Zack Snyder built a whole new camera lens to give Netflix’s Rebel Moon a ‘distorted retro’ look

Zack Snyder has revealed how he crafted a camera lens using four different pieces of technology to create a “distorted retro” look for his new film Rebel Moon.

Speaking to TechRadar at the Netflix movie’s UK junket, the fan-favorite director explained how he combined various tech to create a brand-new lens to augment Rebel Moon‘s visual style.

To begin with, Snyder tracked down multiple versions of the same vintage Japanese camera lens. Once enough units had been sourced, Snyder and his team took each lens apart before affixing certain parts to three different German-made Leica products. These Frankenstein’s Monster-like devices were then used to shoot specific scenes in Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire to optically warp said sequences.

The new lenses are “based on the hard glass, which is behind the anamorphic elements of the Leica rangefinder series, plus the Summilux and Noctilux lenses,” Snyder said. “We found some Japanese anamorphic lenses from a company called Cineovision, which was set up in the 1960s. We took them apart, grabbed the anamorphic element, and attached them to the Summilux and Noctilux lenses.

“What happens in super-wide angles, such as 24mm, the anamorphic optics of the Cineovision elements are so retro that they give this bizarre distortion. For instance, there’s a shot where Sam [Charlotte Maggi] is talking to Jimmy [voiced by Anthony Hopkins]. She’s standing and he’s seated, and the entire top of the frame is out of focus, but Jimmy is in full focus, so it has this weird vignetted accentuation. I love that cool aberration effect we achieved with the lenses.”

Rebel Moon might be Zack Snyder’s most visually impressive film to date (Image credit: Clay Enos/Netflix)

The new-age tech might give Rebel Moon a distinctive flair, but shooting one of 2023’s most anticipated new Netflix movies using these brand-new lenses presented challenges for the wider crew – not least its visual effects (VFX) team. Indeed, when it came to Rebel Moon‘s post-production phase, particularly the stage where the sci-fi fantasy flick’s computer-generated imagery (CGI) was added, said lenses caused a few headaches for the movie’s VFX artists.

“They had to add aberration to their full CG shots,” Snyder revealed. “They’d mapped all the lenses, so they asked me ‘If this was on a 24mm film reel, the CGI would be out of focus. How do you feel about that?’ and I’m like ‘Yeah, that’s amazing’. Then they’d say ‘You know, we don’t have to do that’ and I’d reply ‘No, I really want it’, so it’s really fun to see all of that come together, and incredibly satisfying to create this retro feeling I was trying to get with the overall look.”

Audiences will be able to make their own minds up about Rebel Moon‘s occasionally misshapen visuals when Part 1: A Child of Fire launches on one of the world’s best streaming service on Thursday, December 21 in the US (Friday, December 22 in the UK and Australia). Be sure to check back with TechRadar in the coming days for more exclusive coverage leading up to its release, as well as to find out whether it’s joined our best Netflix movies guide once it’s arrived.

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