At 79 years old, Woody Allen may have a very familiar filmmaking routine, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t willing to shake things up. He’s got an Amazon series on his plate, and he’s currently at work on his next feature, starring Blake Lively, Parker Posey, Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Jeannie Berlin, Corey Stoll, Anna Camp, Paul Schneider, and Steve Carell and this time around, he’s dropped celluloid for digital.
Sony announced today the untitled movie is shooting with their CineAlta F65 camera, with three-time Academy Award winner Vittorio Storaro (“Apocalypse Now,” “Reds,” “The Last Emperor“) behind the camera. Even more, the movie will melt your eyeballs by being mastered in 4K. Take that Gordon Willis! (Of course, I’m joking).
READ MORE: Bruce Willis Exits Woody Allen’s New Film
This movie shouldn’t be a tremendous surprise given that earlier this year, Allen teased that he might be moving to digital, and didn’t profess any loyalty to film stock. “Digital looks very good to me if it’s done well. Film always looks great if it’s done well. I’ve never shot anything in digital, but I think I will shoot my next film digitally to see what that’s like. It is more than the wave of the future; it’s the wave of the present, really,” Allen explained in May.
“…digital is really not cheaper and it’s not faster. It’s just that that’s the way everything has moved and it looks pretty. I see digital shot by good cameramen that is beautiful and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, so I don’t mind it,” he added. “I like that I can edit fast. You just punch electronics where it used to be you’d cut and then have to splice it and tape it and then look at it and un-tape it. Now, it’s bang, bang, bang, bang, bang and it’s done.” For a guy who already cuts his movies ridiculously fast, he’s only going to get even more productive.
Meanwhile, Storaro couldn’t be more excited to take Allen into the digital realm. “I had seen that the Sony F65 was capable of recording beautiful images in 4K and 16 bit-color depth in 1:2, which is my favorite composition. So when Woody called me this year asking me to be the cinematographer of his new film with the working title ‘WASP 2015,’ my decision was already made. I convinced him to record the film in digital, so we can begin our journey together in the digital world,” he said in a statement.
And in case you’re wondering WASP isn’t what you think it is — it’s Woody Allen Summer Project 2015.
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