FEATURE | WHY THEY WON
GLASS FROM THE PAST WINNER OF OUR TECH INNOVATION AWARDS FOR OPTICS, ARRI RENTAL HAS LEGITIMISED THE BLACK ART OF LENS MANIPULATION WITH ITS DNA BRAND OF TUNEABLE GLASS
WORDS JULI AN M ITCHELL / PICTURES ARRI RENTAL / JULI AN M ITCHELL
I s there anything more creative in the movie production business than a cinematographer finding a look for a film? In this voyage of discovery, you can drench yourself in other imagery and references in the hope something formulates; it can’t be art for art’s sake as it is the shell of the narrative. Bradford Young, who shot Solo: A Star War’s Story , went through a similar process; watching movies to get a feel for the right way forward. As it happened, one look into a prototype lens gave him his light bulb moment; the lens was the first design of the Arri Rental DNA lens range. The look was just what he wanted as a base for the ‘dirt brown cowboy’ aesthetic that he was aiming for.
We listened to Young himself retell the story in a Q&A and what stood out was how art and science can work so well together. The Arri Rental DNA story has grown with DNA LF, DNA X and the new codifying of DOP’s lens de-tuning we discussed in our previous issue’s lens special. Others have also been pleased with mixing digital with DNA, as DOP, Stuart Dryburgh, notes from our MIB: International article on page 12 of this issue: “As for lenses, we mainly used Arri Rental DNA glass. These are all rehoused and rebalanced vintage lenses, but they look good and have some character to them – a lot more character than the Prime 65s did. They flare a bit more and are less colour consistent through the range. We could have had
them de-tuned, but decided against it as we wanted them as good as they could be.” SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES DNA glass, including the new large format models, are made up of glass from the sixties and seventies with new housings and new irises to offer the more circular bokeh, which is what people have asked for, especially for LF. The new LF range starts at a 21mm, which is pretty wide in the LF world, there were even calls for something wider, which they aren’t going to do. The 21mm represents around a 14mm field of view normally and is designed primarily
BELOW The Prime DNA and new DNA LF lens series
50 DEF I N I T ION | AUGUST 20 1 9
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