expansive conversation with Dan Sasaki, Panavision’s Senior Vice President of Optical Engineering and Lens Strategy, Brooks details the character-driven motivations behind her technical choices across the musicals Tick, Tick… Boom! with director Lin-Manuel Miranda, and In the Heights, Wicked and Wicked: For Good with her longtime collaborator Jon M. Chu. She and Sasaki also revisit the close collaboration that led to the 1.3x-squeeze anamorphic prototype optics Brooks used across the two Wicked features — the prototypes that ultimately became Panavision’s Ultra Panatar II series. From intimate New York interiors to the mythic scale of Oz, the discussion reveals how lens design can become an emotional instrument in the visual storytelling of musicals.

Pop-up definitions appear onscreen throughout the conversation to provide additional context or information related to topics and terms that Brooks and Sasaki mention. For ease of reference, you can also find those definitions — and their timecodes — below.

00:31 – The HDW-F900 was a 2/3” HD video camera made by Sony. For its use on the 2002 feature Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, the camera was Panavised with a range of accessories and a new Primo Digital lens series.

02:00 – Introduced in 2007, Panavision G Series 2x anamorphic lenses combine the compact convenience of the C Series with optical innovations of Primo Anamorphic lenses.

02:41 – Induced when a bright light reflects between a lens’ elements, a flare is a luminance change with a defined shape, pointing out aberrations at each lens surface. In an anamorphic lens, the increased optical power of the squeezed axis results in the flare stretching across the frame.

08:09 – American playwright Jonathan Larson wrote the musicals Rent and Tick, Tick… Boom! In the film adaptation of the latter, Larson is portrayed by actor Andrew Garfield.

09:48 – Like a lens flare, veiling glare is a type of luminance change, but unlike flare, glare is a scattering of light rather than a reflection. The result is that glare appears more like a haze over the image, lifting black levels and reducing contrast, with no clear shape or boundary.

11:04 – Astigmatism is an optical aberration in which a ray bundle has a difference in focal length between the perpendicular tangential and sagittal planes, creating a blurred image. In the case of an anamorphic lens, the planes can be independently manipulated to create or augment a desired look.

12:51 – Nan Goldin is an American photographer whose work — much of it made in New York City — often explores themes of identity, vulnerability, and social issues.

14:34 – Wicked was the first movie to go into production with the prototypes of what would ultimately become Panavision’s Ultra Panatar II 1.3x-squeeze anamorphic lens series. The lenses are often referred to by the abbreviated moniker “UPII.”

15:03 – Released in 2012, the feature film Killing Them Softly was directed by Andrew Dominik with cinematography by Greig Fraser ACS ASC.

15:40 – A lens’ close focus refers to the nearest distance — measured from the image plane — at which an object can be brought into sharp focus.

16:20 – Many of Panavision’s lens series have started as a prototype set developed in close collaboration with a cinematographer for a particular production. 

19:05 – The incident angle measures the angle at which a ray of light strikes the surface of a lens.

19:46 – With barreling, also known as barrel distortion, straight lines in an image appear to curve outward, toward the edges of frame. Mathematically, barrel distortion has a negative coefficient, whereas pincushion distortion has a positive coefficient.

20:34 – The five tenets, or pillars, of anamorphic define the visual characteristics that distinguish anamorphic imagery. The pillars are: 1) magnification & perspective, 2) disproportionate breathing, 3) flare, 4) bokeh, and 5) organic focus roll-off.

23:14 – Measured in degrees, field of view indicates how much of the environment in front of the camera is visible through a given lens.

26:34 – In animation, a color script is used to map a story’s emotional arc and provide a visual guide — comprising sequential panels laid out scene by scene — of the entire movie.

28:04 – Primarily used for synchronizing cameras and audio, timecode is a numerical timestamp — formatted as hours:minutes:seconds:frames — that can also be employed when programming repeatable elements such as lighting cues.

34:15 – Created and co-directed by Jon M. Chu, The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, aka The LXD, was a web series that spanned three seasons, featuring cinematography by Alice Brooks and choreography by Christopher Scott.