Given the production’s commitment to a DI, Lubezki decided to employ another tactic that would help him render the sharpest and fullest image possible: shooting with Panaflex Platinums in full-aperture 4-perf Super 35mm, with the plan to later extract and reduce from the 0.980"x0.735" image area to achieve a final 1.85:1 composition. This process, known as “Super 1.85,” would give his original image area an increase of about 30 percent over the 0.825"x0.446" standard projection aperture. Like many cinematographers, Lubezki has frequently used Super 35 in this manner for increased resolution while shooting TV commercials, because working without any need for prints or soundtrack space makes it an ideal choice. “I think you can really feel the difference in the increased negative size,” says Lubezki, who also shot The Cat in the Hat and The Assassination of Richard Nixon in Super 1.85.

During the 1980s, a number of filmmakers experimented with shooting in Super 1.85 for reduction prints on theatrical films, but the required optical-printing step negated any gain of using the larger negative and resulted in an edgy image quality that actually enhanced apparent grain (though it did result in improved 70mm prints). Today, however, the advent of the DI has given this use of Super 35 a new life.

Lubezki’s Super 1.85 approach on Snicket prompted concerns about optics, because he wondered if the outer edges and corners of the format’s exposure area — generally discarded in the standard Super 35 process when the frame is cropped to 2.40:1 — might not seem as sharp or contrasty as the area covered by the “best” part of the lens. As he notes, any such differences would probably be invisible on even the largest TV screen, but they might create a problem on even a medium-sized theatrical screen. “I did many tests and couldn’t see any loss of quality,” Lubezki maintains. “After going all the way through the DI, working at 2K and outputting it to film, we did comparison tests with standard 1.85, and everybody thought Super 1.85 looked slightly better.”

Asked to discuss the issue of edge-to-edge image sharpness in Super 1.85, ASC associate member Tak Miyagishima, Panavision’s senior vice president of engineering, offers, “The ‘best’ part of the lens — the center — is dictated by of the laws of physics. As you move from the center of any lens, there’s going to be illumination falloff. However, the longer the lens, the more illumination you will retain in the corners; conversely, the shorter the lens, the greater the loss. We took that into account when we designed the Primo lenses and tried to improve the light transmission to the corners. With older, non-Primo lenses, there is a stop-loss in the corners — sometimes a dramatic stop-loss, as well as distortion and more breathing — but we’ve corrected that with the Primos, so they would be the lenses best-suited for that use of Super 35.” He adds that working at the bottom of the lens, as Lubezki often does, will accentuate the performance limitations of any cinema optics: “Most lenses were designed to offer their best performance between a T2.8 and T4, but every cinematographer knows this and works with that limitation.”

“I would have loved to work with more depth of field,” Lubezki admits, “but the storybook look we were after is very closely related to and dependent upon the effects of depth of field; when you start to see too much, you lose that quality. I would have loved to shoot at a T2.8, just to have enough depth to allow the actors to feel where they were and tie them to their backgrounds. But I also liked to separate them with depth of field to be able to focus a little more on their faces.”

Lubezki shot Snicket with extremely wide lenses in part to “relate the actors to the background,” but he notes that “when you’re on a wide lens but very close to the actors, the audience will feel that closeness. I disagree with people who say you should shoot close-ups with a very long lens in order to feel close to the actors. You’re not close, and it feels artificial. On Snicket, we were 4 inches from some of our actors, including the babies, and it was fantastic to see their reactions.” The Primo 21mm became Lubezki’s “normal” lens, “but we used a 14mm sometimes, and we basically shot the entire film with 21mm, 27mm and 40mm lenses. The 40mm was our telephoto lens for close-ups, accent shots or any shot where we just couldn’t physically get any closer to the subject. So even though we were working at low stops, using the wide lenses also gave us a bit more depth.”

Footage from Snicket suggests that Lubezki sought a formal, symmetrical look for the picture. “It’s very formal in the sense that we never used a handheld camera or Steadicam, and we tried to keep the camera moves strictly on the Z axis — very straight, with the camera just moving in or out,” he says. “I believe the camera cannot be ‘funny,’ especially when it’s moving all over the place. It’s funny in, say, Wes Anderson’s movies because it’s static, which becomes funny because it defies expectation or plays against the emotion. But if you’re trying to be funny by zooming the camera around, it just doesn’t work. And if you do it all the time, it’s even less funny. We tried to use movement in specific ways at the right times to accent certain things. We also didn’t use a lot of pans, so the look of the film is what I would call ‘geometrical.’ This was partly inspired by Brad, because he always talked about ‘storybook framing.’ The film looks a bit like an illustration in a children’s book.”

With his approach and tools largely set, Lubezki was ready to begin production with the aid of his crew, including Buckley, key grip Mike Gunderson, operator George Billinger, first AC Harry Zimmerman and loader Todd Avery. Set in a completely stylized world, Snicket was always intended to be a completely stagebound production, but “what’s so impressive is that a film of this size would normally go to Canada or Europe for budgetary reasons, but we shot it in Los Angeles,” says Lubezki. “We also had to find enough space for all of our sets, which are as big as they are amazing.” With obvious affection, he adds, “I just couldn’t believe we were making this movie in Los Angeles, which meant I could have the best gaffer, key grip and camera crew in the world.”

Shooting began in November 2003 on stages at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. These sets were primarily extensive interiors, including Olaf’s morose-looking mansion, which called for two separate soundstages to have a permanent dividing wall that could be removed, thus allowing the spaces to be joined together. Although Heinrichs’ sets were imaginative and beautifully detailed, they also proved to be “incredibly hard to light,” Lubezki says, noting that the production designer had worked on the picture long before he was hired. “When I arrived, Rick had tons of material and designs for me, much more than I’m used to. The sets were so gigantic that they were built literally to the rafters, and to light them with big, soft sources without any room — well, it was complicated. And with our wide lenses, we were afraid we’d see all the ceilings. We originally thought we could conceal the ceilings with smoke the way we did on Sleepy Hollow, and I think Rick really counted on that plan. Unfortunately, though, the kind of smoke we used on that film, which we shot in London, is illegal to use in the States, and when we tested American smoke, it didn’t work the same way. It wouldn’t cloud in the ceiling; it just went everywhere.”