Searching for Fallen Angels' Lost Lens

Fallen Angels and Chungking Express are sister films made fairly fast during/after the filming of Ashes of Time. One thing that I particularly remember is that a critic describes the use of wide lens in Fallen Angels and the use of long lens in Chungking Express, Fallen Angels is about “close but far” and Chungking Express is about “far but close”.

This video is better than most multi-million dollar Netflix documentaries. Nice work!

If you look closely at the shots, especially while panning, you can see two different distortion patterns intersecting, a normal rectilinear distortion in the center and a slight barrel or fisheye effect at the edges, very indicative of a converter at least on non-zoom lenses

This was randomly thrown at me by YouTube, from someone i don't know, about a film I've never heard of. And yet it had me engrossed the entire almost 20 minutes. Not just awesome sluthing, but such a well presented , fascinating narrative. Thank you.

Hey just letting you know I just credited this video in a brief review I did on the film, as this video is incredible.

This video is a masterpiece on it's own! I came here right after finishing Fallen Angels for the first time and I am in awe of the movie itself, the neo-noir nostalgic feel that it has, the story and the cinematography.

Well done, really well done. Finally a film analysis video that isn't pretentious or shallow.

Here is all the Stephen Teo "WONG KAR-WAI" book says: "Wong shot the film almost entirely with a super wide-angle 9.8mm lens. He called it the ‘standard lens’ of the film, and the effect this exerts on the viewer is a distortion of space, conveying a sense of distance in closeness, of being near and yet far away."

This is one of my favorite videos ever, such an obscure topic on a kinda obscure movie. This why Youtube was made, this is the internet or whatever.

I love how to the point and well-edited this vid is, while not sacrificing any detail to achieve it. I really hope you do keep making more, your work's great.

The super wide attachment would've been my second guess if there was no standalone super wide-angle lens for 35mm use. At that time these attachments were quite popular. Lens manufacturers even produced these attachments for lenses used in 8mm and 16mm format. I've had a Schneider super wide angle which is extremely useful as it not just looks cool but in that range DoF range extends greatly. At large f-stops you don't really have to worry about missing focus, so after a certain aperture it works like a zone focus lens. I guess around T2/2.8 infinity focus is achieved from around 1 meters. Have you tried contacting Doyle himself? It would be nice to hear his answer.

Wow, this video is so good. Love seeing fallen angels being talked about on this platform especially about the lens too.

this really reminded me why crediting is important

A measure of how rare such lenses are, Nikon's 6mm f/2.8 fisheye Nikkor sold at auction for US$145,000 a few years ago. Great video, well researched.

Crazy stuff. I'm very glad I subscribed even though you haven't uploaded in 2 years. Keep your own pace and as long as the videos are always this consistently good, I'll keep watching.

awesome video and found! I was lucky to be on set with doyle on Underwater Love. It was a life changing experience to see him preparing his shots few minute before (mostly focusing on color atmosphere and accesoiries), and just shoot as he feel. Great memory!

Dude! Every couple of years I try to find this out. Today was one of those days! Thanks SO much! This is a huge itch I've had in my head ever so often and you stopped that itch! Awesome!

Think 6.8mm would be way too wide for what I see and around 10mm range is more correct. One thing also is he was able to focus quite close to the subjects and see vignette of diopter filter in some of the shots and 6.8mm would been impossible to add a diopter. Also checking Hong Kong rental houses none of them have the adapter for the 6.8mm. Also Doyle had shot another movie called First Love with Eric Kot which got scenes with similar looks and listed only using Zeiss and Angenieux lenses only. Likely more be Zeiss 10mm and softness could been from an filter instead of that it’s a look from the lens itself as First love have the wide angle but without then softness.

Brilliant man! I have been wondering about this for about a year now and you cracked it! So grateful, many thanks!!!

Super interesting find. I have been interested in the background of film art for a long time, but I have never dealt with this topic before and found it very fascinating. I'm looking forward to the next video.