Ultra Panavision 70 and MGM Camera 65 were the photographic marketing brands — ca. 1957 to 1966 — that identified movies photographed with Panavision-brand anamorphic lenses using a 65mm negative and 70mm release print. The image frame dimensions and the six-track stereophonic soundtrack configuration of Ultra Panavision 70 were virtually identical to those of the 1955 version of the Todd-AO 65mm and 70mm photographic processes, however, the lenses incorporated a 1.25x anamorphic compression, yielding an approximate, ultra-wide projected aspect ratio of 2.76:1.
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In the 1950s, Panavision and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer developed the Camera 65 widescreen film process as a single-strip Cinerama substitute. They created the anamorphic lenses to photograph the films Raintree County (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), which were advertised as MGM Camera 65 process films; however, they were projected onto flat or only slightly curved Cinemascope screens, not the deep concave screens of Cinerama and Todd-AO. Raintree County was projected from a 2.35:1 reduction print, while Ben-Hur was the first Camera 65-format movie projected from the full, anamorphic 70mm frame. The laserdisc and DVD releases of Ben-Hur, in its original 2.76:1 aspect ratio, were the widest-letterbox-image home videos of the time.
Using 65mm film stock, the photographic process horizontally compressed the image by a factor of 1.33x via an anamorphic lens that yielded an approximate aspect ratio of 2.93:1. Before its first commercial use, however, the compression factor was reduced to 1.25, yielding an aspect ratio of 2.76:1. The system was little used because of the large, heavy cameras; also, the very wide aspect ratio proved incompatible with the screens of most cinemas, even those equipped with 70mm projectors. Anamorphic 35mm prints derived from the Camera 65 negatives were cropped to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio and were indistinguishable from Cinemascope film images (except for finer grain and better detail).
After these first two productions, MGM Camera 65 was renamed Ultra Panavision 70. Portions of the three-strip Cinerama film How the West Was Won (1962) were photographed in Ultra Panavision 70, then optically converted to the three-strip format.[1] Some of the films made in Ultra Panavision had specially rectified prints made for exhibiting on deeply curved Cinerama screens. On these prints the image was unsqueezed in the centre and gradually more squeezed at the sides. The curved screen naturally elongated the image at the sides.[2]