The Canon kit that made FX's Pistol

DoP Anthony Dod Mantle calls his cameras and lenses "paintbrushes" because "some are wider than others, some are oily, some are greasy and some are watery". It's also an "easy way of avoiding having to say the numbers and the names all the time, and having to remember them".

For FX's limited series Pistol, a frenetic celebration of 1970s punk rock that charts the meteoric rise and chaotic fall of the Sex Pistols, the Academy Award®-winning cinematographer needed a larger palette than usual, with more than six image capture systems being employed at one point or another over the course of filming. "I guess you could say the varying [camera] formats represent instruments that have their own characteristic beat and tone and potential noise level, until they mesh into a final mix in the edit," he says.

Here, Dod Mantle, together with long-time collaborator and fellow Oscar winner Danny Boyle, who directed the project, talk about the Canon cameras and lenses they used to shoot the series, and why they were the best tools for this unique production.

"For the bar cams, and the idea of capturing time [explained in our Making Of], we went with the Canon EOS R5, because it's a robust, small, lightweight, powerful little image camera; it's a strong tool," says Dod Mantle.

"It was all about taking up as little space as possible and not making the rig too heavy – and the EOS R5 had a combination of this light body and small size with a small lens. If I put 12 Canon EOS-1D X Mark III cameras on a rig, I'd have a monster of a powerful image capture system, but I wouldn't be able to lift it, and it'd bend the bar of the crane.

The Canon EOS-1D X Mark III, Dod Mantle says, "is an absolute beast – an incredible piece of technology. I've used earlier models on many films, grabbing burst images. On Slumdog Millionaire, there's a lot of material on EOS-1D series cameras, which people think is created in the edit – but it's actually just me moving the camera and working with the burst mode. It was to do with memory on Slumdog; in the case of Pistol, it's about time, and freezing time. We can get to 20 frames per second burst capture [in high-resolution 20MP stills] – it's a slight adjustment of our conventional perception of reality. I could move, either with zooms or with prime lenses physically close, and dance around the actors.

"This started as a potential concert tool," Dod Mantle continues, "but it became something I shot in every single location: a prop or a picture, it could be a pair of underpants in the SEX boutique of Vivienne Westwood or a record spinning in a jukebox. I never left a scene without grabbing the EOS-1D X Mark III and just painting a little image… and it's become a montage element of the film, which is very clear and very important.

"We had the Canon EOS C70, which I was hoping would work as a transition between the bar cam and our other studio cameras, with PL lenses and older vintage lenses," says Dod Mantle. "That went out the window because the time was too complicated, but I kept that camera and used it with the FX guys, because they were shooting plates all the time.

"It's an incredibly powerful camera with a good sensor, good lenses, latitude, sensitivity and speed."

"The Canon XL H1 is a beautiful dinosaur that we used on 28 Days Later," says Dod Mantle. "We pulled it out of its grave on this show, which is quite funny and not without complications because you're suddenly back on MiniDV tape and stuff like that. But we brought it out as a tool because, although it's not a '70s camera, it has the ability to capture images at a resolution that suddenly became important to me.

"I could mix the quality of images together to make this patchwork montage," he continues. "A sort of 'Rauschenberg' idea of pop art meets punk meets entertainment meets the rock business. That's where the formats come from."

Pistol was a collaborative effort between ARRI Rental and Canon Europe, with much of the series primarily shot on the ARRI ALEXA Mini LF paired with Canon K35 vintage glass to provide an authentic 1970s look that would blend well with the archive footage used in the series. "I work with the Canon K35 lenses [now succeeded by the Canon Sumire Prime series], which I have been married to for 15 years," says Dod Mantle. "And anybody sane in this industry should marry themselves to the Canon K35s because they are the most adorable pieces of glass, and rightfully respected for that.

"Any honest filmmaker and storyteller wishes ultimately to create something unforeseeable and unforgettable," concludes Dod Mantle. "Each story has to have its own alphabet."

Pistol premieres on 31 May exclusively on Hulu in the United States and on Disney+ in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.