How Lenses are Made

[Soopafresh]

I was watching a documentary on Kubrick who bought these special F 0.7 lenses to film the indoor candle lit scenes for "Barry Lyndon". "The DOP, John Alcott, used three f/0.70 lenses developed by Zeiss for NASA for use in the Apollo moon landings. The super-fast lens allowed him to shoot scenes lit with actual candlelight with an average lighting volume of only three candlepower. In fact, the film features the largest lens aperture in film history."

Amazing the work to build a camera lens. No wonder they're so expensive. Quite an informative little clip on how camera lenses are made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7_wL0ZZi6k

[guns1inger]

This is also the basis for a brilliant little French doco called Dark Side of the Moon, that posits that Kubrick was allowed to use these lenses because he had helped NASA by giving them a weekend on his Moon set at Pinewood during the 2001 shoot, so they could fake the moon landing. It has interviews with Kissinger, Aldrin, Christiane (his wife) and Jan Harlen, who all come clean about this conspiracy. It is all done completely deadpan, until the final credits roll. Fantastic little video, if you can find it.

As for Barry Lyndon - while it is not one of my favourites, and Ryan O'Neal is hopelessly mis-cast (was he ever well cast ?) - it is certainly beautifully shot, and the interiors are incredible. Visually it is only rivaled (and arguably surpassed) by Ridley Scott's The Duelists.

[Soopafresh]

Yeah, I saw that "documentary"

[guns1inger]

It's the Spinal Tap of conspiracy films.