Let's rewind the clock a little, shall we? Rewind it back to the year 2021 when the coveted & illustrious vision of Zack Snyder's Justice League finally became available to the world and graced my eyelids.
This was a glorious moment for me as I fucks hard with this Movie (hard language will be used to describe my unbridled love for this man's interpretation of the DC Universe). This was also the same time when his zombie film, Army of the Dead, was just on the cusp of being released.
Zack Snyder not only released two movies in 1 year, but he also promoted the hell out of them and from it was a beautiful collection of portraits crafted for the release of Justice League.
These photos portrayed the cast as their respective characters in the Knightmare reality, and each character was gorgeously captured by Zack Snyder with the beautiful lens that is the Canon 50mm F/0.95, aka the Dream Lens. Absolutely in awe by these photos, the texture, the creaminess, the bokeh goodness; they're nothing short of visually arresting. Not too long later, the trailer for Army of the Dead released, and once again, I was visually arrested by the mixture of beauty and horror.
Never have I been so fascinated by seeing zombies rendered in gorgeous shallow depth of field. After watching that trailer for about 4 times that day and scouring every inch of Snyder's Vero account [Decent app, but not for me] for more details on the mythical lens.
!st shot after getting the lens
I eventually found out there was a dream lens available at the camera shop I worked and I immediately jumped at the chance to bother my manager about letting me borrow it. After enough harassment and crying on the subject, they caved in and gave me the weekend to borrow it. Yay!
I hit up the sexy Mexican Charlie’s Angel himself, Mr. Jersain, for a Sunday afternoon of testing the Dream Lens.
Da Mexican Charlie’s Angel, Jersain
Now with most lens tests I do the point is to get a feel for the character and rendering of the glass with my camera. I’m not one for scientific tests because A.) It’s boring B.) It’s not interesting C.) It's not fun. (Very non-rational reasons) At the end of the day, the point is to make moving images that evoke feelings and reactions. I want to say it was this year the desire to create some sort of story in my tests started to neander around my thoughts. Even though we are two adult dudes, we are very silly man-children messing around on the playground. The footage are a bunch of random shots by themselves, but by re-purposing the footage to portray a loose story [emphasis on loose] accompanied by a bumpin track by Wax, this arranges the footage in the context of a narrative. The close-up shots of Jersain looking out in the distance could be a moment of longing rather than just a pretty shot of Jersain lookin sexy, either works, but there's still something being emoted through the images arranged into a sequence of events.
It took seconds for me to fall in love with this lens. The way it renders the face in close-ups is remarkable; the way a person is encapsulated by these gigantic pearls of light feels as though you're looking inside a jewel. There's no point in playing with a lens that opens to F/0.95 and stopping it down for any reason. Any other lens can stop down, but a lens that opens all the way to F/0.95 is bonkers and just the kind of quality that I’m drawn to. Slap an ND on it, set the camera to the lowest ISO, and keep it pushin.
Taking that responsibility in creating an image, let alone a film with that approach, is what got me excited about Zack Snyder's reason for shooting Army of the Dead that way. A directorial and stylistic choice that was executed from beginning to end. After this test and getting the footage put together in the video you see up top, I absolutely made this lens an official part of my arsenal. I couldn't pass this lens up. The moment it became my lens, I knew I was going to make a film with it. Just like Snyder, I’d make a directorial and stylistic choice to film a narrative from beginning to end with this lens.
Fast forward to today, currently working on Of Little Dreams and Odysseys with that exact intent, but that's a story for another time.
Still from Of Little Dreams and Odysseys Lens test
Hope you Enjoy
-Andrew