Baffling trivia (Special Effects)

Among the trivia for this film is the slightly baffling:

"Because Panavision cameras couldn't cope with special effects (at the time), a scope camera was still needed for filming, so Techniscope was used instead. This would also be used in the filming of Thunderbird 6 (1968). "

I assume that the writer was making the same mistake lots of people make - Panavision is not a unique process - it simply means a camera and/or lens made by a company called Panavision. Many films shot with Panavision equipment are not anamorphic, Many anamorphic films are not shot with Panavision equipment.

There is no particular reason why a film, then or now, should use Panavision cameras, whether they are shooting "scope" (i.e. anamorphic) or not. There are other cameras which do exactly the same job with the same results. In fact the Thunderbirds crew could have used the very Mitchells and Arriflexes they used for the TV series with the simple addition of anamorphic lenses (made by anyone).

The main problem with shooting miniatures (which I assume was meant by the vague "couldn't cope with special effects (at the time)" in anamorphic is the reduced depth of field. This means that only a narrow band of the miniature landscapes would be in focus - something which would look very unrealistic.

This is still a difficulty now and is likely to remain so as long as the laws of optical physics apply.

The likely reason that Techniscope was chosen, apart from its relative cheapness, was because it used spherical (non-anamorphic) lenses with a smaller negative area (which was then optically blown up to anamorphic for release prints) and hence gave a much larger depth of field than shooting with an anamorphic lens.