Dan Mindel, ASC, BSC is known for his preference for 35mm anamorphic cinematography. In fact, he knows the serial numbers of his favorite Panavision anamorphic lenses by heart, and knows exactly how each lens will affect a given photographic subject.

“When I look through an anamorphic lens, it just feels very natural and human to me because the field of view is so wide,” he says. “The glass in these lenses that we’ve been using for the last 30 or 40 years was cut by hand, so there are imperfections. The light does unimaginable things when it hits those aberrations. An unquantifiable magic happens, and I love that. It’s one of the tools we use to sell the illusion.”

With the action happening just down the street from our corporate headquarters here in Rochester, we jumped at the opportunity to meet and talk with the team tasked with capturing the action for this latest installment in the Spider-Man saga.

Cinematographer Bruce McCleery took time out of a packed shooting schedule to speak with Andrew Evenski, president and general manager of Kodak’s Entertainment and Commercial Films Group. Everyone we talked with expressed how great it was to be shooting in Rochester, the home of Kodak.

Cinematographer Daniel Mindel, ASC, BSC is shooting director Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which is shooting entirely in New York, including Kodak’s hometown of Rochester. Mindel, whose credits include Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, Savages, Mission: Impossible III and Domino, is known for a strong preference for shooting anamorphic 35 mm film, or larger film formats like IMAX and 8-perf 65 mm.

The first installment of the Amazing Spider-Man was shot in native 3D using digital cameras. “On The Amazing Spider-Man 2, they hired me because they wanted to go back to shooting film,” says Mindel. “Marc Webb had seen Star Trek and liked the way it looked. We are halfway through the Spider-Man 2 shoot, and it’s looking really good.”

Columbia Pictures is currently shooting sequences of The Amazing Spider-Man™ 2 in Kodak’s hometown of Rochester, New York. The comic book sequel is directed by Marc Webb, photographed by Daniel Mindel, ASC, BSC, and is being shot on KODAK VISION3 Color Negative Film.

“We’re thrilled to welcome the cast and crew of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to the hometown of motion picture film,” says Andrew Evenski, president and general manager of Kodak’s Entertainment and Commercial Films Group. “Our company is at the very heart of the entertainment industry, so it’s great to see Rochester have the opportunity to host a little bit of Hollywood here.”

With the democratization of filmmaking spreading worldwide over the last decade, it takes real ingenuity to stand out amongst the crowd. Rising animator and director Marieka Walsh broke through with her sand-animated stop-motion short film last year, which has since screened at over 40 festivals worldwide and has won the Australia Academy of Television Arts (AACTA) and Dendy Awards in its respective category.

It’s not that sand stop-motion hasn’t been done before; it’s just not done often because it takes an inordinate amount of time to do as well as a very particular set of skills to do it well.