Director of Photography Ben Brahem Ziryab
A Conversation about VistaVision, 65mm, 70mm and much more

"Who was he, as a kid, to buy a Hasselblad?"

It never happened. He went into engineering and never pursued photography. 35 years later, I was born in Copenhagen and as a kid I was interested in the normal stuff that kids do, like being a firemen, a policemen and playing soccer. All these traditional things that were part of being a kid growing up. And all of a sudden, my dad thought

"Wouldn't it be great to give Ben that hobby?"

It would be great to give him something different, other than all the traditional toys and things. So he bought me a medium format film camera as a very young kid. I was maybe 7 years old, something like that, and I had no idea of how to use it. I had no idea of how load the the film, how to expose. All this was completely unfamiliar to me, but I got the camera and started playing with it. I was actually hooked from the beginning. Not so much about photography. I didn't really care too much about that. I was really interested in the mechanics. How the camera works, how to make this very complex and really nice camera work. We travelled a lot when I was young and eventually learned how to load the camera. I would take just travel pictures, which was amazing on this medium format camera. At the time I didn't know how amazing it was, but now I really know how powerful it can be. Not every shot was in focus. Not every shot was exposed well. At the time I was using slide film [reversal, or diapositive, ed]. The exposure latitude was really narrow, so you had to really nail the exposure, otherwise you would get the image too bright or too dark very fast. It was very unforgiving as a medium.

That was really interesting to learn, going back and seeing these images being out of focus, blurry, overexposed and underexposed. Eventually I learned how to make it work. Again, at the time, I wasn't interested in the art of photography. It didn't occur to me. For me it was just how to get this mechanical device to work. That was my only concern. That was the beginning. I think I was about 10 or 11 years old, in the early 2000s.

That time also was the beginning of the digital video cameras. The home video cameras with tape, were getting cheaper. They were all around, but it was at the time when it went from being really, really expensive, like super expensive to affordable, so a normal household could get the cameras. For my birthday my parents also bought this little video camera, which was my introduction to moving images. Again I wasn't too interested in the photography of it, or the art of it. I was more interested in how to get this camera to work.

It was very crude, it was analog tape and to digitize it you have to go to a special place. At that time I didn't have a computer or editing software, so I edited these small films in the camera.

Basically, I would act myself. I would just set it up near my friend, and then walk in and then "Oh shit, that wasn't very good". So we would just rewind it to the part where we cut it, and do it again and overwrite the tape. You could do it an infinite amount of times, which was really cool. That was interesting, how you really learned to edit by necessity. By having to edit in the camera, you actually had to learn how different pieces fit together. They weren't great films, but they were stories anyway, and they had to be pieced together to tell the story. That was the beginning of learning storytelling. After the video camera I got really into the film making part of it, and from that age I think, maybe 11 or 12, I think I was pretty hooked on it. I knew this was it. I didn't know that I was going to be a photographer, but I knew that this was very interesting. It was something I wanted to do. I didn't think I had any special talent, but I thought it was a fun thing to do. As a hobby at least, and I still had my Hasselblad and still took some photos with that, so I was still into still photography a little bit.

"Would it be interesting to pursue this artistic medium?" I did a couple of things. One of them was I signed up for an internship at Zentropa Productions, which was part of my school. You could do an internship anywhere you wanted to, and I just picked Zentropa. I thought it was an interesting choice to become an intern. Afterwards I got an internship at the Film Workshop at the Danish Film Institute and that was also just working with learning the basics of film making. I didn't really know I was going to be a cinematographer. I wanted to be a director, because that is just the default thing - being a director. But then you realize that you are not that good with actors, and maybe I don't have the patience [laughing].

I eventually found out that I was interested in cameras and that was my thing. "Cameraman" was the word I used to describe what I wanted to do if anyone asked. If someone asked "What do you want to do?", I said "cameraman". I didn't know the terms Cinematographer, DP, etc., and at the same time I loved movies. I went to watch movies when they came out and rented movies a lot. I had a big film collection on VHS tapes. This was way after DVD came out, and no one wanted VHS tapes because DVD was new and exciting and everyone wanted the DVD. Basically all the VHS tapes were sold for like pennies. I would go to these stores to get 30 films [on VHS] for the price of two or three DVDs. I'd go home and watch 30 films instead of two or three films. And I really didn't know enough to care that the quality wasn't so good.
 

"Oh! We cant be teaching you film anymore! If we have to make a class of students that have to have a relevant experience, we have to teach HD and digital"

That was when they thought it [film] was going, and it was going to go away. So they started to pull away the film stuff. Luckily I learned how to load a 16mm camera in school, which is cool, but they went digital, so we just started learning that. Luckily we did have a Panavision film camera at school. The school had an agreement with Panavision: If you were really good and you got a project and you wanted to make it, you could pitch it to their committee, and they would give you a Panavision camera for free. And then you could go out and shoot for one week or two weeks and come back. FotoKem was also really generous. They gave us good discount on the processing. So if you really wanted it, you still had that opportunity to go and shoot film and learn with film. That was what I did. I thought I want to learn digital. I want to be familiar with it and I want to go to the classes and learn digital stuff, but I still think film is more interesting. I really want to stick to that.
 

A VistaVision frame from "The Negative".

Actually "The Negative" came out from San Diego State. That was my thesis film and that was after having done 35mm. So I did 16mm and 35mm productions through film school, because we had free camera and discounts. And for the thesis film I thought well, "I've got to do something different.". I remember at the time that I was really interested in John Ford films, the westerns, in particular "The Searchers" was a big hit for me because I really liked that film and how it was shot and how it was composed. I was always fascinated about the way they put the horizon line in the frame. I also noticed something interesting when I watched Hitchcock films and these John Ford film like the "The Searchers" or even other films I watched at the time: I often saw this logo in the beginning:

"Hey man, I have heard that you have been calling all over town for this VistaVision camera. I just want to let you know that we don't have one any more. But there is this guy up in Northern California, he is the engineer of the camera. He makes these cameras. Give him a call. I am sure he can find something, or he can point you in the right direction".

I gave him a call, and it was a voice message. He might call me back or he might not, we will see. And he called me back and he said:

"Hey are you Ben?" I replied "Yes?", "...and you are looking for a VistaVision camera?"

He sent me all the camera parts. Everything. He was really generous, and he didn't even know me. That was amazing, and it happened really fast. I spent two days with him over the phone to learn how this hand-built camera works. The manual is not exactly like the camera. It was a lot of guesswork but luckily, he was available via the phone for us and was really generous in guiding myself and my first AC [Assistant Cameraman] through. We got to learn how it works and after two days we just drove out to the middle of nowhere essentially, which was Monument Valley as you see in "The Negative".

It was a five days shoot. We had ONE chance to do this in VistaVision. If anything happened, or if we had camera problems we would be screwed. Actually we did have a 35mm camera as a backup, but our dream of doing it in VistaVision would be crushed if anything happened. Luckily it didn't, I mean, this camera was working very well in the heat in the desert, and in all these crazy conditions, that we were working in. We were fortunate this film came out, and were really excited about it. We found the projector, installed the projector and screened it in VistaVision. That was also the first time I ever saw it. I mean I had seen it digitally, so I saw the 6K scan when we did the grading, but I never saw the film assembled. That was the first time it was projected with sound. We actually had to borrow a VistaVision projector from a projectionist.
 

A Century VistaVision projector head.

Because it was either that, or at Paramount Studios ['s VistaVision projector] in Los Angeles. There was no way we could get all the people to Paramount from San Diego State. That was not going to happen and we wanted our movie to be the final show at the screening event. When then the image came on the screen and there was just ... silence. I think people were quite impressed.

"The Negative" was a really successful project and I actually ended up getting an ASC nomination for cinematography. Which was awesome! So that was my thesis film. I later worked on commercials and short films and music videos and anything I could work on. I think that I worked in LA for a year and then I got offered my first feature. That was great and then I did a second feature and worked on some other stuff, documentary stuff for UN organizations actually. Basically, it was just one thing that led to another. So, the first feature led to the second feature, second feature led to the third feature and meantime I have all these commercial jobs and documentary jobs in between. And this is two and a half years ago.

I came back to Denmark, because my visa had expired, and the rule is that you have to go back and apply from your home country. Then this Danish film maker contacts me and says:

"Hey, I saw your film, the VistaVision one. That was really cool and I was wondering, can we do at short film on film?"

I said "sure", and it actually started as a Super 16 project, but I thought that 35mm was a more appropriate format. That was Simon [Wasiolek] and we went out and did this short film "Diamant Pigen" on 35mm film. It was all photochemical post[production], there is no digital intermediate. All old school and surprisingly, I don't think it has been done in Denmark for a while. I don't know how long, but film has, as a capture format, been phased out [in Denmark]. I believe that we were one of the first to shoot film again and specifically with photochemical printing. Then we couldn't find a loader, because all of the people who used to load film, were now first AC's and they didn't want to go down and load film again. Literally we looked everywhere and finally found this person who had no experience loading film. We taught her, and did a little workshop with her. She was great and she did really well. That was "Diamant Pigen", which is coming out this year on film.
 

Cinematographer Ben Brahem Ziryab in Nyhavn, Copenhagen, 10. May 2019 inspecting a clip of 70mm film. Picture by Thomas Hauerslev

THa: How did you become involved with the 65mm short film "Daughter of Dismay"?

Ben: That is interesting. Let me go back to my student short "The Negative". One Austrian guy saw it and thought "Well, this is kind of interesting". And he was at the time planning to do a 65mm project. I don't know how he thought of that. It was kind of an art project, essentially, and he wanted to do something different. Originally it was conceived in black and white, which we ended up not doing, because you can't actually get that in 65 except on special order. But it began as a 65mm black and white short film, with him shooting his own material. He is a director, but I mean his style is so visual and so specific, he operates his own camera and he likes to shoot his own stuff. For him to have a cinematographer was not something he had done before. He saw "The Negative", and when he saw that, he contacted me and said he was interested in how I did the film. I tried to explain to him what I did, and the format, and the challenges we just talked about. From there he was, pretty quickly, he said, "You know, what do you think about 65mm?" We had a discussion about that. We share a passion about film, the grain structure and we had similar interests in terms of the filmmakers we liked and the kind of visuals that we respond to. From that conversation he pretty much hired me, and a month later I was in Austria shooting 65mm film. Which was interesting because we had originally wanted to do it as a conventional 5­perf project.

But something made us reconsider, and moved us away from "conventional" when we saw the locations. We saw the height of the mountains and the trees in the forest. We saw all these different things that were really above the 2,20:1 frame, and we thought it would be a shame to lose all that. Plus we thought this was a short film that would lend itself to that visual experience that you get by watching it on the biggest screen possible, which is the Imax format, which is essentially 1,43:1. It is square­ish, but I wouldn't really call it a square. It is kind of a square, very tall which is nice and you feel like you are sitting close to the screen and you kind of feel that you are in the movie. It is very visual and we thought "Well, that could be a very interesting option", so we ended up deciding,

"­, well, what if we shoot it in that aspect ratio? Then we make two different versions of the film. Make a version that is 2,20 for the 70mm screens and we make one for the Imax screens?"

James said "Let's do that". We did look at 15­perf, which is the Imax format, 15-perf, 65mm film. For budget reasons we thought that that was just a little bit too expensive. We found this other format which has actually not been used very much. It is 8­perf, 65mm, but instead of the film going horizontally [like IMAX] it actually goes vertically, like 5­perf and we thought "Well, this is kind of an interesting medium", and 8­perf 65's projection aspect ratio is actually very similar to the 1,43:1 Imax. So, you could release it in both formats without breaking the bank, essentially. We looked into it and we talked to Andrew [Oran, FotoKem] and he said there are only few theatres left in the world that still do 8­perf projection, so it is not growing, unfortunately.


THa: How did you find the camera, because Fries Engineering is not in business anymore?

Ben: No, they are not in business now. I think that the main guy is still alive, but I'm not sure. But he still exists, is what I have heard. It is interesting: what happened to all this [camera] stuff? Anyway, we found this 8­perf 65mm camera from a giant screen filmmaker who is a friend of Andrew Oran. He had made two 8­perf 70mm films in the UK on the British countryside ["Rheged: The Lost Kingdom"].


THa: What is the story in "Daughter of Dismay"?

Ben: Daughter of Dismay tells the surreal and mystical tale of an emotionally broken witch. She enters the darkness of the woods to fulfill her biggest desire, for which she takes extreme and radical measures that will have sinister consequences. Portrayed in elegant painting-like images, the film is an epic, moving and emotional trip through a world of witchcraft and occultism, leading to a heartbreaking and melancholic finale.
 

The news about Magellan 65 have created attention from Hollywood to Frederikshavn. Seen here with Ben Brahem Ziryab (with the Magellan 65) and (from left) Tommy Madsen, Orla Nielsen, Ben, producer William Lindhardt and director Simon Wasiolek. Picture: Ben Brahem Ziryab

THa: Have you shot with any other 65mm cameras lately?

Ben: Yes, I have been shooting with a 5-perf 65mm Fries AP65 camera which is a very lovely camera and one of only three in the world. It’s like a fine Swiss watch. I’m currently using Hasselblad lenses but the lens board is interchangeable.


THa: How do you see the future of 65mm photography in the motion picture industry?

Ben: I am seeing it being more popular than ... I don't want to say ever, but staying with us for a looong time. It has kind of come back a little bit and we are seeing Chris Nolan doing it almost exclusively for his 70mm productions, releasing them on film and lobbying to keep theaters open and showing film. You are seeing prints getting made, even digital films being transferred to 70mm film and shown in 70mm. I think that there is a revived interest in the format, and it is part the counterrevolution to Netflix, you know. It is getting viewed in the theaters again and having that experience and 70mm in Imax and these things are part of it. It is about getting people back in the theater and seeing it on the biggest screen possible. Yet it is still a format reserved for only the very top budgets and will probably always remain that way.


THa: Are there any other of your colleagues that are as enthusiastic about it as you are?

Ben: Generally this whole Ethos of films, not just large formats, but the whole Ethos of film on film, is getting more popular, so that a number of people I know are getting more interested. Yes, there are a lot of filmmakers I know who are getting interested in pursuing it. I think it has come back a little bit and I hope it stays that way.


THa: What are your thoughts on the new Danish Magellan 65 camera?

Ben: I think that one of the problems of 65mm has been the lack of cameras. There are only a few cameras around. I love the idea of the Magellan camera and taking the best of both worlds. Taking the best of the film world, which is 65mm film and it has merged that with digital features, like wi­fi and Bluetooth and these are wonderful enhancements through digital technologies. So, they married that with the wonderful texture and beauty of film. I love what they are doing, but I also know that making a 65mm camera from the ground up is no easy feat. I think it takes a lot to withstand all that massive force and vibration going through a camera, especially over periods of time. I hope that they are successful, and it’s always wonderful to see a 65mm camera made in Denmark.

The big thing is, will Kodak stick around, and will the FotoKem lab stick around? Five years ago, they were this close to losing film all together. Kodak basically said

"Well, we are going to be not doing film anymore"

So that would have been the death of film, and the labs face the same problem. We were this close to losing film, and now we have multiple labs processing film. I have a positive feeling. I am optimistic.

THa: Since you have been working with 65mm, have you received any comments from your colleagues?

Ben: No never.

THa: Never?!

Ben: I am just kidding. There have been some comments of course. I mean, after I finished the VistaVision project, people contacted me, asking me

"How do I get the camera?" and "How do I load the film in the camera".

People became interested in VistaVision and reached out to me after that film - film for one, and secondly every time I go to show the film, I get tons of interesting questions. It is wonderful. It really inspires people, especially my generation. They didn't grow up with film, per se, I mean, we might have seen film, when we were really young, but we didn't really grow up with shooting on film. I think that my generation and new generations as well, will experience the film experience much differently than maybe your generation. They see it as something more interesting and certainly different than digital. Because it is not what they are used to. It is different.