◗ Visions of Grandeur Top: A production still from the film. Bottom: Walsh (lower left) leans against the twolevel platform as technicians attend to six motion-picture cameras, several covered with blimps. A soundman (right) works on the top tier. film would be simultaneously shot in Grandeur 70mm by Edeson and in 35mm by Lucien Andriot, ASC. Edeson also felt that the Grandeur images were too large to support conventional close-ups, so the production would mostly do without them. At the same time, the background detail visible to the Grandeur lenses was so extreme that Walsh and his team would have to invest enormous time (and money) populating backgrounds with thousands of extras, cattle, horses, wagons and buffaloes. And if a wandering sightseer a mile in the background happened to pass into frame and ruin a shot (as occasionally happened), everything would have to be set up again. "The idea that widescreen made it necessary to stage even more action - background action as well as foreground action for the camera - is amazing," says film critic Leonard Maltin. "What knocks me out is just the enormity of 86 April 2015 American Cinematographer