Ken Danvers’ photographs capture behind-the-scenes glimpses of widescreen film-making in the 1950s and 60s.
In the 1950s and 60s, movies got bigger: big screen formats appeared, designed to entice audiences away from their TV sets and back to the cinema.
Panavision developed two new widescreen processes—Super Panavision 70 and Ultra Panavision 70. Offering unrivalled image and sound quality, they were designed to be used on epic films made by big-name directors and featuring huge stars.
Ken Danvers was a photographer who worked on film sets to produce publicity pictures as well as more candid shots of the stars. This small selection from over 1,000 of Danvers’ photographs held by the National Science and Media Museum showed the kind of images these ‘specials’ (as they were known) produced.