{"id":475590,"date":"2026-05-09T00:48:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T00:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/475590\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T00:48:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T00:48:14","slug":"wuthering-heights-dp-linus-sandgren-talks-vistavisions-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/475590\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Wuthering Heights’ DP Linus Sandgren Talks VistaVision\u2019s Revival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWuthering Heights<\/a> cinematographer Linus Sandgren<\/a> lets the story dictate the format.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs much as the Swedish DP may enjoy shooting in IMAX, Emerald Fennell<\/a>\u2019s vision for her reimagining of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s seminal novel had a different ambition than the one he fulfilled for Denis Villeneuve<\/a> on Dune: Part Three<\/a>. The writer-director wanted her tragic period romance starring Margot Robbie (Cathy Earnshaw) and Jacob Elordi (Heathcliff) to have a tactile, impressionistic quality, hence the decision to shoot the majority of the piece on standard 35 mm film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it came to landscape shots of the Yorkshire Moors \u2014\u00a0as well as wide interior shots involving Edgar Linton\u2019s (Shazad Latif) decadent manor \u2014\u00a0the filmmakers sought a higher resolution for the sake of detail, but without sacrificing film grain. Neither standard 65 mm nor IMAX were going to uphold both of those requirements. Thus, Sandgren and Fennell opted for VistaVision, a large 35 mm film format that presents high resolution and just enough grain to maintain continuity with the rest of the film\u2019s 3-perf 35 mm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEach format will affect the emotions, and there\u2019s a huge difference to me within the film formats. We tested 65, but Emerald was missing the grain, so we went for 35 to see the grain,\u201d the Oscar-winning Sandgren tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Wuthering Heights\u2019 4K release. \u201cOur technical reason for VistaVision was to capture the landscape shots in a high resolution [with a finer grain] because they include small details that you want to see better. Basically, all real exteriors and wide-shot interiors were VistaVision.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis particular system had a dominant run in the 1950s, but then it fell by the wayside until Brady Corbet\u2019s The Brutalist seemingly brought it back in 2024. Since then, VistaVision has been used in Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s Oscar-winning One Battle After Another<\/a>, Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019 Bugonia and upcoming films from Alejandro <\/strong>Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu (Digger), M. Night Shyamalan (Remain) and Greta Gerwig (Narnia: The Magician\u2019s Nephew). In a time where moviegoing is on shakier ground, VistaVision, like IMAX, offers a marketable large format that promises a unique moviegoing experience compared to the majority of today\u2019s films and series shot on digital.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Sandgren, its image clarity is a key selling point for filmmakers who\u2019ve become enamored with digital\u2019s sharpness. \u201cPeople started shooting digital, and they got used to the sharp quality of the image. So directors who like the sharpness of shooting on digital cameras can maintain that very sharp image with film formats like VistaVision,\u201d Sandgren says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for December\u2019s Dune: Part Three, Sandgren did opt for strategic use of IMAX cameras to achieve the scope and scale that Villeneuve envisioned for his trilogy capper. He\u2019d previously applied the camera to select sequences in First Man and No Time to Die. Compared to VistaVision, IMAX provides a larger and even clearer image, but it generally lacks the texture that comes with the former.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSandgren has provided a great deal of feedback to IMAX as part of their ongoing efforts to refine its technology, but he\u2019s yet to use the modernized camera system that Christopher Nolan and DP Hoyte van Hoytema deployed for the entirety of their upcoming epic, The Odyssey. The historical knock against the IMAX camera is that it\u2019s heavy and noisy, preventing use during dialogue scenes. However, IMAX finally solved the problem ahead of The Odyssey\u2019s shoot by surrounding the camera with a sound blimp or a box-like encasement. Sandgren admits he\u2019s intrigued by the possibility of shooting an entire film with an IMAX camera, but he will still let the script govern all format decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI absolutely love films that are epic and big and use IMAX correctly. Some films shouldn\u2019t be IMAX, and some films should be IMAX. We used it a lot on Dune: Part Three,\u201d Sandgren says. \u201cOf course, you want those IMAX cameras to be quiet, and we have all offered input on their new cameras to try to make them quieter. Still, a blimp is needed, and it\u2019s as cumbersome as it looks. It\u2019s a complicated device. Maybe there are AI ways of somehow filtering [the noise], but you want the authenticity of the audio as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Nolan and van Hoytema, Sandgren champions celluloid, having used it across all his other feature films that preceded Wuthering Heights. He\u2019s open to digital if the situation calls for it, but most of all, he just wants filmmakers to have every tool available to them. Shooting on film can often be a tough sell to studios and financiers given the additional expense and processing time involved. The director of photography alludes to one instance where he was put through the wringer to secure film stock, but he\u2019s largely been lucky to have supportive collaborators. When the subject of cost comes up, he indicates that there are creative ways to pull it off if the desire is there.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been in situations where I had to pitch to the studio, by myself, why we should shoot on film and not digital. Once, I had already talked with the director and the studio about shooting on film, and then suddenly they pulled that back. So it felt like a breach of contract, in my opinion,\u201d Sandgren shares. \u201cObviously, you need to compromise to make the budget work. But if you open your eyes across all departments, then perhaps there\u2019s a way to save the money that film costs in production.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSandgren\u2019s parting words restate his philosophy that a film\u2019s format should be driven less by marketing opportunities and more by the root of the entire enterprise. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe format doesn\u2019t decide what the format should be. It\u2019s the story that asks for a format. It\u2019s a tool to serve the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t***
\u201cWuthering Heights\u201d is now available on 4K.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJacob Elordi as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Warner Bros. Pictures<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMargot Robbie as Cathy in Emerald Fennell\u2019s Wuthering Heights.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Warner Bros. \/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJacob Elordi as Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell\u2019s Wuthering Heights.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAlison Oliver as Isabella Linton and Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Warner Bros. Pictures<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wuthering Heights cinematographer Linus Sandgren lets the story dictate the format.\u00a0 As much as the Swedish DP may…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[55360,18,31561,117,19,17,208358,327,31562],"class_list":{"0":"post-475590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-dune-part-three","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-emerald-fennell","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-linus-sandgren","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-wuthering-heights"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116541870289070531","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}