Panavision
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| Panavision Incorporated | |
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| Type of Company | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1953 |
| Headquarters | Woodland Hills, California, USA |
| Key people | Robert Gottschalk, Founder Ronald Perelman, chief shareholder |
| Industry | Movie camera rental, Motion picture equipment |
| Products | Panaflex Lee Lighting Genesis HD camera Grip equipment |
| Revenue |  $207.5 million USD (2004) |
| Employees | 1,181 (as of December 31, 2004) |
| Slogan | Inspired by the past. Focused on the future. |
| Website | www.panavision.com |
Panavision is a motion picture equipment company specializing in camera, lens, and grip equipment, along with related accessories. After starting out as a small partnership that created anamorphic attachments for projection lenses, Panavision has slowly but steadily expanded its operations and product lines while maintaining a high level of design and quality. It is thus considered by many film crews to be a prestigious brand name. Unlike most of its competition, including rival Arri, Panavision operates exclusively as a rental house and owns its entire inventory. Its comprehensive offerings of in-house and externally produced camera models means Panavision is also one of Arri's top customers. The company is currently based in Woodland Hills, California, United States.
Any major production that uses Panavision's services is contractually obliged to provide a credit that says "Filmed with Panavision Cameras and Lenses" if using spherical lenses, or "Filmed in Panavision" if using anamorphic lenses.[1]
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[edit] Early history
Panavision was founded in late 1953 by Robert Gottschalk, Harry Eller, Richard Moore, Meredith Nicholson, Walter Wallin and William Mann[2]. It was formally incorporated in 1954, which is usually the more commonly cited date. Formed by Robert Gottschalk, principally for the manufacture of anamorphic lenses to meet the demands of theaters showing CinemaScope films. At the time of Panavision's formation, Gottschalk owned a camera shop in Westwood Village, California where some of his most common customers were cinematographers.[3] He had become interested in anamorphic lenses several years earlier, while attempting underwater photography with Moore, who worked with him in the camera shop. The technology had been designed during World War I to increase the field of view on tank periscopes[3] — anamorphic lenses horizontally "squeeze" an image thus allowing a wider field of view once unsqueezed by complementary anamorphic lens. Gottschalk and Moore bought some of these lenses from C.P. Goerz, a New York optics company. Nicholson, a friend of Moore's, started working as a cameraman on several early tests of anamorphic photography.
Threatened by the advent of television, film studios began looking for ways to draw audiences back into the theaters with innovations television could not provide at the time. Cinerama was among the first widescreen processes put forth. However, it required three cameras (at first) and three synced projectors, and the image always had lines between the three images. Looking to create a high-impact method of widescreen filmmaking that was both more cost-efficient and less complicated or visually distracting, 20th Century Fox had been working to design an anamorphic production system, called CinemaScope. This involved shooting the film with anamorphic lenses (which would squeeze the image onto the negative and subsequent prints). The images were then projected back with anamorphic lenses that expanded the image, creating an aspect ratio twice as wide as the frame itself. By the time the first CinemaScope film, The Robe, was announced for production, Gottschalk, Moore, and Nicholson already had a full demo reel of work with an anamorphic system.
Gottschalk learned, through a vendor to his camera store, that Bausch & Lomb were having difficulty filling the orders for theatrical anamorphic projection lenses. Eventually Gottschalk met Mann, who could provide the optical manufacturing; Mann introduced him to Wallin, who studied optics. Thanks to Wallin, the design put forward for the lenses was prismatic rather than the then-favored cylindrical method. This meant that the anamorphic lens extension factor (how much the image was horizontally unsqueezed) could be manually shifted, which was useful for projectionists switching between full-screen ("flat" or "spherical") trailers and an anamorphic feature.
Panavision's first product, the Super Panatar projection lens, debuted in March 1954 for $1,100 a pair and quickly captured the market. The Super Panatar had the form of a rectangular box which required a special bracket to hold it on the front of the projector in line with the lens. Later an improved and lighter design called the Ultra Panatar which was cylindrical in shape could be screwed directly to the front of the projection lens.
In December of that year, the company then created a specialized lens for film laboratories called the Micro Panatar which, when fitted to an optical printer, could be used to create "flat" (non-anamorphic) prints from anamorphic negatives. (Previously studios sometimes shot films with two cameras—one anamorphic and one flat—so that non-widescreen theaters could still exhibit the film. The cost savings of making flat prints in post-production instead were enormous.)
In 1955, Panavision entered the camera lens business by working with MGM to create the Camera 65 system. This employed using 65 mm film in conjunction with the APO Panatar lens, an integrated anamorphic lens (rather than a prime lens with an anamorphoser mounted on it) set to a 1.25 squeeze factor. This process was also named MGM 65 and Panavision 65, before finally settling on Ultra Panavision. It meant that the aspect ratio was an astounding 2.75; unfortunately, it was only used on a small handful of films, starting with Raintree County (1956). Ironically the film was only released as a 35 mm anamorphic print due to the fact that all 70 mm theaters were solidly booked up with Around the World in Eighty Days. The first film to actually be shown in 70 mm anamorphic, Ben-Hur, was released in 1959. Subsequent Ultra Panavision films were Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Hallelujah Trail (1965), and Khartoum (1966). Virtually all 70 mm prints of these films still in circulation are straight spherical (2.20 ratio), however, due to the rarity of 1.25x anamorphosers for 70 mm projectors today.
Finally, the company's last major early period innovation was the Auto Panatar camera lens, used with 35 mm anamorphic productions. A problem with early CinemaScope camera lenses was what was known as "the mumps": a widening of the face in close-ups due to a loss of anamorphic power as a subject approaches the lens. Although early productions were willing to compensate for this limitation because of the new anamorphic process by staying away from close ups, as anamorphic became more popular, it became a major annoyance. Gottschalk himself solved the problem with additional rotating lens elements moved in concert with the focus ring. The Auto Panatar was released in 1958 and rapidly adopted industry-wide, eventually making CinemaScope lenses (and thus CinemaScope) obsolete. While Fox insisted on maintaining CinemaScope for a time, the pressure of actors' demands for Panavision lenses for their close ups, and the fact that the company was not owned by a rival studio eventually led Fox to abandon CinemaScope for Auto Panatars in 1965, debuting on Von Ryan's Express after Frank Sinatra's legendary demand that the studio use them.
[edit] Middle period and changes
Three of the founders, Nicholson, Mann, and Wallin, left in 1960 to move on in their own respective creative interests. Moore followed in 1962 in order to do production work (as did Nicholson). The same year, after mulling over working with camera companies on new designs, Panavision had the fortuitous opportunity to purchase the camera equipment division of MGM, which they took advantage of. (Mutiny on the Bounty—an Ultra Panavision production—went so over-budget that MGM needed to divest several whole divisions to stay afloat.) The company spent the next five years researching how to create a lighter, quieter camera with a reflex viewfinder; the Panavision Silent Reflex (PSR) was released in 1967, followed by a handheld 65 mm camera the next year. In the meantime, development of an optical printing lens for the purpose of blowing up 35 mm anamorphic to 70 mm had succeeded by 1964, the effect of which was to virtually destroy 65 mm productions: film studios no longer needed to shoot in 65 mm for 70 mm projection when they could more cheaply shoot in 35 mm anamorphic and blow it up to 70 mm for release. The Cardinal (1964) was the first film which used this process. Between 1970 and 1990, no major studio films were shot in 65 mm, and with the exception of a handful of films in the early 1990s, none have been since.
Around this time, Panavision switched its equipment business model to its current incarnation: equipment would be available only for rental, rather than sales. The advantages of this method were that more money could be spent on equipment development (hence to a higher standard), all equipment could be maintained and modified directly by the company, it provided an incentive to make parts more durable, allowed for closer and more responsive feedback from customers regarding design, and meant that producers no longer needed to buy valuable camera equipment for a given production. To this day, Panavision remains the sole owner of all Panavision equipment (although at least one film school has a camera out on "permanent loan").
This policy required additional upfront assets, and to this end, the company was sold to Banner Productions in 1965, although Gottschalk remained as president. Panavision benefited from the purchase by becoming the global company it is today, branching out into markets beyond Hollywood. Kinney National Service bought out Banner in 1968 and then took over Warner Brothers the following year, eventually renaming itself Warner Communications. Consequently, the deeper pockets of new owners allowed a massive expansion in inventory and a leap forward in research and development.
Albert Mayer headed up the next major project: the creation of a lightweight (the PSR weighed 140 pounds (64 kg)), quiet reflex camera adaptable to either handheld or studio conditions. Following four years of development, the Panaflex debuted in 1972, concurrent with the Arriflex 35 BL. Both were revolutionary cameras in that they operated virtually silently, thus no longer needing a heavy and cumbersome sound blimp, and could be used for sync hand-held work. The Panaflex set itself apart by also including a digital electronic tachometer and magazine motors for the take-up reel. Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express became the first film to use them.[4]
As the 1970s moved on, the Panaflex line was continually updated and expanded in further incarnations: the Panaflex X, Panaflex Lightweight (for steadicam), Panastar (high speed camera), Panaflex Gold, and Panaflex G2. Work with video cameras was first explored with the Panacam, although the company chose to leave the field for others to develop in the meantime. A competitor to the Steadicam, known as the Panaglide, was also developed and released.
[edit] Post-Gottschalk
Robert Gottschalk died in 1982, aged 64. Although he remained the president of Panavision up until that time, the company had been sold to producer Sy Weintraub in 1965. Weintraub sold the company three years later to Kinney National Service, Inc. After Gottschalk's death, Kinney National sold the company to a consortium headed by Chicago newspaper and department store heir Frederick Field[5], Ted Field and John Farrand, who brought sweeping changes to the then-stagnant company. Optics testing was computerized, the new Platinum model camera was built (1986), and a new line of lenses known as Primos were created (1990), which exhibited matching color characteristics across the lens line. The company was sold to Lee Lighting in 1987 but financing was overextended, and the ownership reverted to Warburg Pincus in 1989.
In 1987, responding to sensed demand for the resurrection of a 65 mm camera, development began on a new model, which was released in 1991 and known as System 65. However, Arri beat them to market two years prior with the Arriflex 765. Production, for one reason or another, did not wind up re-adopting the gauge, and only a small handful of films used 65 mm during this time period; notably, Far and Away, parts of Little Buddha, Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet, and parts of The New World. Branagh's Hamlet also has the distinction of being the last known feature film to be shot entirely on 65 mm.
In 1998, the majority shareholding of Panavision was acquired by Mafco Holdings, a company solely owned by Ronald Perelman, via a Mafco subsidiary. On July 28 2006, Mafco compulaorily acquired the remaining 4% of stock and returned the company to private status. In early October 2006 Panavision purchased Digital rival Plus8Digital.
As the end of the 1990s approached, it was clear that the movement for digital cinema was gaining mindshare in Hollywood, and so Panavision moved to capitalize on this by both improving its film camera systems and approaching the vanguard of high-end digital camera development.
For the former, the Millennium replaced the Platinum as the flagship camera (1997), followed by the Millennium XL (1999) and XL2 (2004). The first feature films to use each of these cameras were The Perfect Storm and Just Like Heaven, respectively. The XL series not only made for a much smaller camera body suitable for interoperability between studio, handheld, and steadicam work, but also marked the first significant change to the film transport mechanism in the camera since the Panaflex: two smaller sprocket drums for feed and takeup (a design similar to the Moviecam and subsequent Arricam) instead of one large drum to do both.
[edit] Panavision goes digital
[edit] CineAlta
Following a number of attempts to marry up standard and high definition TV cameras with film-type lenses in the 1980s, Panavision entered into a joint partnership with Sony which produced the "Panavized" HD-900F "CineAlta" High Definition Camera System in 1999, first used by George Lucas for the second Star Wars installment, Attack of the Clones (2002). This is generally regarded the first commercial HD 24p camera system.
The "Panavized" CineAlta still presented a number of compromises, as the "holy grail" had always been to produce an electronic camera that could utilize Panavision's vast existing range of cine lenses. The CineAlta required the design and manufacture of a new range of "Digital" Primo lenses, since most lenses designed for 35mm film cameras will not work properly (or at all) on 3-chip HD cameras. Apart from greatly increasing the cost of the project, this greatly restricted the choice of lens available to film-makers. For this and other reasons, the PV CineAlta system has attracted little interest from mainstream feature film producers, although it is still in regular demand for HDTV studio production work.
[edit] Genesis
Main article: Genesis HD Camera
In an attempt to address these problems, Panavision followed this up in 2004 with the Genesis HD camera, a full bandwidth (4:4:4) HD SDI camera with improved colorimetry and sensitometry-related specs and a Super 35 mm film-sized recording area, making it focally compatible with regular Cine Primo lenses and giving a true 35 mm depth of field. The main imaging module of the Genesis is made by Sony, but the exact relationship between the two companies is unclear, since their joint partnership was dissolved in 2004 with Panavision's re-purchase of the 8% shareholding Sony bought in 1999.
[edit] See also
- 70 mm film
- American Cinematographer
- Camera crew
- Camera magazine
- Cinematography
- Clapper loader
- Digital cinema
- Focus puller
- List of film formats
- Movie camera
- Principal photography
- PV mount
- Steadicam
- Super Panavision 70
- Ultra Panavision 70
- Widescreen
[edit] References
- ^ Everything2 article, dated April 1, 2002
- ^ Samuelson, David W. Panaflex Users' Manual Focal Press: 1990.
- ^ a b Samuelson, David W. Golden Years, American Cinematographer Magazine September 2003 pp. 70-77
- ^ Brode, Douglas. The Films of Steven Spielberg Citidel Press. 1995. p. 39. ISBN 0-8065-1540-6
- ^ Slide, Anthony The American Film Industry: A Historical Dictionary, Limelight Editions. 1990 "Panavision" pp. 253-4
- Panavision official site
- Bijl, Adriaan. "The Importance of Panavision", Masters Thesis. Royal University of Utrecht, September 1991.
- "Honoring Our Own" Panavision article on engineer Takuo Miyagishima, 2005.
- Balance Sheet for 2004.(Yahoo! Finance)
- Share Price History.(Yahoo! Finance)
