you might want to kick back and grab a drink because in this video we'll look at the focal lens preferred and used by 25 great directors now just because a director prefers or likes a particular focal length doesn't mean he or she won't change it when the situation calls for it also directors might change their preferences as their careers's progress some directors like to use just one focal length for an entire movie other directors makes all kinds of focal lens within a single scene because that works best for them why are focal length important to keep keep it simple all you need to remember is that different focal lens help tell stories differently it's a powerful tool in cinematography as we'll see many great directors don't neglect this powerful aspect of Storytelling let's start with the greatest of the greats Orson Wells Orson well shot much of Citizen Cane with a 25mm lens which isn't that wide to begin with but that's what he used to get his deep focus and Majestic blocking over long takes he took the skill to its highest with a touch of eil most of which was shot on an 18 mm lens where he used it to great effect to widen spaces and distort faces mostly his own focal lens don't mean much without the format it's used for Citizen Kane was shot in Academy but Touch of Evil was cropped for 1.85 to1 from an academy frame I've written an article on the 35mm equivalent that I link to below for the purposes of this video all you need to remember is that if you crop the top and bottom to maintain the same horizontal angle your composition will change if you take the camera back to include these details you'll need to fill in more of the scene from the sides you have to decide whether you want to give preference to the horizontal change or the vertical change and then find the equivalent focal length for the format you are filming in to keep things simple in this video I'll convert the crop factor for its horizontal Dimension to a fullframe 36x 24 mm sensor I'll also mention the general format as in 1 .85 to1 can be cropped from many formats as Wells did In Touch of Evil by cropping from the academy frame however in modern film 1.85 to1 is super 35 mm which has different dimensions if you want more specific details please feel free to Google the films and the directors on IMDb or elsewhere Jean Pier Janette is also a huge fan of extreme wide angle lenses and camera movement in the tradition of Sergio Leone he's most happy with an 18 mm and 25 mm lens on super 35 mm he used the lad focal length for most of delicate tesin on Alien Resurrection he went even wider as wide as 14 mm to make the sets more imposing mik katov used mostly wide-angle lenses in his Masterpiece of soy Cuba and the cranes are flying for soy Cuba he used a 9.8 mm K optic for 90% of the film and the other lens was just an 18 mm which he used like a normal or telephoto lens few people would call 18 mm a telephoto next we have Roman palansky who shot most of Rosemary's Baby on a 25mm lens he also used the anamorphic format a lot most notable being the 40 mm lens on Chinatown I link to a video explaining the anamorphic format in the description but the equivalent focal length on anamorphic lenses is not the same as spherical lenses also both anamorphic and super 35mm widescreen have an aspect ratio of 2.39 to1 but the focal lens will not give the same field of view on both formats in the anamorphic format you get the wide angle of view but the compression of the actual focal length in other words a 40 mm looks like a 40 mm but is as wide as a 24 mm or thereabouts keep this in mind when you make your calculations let's talk about a couple of directors who prefer wide fields of view in the anamorphic format one of the most popular today being Wes Anderson who prefers a 40 mm lens or even wider sometimes like a 27 mm lens in the Royal Tannon bombs and The Grand Budapest Hotel another popular director who uses anamorphic lenses today is Quenton Tarantino even though he uses all kinds of focal lens he prefers The Wider ones like the 40 or 50 mm lens now let's talk about three directors who moved away from anamorphic to spherical the first is Christopher Nolan Nolan used a 75 mm anamorphic lens for most of momento and insomnia considering the crop factor that works out to be about 60 mm on a full-frame camera with Batman he continued to use anamorphic but went wider to accommodate the large set now that he has shifted to filming in 65 mm for IMAX his go-to focal length is 50 mm for normal shots and 80 mm for close-ups another director who has moved away from anamorphic is Ridley Scott he typically likes the telephoto range he too began his career shooting anamorphic and stuck to lenses 75 mm and above he also preferred zoom lenses later on he gave up the anamorphic format and has since then shot spherically and cropped for widescreen like with the Gladiator recently though he has moved on to large format which is what he shot Napoleon with the third director who moved away from anamorphic is Terence mik he shot A Thin Red Line in anamorphic with a 40 or 50 mm lens the close-ups were 75 and 100 mm for Tree of Life they shot super 35 with a lens range of 14 to 27 mm on his latest film a hidden life Malik went even wider with 12 mm as his main lens and 16 mm as his coat unquote longer lens they also went as wide as 8 mm on this film to continue with the sperical format next up is Steven Spielberg who reportedly sees the world in 21 mm when filming super 35 he uses a wide angle pretty much like Orson Wells and it can be argued his blocking technique is probably the best the world has ever seen he only tries out the focal lens if the 21 mm doesn't work another director who prefers the 21 mm lens is Tim Burton he tends to stay in the 21 to 50 mm range and occasionally uses long lenses for variety Martin scores he prefers wides as well mostly the 25mm lens or even wider though he too makes exceptions like he did for the king of comedy where he almost exclusively used the 32mm lens or for Raging Bull where he used telephoto lenses for some shots to separate them psychologically from other similar moments and killers of the flower Moon scar sayi used the anamorphic format we finish with the Cohen Brothers who love the 27 mm lens they generally stick to between 25 to 40 mm and also use the 32mm lens with Roger Deacons on the super 35mm widescreen format David Cronenberg sticks to one lens per movie like he did for existence where he shot the entire movie on a 27 mm lens on the super 35mm flat format another David prefers a 27 mm lens as well and goes by the name of David Fincher though he often also uses mid-range and even T aoto lenses to mix things up he shoots on RED cameras and the sensors typically tend to be slightly great ler than super 35 mm the aspect ratio is mostly 2.39 to1 or at least widescreen as in the case of M which was 2.2 to1 it's not uncommon for some great directors to prefer a single focal length over others but it's not easy practically within the constraints imposed by production Francis for CA stuck to a 40 mm lens for most of the Godfather the one can argue it was more due to the influence of Gordon Willis on Apocalypse Now they used all kinds of of lenses considering the nature of the production Alfred Hitchcock preferred the 50 mm lens on Academy which is about an 85 mimet equivalent on full frame the Great Master of suspense strongly preferred a natural field of view and strived to make his actors look good in the latter half of his career when he was churning out his great masterpieces he preferred to use a 50mm lens and had the luxury of having sets built for him to match its field of view the directors mention this video have shot in various formats like Academy super 35 anamorphic and so on to find the equivalent focal length to the system you're using I'll link to my article so you can learn to make your own calculations let's end the discussion on the 50mm lens with two directors who stuck to it for entire movies Robert Bron being one big name and the other being yazu jira U who went to great lens to create sets to accommodate the 50 mm lens and its compressed frame unlike well or Spielberg U hardly ever moved the camera he too shot in the academy format there's a lot of confusion about which focal length resembles the human eye is it a 35 mm or a 50 mm or 27 or whatever or is it a 50 mm lens in the anamorphic format or in the large format it's not an easy question to answer and the best way is to use different focal lens and see what your eyes agree with finally we move on to Long lenses Ridley Scott is one modern director who prefers long lenses probably the most popular Director people associate with long lenses is Akira kurava I've already made an extensive video and article on the focal lens he used so I'll briefly mention he preferred yde to mid-range lenses from about 35 to 50 mm on Academy and only occasionally use telephoto lenses as a sort of extreme compression like with red beard and dreams however 50 mm in Academy translates to 85 mm in full frame which most photographers was classify as a telephoto focal length I found it's better to use the focal lens in formats than to use loose terms like wide medium and telephoto now we come to the last three names on the list the first is Sydney lumit as far as I know Sydney is the first director to extensively document his use of focal lens as a storytelling tool in his book making movies he used all kinds of focal lens from y to telephoto he changed focal lens in different parts of the movie to separate them visually carefully designing the look to convey particular emotions just to be clear many directors before Sydney have done the same thing so in that respect he's not a Pioneer if you don't have a particular preference of focal length but just want to learn how to use all kinds of lenses for suggestive power you need to study his work he picked lenses as a painter picks color the next director we're going to look at not only changed lenses and focal lens for storytelling but even went to great lens to have custom design lenses for him Stanley cubric famously used a Custom Modified 50mm f. 7 lens designed originally for NASA for lowl light shots on Barry lyen he also had a wide-angle adapter made for it to get it to about 37.5 mm cubric also used extreme wides like the kopic 9.8 mm lens for scenes in the Clockwork Orange and the shining his signature technique was his long Zoom from closeup to wide Shelf for which he had a custommade cine Pro 24 to 480 mm T9 zoom lens Stanley cubric actually owned most of his equipment and even carried it in a custom van to the set on the holdo he preferred wide-angle lenses mostly the 18 mm finally we have James Cameron who uses non-traditional lenses and customdesign cameras for his T pole films he has earned the luxury of experimenting technically in a way no other filmmaker can afford to maybe except for Christopher Nolan as far as focal lens are concerned he sticks to the medium range most times there you have it 25 directors and their favorite focal lens check out the article I wrote for this video it has all the details if you want to take a look thank you for watching now zoom in to this next video