What is vista vision and how did it help the star war movie?

Answer 1

VistaVision was a motion picture film format created by Paramount. It was a method of running 35mm film sideways through a camera instead of vertically, so that the images were exposed length-parallel to the film. This allowed very widescreen movies (as wide as 2.00:1) to be shot on 35mm film without specially made lenses for both camera and projector. It allowed very high quality, fine-grain exposures, but to show in regular theaters it was usually copied back onto regular vertically spooled 35mm film, since special projection equipment was needed to run the film horizontally at a fast enough speed. Therefore, it was only popular for a few years.

Until Star Wars, that is. Since Star Wars had to do a lot of blue screen compositing, and since compositing shots introduces more grain with each layer, ILM needed as fine a grain image as possible for all the effects shots. They decided to shoot the special effects with VistaVision cameras. When these shots were composited, they were composited on regular, vertically spooled film, to match the rest of the movie.

For years after Star Wars, VistaVision was used to shoot special effects. These days, effects shots can be composited digitally. This means that there is no extra grain introduced since the shots aren't rephotographed over and over. So, VistaVision isn't as popular anymore. Some movies still used it, though, like Inception.