After shooting his latest film in the stunning high-resolution, wide image 70mm format, Quentin Tarantino has made plans to retrofit 50 theatres worldwide with the film projectors and anamorphic lenses required to do the photography justice.
In today’s cinematic landscape, shooting on film is rare and shooting on 70mm is almost unheard of, but Tarantino and cinematographer Robert Richardson took things to the next level, filming The Hateful Eight in the extremely rare Ultra Panavision 70 format, which is believed to have last been used on the 1966 film Khartoum.
After a screening of Hateful Eight test footage at the Cine Gear Expo, cinematographer Bill Bennett (who did not work on the film), offered up his reaction on twitter, along with a glimpse at the extremely wide-format footage saying “Saw Ultra Panavision 70, Tarantino’s “The Hateful 8″, projected in Anamorphic 70mm. Crazy beautiful. An entirely chemical analog process.”
Tarantino, who is best known for his films Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction, has long been a vocal proponent of film preservation – from his personal archive of film prints, to his no-digital-allowed revival of The New Beverly theatre. Providing the world with the means to properly view his latest 70mm western is yet another instance of Tarantino’s impressive efforts to preserve the use of celluloid film in cinema.
The Hateful Eight is set for release in November 2015.
