Yeoman shot Asteroid City using an ARRICAM ST 35mm film camera, variously framing the action in 1.37:1 aspect ratio using Cooke S4 lenses and 2.40:1 with ARRI Master Anamorphics.
They chose Cooke S4 lenses for the 1.37 black-and-white spherical sequences, having been impressed by how they rendered actors' faces on previous productions. For the 2.40 colour sequences Yeoman worked with ARRI Anamorphic lenses which he and Anderson also used on past films.
The film is interspersed with 4:3 monochrome television aspect ratio snippets, wherein Cranston's host dryly explains the making of the play we are viewing, regarding the writer, director, and cast, and their various behind-the-scenes dramas.
Famous international filmmakers like Robert Bresson and Yasujiro Ozu also preferred the 50mm and would make adjustments to their sets to accommodate the lens.
The Making of Desert Town, Asteroid City - Shot On KODAK 35mm Film
Is 50mm closest to the human eye?
On a 35mm film camera, or Full Frame Digital camera, something around 50mm gives a similar perspective to the human eye, but it gives a narrower field of view.
DP Robert Yeoman ASC used KODAK 35mm color/B&W film to deliver a striking result on Wes Anderson's 'Asteroid City' (L to R) Steve Carell and Liev Schreiber in writer/director Wes Anderson's ASTEROID CITY, a Focus Features release.
Asteroid City (or "Asteroid City") is a 2023 American comedy-drama film written, directed, and produced by Wes Anderson, from a story he wrote with Roman Coppola.
We shot anamorphic color film in the desert. I was a bit concerned at the start because we were shooting in Spain in the middle of summer. The light can be very harsh and unforgiving.
Per The Numbers, "Asteroid City" pulled in just shy of $43,000 over Labor Day weekend domestically, which was just enough to put it over the top. It now sits at $28.1 million domestically to go with $22.4 million internationally for a grand total of $50.5 million.
Yeoman: Wes originally came to me, and he said his concept was to shoot everything in Asteroid City with natural light—so no movie lights. We constructed these structures with the skylights that we could control a little bit with silks, so that we wouldn't have to use any movie lights.
What are the black-and-white scenes in Asteroid City?
These scenes, shot in black-and-white and Academy ratio, are a performance, too — they're presented as dramatizations for the television program that's broadcasting the live production of Asteroid City.
While a spherical lens has a consistently curved surface (like a sphere), an anamorphic lens is shaped more like an oval. This asymmetrical curve produces an image that looks more compressed in width and more stretched in height — what's called a "squeeze factor."
Asteroid City would not work if it was a CGI green-screen situation. It needed to be tangible for such an outlandish script and characters. The grounding of a real place helped that. While the script may seem a bit bloated and convoluted in some places, Anderson uses that to his advantage.
Where is Asteroid City? Adam Stockhausen: The movie was shot outside of Madrid, Spain. Asteroid City itself is in a farm field about halfway between the little town of Chinchón and the next town over, Colmenar de Oreja.
The film was shot on the Arricam LT and Arricam ST with Cooke S4 and Zeiss Master Anamorphic Lenses. It's a Wes Anderson flick, which means a planimetric composition with room-to-room tracking shots and whip pans that usually provide a comedic reveal or some kind of periscope effect.
One that many eagle-eyed viewers may notice was the regular switching of aspect ratios during various scenes, often going from 1.85:1, the most common aspect ratio in film, to 4:3, an older but still visually appealing aspect ratio.
Nominated for Nothing: The Academy didn't wake up to Asteroid City because it couldn't fall asleep. Wes Anderson's latest feature deserved more consideration from the Oscars.
The alien spaceship was fabricated as miniatures not CGI and the alien is a three-foot high stop-motion puppet, animated by Kim Keukelerie, and based on a performance by Geoff Goldblum acting in alien costume.
Sex, Romance & Nudity. Full-frontal nudity of a fragmented female body (head out of frame). Through a window, a teen watches her mother have sex, which is depicted by showing the moment before activity occurs, with a close-up of the mom's bare feet on the bed next to a man standing above her. Kissing.
Pastel colors flow freely throughout the film, drenching the entire cinematic landscape in hues of soft pinks, tranquil blues, and soothing greens. Anderson has always used color to tell his stories, but never before have the shades themselves taken such an active role.
Hitchcock did it with Psycho – shot entirely on a 50mm lens, but he was far from the first or the last. Notable classic examples include iconic films like Chinatown or Tokyo Story, and modern day examples would include The Royal Tennenbaums or Birdman.
The 35mm lens provides a wider field of view than a 50mm lens without nearly as much distortion as a 24mm lens. This allows 35mm lenses to perform as a wide angle lens when desired and also a standard lens if needed.
