The look of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood does not come from a single vintage lens or a golden filter. Robert Richardson and his collaborators built a system of formats, lighting and colour capable of distinguishing everyday life from the images that its characters create.
The negative and the main frame
The main narrative of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was shot on 35mm anamorphic film, with a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Robert Richardson primarily used Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 and 200T 5213 negatives. The black-and-white television recreations incorporated Double-X 5222 and spherical lenses. These details describe a production with several registers, whose look cannot be reduced to a single texture applied from start to finish.
The widescreen format makes it possible to distribute bodies and landscape within the same image. In the driving scenes around Los Angeles, the surroundings retain space around the car or the character. The city is not always reduced to a blurred background: it can provide signs, traffic and other simultaneous action. That breadth encourages a mode of viewing that needs time to travel visually across the frame.
In the domestic scenes, the width also makes it possible to show distances between people without necessarily separating them through cuts. Two characters can share a shot while remaining in different emotional positions. The cinematography then works with bodies, furniture and pools of light to guide attention. The medium records the scene, but the dramatic relationship depends on decisions about placement and framing that no emulsion creates by itself.
The changes associated with television, advertisements and other formats help to identify levels of representation. The audience can move from the world where Rick works to an image that forms part of his career. The visual difference offers an immediate clue, even though the film sometimes delays clarifying what we are seeing. The format system makes that play possible without making the whole narrative lose coherence.
The lenses were not all vintage
The crew combined Panavision C Series, E Series and T Series lenses. The first two belong to earlier generations, while the T Series was introduced in 2017 and adapted for use with motion-picture cameras. Therefore, describing the shoot as being done exclusively with 1960s lenses would be incorrect. The search for an period look allowed modern tools whenever they offered the response a shot needed.
Optics influence the way light, contrast and space are represented, but their effect depends on the conditions of use. A strong light within the frame can produce different reflections depending on the lens; a short distance calls for a particular focusing ability. The selection has to respond to a specific image. The age of a lens, isolated from those decisions, is not enough to explain why a scene seems warm, intimate or threatening.
Richardson and focus puller Gregor Tavenner carried out tests to compare the different lens families. Dan Sasaki took part in their preparation, and Yvan Lucas collaborated on the colour look and oversaw the digital finishing. Panavision documents that combination of specialisms. The final image comes from coordinated work, where lens choice must be linked to exposure, lighting, development and post-production treatment.
The presence of a digital finish also does not contradict the photochemical origin of the image. Shooting on negative and then adjusting a digital copy are compatible stages. Tarantino’s defence of celluloid is better understood when the capture medium is distinguished from the whole set of later operations. In this film, a preference for film does not mean that every stage of the process does without digital tools.
Colour, light and a city that can change tone
The sense of chromatic richness also depends on what is placed in front of the camera. The reconstructed Hollywood Boulevard provides surfaces, signs and vehicles; costume introduces colours close to the faces; lighting decides how they relate to one another. A period palette requires coordination between departments. The camera records those relationships, but it cannot on its own recover a set or a fabric whose material presence belongs to another visual world.
The bright exteriors allow the film to retain a sense of breadth and pleasure. The characters move through streets that seem available to be inhabited, even when their concerns are intense. Light is not only used to date the story: it establishes an emotional relationship with places where people work, stroll and return home. That openness of the landscape helps the later threat feel like an intrusion into an already lived-in life.
Night introduces another order. Deeper blacks can limit what is visible and make a face, a window or a sign draw the eye. Neon lighting offers a moment of urban transformation that keeps its beauty without removing unease. The film can show the pleasure of a lit-up city and, at the same time, move towards events that the viewer fears. Colour takes part in that ambivalence.
Robert Richardson’s contributionRobert Richardson is especially clear in that variety of situations held together by a common identity. The Lancer shoot, the visit to the ranch, the cinema and the night journeys do not receive interchangeable lighting. Each space changes the attention and emotional state. The cinematography builds a recognisable past through concrete decisions, while allowing that past to contain humour, rest, work and danger without being trapped in a uniform postcard.
More context in the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood guide.