Most cinematographers approaching a multigenerational story make a visible visual break between time periods. Different aspect ratios. Different film stocks. Different color grades. Different lenses. Each era gets a distinct visual language to signal to the audience: this is a different time, a different generation, a different visual world. Christopher Aoun rejected this conventional approach entirely when he shot All That's Left of You for Sundance 2025.
The film follows a family across four time periods: 1948, 1978, 1988, and 2022. Instead of differentiating the cinematography across these 74 years, Aoun made a deliberate choice to maintain the same lens set—HAWK V-Lites 2x anamorphic lenses—throughout the entire film. When director Cherien Dabis asked why, Aoun explained to IndieWire: "We wanted a unifying texture instead of giving each generation a different look." This statement is quietly revolutionary. It argues that the family's continuity is more important than the historical specificity of each era.
Anamorphic lenses have a distinct optical rendering: the characteristic oval bokeh in out-of-focus areas, the specific way highlights bloom, the anamorphic softness at the frame edges that makes human faces feel embedded in their environments rather than floating against a background. The HAWK V-Lites 2x anamorphics produce these properties consistently across all focal lengths. When you use the same anamorphic lens set for 74 years of a family's visual history, you are saying: the family has always looked this way to itself. The family's visual continuity is the family's identity.
This approach refuses what Aoun calls "the safety of visual differentiation." It is tempting as a cinematographer to use different lenses, different stocks, different looks for different periods because it helps the audience understand time is passing. It provides a visual hierarch. It makes the transitions clear. But that clarity comes at a cost: it fragments the visual experience. Each era becomes visually distinct, which paradoxically makes the family feel fragmented across time.
By maintaining the same lens throughout, Aoun makes the family's temporal continuity the film's visual thesis. The family looks the same to itself across generations because the family is the same across generations. The structural forces that shaped the 1948 generation shaped the 1978 generation shaped the 1988 generation shaped the 2022 generation. The cinematography photographs that structural continuity directly. The anamorphic rendering does not change. The family does not change. Time passes, but the visual language remains consistent.
This creates a specific viewing experience: the audience has to pay closer attention to costumes, production design, and dialogue to understand which era they are in, because the cinematography is not doing that signaling work. The lack of visual differentiation forces the viewer into a more active relationship with the narrative. You cannot coast through the film assuming that visual language changes will tell you when you are. You have to listen and observe and participate in understanding the temporal transitions.
The HAWK V-Lites anamorphics were chosen not because they are the best lenses available, but because they would create a consistent visual identity across the entire 74-year span. The technical properties of the anamorphic glass—the oval bokeh, the halation, the characteristic flare—become the visual signature of the family itself. When the audience sees an anamorphic flare, they are not seeing a stylistic choice. They are seeing the family's continuity.
For cinematographers working on multigenerational narratives or stories that span significant time, Aoun's approach demonstrates an alternative to the conventional strategy of visual differentiation. The argument for using the same lens set across time periods is not that time is not important. It is that family continuity is more important than historical specificity. The cinematography makes that argument visually. The lens does not know it is 1948. It renders the family the same way it always has.
Gear Recommendations
- Atlas Lens Co. Orion 2x Anamorphic | Adorama – B&H Photo
- Vazen 40mm 1.8x Anamorphic | Adorama – B&H Photo
- Tiffen Black Pro-Mist 1/4 | Adorama – B&H Photo
- Tiffen Glimmerglass 1/4 | Adorama – B&H Photo
- DJI Ronin 4D-8K – Amazon
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