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Affonso Beato, ASC, ABC y fascination with moving images began when I was 4 years old, when my father took me to see the old Superman, Flash Gordon and Rocket Man serials. Years later, at the beginning of my professional career, I discovered American Cinematographer, which was my first exposure to the techniques behind the art of cinematography. “AC helped open the door that brought me to this country 40 years ago, and it continues to be my window onto the work of the cinematographers I admire and respect.”
“M
©photo by Owen Roizman, ASC
— Affonso Beato, ASC, ABC
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
On Our Cover: Covert operative Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) must run for her life in Salt, shot by Robert Elswit, ASC. (Photo by François Duhamel, SMPSP, courtesy of Universal Pictures.)
FEATURES 28 42 56 68
Cat and Mouse Robert Elswit, ASC gets ample support from collaborators on Salt
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Girl Trouble Bill Pope, ASC creates wild battles for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
A Magical Manhattan Bojan Bazelli, ASC conjures wizardly visuals for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
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True Colors David Boyd, ASC shoots Get Low for director and fellow ASC member Aaron Schneider
DEPARTMENTS 8 10 12 16 76 80 82 90 91 92 94 96
Editor’s Note 68 President’s Desk Short Takes: Quiksilver ad campaign Production Slate: Best-Shot Films of 1998-2008 • The Kids Are All Right Post Focus: True Blood Workflow Filmmakers’ Forum: Steven Fierberg, ASC New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Charles Minsky
— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES — DVD Playback: A Star Is Born • The Only Son/There Was a Father
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
Visit us online at
www.theasc.com ———————————————————————————————————— PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter ————————————————————————————————————
EDITORIAL EXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon D. Witmer TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Stephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard, John Calhoun, Bob Fisher, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring, Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer, John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich, Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson ————————————————————————————————————
ART DEPARTMENT CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Gore ————————————————————————————————————
ADVERTISING ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Angie Gollmann 323-936-3769 FAX 323-936-9188 e-mail:
[email protected] ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Sanja Pearce 323-952-2114 FAX 323-876-4973 e-mail:
[email protected] ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Scott Burnell 323-936-0672 FAX 323-936-9188 e-mail:
[email protected] CLASSIFIEDS/ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Diella Nepomuceno 323-952-2124 FAX 323-876-4973 e-mail:
[email protected] ————————————————————————————————————
CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina CIRCULATION MANAGER Alex Lopez SHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal ———————————————————————————————————— ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost ASC PRESIDENT’S ASSISTANT Kim Weston ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Corey Clark ————————————————————————————————————
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American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 90th year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A., (800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344. Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $). Advertising: Rate card upon request from Hollywood office. Article Reprints: Requests for high-quality article reprints (or electronic reprints) should be made to Sheridan Reprints at (800) 635-7181 ext. 8065 or by e-mail
[email protected]. Copyright 2007 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA. POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.
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American Society of Cinematographers The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but an educational, cultural and professional organization. Membership is by invitation to those who are actively engaged as directors of photography and have demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC membership has become one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a professional cinematographer — a mark of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2010/2011 Michael Goi President
Richard Crudo Vice President
Owen Roizman Vice President
John C. Flinn III Vice President
Matthew Leonetti Treasurer
Rodney Taylor Secretary
Ron Garcia Sergeant At Arms
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD John Bailey Stephen Burum Curtis Clark George Spiro Dibie Richard Edlund John C. Flinn III Michael Goi Stephen Lighthill Isidore Mankofsky Daryn Okada Robert Primes Nancy Schreiber Kees Van Oostrum Haskell Wexler Vilmos Zsigmond
ALTERNATES Fred Elmes Rodney Taylor Michael D. O’Shea Sol Negrin Michael B. Negrin MUSEUM CURATOR 6
Steve Gainer
It’s a wise cinematographer who recognizes the contributions of his crew, and Robert Elswit, ASC was quick to credit his collaborators on the action film Salt. After agreeing to be interviewed, he asked that we bring other members of his team into the foreground. “Any large production that involves multiple units working independently and shooting stunts, effects and aerials is as big a logistical challenge as it is a creative challenge,” he tells Iain Stasukevich (“Cat and Mouse,” page 28). “Thank God I had [1st AC] Baz Idoine to take care of all the cameraequipment issues, and [gaffer] Andy [Day] and [key grip] Dennis Gamiello to sort out all the other stuff.” Our coverage also details some of the contributions made by 2nd-unit director Simon Crane; 2nd-unit director of photography Igor Meglic, ZFS; visual-effects supervisor Mark Breakspear; and visual-effects supervisor/3rd-unit director of photography Robert Grasmere. Comic-book aesthetics played a large part in Bill Pope, ASC’s approach to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, in which a jobless hipster (Michael Cera) attempts to win the affections of his new crush (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) by defeating her seven exes in video-game-style battles. Pope, director Edgar Wright and their collaborators drew visual cues from the Scott Pilgrim comic books, created by Bryan Lee O’Malley. “We took our initial inspiration off the books’ full-color covers,” Pope tells Noah Kadner (“Girl Trouble,” page 42). “From there, we imagined what all the black-and-white illustrations [inside] would look like in color. Translating O’Malley’s aesthetics to live action was more straightforward than adapting other comics might be, because Bryan doesn’t cheat perspective and use ‘cartoon engineering.’” Bojan Bazelli, ASC faced equally fantastic plot points on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, in which a New York-based conjurer (Nicolas Cage) trains a regular guy (Jay Baruchel) to master real magic. Although the film is filled with sophisticated visual effects, Bazelli preferred to capture as much of the look as possible on set. “I believe strongly that you cannot create the look in post,” he tells David Heuring (“A Magical Manhattan,” page 56). “In post, I finish shaping the sculpture. I do use those tools extensively to take the look further, but I like to carve the biggest, deepest cut in the wood at the moment of photography.” Amid all the summer pyrotechnics, ASC members Aaron Schneider and David Boyd teamed as director and cinematographer, respectively, on the atmospheric period drama Get Low. The Society chums first met 15 years ago, when Boyd operated camera for Schneider on the pilot for the TV show Murder One. “We made it our mission to do feature-quality work on a television schedule,” Schneider informs Michael Goldman (“True Colors,” page 68). “When it happened that Get Low shaped up as a $7.5-million movie with a 24-day shooting schedule [on location], David was the first person I thought of. Our history was invaluable.” Speaking of history, this issue also spotlights the top 10 movies from our recent online poll regarding the Best-Shot Films of 1998-2008 (Production Slate, page 16). More than 17,000 people cast votes in the poll, which serves as a follow-up to our 1999 survey of films shot between 1894-1997. Everyone has his favorites, and we’re sure this new list will generate debate. Complete results from both polls are posted on the ASC’s website (www.theasc.com).
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Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editor’s Note
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President’s Desk As I begin my second term as president of the ASC, the recent passing of Billy Fraker is very much on my mind. When I wrote my first column one year ago, I included this statement among the musings about the things I believe in: “I believe William A. Fraker, ASC, BSC is no mere mortal, but a benevolent angel sent to earth to remind us that we work in a magical, romantic industry.” As with everything I say, I said it because I believe it to be true. When that article ran, Billy called to thank me. When I talked with Billy about his work on Heaven Can Wait, Bullitt or Looking for Mr. Goodbar, I’m sure his colorful stories were tinted with the nostalgic glow that we all tend to give our memories. But watching his face and the twinkle in his eyes, it was clear that he loved the business as much as the creative process. Just the fact that you were making movies was enough to make you feel good about yourself. With Billy’s passing, another link to a crucial era in cinematography and the industry has faded. His heyday was a time when the heads of studios met personally with cinematographers and directly hired them for projects. The challenges of balancing the political agendas of the parties involved in getting a picture into production existed then, as they do now, but it is far less common today for the person ultimately responsible for the success of his particular studio to feel that the choice of cinematographer is important enough to warrant a face-to-face meeting. That way of doing business boils down to the respect that was accorded not only to our craft, but also to all the major artistic contributors to a production. It recalls a time when the pride of “getting it right” in front of the camera was preferable to “fixing it in post”; when the true skill of a producer was in assembling the right artistic mix of people for a production rather than hiring whomever was willing to work with equipment the producer had already chosen; when making a big-screen movie meant that you had to watch your dailies on a big screen to really know the effect of what you’d created. That respect for the talent of a great craftsperson translated into work of stunning originality. That originality translated into good box office and movies that are now considered classics. And Bill Fraker was in the middle of it. I brought my parents to Los Angeles for the ASC Awards in 2004, when I was nominated for my work on the TV movie Judas. It was the first time my dad had ever worn a tuxedo. I had been an ASC member for only one year. As my family and I approached the ballroom, we crossed paths with Billy, and I introduced him to my parents. Billy shook my dad’s hand and said, “Mr. Goi, we love your son. He’s going to be president of the ASC someday.” I will miss Billy. For me, he represented not only the artistry that was expected of a world-class cinematographer, but also the dignity, romance and glamour of the craft. I firmly believe that the generations of cinematographers to come will do extraordinary things and create memorable images, but I hope they take to heart one quality that Billy possessed in abundance — something you cannot learn in film school or with a technical manual, something that is indescribable but understood: Mr. William A. Fraker had class.
Goi poses for a snapshot with ASC greats Bill Fraker (left) and Laszlo Kovacs.
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August 2010
American Cinematographer
Top photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Michael Goi, ASC President
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Short Takes
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Brain Farm Makes Waves with Quiksilver Campaign By Noah Kadner
Wyoming production house Brain Farm, which specializes in high-end action-sports cinematography, recently used the Phantom HD camera for an ad campaign for surfwear and boardsports manufacturer Quiksilver that featured a number of world-famous surfers catching waves in ultra-slow motion. Brain Farm came to Quiksilver’s attention through That’s It, That’s All, a snowboarding feature co-sponsored by Quiksilver and Red Bull, according to Chad Jackson, Brain Farm’s lead producer. James Tierney, a producer for Quiksilver, calls That’s It, That’s All “the best action-sports film ever made.” When Quiksilver was ready to launch its Cypher line of high-performance board shorts, he continues, “we wanted to showcase both [the Cypher shorts] and the top global surfers in a truly groundbreaking way. We wanted to show surfing like it had never been seen before.” As discussions began, director and Brain Farm President Curt Morgan showed the Quiksilver team what the high-speed Phantom could do. “That sparked a lot of interest on their part into how those ultra-slow-motion effects might look in water,” says Morgan. At that time, the Phantom had not yet been used for extensive water work, so no compatible underwater camera housing was readily available. “Before the project was even a go, we turned to Erik Hjermstad at Del Mar Housing Projects in San Marcos, California, to inquire about a custom housing for the Phantom,” says Morgan. “The housing took about six weeks to build and was completed maybe a week before the shoot.” With the housing in hand, the Brain Farm team was off to 12
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Oaxaca, Mexico, where they met surfers Dane Reynolds, Kelly Slater, Julian Wilson and Jeremy Flores. “Because of their crazy schedules, it had been four years since Dane, Kelly, Julian and Jeremy had all been on a trip together,” notes Tierney. “Having them all surfing together was huge, and they really pushed each other. We got a ridiculous amount of footage in two days of surfing.” Brain Farm brought in Australian cinematographer Chris Bryan to handle operating responsibilities with the Phantom rig. Morgan recalls, “We were set up to take shots from the beach and right in the water with the surfers. The very first shot we got was even cooler than we thought possible. The waves, the water droplets — everything was moving so slowly, and you saw so much detail. We instantly felt like kids in a candy factory who’d just been cut loose by our parents!” “Even on a small monitor, we could tell right away we had something special,” adds Tierney. “You can really see the subtleties of surfing: the way a board flexes when it lands on the wave after an aerial, the way riders weight and un-weight during turns, the way water drops fly off the rail. It was like seeing our sport with new eyes.” To maximize shooting time on the beach and avoid having to frequently re-open the underwater housing to change lenses, Morgan shot mostly with a single Zeiss Ultra Prime 8R rectilinear lens. “It gives you a wide-angle shot with no barrel distortion,” he explains. “It’s a really funky look that added a lot to the image.” The latest iteration of the Phantom camera, the Gold, can shoot at speeds exceeding 1,000 fps, depending on the resolution that’s selected. As Morgan points out, however, the camera’s frame rate also affects the aperture. “When you’re shooting at 1,000 fps, as we were, you’re typically at T2.8, even when you’re outdoors in
American Cinematographer
Photos and frame grab courtesy of Brain Farm.
Kelly Slater shreds in superslow motion for a Quiksilver spot captured with the Vision Research Phantom HD camera.
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Above: Chris Bryan wields a custom camera housing built for the Phantom as Julian Wilson gets airborne. Right: Chad Jackson (left), Brain Farm’s lead producer, and Curt Morgan (right), director and Brain Farm president, flank their Phantom HD.
full sunlight,” he explains. “That means you have a very shallow depth-of-field, and when you’re out there in those violent waves, it’s pretty difficult to rack focus. The 8mm lens gives you more depth-of-field to work with, and when those shots are done right, they look really cool.” On average, the Brain Farm team was able to capture about 19 takes on the Phantom’s CineMag recorder before the camera needed to be reloaded. “Jamie Alac at Abel Cine Tech helped us set up the camera controls so we could hit record and the camera would shoot the full buffer and save an entire take off to the CineMag,” explains Morgan. “The camera would then reset and go right back to recording mode without our having to hit another button. That enabled us to get our shots with the camera in the water housing.” The Phantom’s footage can be transferred as RAW data files or played out of the camera’s HD-SDI port. “Dumping the 14
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CineMag’s RAW files takes a while, and we knew we couldn’t spare any time with the surfers in the water,” says Morgan. “Having the RAW footage as DPX files is great, but I’ve done side-by-side tests with HDCam-SR, and there’s not that much of a difference to the eye. We had a Sony SRW-1 HDCam-SR deck at our base camp on the beach, and we decided to transfer the footage by playing out from the camera’s HD-SDI connection directly to HDCam-SR tapes; it took about 40 minutes to dump the whole CineMag. This method was critical to maximizing our time.” In addition to the surfing footage, Morgan notes, “we added a bit of a documentary-style lifestyle element. For example, we placed three or four mirrors upright on the beach and had the surfers run by them. We tried to keep our approach simple while still making a stylized piece.” (Some material was shot with a Panasonic AJHPX3700 VariCam.) American Cinematographer
When production in Mexico wrapped, Brain Farm headed back to the Wyoming office to handle post. “Depending on the type of final output a particular client needs, sometimes we’ll outsource the final grading and sound,” says Jackson, “but in this case, we did all the editing, grading and sound for four complete commercials. We also composed, recorded and mixed the full sound score with our inhouse musicians. “Our post facility is based on Final Cut Studio,” he continues. “We edit in Final Cut Pro and grade in Color. We also have a fully equipped sound studio with 36 channels of ProTools HD. It’s not a massive studio, but it’s more than enough to do some cool sound design.” “We use a RAID-based Ethernet array to support seven edit bays,” adds Morgan. “It’s about 48 terabytes of total storage running off a Mac shared server. We generally do all our post work in Apple’s ProRes HQ codec in 1080p HD, but if our client requires a specific format deliverable, we can go back and online to any other format, such as uncompressed HDCam-SR.” When final color grading was complete, Brain Farm delivered the four spots as HD QuickTime files directly to Quiksilver via an FTP connection; the spots were then pushed out to Quiksilver’s website, Fuel TV in the U.S. and other broadcasters worldwide. “We’re more than happy with the final product, and the viewers’ reactions have been incredibly positive,” says Tierney. “It’s been really rewarding to partner with Brain Farm.” Morgan is thrilled with what the Brain Farm team accomplished. “Moving into this project, I was very unsure,” he says. “I like to show confidence, but we were planning to do so much that had never been done before. Plus, surfing is so unplanned to begin with! You roll in and hope the waves are good, and if they are, you just shoot. It was a lot of work and trial-and-error, but after two days of shooting, we were convinced we were capturing something that was really new and exciting, and Quiksilver was extremely happy with what we produced. That’s a good feeling, and it encourages us to keep coming up with new ways for people to see the world.” ●
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Production Slate
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AC Poll Names 10 Best-Shot Films of 1998-2008 By Rachael K. Bosley
Bucking the conventional wisdom that says comedies do not present cinematographers with as many creative opportunities as dramas do, the French comedy Amélie, shot by Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC, was voted the best-shot film of 1998-2008 in a recent American Cinematographer poll. “Cinematography is a desire, the desire to challenge yourself and the desire to give the audience a visual experience, and this desire is the same whether you’re shooting a comedy or a drama,” observed Delbonnel, responding to news of the poll results via e-mail. “I am very thankful to the readers of AC. This is a real honor, especially considering the other movies on this list. These are some of the finest cinematographers, and I’m not sure I deserve to be among them, but I am very happy to be. All of these movies are visually stunning, but more importantly, all of these cinematographers are consistent. From the first frame to the last, they stick to the look they’ve chosen. And they are all explorers.” More than 17,000 people around the world participated in the online vote, which updates the comprehensive reader poll AC published in March ’99 in honor of the ASC’s 80th anniversary. (That vote covered the best-shot films of 1894-1997.) For the new poll, each voter chose 10 films from a list of 50 nominated by AC subscribers. Here’s the Top 10: 1) Amélie (2001): Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s comedy about a sheltered young woman (Audrey Tatou) with an overactive imagination is a vivid example of the unusual looks filmmakers could achieve with early digital-intermediate technology. However, given limited time for preproduction testing, Delbonnel actually decided to create as much of the film’s unusual gold-green hue as possible in-camera. In a Sept. ’01 interview with AC, he 16
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explained, “I thought that maybe this [post] process wouldn’t really work … [and] I always believe in doing as much as possible during the actual photography, because the result looks better than when you do all the manipulation in post.” Reflecting on Amélie today, he says, “It’s difficult to remember how things started, [but] I had this idea that it would be interesting to depart from the idea of following what the script said in terms of effects — day, morning, evening and so on — and work on a mood rather than an effect, a mood that could reflect not only the story, but also the mood of the character. I think I’m like most cinematographers: we try something on a specific movie that is based on our thoughts at a specific time in our life and career. Today I see Amélie as a starting point in my way of thinking about light, and since then I’ve kept developing what is more or less the same theory, pushing it a bit further every time. This was the first film I shot where I started to think of the script as a music score. In each movie, there’s a melody I try to find [and] translate into light. Amélie was probably a very light, not-so-fast melody with this single note, which is the overall yellow-green color in the film.” Delbonnel earned ASC and Oscar nominations for the film, his first feature with Jeunet. Super 35mm. 2) Children of Men (2006): Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC. For his fifth film with director Alfonso Cuarón, Lubezki boldly applied a documentary aesthetic to a science-fiction narrative, employing a handheld camera and very few movie lights to tell the story of a Londoner (Clive Owen) who is drawn into an underground effort to save mankind in the wake of an ecological disaster. “It’s a future that reminds you of the present,” Lubezki told AC (Dec. ’06). The filmmakers eschewed traditional coverage, often staging shots with complex action to play out in single takes. Of his minimalistic approach to lighting, the cinematographer noted, “It took me a long time to go back to basics and say, ‘I don’t want this movie to look
American Cinematographer
Amélie photo ©2001 Miramax Films.
The French comedy Amélie, shot by Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC, landed in the top spot in a recent AC poll to determine the 10 bestshot films of 1998-2008. More than 17,000 people participated in the online vote.
Children of Men photo ©2006 Universal Pictures. Saving Private Ryan photo ©1998 DreamWorks SKG and Paramount Pictures.
conventionally beautiful.’ This is a movie I couldn’t have done when I was younger … the more I learn, the less lighting I want to do.” He won the ASC Award and earned an Oscar nomination for the film. Super 35mm. 3) Saving Private Ryan (1998): Janusz Kaminski. With a depiction of America’s D-Day landing on Omaha Beach that was unprecedented in its detail and ferocity, Steven Spielberg’s World War II combat film immediately set the bar for the genre several notches higher. The goal, Kaminski told AC in Aug. ’98, was “to make this look like it was shot in 16mm by a bunch of combat cameramen,” and to create that sense of chaos, he used techniques that included shooting with mismatched lenses, varying the camera’s shutter angle, and using an Image Shaker to add vibrations to shots. To desaturate the palette, he also flashed the negative and applied Technicolor’s ENR process, his favorite lab treatment. Kaminski, who was collaborating with Spielberg for the fourth time, noted, “We’ve all got the ability to do groundbreaking work, and nothing is stopping us from using very experimental techniques in a major Hollywood movie if the subject matter allows it and the director is willing to go there.” He won the Oscar and earned an ASC nomination for the film. Upon hearing of its place in AC’s poll, Kaminski said, “I am thrilled and honored. This is good company to be in!” 35mm. 4) There Will Be Blood (2007): Robert Elswit, ASC. Tapping a creative partnership that both men acknowledge is often as fractious as it is fruitful, Elswit and director Paul Thomas Anderson teamed for the fifth time on this stark frontier drama about a misanthropic oil prospector (Daniel Day-Lewis) who makes his fortune in the early 20th century. “Cinematographers want to control things as much as we can, but what I’ve learned from Paul is how much better it can be to let accidents happen, rather than try to force everything to be a certain way,” said Elswit (AC Jan. ’08). The mostly day-exterior shoot enabled the filmmakers to make the most of slow film stocks, which Anderson favors, and, in a notable break from today’s norm, the team screened 35mm dailies and did a photochemical finish. Elswit won the ASC Award and the Oscar for the picture. Commenting
The science-fiction drama Children of Men (top), shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC, and the World War II combat film Saving Private Ryan, shot by Janusz Kaminski, placed second and third in the poll, respectively.
on its place in AC’s poll, he noted, “Each of the other films on this list is a remarkable testament to the skills and talents of some very gifted cinematographers, and it’s an extraordinary and unexpected honor to have my work included with theirs.” Anamorphic 35mm. 5) No Country for Old Men (2007): Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC. Deakins landed on AC’s ballot for four films, more than any other cinematographer, and he was voted into the Top 10 for this rigorous cat-and-mouse tale involving a Vietnam veteran (Josh Brolin) who absconds with www.theasc.com
stolen drug money, the hit man (Javier Bardem) who pursues him, and the Texas lawman (Tommy Lee Jones) who is always a few steps behind them. The film, Deakins’ eighth collaboration with Joel and Ethan Coen, also serves as a meditation on the changing of the West, and this theme made the project especially attractive to the cinematographer. “I felt this was the nearest a contemporary film might come to a Peckinpah Western,” he told AC (Oct. ’07). “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia are … much more than the sum of their stories. August 2010
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Top to bottom: There Will Be Blood, shot by Robert Elswit, ASC, placed fourth; No Country for Old Men, shot by Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, fifth; and Fight Club, shot by Jeff Cronenweth, ASC, sixth.
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American Cinematographer
There Will Be Blood photo ©2007 Paramount Vantage. No Country for Old Men photo ©2007 Miramax Films. Fight Club photo ©1999 20th Century Fox.
They address many different themes, and so does this film.” He earned ASC and Oscar nominations for the picture. Super 35mm. 6) Fight Club (1999): Jeff Cronenweth, ASC. David Fincher’s mostly nocturnal drama about urban alienation and male aggression, which focuses on a city dweller (Edward Norton) and the charismatic stranger (Brad Pitt) who changes his life, was Cronenweth’s first feature as a cinematographer, but because he had previously worked on a number of Fincher’s projects as a camera operator, additional cinematographer or second-unit cinematographer, he was undaunted by the challenge. “I couldn’t think of a better movie to do as my first film,” Cronenweth told AC (Nov. ’99). “Although I knew it would be rough, I had so much trust in David as a filmmaker that I had the confidence [to do it].” Contributing to the film’s unique ambience were a desaturated palette, a heavy reliance on existing light at locations, and an unusual approach to lighting the leads. “We didn’t necessarily want to be able to see directly into the actors’ faces,” said Cronenweth. “It was more interesting and appropriate for the story to force the audience to pay attention.” Delighted to hear of the film’s place in AC’s poll, he noted, “In a way, Fight Club challenged all notions of a big Hollywood movie. Many scenes were lit by only one or two practical sources, creating a tone that was very unique and rarely seen in the industry at large. I think this was one of those rare times when all the creative forces were in sync; every element, from wardrobe to visual effects, contributed to fulfilling David’s vision of this most complicated story. The film pushed some people’s buttons, but I think it mostly tapped into some common thoughts, shared journeys and similar frustrations. It certainly summed up the Nineties.” Super 35mm. 7) The Dark Knight (2008): Wally Pfister, ASC. For their second Batman film, in which the Caped Crusader (Christian Bale) is nearly undone by the criminally insane Joker (Heath Ledger), Pfister and director Christopher Nolan achieved epic scale by capturing about 20 percent of the movie in Imax 15-perf 65mm, a first for a studio feature. “Many filmmakers are trying out digital cameras that actually capture less resolution and information, and we’re going
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in the opposite direction, upping the ante by capturing images with unparalleled resolution and clarity,” said Pfister (AC July ’08). The entire crew was new to large-format filmmaking, but, as Pfister noted, “You face new technical and creative challenges on every film, and eventually you find a way to overcome them. We were so determined to make this a success that we had to keep reminding ourselves no one had done this before on this scale.” He earned ASC and Oscar nominations for his efforts. Anamorphic 35mm and 15-perf 65mm. 20
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8) Road to Perdition (2002): Conrad L. Hall, ASC. “Soft noir” was how Hall described the look he was after on this Depression-era drama, his second collaboration with director Sam Mendes. The film follows a hit man (Tom Hanks) who takes to the road with his young son (Tyler Hoechlin) in an attempt to protect the boy from criminal elements, including his own boss (Paul Newman). “I felt a less colorful palette was best suited to the story,” Hall told AC (Aug. ’02). “It’s a stark story set in the Depression, and it has a serious message.” He underexAmerican Cinematographer
The Dark Knight photo ©2008 Warner Bros. Pictures. Road to Perdition photo ©2002 DreamWorks SKG.
The anamorphic 35mm/15-perf 65mm hybrid The Dark Knight (top), shot by Wally Pfister, ASC, landed in seventh place, while the Depression-era drama Road to Perdition, shot by Conrad L. Hall, ASC, placed eighth.
posed the negative and shot at the bottom of the aperture, and the team undertook a particularly grueling winter shoot in Illinois that also contributed much to the “cold period look.” This proved to be Hall’s last film; he died in 2003. He was posthumously honored with ASC and Academy awards for the picture. Super 35mm. 9) City of God (2002): César Charlone, ABC. Offering a look at life in Rio de Janeiro’s most notorious slum in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Fernando Meirelles’ drama presented Charlone with a new challenge: “I’ve shot eight other features, and this is the first one in which the main concern was being real, being believable,” he told AC (Feb. ’03). To tell the story of an aspiring photographer (Alexandre Rodrigues) who watches his friends’ lives go in troubling directions, the filmmakers shot on location in two favelas that were deemed safer than the titular one, working with a cast of non-professionals who actually lived in the slums. Charlone kept his lighting to a minimum, in part to facilitate the cast’s improvisation. “Our entire approach was dictated by whom we were dealing with — most of these kids had never even seen a camera before,” he noted. He earned an Oscar nomination for his efforts. Super 35mm and Super 16mm. 10) American Beauty (1999): Conrad L. Hall, ASC. An affluent but miserable suburban family (Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening and Thora Birch) is the focus of Hall’s first collaboration with Sam Mendes, and the cinematographer, who was always most
Above: The Brazilian film City of God, shot by César Charlone, ABC, placed ninth. Below: American Beauty, shot by Conrad L. Hall, ASC, rounded out the Top 10.
attracted to character-driven stories, recalled that he was initially concerned by how “unlikable” the characters were. “But once the actors got hold of those wonderful words and started to react to one another, that’s where the magic happened,” he told AC (March ’00). His lighting approach was “the same sort of strategy I always do: I first light for what I want to see by painting in specific areas in values of black-and-white, and then add room tone, a fill light that brings up the shadows to where I want them.” The goal with composition was “a 22
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sort of classicism. [This] allows the viewer to just watch things happen in a very graphic frame.” Hall won ASC and Academy awards for the film. Super 35mm. (Ed. Note: AC also covered American Beauty in June ’00.) A full account of the poll results is posted at www.theasc.com. Original coverage of these films was written by Benjamin Bergery, David Heuring, Jean Oppenheimer, Stephen Pizzello, Christopher Probst, Jon Silberg and Ray Zone.
American Cinematographer
The definition of the modern American family has evolved over the past several decades as non-traditional domestic arrangements have become increasingly common. Same-sex couples have gone mainstream, a reality reflected in movies and television, where the protagonists’ sexual orientation is incidental to the universal themes being explored. One of the latest examples of this is Lisa Cholodenko’s comedy The Kids Are All Right, which focuses on a lesbian couple, Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), whose teenaged children, Joni (Mia Wasikowski) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), decide to track down their biological father, an act that elicits different reactions from “the Moms,” as the kids refer to them. Nic feels threatened by Paul (Mark Ruffalo), whose sudden immersion in the family brings marital tensions to the surface and sparks a kind of mid-life crisis for Jules. “The most important thing was to tell the story of a conventional suburban family,” says director of photography Igor Jadue-Lillo, who recently met with AC in Los Angeles. “It doesn’t matter if it’s two women or two men; they go through the same things that any other family does. Lisa wanted the film to feel very natural; she didn’t want the filmmaking to intrude. Everything was shot on location, and because the palette and textures needed to feel ordinary, we never pushed to enhance the art direction, lighting or camerawork. We didn’t use cranes or any complicated moves; everything was shot on a dolly or handheld, and we usually stuck with focal lengths between 20mm and 50mm. We introduced a long lens to shoot Paul’s arrival at Nic and Jules’ home.” The camera Jadue-Lillo frequently shouldered was an Arricam Lite, which he chose because “it’s small and lightweight, so you can move fast.” Clairmont Camera supplied the package, which also included an Arri BL-4, Zeiss Ultra Primes and no zoom lenses. When production began on the 23day shoot, the filmmakers intended to do a traditional photochemical finish, but with the Sundance Film Festival deadline loom-
City of God photo ©2002 Miramax Films. American Beauty photo ©1999 DreamWorks SKG.
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A Contemporary Comedy By Jean Oppenheimer
ing, they had to rethink their strategy. They completed a two-day digital intermediate at Technicolor, and after Sundance, they went back to the lab for an additional day of grading, according to Jadue-Lillo. The story takes place in Los Angeles over one summer and is set primarily indoors. Cholodenko had a specific vision of how Nic and Jules lived and what their house looked like: a middle-class home in suburban Sherman Oaks with big windows, pastel-colored walls, white décor, and furnishings “straight out of Restoration 24
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Hardware,” recalls Jadue-Lillo. The only problem was that the perfect location proved to be in the hip waterfront enclave of Venice, whose narrow canals gave the community its name. There was no room to park crew trucks on the street, and the houses were close together, which made positioning lights outside difficult. The ground floor of the house is an enormous room that is informally divided into areas — kitchen, dining room, living room — that are not separated by walls. Windows are everywhere and sunlight American Cinematographer
pours into the house, which proved both a blessing and a curse. “We wanted sunlight but not hard light,” says Jadue-Lillo. “We didn’t want to blow out the windows.” A small practical porch out front provided some natural diffusion, allowing light in the windows but keeping direct sun out. Whenever possible, interior day scenes were scheduled for when the light was good, and when it wasn’t, a 20'x40' piece of Grid Cloth was hung over the windows. When interiors had to be shot day-for-night, the Grid Cloth was replaced by black material and side flaps were added, completely sealing out the natural light. Inside the house, Jadue-Lillo relied on practicals to create atmosphere and depth, and production designer Julie Berghoff created built-in bookshelves that presented an ample number of small hiding places. Jadue-Lillo used Dedolights, small Fresnels, Zip lights and China balls, all diffused with ½ Grid, ¼ Grid, 216, 250 or Frost. Multiple NDs were usually on the lens, and outdoors, Polarizers were often required. The décor in the house is almost exclusively white or pastel. “You have to be careful when lighting that kind of color scheme if you want to keep the detail of the architecture and the furnishings, which we did,” says Jadue-Lillo. “That’s why the prac-
The Kids Are All Right photos by Suzanne Tenner, courtesy of Focus Features.
Right: In a scene from The Kids Are All Right, longtime partners Nic (Annette Bening, center) and Jules (Julianne Moore, second from left) enjoy dinner with their children, Joni (Mia Wasikowska, right) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). Below: Joni introduces her brother to their biological father, Paul (Mark Ruffalo).
Above: Director of photography Igor Jadue-Lillo (at camera) and his crew prepare to film a scene in the family’s backyard. Right: Paul meets Nic and Jules for the first time.
ticals were so important. In addition, you really need to balance your key lights and be careful with exposure — I was usually around f2.2 in the house.” The kitchen looks out onto the back yard, which is the site of the first meal the family shares with Paul. To soften the light and knock out unwanted shadows, the grips erected a 20'x40' muslin overhang. A couple of 18K Alpha lights were placed on the ground or atop scaffolding. “My wonderful gaffer, Dayton Nietert, introduced me to the HMI Alphas,” notes JadueLillo. Strings of small decorative lights crisscrossing the porch served as both a decorative touch and low-level fill. Despite the challenges posed by the Venice location, Jadue-Lillo notes that it “was actually the good house to shoot — Paul’s was the real challenge.” A laid-back 26
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restaurateur, Paul lives in a bungalow built into the side of a hill. The property includes a large back yard that is overgrown with native plants, and Paul hires Jules to landscape it. Once again, the filmmakers found the perfect location, this time in Echo Park, but the road leading to it was winding and so narrow that some crew trucks couldn’t make it up the hill. Like Nic and Jules’ house, Paul’s place is airy and open. Floor-to-ceiling windows and a sliding glass door look onto the back porch. And, as in Venice, the houses were built close together. “To light that house, whether night or day, was like being on the 15th floor of a high-rise,” declares Jadue-Lillo. “We didn’t have the budget for Condors or lifts, and there wasn’t enough room on the sides of the house or on the back porch to set up lights. American Cinematographer
We ended up placing Alpha lights on the ground behind the house, at least 10 feet below the porch, and leveled them as best we could. We aimed the units toward the ceiling in Paul’s den, just inside the back door, and bounced the light that way. We didn’t need bounce cards because the ceiling was white.” Another key location is the restaurant Paul owns, which has mostly outdoor seating. “We wanted to emphasize the bohemian feeling of Paul’s character,” recounts Berghoff, “so we fabricated string lights out of old mason jars and carnival lights [and hung them] above the tables. [We added a few] chandeliers that Paul might have discovered in some funky thrift shop.” The last sequence in the film finds Nic, Jules and Laser taking Joni up to Berkeley, where she is starting college. Jadue-Lillo describes filming the family in the car as “a good challenge,” especially given the time pressure. “We only had three hours to film four people in a car on a process trailer, and we shot on a freeway in Los Angeles. Initially, we were told we couldn’t have the wings down on the trailer. How in the world were we were going to shoot this? Fortunately, the police relented and allowed us to use the wings.” Jadue-Lillo, who was born in Chile and raised in Argentina and Mexico, credits high-school friend and future ASC member Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki with introducing him to filmmaking. “Chivo was already making short films in high school, and when he started film school, he dragged me into writing, producing, acting and serving as a camera assistant,” he says. After catching the cinematography bug, Jadue-Lillo moved to England to attend the London Film School. His credits as director of photography include The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Passengers and Disco Pigs.
TECHNICAL SPECS 1.85:1 35mm Arricam Lite, Arri BL-4 Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T 5229 Digital Intermediate ●
Multiple units and an arsenal of visual effects help Robert Elswit, ASC realize Phillip Noyce’s action thriller Salt. By Iain Stasukevich •|•
Cat and
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n the new film Salt, American covert operative Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is accused of spying for the Russians and must draw upon all her skills to evade capture by her CIA colleagues. She is also determined to prove her innocence, something that becomes increasingly difficult to do as her flight continues. The movie features a variety of ambitious action sequences, but according to director of photography Robert Elswit, ASC, director Phillip Noyce “was not interested in spectacular scale, which runs counter to the way action films are usually done. Phil pushed [production designer] Scott Chambliss to design our sets to be small, claustrophobic and authentic-looking, and he asked me to provide a naturalistic lighting scheme.” However, he continues, “Phil was also open to the
American Cinematographer
Unit photography by Andrew Schwartz, SMPSP and David Griesbrecht, courtesy of Sony Pictures.
world of Salt taking on a somewhat stylized theatricality — the story, which is essentially a character-driven drama with a somewhat unbelievable premise, seemed to demand a slightly theatrical approach. This allowed me to try to find a lighting style that, though somewhat realistic, could also be shamelessly flattering to the actors, allowing them to look as attractive as possible even when bruised, cut and covered in blood. What that meant in practical terms is that very often the character lighting would dictate the set lighting. Luckily for me, the actor playing Salt was Angelina Jolie. “In modern films, trying to maintain flattering lighting throughout a realistic drama can be a tricky road to go down,” continues Elswit. “At best it can dictate the entire look of a film and compromise every lighting setup; at worst the actor can appear as if he or she is in a different movie from everyone else. For all the actors, we tried to find a way to blend a kind of movie-star lighting with a theatrical realism that I hoped would not contradict or call attention to itself.” Over the course of the film, Elswit gradually altered the quality of light he used on Jolie to underscore her character’s predicament. “I started with a bright frontal or ¾-frontal light on her, and then, as the story progresses, we begin to see her in half-light or backlight, or she’s keyed by light bouncing off the floor, creating stronger shadows and more contrast,” he says. “We actually found that putting Angie in half-light with strong contrast made her look even more striking. We never had to compromise the way the scenes looked or felt when we were lighting her. As long as I stayed away from toplight, the harsher and more unusual the angle, the more expressive the results.” Elswit acknowledges that a stunt-heavy thriller such as Salt looks a bit anomalous among his recent credits, which include Duplicity, There Will Be Blood (AC Jan.’08) and Michael Clayton, and he defers much of the credit for
Opposite: When her CIA colleagues accuse her of being a double agent, covert operative Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) must go on the run. This page, top: Salt examines subway blueprints as she wends her way through the service tunnels. Bottom: New York’s finest arrest Salt, but the filmmakers took creative liberty by cuffing her hands in front, a breach of normal police procedure that enables her to make an escape.
www.theasc.com
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Cat and Mouse
Right: The duality of Salt’s situation is reflected in the two-way mirror of an interrogation room. Below: The spy springs into action.
Salt’s visual style to his collaborators, notably 2nd-unit director Simon Crane; 2nd-unit director of photography Igor Meglic, ZFS (Slovene Association of Cinematographers); and visual-effects supervisor/3rd-unit direc30
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tor of photography Robert Grasmere, who coordinated the work of 10 visualeffects facilities. Crane, who also worked with Jolie on Mr. & Mrs. Smith (AC July ’05), and Meglic, whose second-unit credits American Cinematographer
include The Bourne Ultimatum (AC Sept. ’07), are well known in their respective fields. “Being a second-unit cameraman requires a special set of skills,” Meglic remarks. “You have to have an understanding of how mass moves through space, and you have to be able to feel what’s going to happen as it does.” Meglic notes that Salt illustrates how the second unit’s responsibilities have evolved on films in which action is closely fused with character. He and Crane often found themselves shooting what might normally be considered main-unit material, and “that used to be unheard of,” says Meglic. “Usually the first unit handles the principals while the second unit is off shooting all the cars and other action. It takes the right kind of director to gain the actors’ trust, and Angelina trusts Simon to direct her.” Grasmere’s unit was tasked with filming all of the background plates, some aerial shots and the Russia mate-
Top: Reflections are also used to artful effect on the other side of the twoway mirror during the interrogation of a Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski). Bottom: Inside the room, director Phillip Noyce (leaning on table) and cinematographer Robert Elswit, ASC (wearing cap) work through the scene with Olbrychski.
rial. It was also up to Grasmere to determine what could be achieved practically without slowing down the production, and what could be achieved in post without compromising the integrity of the other departments’ work. “There were big fixes and small fixes [in post] — the work was evenly distributed,” says Grasmere. “We finaled around 800 shots, which is a lot when you consider the whole film has 2,500 shots.” On the set pieces where the second or third unit simply had to match first-unit photography, Elswit, Meglic and Grasmere, along with gaffers Andy Day and Greg Addison, would walk the sets and discuss the best way to match or re-create the original lighting setup. At other times, the secondary units worked autonomously in other locations; if they shot a critical dramatic scene featuring principal actors, the dailies were sent to Noyce and Elswit for approval. “Any large production that involves multiple units
working independently and shooting stunts, effects and aerials is as big a logistical challenge as it is a creative challenge,” Elswit observes. “Thank God I had [1st AC] Baz Idoine to take care of all the camera-equipment issues, and Andy [Day] and [key grip] Dennis Gamiello to sort out all the www.theasc.com
other stuff.” In one sequence that features a complex combination of stunts and visual effects, Salt is cornered on a freeway overpass by two CIA colleagues (played by Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor) and throws herself over the guardrail, landing hard on a container August 2010
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Cat and Mouse
Top: Elswit (far right) and Steadicam operator Scott Sakamoto follow Jolie while filming a foot chase. Bottom left: A Technocrane is used to capture a character being pushed off a pier to “sleep with the fishes.” Bottom right: 2nd-unit director Simon Crane (left) and 2nd-unit director of photography Igor Meglic, ZFS coordinate the action.
truck below. For the location work, Jolie rolled off the overpass of a highway interchange in Washington, D.C. Then an amalgam of elements were photographed on location in Albany, N.Y., and on a greenscreen stage erected in the former Northrop Grumman buildings in Bethpage, Long Island. Onstage, Jolie was suspended from a 25' track on a stunt wire and filmed at high speed as she was flown laterally into a chroma-key crash pad; Meglic’s camera was on a scaffold on precision dolly track. 32
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Visual-effects artists at Framestore in New York, led by visualeffects supervisor Ivan Moran and CG supervisor Theo Jones, used Shake and Nuke software to alter the truck plate from Albany to sync the timing of Jolie’s fall and to match the lighting between the elements. (The plate was scanned at 4K by Deluxe’s New York facility.) Jones’ team created a CG container for the truck, using geometric data from a 3-D LIDAR scan made in Albany, and then fine-tuned the lighting for the container and the rest of the American Cinematographer
plate. The final composite is a quick, overhead shot of Jolie spinning through the air toward the truck. When Salt hits the container, it’s a stuntwoman standing on top of the moving truck who completes the fall, rolling over as Meglic’s camera (operated by Jason Ellson) pans with her. In the same shot, Salt regains her composure, so a transition between two handheld shots — one with the stuntwoman, and one with Jolie — was hidden in the camera moves done on location atop the moving semi. “The
Soft overhead lighting is supplemented by more direct sources for a major sequence set within St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York.
two actresses did their best to match each other’s movements, and after that it was just a matter of morphing the two shots together over a few frames,” Moran explains. The rest of the scene sees Salt jumping from truck to truck before hijacking a motorcycle and speeding away. Crane and Meglic, along with stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood, used previs animations (by Proof Inc.) and detailed beat sheets to determine shots and the kinds of equipment they’d need. “The Arri 235 is a godsend for this kind of work,” says Meglic. “It’s small, lightweight and has a great viewing system.” His lenses included a 70-210mm (T2.8) zoom lens that Panavision’s Dan Sasaki custom-built for him, and a range of Panavision Primo zooms and primes. Six operators covered the action and worked handheld, employing a Libra-headequipped Supertechno 50 crane and a Mercedes-mounted Russian Arm. To heighten the sense of excitement, Meglic employed an in-camera combination of shutter clipping and speed ramping. “Depending on the shot, we’d undercrank film by a couple of frames to speed up the action just a bit,” he comments. “If you do it any more than www.theasc.com
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Cat and Mouse that, it becomes obvious.” Jolie enjoys performing many stunts herself, and it is actually she in several shots of Salt riding atop the trucks as they roll down the highway. She was always wired to the vehicle, and the artists at Framestore were tasked with removing all traces of stunt wire from each shot. “That’s not always the easiest thing to achieve, especially when you’ve got a big cable passing in front of the actor’s face,” notes Moran. The Framestore team and a team at Tikibot, which also contributed some shots, often had to reconstruct Jolie’s face frame by frame, he adds. At one point in the film, Salt is captured and transported to
“It’s important to keep the camera rolling after the impact.”
another location via Manhattan’s Queensborough Bridge. The New York Police make the mistake of cuffing her hands in the front, enabling her to wreak havoc in the SUV. She headbutts one of her guards in the backseat and then disables another guard and steals his taser. After overpowering the driver, she uses the SUV to smash her way through a police escort, only to find that the bridge off-ramp is blocked by more police cars. The only way out is to drive over the edge. The trick was to place Jolie and a camera inside the car when it hit the ground. The crash was split into two elements, a background plate of the vehicle cab and Jolie’s foreground element. The actual crash was shot on location at the Queensborough Bridge. The SUV was rigged to jump the off-
Salt escapes a tense situation by clinging to the exterior wall of an apartment building. Special rigging (top) allows the camera to move while capturing overhead angles of Jolie, who often performs her own stunts (bottom).
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Cat and Mouse
Top: A specially built camera platform allows camera operator Jason Ellson and stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood to capture shots of Jolie atop a moving truck. Bottom: Noyce blocks out a subway sequence with Sakamoto.
ramp’s concrete barrier and crash into the street below. Nine Arri and Panavision cameras covered the crash; one was on a Supertechno 50 crane that extended over the side, flying next to the car as it went over. Crane wanted to have a moving camera inside the car, so 2nd-unit key grip Peter Chrimes installed a 5' camera slider in the cab so that when the car hit bottom, the camera, an Arri 235, would slam forward with the impact, going 36
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from a medium shot of Jolie to a closeup. “It’s important to keep the camera rolling after the impact so you see how it affects the character,” says Meglic. “We built a special cage for the camera with two rods, one on top of the lens and one on the bottom, to help prevent the lens from being ripped out. The lens had to be the lightest we could find, which turned out to be a 24mm Panavision Ultra Speed.” The team also had to make sure the crash didn’t American Cinematographer
disable the camera, so Chrimes figured out a way to slow down the slider in the last 4" of the move by hooking bungee cords to the back of the camera platform and layering strips of tape onto the slider’s rail. The gradual thickening of the tape slowed the platform enough that it hit the end of the track with much less force. The vehicle-interior plate was shot on the production’s greenscreen stages in Bethpage, with Jolie inside a mockup of the vehicle. As she acted out the moment of impact, Meglic photographed her at high speed with the same lens and camera slider used in the crash. From there, it was up to Framestore to marry the elements together, but it wasn’t a simple composite — the artists filled the car interior with all manner of digital debris, including glass, dust and metal fragments. “Without the proper atmosphere, it would have looked too clean,” says Moran. The final shot takes only a few seconds of screen time. “It happens so fast, but it’s not like seeing a pushin,” Meglic says. “It’s one of those little things, the imperceptible things, that
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Elswit and Sakamoto capture various angles for sequences set aboard a dinghy and in the hold of a larger vessel.
enhance the action.” If an important scene was set in a location that proved to be unavailable to the production, CG artists re-created the environment down to its tiniest textures. CIS Vancouver visual-effects supervisor Mark Breakspear oversaw much of this work. “Some people like making CG creatures, but I love making environments,” he says. For Salt, his team had to create two façades of the White House, the front and the back. The front appears in a night scene that shows characters entering the front gates and driving up to the building; the back appears in a dawn scene that shows Salt being taken away by helicopter. “CG shots of famous locations like the White House are definitely the hardest to accomplish because if you don’t get it right, everyone will notice,” observes Grasmere. Initially, he and 38
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American Cinematographer
Breakspear attempted to capture background plates of the White House, but the Secret Service wouldn’t allow access to the grounds. Plan B was to photograph the guards driving up to a mockup of the White House gates in a parking lot in Long Island, and then build everything else digitally. During his research phase, Breakspear went so far as to dig up the original White House landscaping plans in a public archive. “We also did a lot of HDRI [high-dynamic-range imaging], which allows us to record the volume of light in the area, and we took a lot of digital photos around the White
“CG shots of famous locations like the White House are definitely the hardest to accomplish because if you don’t get it right, everyone will notice.” House which, when cleaned up, could be used for textures on the CG model of the buildings,” he says. When gathering data for CG lighting references on set, Grasmere prefers to use a fish-eye lens on a highresolution still camera and photograph the location or set with 360 degrees of overlapping coverage, shooting at a depth of 5 to 6 stops (3 stops over and 3 stops under) to capture the full dynamic range of anything touched by light. “I might not slavishly adhere to that, but it’s a starting point,” he says. “For the night exterior on the White House back lawn, we lit the foreground beautifully and backlit the actors, but
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Cat and Mouse
Salt’s cloak-and-dagger adventures are enhanced by Elswit’s eye for intriguing compositions.
when we added the building and the lawn, we had to add a CG light source to justify the foreground illumination.” Artists at CIS had to create a sizeable section of Washington, D.C., for the sequence that shows Salt being
taken away in a helicopter. Grasmere shot a moving aerial foreground element of the Blackhawk taking off from a Long Island park, and CIS was asked to comp a 2-D skyline into the background. “But we were trying to sell
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this environment, and [using 2-D instead of 3-D] was a corner we didn’t want to cut, so we found a simple 3-D model of D.C. online that was available for download — the data set was provided by the U.S. government,” recalls Breakspear. CIS used the data to create corresponding 3-D blocks within their software (Maya and Houdini), and then skinned them with textures and twinkling lights. “We went to Washington and studied 30 or 40 buildings, shot textures, and fed those elements into a computer,” explains Breakspear. “We added air-conditioner units, antennae and water tanks to the rooftops, and with the camera movement and the parallax, it looks absolutely stunning.” Optical performance is a critical element of all visual-effects work, and CIS matched a set of CG lenses into its Maya and Houdini software based on the lenses Elswit and his collaborators used for principal photography.
Breakspear explains, “When you’re tracking a shot, you have to negate the distortion the lens gives you. Before production starts, we shoot lens grids, which are big white boards with a black grid. The lens we use to shoot the grid takes the square geometry and distorts those lines. We scan the test shots, using the lens grids to show us how to undistort the original photographic elements. When we’ve added our [CG] elements to the shot, we then use a secondary piece of software to redistort the final composite so it matches the original.” Principal photography on Salt wrapped in June 2009, and as the visual-effects team finalized shots, they referenced Elswit’s dailies, which had been timed by Nolan Murdock at Deluxe’s New York facility. Elswit supervised the film’s final digital grade at Sony Colorworks, where he worked with colorist Steve Bowen. After again passing most of the credit for the film’s
look to his collaborators, Elswit sums up his DI work in an equally humble fashion: “There are many cinematographers who do wonderfully creative work in the DI, but I spend most of my time fixing things I screwed up in principal photography.” ●
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An unlikely hero fights for his woman in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, directed by Edgar Wright and shot by Bill Pope, ASC. By Noah Kadner •|•
Girl Trouble A
dapted from an irreverent comic-book series, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World chronicles the attempts of its titular character (Michael Cera) to woo a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) by defeating her seven evil exboyfriends in video-game-style fights. The film is directed by Edgar Wright, who decided to team with Bill Pope, ASC after the cinematographer, a comic-book aficionado, made a convincing pitch for the job. “Bill really impressed me because he wanted to talk about the script rather than the look,” recalls Wright. “He’d already read the books and was really into them.” When the pair began discussing the film’s look, says Pope, “we took our initial inspiration off the books’ full-color covers. From there, we imagined what all the black-and-white 42
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illustrations [inside] would look like in color. Translating [Scott Pilgrim creator] Bryan Lee O’Malley’s aesthetics to live action was more straightforward than adapting other comics might be, because Bryan doesn’t cheat perspective and use ‘cartoon engineering.’ Also, he drew a lot of the comic [referencing] actual photos of Toronto, where the story is set.” “Edgar wanted to stay true to the linear lines of the books while taking things a step further,” notes production designer Marcus Rowland. “The comic pages have no texture or color, but you get a real sense of geography. Edgar, Bill and I extrapolated a look that would start with mundane browns and muted tones and evolve into a progressively more colorful palette.”
American Cinematographer
Unit photography by Kerry Hayes, SMPSP. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Universal Pictures.
The filmmakers began principal photography in Toronto in July 2008, working on location and onstage at Cinespace Film Studios. A chief element of the style they envisioned was extreme changes to aspect ratios and framing in order to approximate both the multi-panel graphic manga comic aesthetics and video-game styles used throughout the source material. The movie is structured around the seven fights Pilgrim must win — each being more intense than the last — and intermingles naturalistic dialogue and transitional scenes. “We generally shot the realistic scenes with spherical lenses and the fight scenes with anamorphic lenses,” explains Pope. “Anamorphic established a more heightened reality with incredible contrast, shortened depth-of-field and often a wider aspect ratio. We broke the rules a lot and sometimes had 1.85 shots with anamorphic lenses [using a custom 1.85 anamorphic ground glass supplied by Panavision], and we also framed [2.40:1] shots with spherical lenses. Often the aspect ratio changes within a shot in order to emphasize the action or a particular detail. The final print is in 1.85, with the anamorphic footage digitally unsqueezed and presented both as filling the frame and with a hard 2.40:1 matte.” (The spherical material was shot in 4-perf Super 35mm.) Pope’s principal crew included 1st
Opposite: Lovestruck hipster Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) attempts to chat up his dream girl, Ramona V. Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). This page, top: To win Ramona’s affection, Scott must battle and defeat her seven evil exes. Middle: Scott is held in the grip of an ornery enemy. Bottom: Cinematographer Bill Pope, ASC (left) and director Edgar Wright position themselves for the next take.
www.theasc.com
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Girl Trouble AC Russel Bowie, camera operator Angelo Colavecchia, chief lighting technician Jean Courteau and chief rigging gaffer Stephen Spurrell. Many of the crew had worked together before but were collaborating with Pope for the first time. Lighting gear was sourced from William F. White Equipment in Toronto, and Panavision Toronto supplied the camera package. Panaflex XL2s were the main cameras, and an Arri 435ES was used for additional coverage and some high-speed work. To capture higher frame rates, Pope used a Phantom HD digital camera customized with a Panavision mount. To get higher resolution for certain visual-effects shots, the production utilized a Beaucam VistaVision camera. The filmmakers carried a large array of lenses in order to capture the film’s varied visuals. Spherical optics included Panavision Primo primes ranging from 10mm to 150mm, complemented by Primo 4:1 and 11:1 zooms. (Pope’s favorite close-up lens was the Primo 50mm.) The anamorphic lenses included a set of Panavision’s GSeries primes and E-series 135mm and 180mm lenses. For anamorphic zooms, Pope utilized Panavision’s 40-80mm and 70-200mm lenses, nicknamed the
Video-game graphics, visual effects and a good, oldfashioned wall of lights enhance Scott’s epic battle with Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman) on the Chaos nightclub set.
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“Short Bailey Zoom” and “Long Bailey Zoom,” after John Bailey, ASC, who actively campaigned for their development. Pope shot most of the picture on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, which he rated at ISO 400. For a handful of snowy day exteriors, he switched to Kodak Vision 200T 5217. Dailies were processed normally at Deluxe Toronto. Lens filtration was limited to 81EF and 85 filters, with a very occasional use of 1⁄8 Schneider Classic Soft. “Our typical stop was a T4 for most of the film-based work,” says Bowie. “On anamorphic lenses, the exposure curve looks much nicer at T4 than wide open. We tried to keep to that stop on day exteriors as well; for night exteriors, we’d sometimes go down to T2.8. For high-speed work of up to 500 fps, we’d drop down to a T2 on location. When we got back into the studio, Bill was able to light some high-speed shots all the way up to a T5.6, depending on how tight we got and how critical the focus became. One second out of focus at 500 fps becomes an eternity!” Pope and Wright chose to work with a single camera as much as possible. “Of the 4,000 or so setups we did during principal photography, about 800 featured more than one camera,” says Pope. “I think we used more than two cameras just two or three times. Edgar and I favor a tight eyeline for the actors, and that’s hard to pull off once you go into multiple cameras.” The filmmakers set a fast pace for the production, which comprised 104 principal shoot days. “We went through more than 200 setups the first week, which is faster than music videos I’ve done,” remarks Pope. “The Matrix [AC April ’99] had a lot of visual-effects work, but the camera moves were relatively simple, and the same was true of Spider-Man 2 and 3. But Scott Pilgrim was a lot more in-camera and complex, like swish pans on specific lines of dialogue and intricate choreography. There were lighting cues and dolly moves on almost every shot.” To facilitate the brisk pace, Pope’s
Scott takes evasive action while running down the side of a three-story pyramid in the club. A Technocrane (bottom photo) was used to capture tricky angles and moves on the set, which required complex rigging supervised by key grip Rico Emerson.
www.theasc.com
August 2010
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Girl Trouble
Some 1,200 visual-effects shots were contributed by London’s Double Negative, including comic-book text, cartoonish weapons and video-game icons. Pope (upper right) strove to create live-action images that would integrate smoothly with the extensive effects.
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crew prelit every set and often devised 360-degree-lighting plots to enable shots to be taken in all directions without a major relight. “Edgar told me he wanted to avoid cutting back to the same shot twice,” says Pope. “There were also lots of split-screen and multiple-panel shots. We brought in the second unit where we could, but Edgar wanted the main unit to shoot the key parts because each fight has a story and a character arc. It’s not just a guy hitting another guy; there’s always a line of dialogue or some bit of action in the middle.” The movie opens at a diningroom table in the apartment of Stephen Stills (Mark Webber), as Pilgrim and his bandmates discuss his aimless lifestyle and flawed romantic aspirations. “We tried to shoot in continuity, so that first scene was shot on day one,” reveals Pope. “The set was a stage version of Stephen’s apartment, which we cluttered up as much as possible. We made it look like it was lit arbitrarily by bare bulbs and whatever else you’d find in the average bachelor pad. After the kids are introduced to Knives Chau [Ellen Wong], they all get up to rehearse, and when they start to play, we do our first big shift from realism to magical realism.” ➣
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Lighting and visual effects were combined to turn a concert sequence into a rock ’n’ roll tsunami.
The band’s music is visualized with notes flying out of their guitars as the camera pulls back far beyond the apparent physical confines of the room. “If Edgar can build it in the camera, he will, so Marcus built the set with a removable wall and multiplied the rectangular length of the room by about 4,” says Pope. “We pulled back on the Technocrane to what seemed like a football field’s distance from the band, and then Young Neil [ Johnny Simmons] and Knives pop up in an over-the-shoulder shot on the couch, as if they’re still in the same room — the couch was on its own track that traveled under the camera and slid up into the shot at the end of the pullback. We pulled out the ceiling to accommodate the Technocrane, so a CG ceiling was added later. It was a lot of fun. We go from that shot directly into the credit sequence.” From the credits onward, Scott Pilgrim alternates between magical realism shot on stages and more conventional-looking location work. “Bill, Jean, [key grip] Rico [Emerson] and I would survey each location as early as possible,” recalls Spurrell. “Some of the sets were on busy streets at the cusp of rush hour. We’d literally have an army of people swoop down a couple of hours before shooting to set up cables, rig Condors, and swap out the mercury-vapor street48
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lamp bulbs for 2K tungsten mockups. We’d place 12-light Maxi-Brutes and 20Ks in the Condors up to 80 feet up for fill and backlight, and then Bill would march in big bounces and direct transmissions with 12- and Nine-light Maxis.” The filmmakers switched from film cameras to the Phantom HD in order to capture extreme-slow-motion shots during fight scenes. “There’s no blood in this movie, so the only way we could suggest a blow’s impact on a person was in their face or the way their hair reacted,” notes Wright. “The
not sure you’ve got the shot till the dailies show up. The Phantom gives you perfect hi-def playback immediately.” A Beaucam VistaVision camera was used “for shots where we nested a close-up inside a wide shot and wanted to optically zoom in while maintaining sharp resolution,” continues Pope. “Edgar wanted perfect continuity between those shots, and the only way to make that work was VistaVision.”
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“The only way we could suggest a blow’s impact on a person was in their face or the way their hair reacted. The Phantom was perfect for this ‘hair porn’ effect.”
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Phantom was perfect for this ‘hair porn’ effect, and we embellished it with wind machines and air cannons. We also used it for the big, power-move sort of shots styled after Japanese animation. In a lot of those films, they didn’t have big budgets, so they’d resort to things like slow motion and freeze frames for effect.” Pope adds, “We kept going back to certain favorite Phantom frame rates, like 388 fps. The latest iteration of the camera is great because the memory is fast, and there’s no waiting for footage to download. With the older high-speed film cameras, you’re looking at a video approximation of each take, and you’re
Bowie notes, “[Beaucam creator] Greg Beaumont also supplied a set of Leica lenses beautifully re-housed with replicated Panavision movie-lens markings. We shot 8-perf 35mm with 400-foot mags, which gave us about two minutes per load. The camera requires a lot of maintenance — you have to check the gate every couple of takes and oil it after every three mags — but the results are worth it.” ➣
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Girl Trouble
The Phantom HD camera was used to capture the movie’s ultraslow-motion fight sequences. “There’s no blood in this movie, so the only way we could suggest a blow’s impact on a person was in their face or the way their hair reacted,” notes Wright.
The movie’s climactic battle, between Pilgrim and Gideon Graves ( Jason Schwartzman), takes place at the Chaos nightclub, a set that features three-story decorative pyramids. “We tried to work in continuity, not only because these are fight scenes, which can evolve on the set, but also because Edgar’s blocking and shot design is so intricate and specific that shooting out of continuity is dangerous — every time we tried to shoot out a direction, we regretted it later because of continuity,” says Pope. “On the pyramid set, this meant shooting on the top deck, the middle deck, the bottom deck and back every day as was needed in the story. Our life became all about scaffold management, and Rico Emerson performed this Herculean labor. He told me the other day he still has nightmares about it. Each level of the pyramid grew smaller and smaller toward the top until the whole crew was working around a 12-by-12-foot area. We built up side platforms and scaffolding in order to accommodate dollies, crew and equipment. The lighting was incorporated into the set as much as possible, but it was a major logistical challenge for the crew.” Wright wanted in-camera lighting effects whenever an impact 50
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snow dragons versus sound yetis,” says Churchill. “We used digital stems of the actual music tracks to drive the animation, and we added digital snow as a fluid simulation. We shot the band sequences with live playback because Edgar is very specific about choreography, down to the millisecond.” Double Negative also had a hand in facilitating the movie’s aspect-ratio shifts. “We did most of our work at 2K,
but we scanned the VistaVision material at 6K,” says Churchill. “For the Phantom footage, we shot the camera’s raw Cine file format, which we converted to 16-bit linear DPX files using Glue Tools. Then we went DPX to EXR floating-point linear color for all the compositing and CG work. Finally, we converted back to 16-bit DPX log color for the digital intermediate with a neutral grade to leave Bill
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occurred. “For the long shots, we used Lightning Strikes 25K and 75K strobes,” says Spurrell. “In the close-ups, we’d switch to Paparazzi data flash units, which are easier on the actors’ eyes. For the rest of the set, we lit 360 degrees with [3'x6'] Midnite Hour LED panels up to about 16 feet, all interactively timed with the band and the fighting. That was augmented with about 1,600 conventional movie lights running through a Grand MH dimmer board. We had 140 bars of six in-the-air Par can rigs that we could raise and lower with chain motors and also play as practical lights. We also set up 48 6K overhead space lights for the base illumination. For backlight, we used Dwight Scorpion pan-and-tilt heads fitted with 36 650-watt DWE bulbs.” For camera moves, Pope deployed dollies, tripods and cranes. “We only did about three handheld shots in the whole show,” notes Bowie. “Everything else was in studio mode with a good number of 15-foot, 30-foot and 50-foot Technocrane days. Since you can get that floating sensation with too much crane action, a lot of our shots were done on a dolly. Bill likes to do fast dolly moves with his eye on the eyepiece.” Double Negative in London contributed about 1,200 visual-effects shots to the movie. “Most of our efforts were devoted to translating the comicbook aesthetic,” explains Frazer Churchill, Double Negative’s visualeffects supervisor. “It was tricky using CG to make comic-book text and graphics occupy space in the frame as stylized photographic objects. We used Shake for compositing, Maya for 3-D, Houdini for effects animation and RenderMan for rendering. We also have proprietary tools for fluid simulations, audio-driven animation and creature effects.” In one sequence, Pilgrim’s band squares off against the twin Katayanagi brothers at a club, and their musical riffs transform into floating notes and fighting creatures. “We did Maya creature shots of the bands’ music fighting as
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Girl Trouble room to work. “We developed various methods of digitally reformatting the anamorphic footage to fit within the spherical frame,” continues Churchill. “For example, there’s a shot that’s presented as letterboxed 2.40:1, and then a character’s fist breaks through the maskedoff area into 1.85. We did a lot of nested zooms or morph zooms, where we digitally zoom into a plate and then transition to a different plate [of the same action] shot with a longer lens or from a closer camera position to create an
“This was my first experience doing nearly everything with HD dailies, and I missed the finer detail you get with film.”
A realistic approach was taken to early scenes staged on an apartment set, but when Pilgrim’s band kicks out the jams, a surreal pullback move extends well past the physical confines of the room, which production designer Marcus Rowland lengthened to comical proportions. “We pulled back on the Technocrane to what seemed like a football field’s distance to the band,” notes Pope. “We pulled out the ceiling to accommodate the Technocrane, so a CG ceiling was added later. It was a lot of fun.”
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impossibly long zoom in. We did this in a number of the fight sequences to create anime-style effects. For a lot of our work, we generated mattes for the separate elements in case Bill wanted to grade, for example, just a face within a composite.” The filmmakers were able to screen their first day’s dailies on 35mm, but then had to transition to HD dailies for the rest of the shoot. “On my next production, I’d like to print more film dailies,” says Pope. “This was my first experience doing nearly everything with HD dailies, and I missed the finer detail you get with film.” Pope carried out the final digital grade at Company 3 in Santa Monica, working with colorist Stephen
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The crew illuminates an elaborate exterior shot.
Nakamura. “Edgar and I liked what we saw as we shot, so most of our work in the DI was about evening things out,” says the cinematographer. “We didn’t
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make any radical shifts.” Pope advocates getting images right in-camera as much as possible. “If something’s going to take an hour to flag off, you may just have to
shoot, but if it’s going to take two minutes, do it,” he emphasizes. “When a shot escapes your grasp during production, it passes through a lot of hands down the chain and becomes the bible for additional post work. A good double net is much better than a power window, if you can do it.” Asked about achieving consistency across Scott Pilgrim’s variety of formats, Pope says, “About the only grading challenge was the Phantom footage, which tends to be a little low in color out of the camera. It’s easily addressed by pumping in some chroma during the grade.” After completing their work, Wright and Pope expressed great satisfaction with the results. “It’s a rush to watch it because the action kicks in and the magical realism never lets up,” says Wright. “I see a lot of big-budget films and occasionally wonder where the budget went, so my main concern was putting all our money on the screen. I
different tiers that don’t have much real interaction, but Edgar made sure every single person in this cast and crew was included. I love the crew, love the movie, love the characters and love the actors, and I think it shows in the final film.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 1.85:1 35mm and High-Definition Video Panaflex XL2; Arri 435ES; Phantom HD; Beaucam Panavision and Leica lenses With each succeeding battle, Scott comes closer to winning Ramona’s heart.
hope everyone can see how much TLC went into this movie.” “Edgar created this warmth in and around the set that suffuses the
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entire movie,” observes Pope. “It started with simple things, like coming in and exercising with the cast every morning. Some film sets are usually divided into
Kodak Vision2 500T 5219 and 200T 5217 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
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Bojan Bazelli, ASC conjures up dueling wizards in the Big Apple for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. By David Heuring •|•
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he Sorcerer’s Apprentice is the latest retelling of an ancient tale in which supernatural powers threaten to overwhelm the young would-be wizard who summons them. Perhaps the best-known antecedent is the synonymous segment of Disney’s animated classic Fantasia, in which Mickey Mouse filled the title role. The new film reimagines the story as a live-action adventure-comedy set in modern-day New York, where fresh-faced Dave Stutler ( Jay Baruchel) finds himself unwittingly cast as the apprentice to sorcerer Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage). To bring this vision to the screen, director Jon Turteltaub teamed with Bojan Bazelli, ASC, whose previous credits include Hairspray (AC Aug. ’07), Mr. & Mrs. Smith
American Cinematographer
Photos by Robert Zuckerman and Abbot Genser. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Disney Enterprises, Inc., and Jerry Bruckheimer, Inc.
(AC July ’05) and The Ring (AC Nov. ’02). Bazelli was recommended to Turteltaub by producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who had recently worked with the cinematographer on G-Force. With a story steeped in magic, Sorcerer’s Apprentice required Bazelli to focus on “the magical feeling you perceive subconsciously as an audience,” the cinematographer offers. “The goal was to engage viewers through characters they can identify with and a story that sweeps them along. If we fail at that, nothing else matters.” Along the way, Bazelli adds, the filmmakers also wanted “to create a version of New York City that’s never been seen before.” Perhaps their most significant decision in this regard was choosing to shoot most of the picture with wide-angle lenses, typically a 12mm, 14mm, 16mm, 18mm or 21mm Cooke S4 prime. “That gives the movie a certain vibe — the perspective is more dynamic,” says Bazelli. “We wanted to
Opposite: The sorcerer Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) lends his magical touch to one of the iconic eagles atop Manhattan’s Chrysler Building — actually a stagebound set lined with a custom TransLite — in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. This page: Blake generates rings of fire while training his apprentice, Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel).
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Right: Stutler tinkers in Blake’s practice room. Below and opposite: Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli, ASC’s lighting for the practice-room set included an array of fixtures mounted to two concentric circles of custom-bent truss centered around a cluster of five space lights.
capture [production designer] Naomi Shohan’s sets, the backgrounds and the city on a grand scale, and if you want to emphasize the environment and really situate your actors in it, wide lenses are the right choice. We shot most of our close-ups in the 25mm-to-27mm range, which is fairly unusual, but the modern rectilinear lenses don’t distort 58
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faces the way older short lenses can. Jon had never shot a movie in this style, so it was a new experience for him, but he really embraced it.” Equally influential on the film’s look was Bazelli’s decision to shoot the entire picture on a daylight-balanced stock, Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, and light it with tungsten sources. He had American Cinematographer
been one of the new stock’s earliest testers and had given Kodak feedback about how it could be fine-tuned, and Kodak gave the production 250,000' of the final product before it even hit the market. “I didn’t treat it like a daylight stock in terms of lighting,” says Bazelli, “and that approach was only possible because we knew we would be finishing with a digital intermediate. In the DI suite, we could easily time out the warmth associated with using a daylight film stock with tungsten lighting, and that would have been pretty much impossible in photochemical timing. “I wanted the images in this movie to travel from the mid-tones to black in as many tones and shades as possible, and 5207 allowed me to create blacks that are deep in a three-dimensional way,” he continues. “You’re always looking for natural ways of softening the image without heavy diffusion, and because the 85 filter is incorporated into 5207, the image appears to be softer. It also holds a great deal of detail in the highlights, which was crucial for maintaining information and variegation in
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Lighting photo (opposite) courtesy of Bojan Bazelli. Diagram courtesy of Bazelli and Tony Nakonechnyj.
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A Magical Manhattan our many shots of explosions and fire. Once fire overexposes, it loses its color, and that’s very difficult to repair or restore in post.” During prep, Bazelli found inspiration in Orpheus Descending, a book of color stills taken by Clayton Burkhart that depict modern New York City, and Fantasy Art Now, a book of contemporary illustrations. “I’m a little obsessed with what these fantasy illustrators do in their pictures,” says Bazelli. “They’re very filmic. The photographs in Burkhart’s book make use of the city’s many lights and colors, and often play off of reflections and wet streets. The colors are strong, and the blacks are really pure. That fit with our desire to set this story in contemporary times.” Most of Sorcerer’s Apprentice was shot on stages in the New York area, including Steiner Studios. The remainder was filmed on location throughout the city. More than 1,200 visual-effects shots round out the magic with flying balls of plasma, a fire-breathing dragon, shape-shifting vehicles and many other illusions. The filmmakers chose to frame the story in 2.40:1, which they achieved by shooting 4-perf Super 35mm. “In New York City, you need [a more vertical frame] to capture the tall buildings, but because a majority of our film would be done in interior situations, we decided on 2.40:1, which gives you a grander scale,” says Bazelli. The filmmakers shot most of the material with four cameras; Arri CSC provided Arricam Lites and Studios and Arri 435s, two sets of Cooke S4 primes, and a complement of Arri Master Primes for low-light night situations, for which they were usually kept wide open. As many as 16 cameras were used on days when the first and second units both had extensive scenes to cover. Shooting on location in New York posed a number of challenges. The filmmakers spent 16 nights filming a climactic battle sequence in lower Manhattan, where all of their gear had to be set up at 7 p.m. and torn down every morning at dawn. Further compli-
Top: The crew readies a flashback scene in the Arcana Cabana set. Middle: Cage demonstrates an LED system used to emulate the light from a plasma ball. Bottom: The finished visual effect.
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cating matters, the city experienced 43 consecutive nights of rain during the summertime shoot. The showers usually lasted no more than an hour, but it was enough to make the short nights even shorter, recalls Bazelli. Nevertheless, the project was finished on schedule in 96 days. In the story, a series of evil sorcerers are locked in a Russian-doll-like series of containers. Each sorcerer must be unlocked by the right code and destroyed before the subsequent sorcerer can emerge. In the final battle, filmed in Bowling Green Park in lower Manhattan, the final sorcerer must be vanquished. The park itself takes the shape of a circle, symbolizing the circular code that Dave must crack. The scene was lit with six 120' Condors surrounding the center of the park. Each Condor carried two or three Nine-light Maxi-Brutes. A fire burned at the middle of the circle that was enhanced later using CG techniques. “I like Maxi-Brutes because they are controllable, cheap to rent and powerful,” says Bazelli. “You can change the globe or dim them, and with the narrow globe they throw light over quite a distance. “In elaborate scenes like this, where many important visual elements will be added later, it’s important to keep your lighting as simple as possible so you can get things done,” he adds. “It doesn’t always work, but it works more often than not.” The production also spent six nights filming in Chinatown, where a dragon springs to life during a parade and pursues Dave up a fire escape to a rooftop. Balthazar intercedes, creating a curtain of confetti to hide his actions. Five tons of confetti was blown into the scenes from rooftop Ritter fans. A 50' Technocrane on the street, a 30' Technocrane on the roof, and a 17' Technocrane on the opposing roof allowed Bazelli to get any angle in a few minutes. The scene was lit with 300 red silk Chinese lanterns; Bazelli chose silk over paper because he thought the glow was more interesting, and he was
relieved to find that the silk held up well in the wet weather. In one major night scene at the Chrysler Building, the structure’s famous Art Deco eagles come to life and take wing. To film the action, the production built the relevant section of the building onstage at Steiner Studios, surrounding the set with a huge TransLite that was lit from behind with 200 Skypans. (A few dozen LED lights were sprinkled across the material and
controlled to suggest warning lights atop various buildings and shimmering city lights in the deep background.) No existing TransLite captured the correct view from the Chrysler Building, so the production ordered a new 160'x35' backdrop, and Bazelli enjoyed the opportunity to participate in its creation. In January 2009, on a day immediately following a blizzard, the production captured a 270-degree view around the Chrysler Building with a
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On location in Manhattan, 2nd-unit cinematographer Patrick Loungway (top, holding camera) prepares to shoot part of a visual-effects-heavy scene featuring Blake’s shape-shifting automobile.
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digital Hasselblad large-format camera, with each exposure creating a 60megabyte file. The hi-rez photos were then stitched together into a panorama, which Bazelli corrected to match the look of the movie. “When we used the TransLite, we put a net in front of it to soften the view a bit more,” he adds. “It looked quite realistic.” The crew found the TransLite’s proper distance from the set via a decidedly simple technique. Bazelli explains, “On the Chrysler Building, I had taken a stick and marked the apparent size of the Empire State Building. Onstage, I held up the stick and asked the grips to move the TransLite back until the size [of the Empire State Building] matched.” Interactive lighting was a major concern throughout the shoot, particularly in scenes requiring visual effects. “It’s key to making an effect credible,” observes Bazelli. “I like to create as much of the effect as possible in-camera and then have the visual-effects team build on that.” This approach came to the fore in a number of scenes wherein characters hurl glowing spheres of light called plasma balls. Bazelli and his chief lighting technician, Tony Nakonechnyj, devised a cluster of LED fixtures that the actors could cradle in their hands. Rubber bands supported the LEDs and gave the source a floating appearance. The light was powered by a battery pack hidden in the actor’s costume, and the source could be remotely switched on and off and dimmed up and down. “We built them from scratch,” says Nakonechnyj. “They were basically tiny, high-output LEDs mounted on wafers — I think there were 18 LEDs on each wafer. These circular wafers were fashioned into a pyramid shape about the size of a golf ball. In that configuration, the actors could suspend them between their palms and spread their fingers. In another configuration, they could lay wafers flat in the palms of their hands, each light illuminating the opposite hand. And we also had a wafer sphere on a rod that could be moved through space to depict a thrown
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A Magical Manhattan plasma ball.” Bazelli adds, “Almost 90 percent of the effect was captured on set. At its center, the light is overexposed, so you don’t really see [the wafer].” In one key scene, Balthazar generates six circles of fire inscribed in a stone floor and circumscribed by a larger circle 35' in diameter. Each circle has its own color of flame, created by the special-effects department and captured in-camera. “You really needed to see the whole circle because of the story point,” says Bazelli, “so we decided to use an overhead shot looking straight down.” A 50' Technocrane was required to get the camera, fitted with a 12mm Cooke S4, high enough to fit the circle within the 2.40 frame. The camera was almost touching the 65'-high ceiling. This scene plays out in the “practice room,” an underground lair where a number of other scenes occur, including a romantic interlude in which Dave impresses his date by creating an impromptu lighting show that is timed with the girl’s favorite song. The light show, which unfolds as the couple stands inside a protective metal cage, includes Tesla coils and strobe lights. Actual Tesla coils and live bolts of electricity were deemed too dangerous, so these elements were created later using CGI. But again, Bazelli sold the illusion with interactive lighting incamera. The underground lair was a set with a domed ceiling, and the center piece of the dome was left out so that Bazelli could light from above. (A CG center piece was used in wide shots that showed the section.) The lighting rig consisted of two concentric rings of truss custom-bent to fit the hole. Each circle could be individually raised or lowered. In the center was a large, coop-type fixture comprising five 6K space lights covered with theatrical canvas rather than muslin. “Theatrical canvas is much thicker than muslin, and it gives no shadows,” notes Bazelli. The concentric circles held roughly 120 fixtures, including Source Four Pars
Top: Bazelli employed 300 Chinese lanterns to illuminate a nighttime sequence filmed on location in Chinatown. Middle: In the sequence, a dragon comes to life amidst a parade. Bottom: Blake worries over a magical container housing a series of evil sorcerers.
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Above: Bazelli checks the frame for a shot in the subway. Right: Gaffer Tony Nakonechnyj (holding light) and Bcamera/Steadicam operator Stephen Consentino follow Baruchel and Teresa Palmer into the subway.
with scrollers, RGB LED Blazes, Atomic 3000 strobes and 5K Fresnels. Bazelli adds that the unusual love scene was shot with a Zeiss Ultra Prime 8R (T2.8) lens as the camera circled the couple. “With the rectilinear lens, the angle of view is that of a fisheye lens but the lines are straight,” he notes. “The approach was so unconventional that we also filmed the scene with a more ‘normal’ lens. But the 8R shot is the one in the movie, and it allows you to see the full scale of that great set.” Footage captured by aerial cinematographer Hans Bjerno helps place the magical story in modern-day New York. Spacecam provided the gyrostabilized helicopter mounts, and Bazelli notes that the company “reconfigured its system to accept an Arri with a PL 66
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mount so we could use Master Prime lenses and get the extra stop. Hans got amazing, beautiful shots of New York at night; these were shot on [Kodak Vision3 500T] 5219 because we needed the speed.” The production’s negative was processed at Deluxe New York, and the dailies, timed by Sean Dunckley, were created nearby at Company 3. Bazelli is a firm believer in establishing a film’s look in the dailies. “Sitting with the dailies timer means getting less sleep during the shoot, but it takes my worries away,” he says. “Every morning before I went to the set, I’d stop by [Company 3] and sit with Sean for as long as I could. After a while, the colorist gets to know you and your style, and it gets easier. All the editing and all American Cinematographer
the test screenings and studio screenings are based on those dailies, so there’s good reason for you to make them as tidy as possible. People become used to that look. “I believe strongly that you cannot create the look in post,” the cinematographer continues. “In post, I finish shaping the sculpture. I do use those tools extensively to take the look further, but I like to carve the biggest, deepest cut in the wood at the moment of photography.” For the final grade, Company 3 scanned the negative at 4K and did the rest of the work at 2K. Bazelli calls Company 3 colorist and ASC associate member Stefan Sonnenfeld “the first eye on the images as they are coming together. I have great faith in him, and he deserves great credit, along with the other people who do this work for me. The quality of the shot depends on them as much as it depends on me and my crew.” At press time, the team was planning to film out to Kodak’s new intermediate stock, Vision3 5254, and then strike release prints on Kodak Vision 2383. “5254 was designed to work with the latest film recorders, and it’s Estarbased, which means that each negative created can be used to make up to 800 prints,” says Bazelli. “We plan to make about seven digital negatives on this new stock, and because of that, we expect the prints to look great everywhere, not just at the premiere and in a few major cities.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 4-perf Super 35mm Arricam Lite, Studio; Arri 435 Cooke, Arri and Zeiss lenses Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, 500T 5219 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
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David Boyd, ASC reteams with director and fellow ASC member Aaron Schneider on the nuanced period piece Get Low. By Michael Goldman •|•
True Colors B
y design, strong connective tissue links Get Low’s plot with the story of how the independent feature got made. Set in Tennessee in 1934, the tale has a vintage feel that directly influenced the filmmakers and their methods. Five-plus years of development went into the character study of an old, mysterious hermit who decides to reveal a shocking, long-held secret by inviting everyone in town to his funeral party — which he plans to stage while he is still alive. The nature of the story, combined with the project’s resources and the aesthetic preferences of director and ASC member Aaron Schneider and his cinematographer, David Boyd, ASC, took Get Low down a very traditional production path. Schneider, who made the transition from shooting to directing with the Academy Award-winning short film Two Soldiers, also shot by Boyd (AC Feb. ’04), says he is overwhelmingly happy with the result of his labors: a charmingly quixotic tale built almost
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entirely around Duvall’s performance, supported by players of similar caliber, including Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Lucas Black. Schneider notes that Get Low represents the pinnacle of an unusual “cinematic relationship,” in his words, between two like-minded cinematographers. He and Boyd met when the latter began operating for Schneider on the pilot for Murder One almost 15 years ago. “We hit it off from the start, and within days, we were speaking the same visual language,” Schneider recalls. “We made it our mission to do feature-quality work on a television schedule, so when it happened that Get Low shaped up as a $7.5-million movie with a 24-day shooting schedule [on location in Georgia], David was the first person I thought of. Our history was invaluable.” By placing his creative bond with Boyd at the film’s foundation, Schneider was able to pull off a quick but complex
American Cinematographer
Unit photography by Sam Emerson. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Opposite: Felix (Robert Duvall) and Mattie (Sissy Spacek), friends with a complicated history, take a stroll on Felix’s property. This page: In a scene set earlier in the story, Buddy (Lucas Black), a funeral-home employee, stops in at Felix’s home to discuss the old man’s unusual funeral plans.
shoot in Georgia, where the production’s locations included a Civil War battlefield deep in a wooded national park. That approach led them to undertake some of the most complicated work of their respective careers, such as shooting an entire feature entirely on location, with no sets; burning down a house at twilight and filming it; and operating on land that had strict restrictions about its use. To accomplish these objectives, the filmmakers eschewed most of the digital luxuries feature films routinely incorporate these days, relying instead on in-camera methods and just six significant visual-effects shots (created by Furious FX). “Aaron and I really wanted this to be a classical, traditionally mounted film, as masterful as we could make it,” Boyd explains. “But at the same time, we did not want to call attention to the photography. We wanted it to have the shades and tones of old still photos from that era — I would describe them as dry colors. We started shooting tests in January 2009 to figure out how we’d achieve that.” Through testing, the filmmakers determined that they would shoot anamorphic 2.40:1 using Panavision’s
C-Series and E-Series prime lenses, which Boyd describes as “old, beautiful lenses, not too technologically advanced by today’s standards. These lenses were the workhorses for the great anamorphic films of the Sixties and Seventies. My first assistant, Lee ‘The Blaster’
“Visually, it needed to be accessible, but it also needed to feel mythic, like a fable.”
Blasingame, secured particular serial numbers of the C and E lenses for us.” Schneider and Boyd also decided to shoot with two Kodak Vision2 stocks, 500T 5218 and 50D 5205, and do a degree of bleach-bypass processing on the negative at Deluxe Laboratories www.theasc.com
in Hollywood to achieve a “weathered, parched look,” says Boyd. He and Schneider had applied a full bleach bypass to Two Soldiers, a period piece also set in the South, but they decided they wanted Get Low’s look to be less extreme. “We dedicated ourselves to the idea that the color palette in Get Low would be established mainly by what we put in front of the camera, and then we would decide what to do with that color in the photography,” says Schneider. “We talked about keeping primary and satured colors out of the film, and [costume designer] Julie Weiss and [production designer] Geoffrey Kirkland, both world-class artists, made our jobs so much easier. “The movie has the feel of a folk tale, so visually, it needed to be accessible, but it also needed to feel mythic, like a fable,” the director continues. “We also wanted to create a kind of veil between the audience and the period without being too heavy-handed.” In consultation with Beverly Wood, an ASC associate member and Deluxe’s executive vice president of technical services, the filmmakers decided a partial bleach bypass would do the trick. “By depriving the negative of some of the bleach baths, August 2010
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True Colors we shortened the latitude slightly, dried out the colors and added a hint of grain,” says Boyd. “That gave us the aged quality we knew the image had to have without stepping out in front of the story.” Schneider adds, “We finished the picture with a digital intermediate at EFilm, but we knew electronic control over saturation couldn’t compare to photochemical desaturation. Bleach bypass changes the film physically and randomly; it’s an analog effect that, at best, can only be simulated with zeroes and ones. We worked very closely with EFilm to use the DI as a means to an analog end.” The production secured permission to shoot in the Pickett’s Mill Battlefield State Park, a location that included a fully restored Civil War-era cabin that the filmmakers could transform into Bush’s home. The nature of the cabin, inside and out, and other scenes in and around the woods, as well as other interior locations, posed major lighting challenges for Boyd and his team, particularly because some scenes appear to be lit almost entirely by firelight, lamplight and even moonlight. In fact, one key encounter in the film, between Bush and onetime girlfriend Mattie Darrow (Spacek), begins as the fire dies in Bush’s fireplace. “The characters come back from a long walk through the woods, and the fire, set earlier in the day, is dying — only the embers are glowing,” explains Schneider. “Then Felix adds a log, and the fire starts to come back to life over 30 or 40 seconds. It’s romantic and intimate, and it even mirrors [the characters’] rekindled relationship. David did a wonderful job capturing the realistic feel of that on film; he had to cue the light levels up consistently over multiple takes. We rehearsed that scene by the gas-powered flame bar, and from there, he built exposure with motion-picture lights, and it all blended seamlessly.” “Felix lights an oil lantern after he adds a log to the fire, and over the course of this very important scene, the firelight grows slowly in intensity and the lantern light provides a rustic, toppy
Top: Director Aaron Schneider, ASC frames up the scene for (from left) 1st AD Eric Tignini, cinematographer David Boyd, ASC, and 1st AC Lee Blasingame. Right: Felix and Buddy visit one of Felix’s old friends, Rev. Charlie Jackson (Bill Cobbs). Below: Schneider and Boyd’s reflections are captured as Boyd films a scene featuring Bill Murray, who portrays funeral-home owner Frank Quinn.
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ambience,” says Boyd. “For ‘firelight,’ we used two units designed and built by [gaffer] Brian Gunter, each of which had four individually dimmable globes. Their shallow design was perfect for our very small practical location. Handheld solids and nets extended the range of these lights to suit the needs of the scene. I echoed the lantern light with a Blonde on a dimmer and flickerbox bounced up into beadboard overhead. It took nine or 10 hands on switches and knobs to make it happen each take, but it works beautifully for the scene. Bobby and Sissy could easily feel and respond to the growing light in their own work. “I mixed colors readily on this film,” continues the cinematographer. “In the tungsten realm, I liked MaxiBrutes with Firestarter globes, 1,200watt narrow globes, to make great daylight of all kinds. In the HMI world, I loved 12K and 4K Pars and Joker Pars for hot, spotty sources. I tended to like pinny sources for this film more than softer light for locations, and that’s why I didn’t use Fresnels very often. I preferred hot, open-faced lights for the feel, and then softer units to file off the edges a little. This movie required a beautifully rough, unrefined look.” For certain interiors where rigging possibilities were limited, Boyd relied on a lightweight overhead grid designed and built by key grip Billy Sherrill. This rig was utilized extensively in the funeral home owned by Frank Quinn (Murray), where Bush comes to arrange his funeral party, and other locations. “It was gridwork constructed out of lightweight 5⁄8-inch copper pipe that could easily support nine to 12 China balls and could be safely and easily installed in a ceiling,” Boyd explains. “It was designed to install and break down fast; we usually used it in a 4-by-8-foot configuration. The China balls were on dimmers, and we skirted off the source with black Grid Cloth to control spill. Billy rigged it to various ceilings, many times using small pulleys so we could adjust it quickly.” Several lighting challenges cropped up in the woods, including a
Above: The crew prepares to film one of Felix and Mattie’s encounters in town. Left: During a cozy scene in Felix’s cabin, the pair becomes reacquainted.
scene early in the film that shows Bush wrapped in a blanket and stumbling into the night, carrying a lantern in the pouring rain. Although the scene looks fairly straightforward, Schneider calls it “the most challenging photography in the film.” That’s because the team had to design a way for the lantern to flicker realistically in a driving rain and also play off Duvall’s face in a way that would be both photographically pleasing and naturalistic. Boyd built a rig using an old oil lantern, and hidden from view was a small bulb activated by a battery hidden in Duvall’s wardrobe. “We wanted to see the flame in the lantern, which meant we’d have to augment its light from a logical place,” says the cinematographer. www.theasc.com
“We also wanted to shoot in a downpour, which meant a low-voltage DC globe of some sort. We found what we needed at an auto-parts store and rigged it up, hiding a small peanut bulb on the lantern side that wasn’t facing the camera and making a small battery pack that Bobby could carry. We localized the rain towers, and I let the background fall off so that there would only be the warm glow around his cabin, motivated by the lighting inside. Bobby wore the battery in a small satchel on his shoulder covered by wardrobe.” However, the flickering lamplight was one of the few practical effects in the movie that required digital augmentation. “Because of the wind and rain, August 2010
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Frames from the opening scene show (top to bottom): the controlled-burn plate; the downstairs and windows tiled in and illumination on the foreground tree comped in; the upstairs raging fire tiled in; and the final comp. “By the time he runs by the camera, the background is 100-percent live action,” notes Schneider.
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there was a lot of movement in the practical flame, but the light and exposure on Bobby’s face were static,” says Schneider. “So we asked Furious FX to put a traveling matte on his face, similar to what cinematographers do [in the DI] when programming power windows to track brightness on an actor’s face. Instead of programming a constant color correction inside the window, we programmed changes in exposure that were in sync with the movement of the flame. That allowed us to simulate the intensity and flicker of the candlelight digitally. Our colorist at EFilm, Natasha Leonnet, put the finishing touches on the composite, and it turned out great.” A more outlandish sequence to film practically and piece together digitally was the burning of an old house, a scene that opens the film and plays an important role in the story. The initial challenge, of course, was finding a real house the production could burn. “The scene was in danger of getting cut from the schedule for weeks, but we sent location scouts far and wide looking for a place that would work,” Boyd recalls. “We came across a long-abandoned house halfway through production; it was out along a two-lane highway that we could control at night. We put five or six cameras out there, including a couple of Eyemos, and one on a dolly track in the woods that I operated myself. Basically, we had one crack at it. We timed it at magic hour, with a small amount of skylight left when the house went up, and it was over in about 30 minutes.” To complete the illusion, the filmmakers had to show a man bursting out of a second-story window, running across the roof, leaping to the ground and running into the woods. That requirement led the team to film the burning house in two rapid takes. Schneider explains, “We first had a controlled burn around the edges of the windows for when [the stuntman] bursts out and jumps off the roof. Then, we quickly reset before the sky went dark and hid a stuntman in a little heat shelter where he had left off in the previous
take. We set the house fully ablaze, and when the fire reached the right level, we cued the stuntman to run across the field toward and past the camera. The intent was to blend the first shot of the controlled burn and stunt with the second shot of the man running away from a raging fire to make it look like one seamless shot. As a visual effect, the shot was composited by tiling different portions of the controlled-burn element with other tiles from the raging-fire element to create a mosaic of blended elements. For example, if a chunk of roof falls off four minutes into the burn, you can blend that with another piece of action from the first minute, such as the moment when a neighboring tree catches fire, and create your own custom inferno. Since the shot was locked off, it was almost like compositing a liveaction shot with itself.” Despite the complexity of these kinds of sequences, however, the biggest overall challenge was the climactic funeral-party sequence, where Bush, at long last, bares his soul to the world. There is no final confrontation, no big action sequence, no device to tie it all together — just a long, impassioned speech. According to Schneider, Duvall pulled off his soliloquy on the first take. But covering the sequence to make it work correctly in the film required extensive planning. Because of their limited time and budget, Schneider, Boyd and 1st AD Eric Tignini storyboarded the sequence and broke it down according to the number of extras that would be required for each shot. The funeral party was shot over three days, beginning with wide shots featuring a large number of extras. Gradually, the number of extras was whittled down, and on the third day, the filmmakers were able to focus on Bush’s speech and tighter coverage. The filmmakers were not allowed to bring heavy equipment into the area where they were shooting because the location was a Civil War memorial. But Bush and other characters had to stand on an elevated platform, so Boyd needed some way to get proper coverage of the
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True Colors
matographer, I always tried to be there for directors when I knew they needed convincing, and David was there for me on this one.” Both Schneider and Boyd take great pains to credit their cast and crew for helping to make Get Low a reality. If they credit themselves with anything, it’s with maintaining the authenticity of the era and the story. “Cinematography has to be authentic, especially on a period piece,” says Boyd. “You have to really control what gets into the frame, whether those details are large or small, and we did that ruthlessly. We filmmakers were the ones who saw this story first, before anyone else, and our mission from the outset was to tell it correctly. I’m happy we did.” ● Top left: With Blasingame assisting, Boyd films Rev. Jackson’s arrival at Felix’s big event. Top right: A Technocrane comes into play for the “funeral party.” Above: The filmmakers prepare to capture another angle of the stage as Quinn welcomes the crowd.
proceedings. He arranged to have a small Technocrane brought in on a stake-bed truck that could maneuver quickly over the dirt roads. “During the day, time was of the essence, and we were not permitted to use a Chapman crane because of its weight,” he recalls. “We needed a movable and easy-toplace camera, so we rigged the Technocrane on the back of the stakebed truck.” Later, the filmmakers had to cover Spacek reacting to the speech, a critical scene shot on an extremely busy day. “We needed to shoot Sissy’s performance when the sunlight was over the trees because of the time of day that the 74
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reverse angle had been shot previously,” Schneider explains. “Sissy’s big moment had arrived, and it was already pretty late in the day. I knew she was about to give the most emotional performance of the shoot, and I wanted to make sure she had the time to do what she wanted to do. I wanted to shoot with about an hour to go in the day, but David resisted. He kept saying, ‘No, let’s wait.’ By the time we lined three cameras up on her, the sun was starting to tickle the treetops. But Sissy nailed it and gave us a beautiful performance, and, like Bobby, she did it in one take. The tears rolling down her face caught the low, warm light, and it was magic. As a cineAmerican Cinematographer
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Anamorphic 35mm Panaflex Gold II Panavision lenses Kodak Vision2 500T 5218, 50D 5205 Bleach Bypass by Deluxe Laboratories Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
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The werewolf Alcide (Joe Manganiello) joins Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin, above right) and vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer, right) for True Blood’s third season, which has transitioned to an all-data-based online/mastering workflow.
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True Blood Workflow Becomes File-Based By Michael Goldman
When the producers of HBO’s True Blood told Technicolor Hollywood they were interested in transitioning to an all-data-based online/mastering workflow, the Technicolor team suggested that the hit series could become, in the words of co-producer Bruce Dunn, “a major test case” for an all-file-based workflow for an episodic TV series originating on film. HBO decided to take Technicolor up on the offer for the current season, the show’s third. The challenge, as Technicolor colorist Scott Klein puts it, was “how to convert a workflow and stay creative.” Well into production when they spoke with AC, those involved say the conversion went off smoothly and has enabled greater creativity. They suggest that True Blood’s overall production methodology seamlessly weaves a traditional film-acquisition approach with the latest all-data post techniques. Dunn enthuses that True Blood can now “spread out many fingers from one hand” in the form of easily accessible data once its imagery enters Technicolor’s SAN, allowing all post units to simultaneously work off the same core files safely. “It gives us incredible flexibility to multitask,” says Dunn. “We can do dirt-fixing while we’re doing assembly, color correction and visual effects. By going to a tapeless, nonlinear post workflow, there are huge benefits for picture conforms. Now we can often make picture changes after we lock the edit.” Using its data-based infrastructure in partnership with its film 76
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lab, Technicolor handles True Blood’s negative processing, dailies, assembly, color correction, titling, audio mixing, layback and final mastering. By entering the file-based universe, the team is now able to have pieces of as many as nine episodes in various stages of production at Technicolor simultaneously. Currently, only the dailies process and the delivery of a final master continue to involve tape or other physical media. Cinematographers Matthew Jensen, Romeo Tirone and Steven St. John typically shoot True Blood on Kodak Vision3 250D 5207 and Vision3 500T 5219. (Most of the show is shot in 3-perf Super 35mm.) The post pipeline’s engine revs up when the film comes from stages on the Warner Bros. lot or from locations in Louisiana; Technicolor develops the film and telecines it on a Spirit 2K system to HDCam-SR at 4:2:2. Dailies colorist Peter Ritter distributes two passes of that material: a basic color pass for dailies viewing and editorial, and a flat pass, which is digitized to Technicolor’s SAN for final assembly and final color. As each episode is cut together, a pull list of shots is created, and those shots are digitized from the flat pass and assembled by online editor Ray Miller in an Avid HD Symphony (v. 4.05). From that point on, everything lives on Technicolor’s SAN. After an episode is conformed, colored and approved, an air master is created from 1080p/23.98 fps files and delivered to HBO at 1080i/59.94 on HDCam-SR tape. Of course, the transition to the file-based approach did pose some challenges. For instance, a new approach to dubbing tapes
American Cinematographer
True Blood photos by John P. Johnson, courtesy of HBO. Technicolor photos by Robert Hoffman, courtesy of Technicolor.
Post Focus
Online editor Ray Miller assembles each episode in an Avid HD Symphony, after which point the files live on Technicolor Hollywood’s SAN.
and DVDs for executives to view had to be implemented, but Dunn notes that Technicolor resolved the issue of exporting files to lower-resolution physical media by incorporating the DVC Clipster system into its pipeline. The production also had to institute new asset-management procedures and personnel to ensure strict control. Miller refers to project manager Ashley Barrett, who heads True Blood’s projectmanagement effort, as “a data traffic cop who ensures each version is right before we start dubs. She makes sure everyone understands the [file-naming] nomenclature and the protocols for knowing who is working on what.” On Miller’s end, the show is assembled entirely in the Avid world, making the transfer of assets more straightforward. From the editorial department at the production’s headquarters at The Lot in Hollywood, “we don’t have to go through any translation process,” says Miller. “Effects, resizes, time warps, speed changes — they all come across as we see them in the offline. The actual Avid bin with the Avid sequence comes over from editorial, and once we ingest all of that, the entire show lives on our SAN from that point forward, which is a huge plus. We start in Avid, stay in Avid and use the actual Avid sequence, so all metadata is built in and no longer has to be translated.” In another change, Klein now uses Autodesk’s Lustre 2010, a software-based color-correction tool, which initially required the colorist to “acclimate to the
real-world difference of a slower-speed non-hardware system,” he says. However, the learning curve was only temporary, and Klein insists the new workflow has allowed him to take full advantage of Lustre’s strengths. “There are some really great, easy tools in Lustre for quickly breaking away sections of the grayscale, isolations, tracking and shape creation to achieve great results for the mood of the show,” he says. “Because the show’s vampires have existed for hundreds of years, there are flashbacks that have extremely customized looks,” Klein continues. “Lustre allows me to highlight the grain for flashbacks and amplify certain parts of the contrast, or build the signal in such a way as to show more grain.” According to Jensen, the new workflow is also benefitting the cinematography team. “In a linear system, you typically deal with your highlights, mid-tones and shadows and adjust those values to change the contrast of your image or the saturation levels,” he explains. “But in this new system, within the highlights, for example, we now have access to the complete gray scale, meaning we can do much subtler contrast changes and color combinations. “We have so many effects [about 40-80 shots per episode], and so many of those shots are delivered long after I am deep into color correction,” Jensen continues. “Now, those shots can just be plugged in, and I don’t have to go back to the lab to work out the color — the system www.theasc.com
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As part of the new True Blood workflow, colorist Scott Klein uses Autodesk’s software-based Lustre 2010 for color correction.
remembers the color values I set. That’s a huge advantage.” Klein suggests that there is a farreaching advantage for True Blood in making the post switch now, at a time when much of the industry is more directly focused on switching front ends from film to digital acquisition. “This is the workflow of the future,” he says. “As resolution requirements increase, the way we’re making this show will allow us to work on [episodes] in 2K resolution later on. We’ll be ready for it when the call comes.” Although the dailies and delivery processes still involve tape, Dunn believes they will see an all-data conversion in the very near future. “I imagine that by next year, we’ll be fully tapeless, outputting [dailies] to whatever media is preferred [for viewing],” he says. “I’d say we are just months away from saying goodbye to tape.” Post News MTI Film Automates Hollywood Facility with ContentAgent MTI Film, a provider of high-quality image-processing tools to the broadcast and postproduction markets, is expanding both its business and its physical footprint. The company recently moved into a new facility in Hollywood, through which it now offers television post services. MTI selected Root6 Technology’s ContentAgent software to streamline the digital-deliverables workflow at the new facility. MTI CEO Larry Chernoff enthuses, “ContentAgent not only gives us the work78
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flow tools, but thanks to its enhanced metadata controls, it allows for an extended level of automation.” ContentAgent incorporates expansive metadata organizational tools, enabling metadata to play a key role in defining and directing workflows. With budgets constantly shrinking, MTI views automation as the only way to manage any volume of file-based deliverables. John Stevens, CTO of MTI, notes, “ContentAgent gives us all the deliverables within one box with a fantastic user interface.” Chernoff adds, “MTI Film seeks to become a unique company that embraces all sides of the postproduction customer spectrum. Through our services facility and continued research and development for film restoration and workflows for digital acquisition, we will be uniquely positioned to improve industry standards, which we will share with both our service and technology customers. … We endeavor to partner with other technology companies like Root6 who share similar values of cooperation that result in improving our industry at a time when change is rampant and postproduction requires new standards of workflow.” For additional information, visit www.mtifilm.com and www.root6technol ogy.com. Cinesite Expands with Nuke Visual-effects company Cinesite has heavily expanded its compositing department by investing in a site license of The Foundry’s Nuke compositing software, allowing the facility to host a significant number of additional seats for its visualeffects artists. American Cinematographer
The investment is part of an overall strategy by the company to double in size by late 2011; the strategy was devised following the commission of such projects as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, John Carter of Mars, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Battle: Los Angeles. “As a result of the high demand for our services, we evaluated the number of licenses for all the software tools we use,” says Antony Hunt, managing director of Cinesite. “Nuke is a powerful compositing tool and we’ve been using it in our pipeline for over 6 years. By expanding our seats, we’re able to work faster and more efficiently turn around our clients’ projects.” Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry, adds, “We’re delighted that Cinesite has invested in a site license and has chosen Nuke as its primary compositing tool. The company works on extremely creative projects and their talented artists showcase to the fullest what our tools can do.” For additional information, visit www.cinesite.com and www.thefoun dry.co.uk. Pro8mm Adds 4:4:4 Workflows Burbank, Calif.-based Pro8mm has introduced two popular 4:4:4 workflows, allowing customers who originate on Super 8mm, 8mm, 16mm or Super 16mm film to post their projects in 444 RGB 10-bit uncompressed and 4444 ProRes. The original film is scanned with Pro8mm’s 4K Millennium II scanner and encoded directly to the facility’s 8TB SAN system; customers can walk out of a telecine session with the files in hand and ready for editing. Pro8mm’s SAN also supports the playback of various data file formats to tape for clients who need to migrate from file to tape. Since implementing the SAN system and file-based workflow, Pro8mm has experienced such an increase in efficiency that the company has lowered the prices of certain workflows and eliminated docking charges. For pricing and additional information, visit www.pro8mm.com. ●
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Filmmakers’ Forum I
Consider “Red” Another Paint in Your Palette By Steven Fierberg, ASC
I recently found myself in a situation that says a lot about cinematography today. Over the course of a few weeks, I was doing postproduction on two features at three different facilities, working with a mix of digital and film technologies. I color-corrected Twelve, which I captured on the Red One, in Technicolor’s DI suite in New York, and then flew to Los Angeles to adjust the answer print at Technicolor Hollywood; then, while in L.A., I went to EFilm to colorcorrect the digital P3 preview master of Love and Other Drugs, which I shot on 35mm. It was a blur of color spaces and formats, and the collective experience taught me a few things about the Red that could serve as an interesting postscript to Chris Probst’s excellent recent article (“Working with the Red,” AC Feb. ’10). Specifically, I learned some things that might be helpful to you if you’re shooting with the Red with a goal of cinema projection. Twelve was actually my second feature with the Red. My first, Alex Cox’s Repo Chick, was shot entirely against greenscreen on a single soundstage, and I was very happy with how it turned out. I was able to choose our camera — a rare opportunity — and I chose the Red because I’d seen tests and knew it was exceptionally well suited to greenscreen work. It did not disappoint; I liked the color, and the fact that the image felt more film-like than other digital imagery. But I did encounter some of the issues that Mr. Probst and other film-trained people have found frustrating. Minor irritants, or “teething problems,” included the somewhat naïve placement of buttons that could be too easily pushed by mistake, and a batteryattachment system that frequently failed, causing surprise powerdowns that required a two-minute reboot of the camera. (We ultimately worked around this by using traditional batteries and a cable.) A more innate issue, which the Red shares with other “full frame” digital cameras, was the surprising lack of depth of field, which made focus harder than with 35mm. Subjects popped sharply in and out of focus, with no smooth transition. Because digital sensors have a fixed array of uniform pixels, the circle of confusion “jumps” from one row of pixels to the next; film, on the other hand, has randomly placed, variably sized microscopic grains, resulting in a smooth, gradual focus transition. To mitigate the focus difficulty, we increased the light level; if I shot masters at f2.8, I sometimes shot tight close-ups at f4.
We also collaborated with an excellent makeup team to foil the Red’s proclivity to reveal every blemish and flaw on an actress’ face, even nascent blackheads lurking just below the skin. It’s important to use full base makeup with extremely soft light. In order to avoid a harsh, “crispy” look, we bounced off 12'x12' muslins or projected through Full Grid Cloth. We used only subtle diffusion filters (1⁄8 or ¼ Schneider Classic Soft) because the Red image is not that sharp when enlarged to cinema size. (I test this by looking at an actor in a “cowboy” shot or a head-to-toe to see how much of their eyes I see; all cameras look sharp in a close-up.) The on-set monitor can be misleading; it’s only 720p, and although it’s useful for previewing contrast (using rec 709) and might keep you from adding that last, unnecessary fill light, using it to make guesses about ultimate sharpness and filter strength is treacherous. You have to see tests at full cinema resolution and scale and remember how they looked. I kept my light meter set to 200 ISO. As the astute AC reader may know, shooting 200 ISO at f4 with bounce light or through Full Grid takes a lot of light. Because we were on a stage, this was quite doable with Ninelights or 20Ks, but it would have been harder to accomplish with smaller lights on location. The next film I did with the Red would be a different challenge altogether. I was very excited to work with Joel Schumacher on the dark drama Twelve, which follows ultrawealthy youths from Manhattan’s Upper East Side who are making that uneasy transition from high school to college or, for some, to the cold night streets. Joel had directed many studio films, but this one was on a tight budget and had to be shot in 23 days. I knew I could save time by using my beloved Angenieux Optimos, the 15-40mm, the 28-76mm, and the magnificent 24280mm. For when we really needed the f-stop, we carried a few Zeiss Superspeeds, which were not only cheap to rent, but also tested extremely well with the Red. Like most digital cameras, the Red craves contrast more than absolute resolution (read about Nyquist sampling if you want to know why), so Superspeeds are, in some ways, a better match for the camera than Cooke S4s. (This did not turn out to be true with the Red’s new chip, the Mysterium-X, which I used on the romantic comedy The Oranges. More on that later.) On Twelve, as with many projects today, the Red was presented to me as a fait accompli. Why not? It was advertised as lightweight, small and sensitive to light, so shooting night exteriors on Manhattan streets should be easier than with film. Of course, I knew that with the same lenses and accessories, the Red was no
“You have to see tests at full cinema resolution and scale and remember how they looked.”
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smaller than an Arricam LT, and at ASA 200, with less dynamic range than film, it was actually far less suited for street filming. But it was too late now! How did I know the Red was really only 200 ISO rather than the “official” 320 ISO? In my careful preproduction testing, I lit three stand-ins — an Asian, an AfricanAmerican and a Caucasian blonde — with direct frontlight at ASA 160 at f2.8. I then opened up the lens 2 stops, to f1.4, to see the result at 2 stops overexposed, and then stopped down to f5.6 to see how they looked 2 stops down. I wasn’t planning to light everyone to key, and wanted to see how people would look if they walked into shadow areas or, say, close to a bright window. (In my mind, the true ISO of a camera or film stock is in the middle of the linear part of the gamma curve.) I then set the camera and lighting to ASA 200 and repeated the sequence, and so on up to ASA 500. Then I reviewed the results. One thing to be careful of with the Red is that most experts, including DITs, only see tests or dailies projected at HD resolution, and they make conclusions about the camera’s capabilities based on that limited evidence. If you are going out to film, it is essential to do a filmout test or see the tests/dailies in a tested DI suite, in a DPX file, at 2K resolution or higher. When I viewed my test footage projected at 1080p HD, the camera appeared to have excellent speed, perhaps even exceeding 320 ISO, and if I were aiming for an HD finish, I could rate it at that speed. But when I saw the results at full film resolution, all kinds of noise showed up in the shadows where there had previously been detail. At 400 ISO, the Asian and African-American stand-ins virtually disappeared when they were 2 stops underexposed. A professional-looking result at 320 ISO would have required crushing the shadows, thereby adding contrast. But Twelve wasn’t the stark world of District 9 — I wanted our film to have a smooth, lush look. Thus, I settled on 200 as the fastest usable speed. To get a fighting chance for decent exposure, we took advantage of a feature that film cameras don’t have, opening the shutter to 270 or even 360 degrees. I had to carefully evaluate when the motion in
the shot would allow this without blurring people’s heads into a creepy zombie effect, but the technique came in handy again and again. By using the shutter, working with Superspeeds (and my excellent 1st AC, Rob Koch), picking locations with enough available light, and occasionally ganging up 4x4 Kino Flos, I achieved very satisfying results in the answer print, check print, video master and DCP. On Julian Farino’s The Oranges, I used the Red One with the new Mysterium-X chip, which lived up to its name — even now, after finishing the film, I don’t know what the chip’s speed is. I played it safe by exposing at 320 for day scenes, 400 for night interiors, and 500 for night exteriors. It’s possible the chip is much faster than that, but I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want to come up short six months down the line when finishing the film. Why don’t I know? Because in the post workflow recommended by Red, you color-correct the native Red files using either Scratch or Red Cine, and after you’ve set the look, you convert the file to DPX for output to an Arrilaser for film printing. Thus, the entire color space, resolution and film format are changed after you’ve timed it. When correcting my tests in a Red DI suite, it seemed the camera had enormous latitude and speed — even 2,000 ISO looked okay — but when we looked at a filmout at 800 ISO, the print was unusable: no contrast, milky blacks, and so on. This problem might have been “teething issues” in the new DI suite, and it might not have arisen if we weren’t making film prints, but we were, and I couldn’t trust what I was seeing in the digital projection. I went back to Tim Stipan, my excellent colorist at Technicolor New York, to use the traditional DI workflow: first converting the file to DPX and then timing it, so that the file sent to the Arrilaser was the same one we’d been color correcting. This is the workflow we used on Twelve, and there had been no significant difference between the digital file and the answer print. (That’s a tribute to both the state of the art and the fine workmanship at Technicolor.) However, The Oranges was one of the first projects to shoot with the Mysterium-X, and the software to convert the Red file to DPX wasn’t even Beta softwww.theasc.com
ware, but Alpha, and it was changing every week. So I played it safe with the speeds I chose. However, I’m certain the Mysterium-X is significantly faster and has more latitude than the old chip. Its greater sharpness requires less contrast, and this led me to choose Cooke S4s for The Oranges, because we wanted a silky and flattering look. I wanted a similar look for the romantic comedy I shot just prior to The Oranges, Ed Zwick’s Love and Other Drugs. Ed and I chose to shoot on film, and having just finished the DI, I can say that Kodak Vision3 200T 5217 put a lot of rich color in Anne Hathaway’s skin that I doubt would be there in a Red file. The Red, especially with the original chip, tends toward more contrast and less differentiated skin tones that look yellower in tungsten light. (I don’t believe an in-camera filter changes this, and besides, who can afford the stop loss?) Of course, that can be exactly what you want for certain films. Is the Red “better” than film? Of course not. Is acrylic “better” than oil paint? No, it’s just different. On a film project, we typically spend time testing emulsions, filters, processing, contrast ratios and so on, so how can we say that a digital camera looks “like film”? Which film stock? With what lenses? For that matter, why try to make it look like film? If you want the taste of an apple, don’t try to make an orange taste like one. Just eat the apple. You may find that the Red image has a lot of what you like about film, and maybe something of its own, too. And the Red Epic may well be a leap forward. If you choose the Red, I hope it’s for the same reason that Hockney and countless other painters have chosen acrylic or house paint rather than oil: because it helps you achieve the look you want for your particular project. Think of the Red as another “paint” in your palette. Just don’t pretend it looks the same as the one next to it. ●
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New Products & Services Universal Studios Reopens New York Street Universal Studios has opened four acres of newly rebuilt New York Street backlot locations. A fixture in Hollywood for decades, New York Street (which comprises 13 city blocks of buildings) has been the setting of countless commercials, television shows and feature films, including To Kill A Mockingbird, The Sting, The Blues Brothers and Back to the Future. The shooting location burned in an accidental fire on June 1, 2008; the rebuilt site offers a wealth of creative opportunities for film and television production and an exciting behindthe-scenes look at Hollywood moviemaking for Universal Studios Hollywood theme-park guests. Immediately following the fire, Jim Watters, president and general manager of NBC Universal Operations Group, and Dave Beanes, senior vice-president of NBC Universal Production Services, began assembling a creative team to design the new street. Steven Spielberg offered his support, and he contacted production designer Rick Carter to be a part of the process. Carter collaborated with art director Beala Neel on the initial design concepts and scope of the rebuild, and Neel headed the team of production designers and graphic artists, which eventually expanded to a staff of 25. Based on his own production experience and feedback from filmmakers, Beanes helped guide the core design team. They decided to keep the original east-west main street and add new locations, including a modern New York block with a glass-and-steel look, Paris Square, London Square and Central Park. The overall design concentrated on detail work that would cater to modern filmmaking needs. The façade heights have been increased 10' to 25' for an average height of 40' to 50', providing a realistic urban downtown feel. The new façades also feature unobstructed interior shooting spaces that can be built out, allowing productions to shoot interiors without returning to a soundstage. The width of the main street was narrowed so the camera could capture both sides of the street in the same shot, and long vista shots through archways are now possible, giving added depth to scenes. For chase sequences, cameras can be positioned on the reinforced façade roofs or mounted on a crane to follow the action. The fire escapes are practical and built for use with actors and stunt 82
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• SUBMISSION INFORMATION • Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to:
[email protected] and include full contact information and product images. Photos must be TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.
people. The new Courthouse Square has a fire station large enough to hold a full-sized fire truck, and next door to the fire station is a modular gas station that can be dismantled and stored according to a production’s needs. As an added touch of realism, the manhole covers can emit special-effects steam, and London Square has chimneys rigged for special-effects smoke. Universal Studios partnered with the Los Angeles County Fire and Building & Safety departments to create new guidelines for fire safety in the innovative façades, which now incorporate fully automatic sprinkler systems, a central fire-alarm system, built-in fire separation areas and a separate water supply infrastructure for the hydrants and sprinkler systems. “This is a proud day for Universal Studios,” enthuses Ron Meyer, president and COO of Universal Studios. “The opening of New York Street shows the company’s commitment to film and television production in Los Angeles and to supporting filmmakers worldwide.” For additional information, visit www.filmmakersdestina tion.com. EUE/Screen Gems Unveils Atlanta Studio Complementing its facilities in New York and North Carolina, EUE/Screen Gems has opened a studio complex with multiple stages and support services minutes away from the Atlanta, Ga., airport. EUE/Screen Gems is undertaking a $6 million renovation of the property, located in the former Lakewood Fairgrounds site. The city of Atlanta agreed to the lease agreement in May, and one of four stages was already fully functional and in use by June. At press time, EUE Screen Gems planned to have four other buildings on the property completely updated by August. The existing buildings offer four stages ranging from 10,000 square feet to 35,000 square feet, plus more than 50,000 square feet for lighting and grip, mill shops and support services. In addition to updating the existing structures, EUE/Screen Gems plans to construct a new 37,500-square-foot soundstage to be ready in March 2011. Current plans for the stage include a
American Cinematographer
mobile, soundproofed wall that can also split the space into two smaller stages if necessary. “Producers, directors and studios came to us and asked us to go into Atlanta,” says Chris Cooney, chief operating officer and co-owner of EUE/Screen Gems. “We chose this site so that producers and directors can book with us immediately. The need is here, and we’re here. “Through our properties in New York City, Wilmington and now Atlanta, we provide coastal, rural and urban settings to our clients, as well as size and infrastructure needed to handle intensive special effects for film, commercial and gaming,” Cooney continues. “This urban location expands our portfolio in a powerful way.” The company was also drawn to Georgia’s 30percent tax incentive for qualified production and postproduction expenditures. The credit is available not only to traditional motion-picture projects such as features, series, commercials and music videos, but also to industries such as game development and animation. For additional information, visit www.euescreengems.com and www.screengemsstudios.com. VES Announces Production Summit 2010 The Visual Effects Society will hold its second annual Production Summit for the greater entertainment industry on Oct. 23 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey, Calif. “Production Summit 2010: Navigating Tomorrow’s Business Models” will bring together professionals from all sectors of
the entertainment community for a day of conversation and collaboration, with a focus on how to thrive in a rapidly changing global economic and technological entertainment environment. “Our inaugural summit, held last October, proved to be an amazing success by offering a great opportunity to bring together leading creatives for a wide-ranging discussion covering the gamut from previs to building worldwide pipelines,” says Eric Roth, executive director of the VES. “Because industry changes come so rapidly and will likely continue to do so, we decided that bringing key industry stakeholders together annually would be beneficial to everyone.” This year’s summit will include directors, producers, cinematographers, editors, technologists and visual-effects artists internationally acknowledged for their innovative thinking and responsibility for moving the industry into the next decade. Attendees will be encouraged to not only think outside the box, but also to reinvent the business models of tomorrow that will guide the future of the entertainment industry as its technologies, financial challenges, shrinking schedules, globalization and proliferating distribution platforms continue to evolve. “It is of the utmost importance that we focus the entire industry on our collective future,” says VES Board Chair Jeffrey A. Okun. “It is time to work together to ensure that we, as a community, will be here to inform, create and operate within this new future. Now is the time to understand where it is going, to stop thinking of what
we used to do, and to look forward and explore how to do it now, well and profitably.” For additional information, visit www.visualeffectssociety.com/productionsummit-2010. Sharp Focus from Redrock Micro Redrock Micro has introduced the MicroRemote Focus System, an affordable, high-performance, wireless/wired focuscontrol system designed for use with any camera.
Designed for professionals and amateurs alike, the system includes a wireless/wired controller, a base station/receiver, motors and a range finder. The controller features an iPhone/iPod Touch interface for graphic display of focus information to aid precise focusing. The system is compatible with both still photo and cine lenses, and it Kodak Expands Vision3 Line Kodak has added two films to its Vision3 family of motion-picture products: Vision3 200T 5213/7213, a medium-speed color-negative camera film, and Vision3 Color Digital Intermediate Film 5254/2254. 5213/7213 features extended latitude, enabling cinematographers to record more details in highlights, and delivers finer grain for naturallooking images in the darkest areas. The emulsion is designed for shooting in both controlled interiors and challenging high-contrast exteriors, and is available in all formats (65mm, 35mm, Super 16mm and Super 8mm). ASC President Michael Goi, who had the opportunity to test 5213, notes that the stock “is a significant improvement over the already excellent Vision2 5217. Reds in skin tones have a noticeably more natural balance, and I felt I could almost touch the high-resolution results in texture.” M. David
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can be used with third-party motors or with Redrock Torque motors. The MicroRemote also boasts modular functionality, allowing additional components to extend the system for multiple motors, multiple cameras and more. The handheld controller features 2.4ghz production-quality wireless radio, with the option for a tethered connection via an integrated connection port. The controller also boasts an integrated rechargeable battery that concurrently powers an attached iPhone/iPod Touch, plus a D-tap power connection. The ergonomic design fits comfortably in the user’s hand, and the controller accommodates both left- and right-hand orientations. The system can be used to control focus, zoom and iris settings, and the controller also offers users camera start/stop functionality. The MicroRemote iPhone/iPod Touch software, which requires an iPhone or iPod Touch running OS 3.0 or later, offers real-time graphic and numeric display of focus distance and focus scale as well as real-time display of the MicroTape sonar range finder distance. The visual display Mullen, ASC, who also tested the stock, adds, “This new film has an even finer grain structure with deeper black tones and richer color saturation, especially in the reds and flesh tones. The images were slightly sharper … and more consistent in overexposed areas. The white tones were cleaner after
the film was scanned and converted to digital files. There is also a tighter grain structure … especially when it is used for daylight exterior scenes.”
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also shows depth-of-field information based on the lens and settings, plus an “auto focus” setting enabling the MicroTape to directly control focus. The MicroTape real-time range finder offers accurate distance-to-subject display with a 25' range. The metric or imperial distance scale appears on both sides of the MicroTape in high-contrast blue. The MicroTape can be used on its own or in conjunction with the wireless remote, and it is configurable for use off-camera. Supporting both wireless and wired control of the motors, the MicroRemote base station enables both automatic and manual lens calibration and incorporates a universal power port. Additionally, a wired finger controller offers precision singlefinger focus adjustment with smooth rotary operation, and it easily attaches to a handgrip for ENG-style operation. For additional information, visit www.redrockmicro.com. 5254/2254 is designed for use with contemporary film recorders. The imaging characteristics of this new intermediate film enhance the speed and efficiency of DI postproduction while rendering noticeably sharper images that more faithfully represent the intentions of filmmakers. The film provides an improved bridge between Kodak negative films and Kodak print films. “These new Vision3 films are the tangible results of our ongoing commitment to filmmakers,” says Kim Snyder, vice president of the Eastman Kodak Company and president of the Entertainment Imaging Division. “They were designed based on our customers’ suggestions and with the goal of increasing creative freedom and efficiencies in production and postproduction.” For additional information, visit www.kodak.com/go/motion.
New Tyler Offers MiniGyro After three years of design, development and testing, Tyler Camera Systems has unveiled the MiniGyro camera-stabilizing mount. The handheld MiniGyro supports and stabilizes cameras weighing up to 30 pounds. Weighing 21 pounds, the Tyler MiniGyro can be assembled or disassembled in under a minute. The stabilizer boasts variable-position handles, a quick-release mounting plate and an adjustable tilt head for shooting up or down. Additionally, a uniquely designed progressive shock tube eliminates vibration while supporting the MiniGyro and camera. Designed to work in cramped quarters, the MiniGyro is ideal for shooting in helicopters, planes, cars, trucks, motorcycles and boats. A standard 28 to 30 VDC camera battery powers four brute gyro wheels and the electronics. The MiniGyro system fits into one custom 22-pound carrying case measuring 19"x23"x12" with a total shipping weight of 43 pounds. For additional information, visit www.tylerminigyro.com. AJA Upgrades Ki Pro Firmware AJA Video Systems has announced the availability of version 2.0 firmware for the Ki Pro portable digital-video recording device. Ki Pro 2.0 includes RS-422 device control, support for eight-channel embedded audio and support for gang recording with multiple Ki Pro units via the Web interface. The Ki Pro is a portable, rugged, tapeless video-recording device that records high-quality Apple ProRes 422 QuickTime
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Ditto Scanner Evolves Cintel International has introduced the Ditto Evolution 2K/4K film scanner and ImageMill2 image-processing platform. Building on the successful elements of the Ditto scanner — including excellent image performance, an easy-to-use interface and the D/SCOP Dust/Scratch Concealment Option — the Ditto Evolution offers a modular and upgradeable solution to film scanning. The Ditto Evolution provides fast shuttle capability, a non-pin registration mode for archive scanning, ImageMill2 processing tools and 3.2D density range. “Ditto Evolution is the first film scanner to be instantly switchable from pin registration to non-pin registration and also the first film scanner to include film grain management and image stabilization tools,” says Simon Carter, sales director for Cintel. “It is the ideal film scanner for all applications and stock types, from OCN ingest for
files onto computer-friendly media. Featuring SD/HD-SDI, HDMI and analog inputs, the Ki Pro enables users to interface with virtually any type of camera or video source they may own or rent. Intuitive to operate, the Ki Pro’s familiar VTR-like buttons provide immediate controls for basic operation, and from a distance, users can control the Ki Pro with a laptop or iPhone Web browser via
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digital intermediates to dense print for restoration projects.” Simon Clark, Cintel’s business development manager, adds, “Ditto Evolution offers solutions to all filmscanning needs. It can evolve from a simpleto-use calibrated pin-registration scanner for digital-intermediate use with superb image quality to a multi-format, non-pin-registration machine for shrunken and damaged film incorporating a full set of image-restoration tools.” The ImageMill2 image-processing platform adds network capabilities and data file management to the existing ImageMill feature set. Carter notes, “ImageMill2 will
address the industry’s need for a fast yet simple-to-use noise and grain management tool for both data-centric digital-intermediate applications and restoration projects within one product. With speeds in excess of 25 fps for 2K and HD files, the performance of ImageMill2 is unequalled. We are currently processing 4K files at 10 fps and can also deal with SD files at twice real time. With ImageMill2 you can truly ‘eliminate the wait.’” For additional information, visit www.cintel.co.uk.
Ethernet or wireless connection. Additionally, AJA has collaborated with Avid to ensure that, via Avid Media Access (AMA) plug-in architecture, the Ki Pro’s ProRes QuickTime files are directly compatible with Avid Media Composer and Symphony systems, allowing users to view, edit and play back the files with access to all clip metadata. “Since Ki Pro delivers pristine 10-bit 4:2:2 image quality, many of our customers have been turning to it as a practical, cost effective alternative to a VTR on set, in the studio and in mobile production environments,” says Nick Rashby, president of AJA Video Systems. “Now with RS-422 device control, Ki Pro can interface to even more devices and workflows via industry standard American Cinematographer
machine control protocols.” Ki Pro version 2.0 firmware is available as a free software download to all Ki Pro customers. For more information, visit www.aja.com. Lightcraft, Mo-Sys Forge Agreement Lightcraft Technology and Mo-Sys, who have independently developed affordable solutions to simplify the tracking and visualization of complex visual-effects shots, have announced they will combine their product offerings in order to provide a full range of virtual-production tools for the entertainment industry. The companies have entered into a joint distribution agreement to sell each other’s products as well as their own in their respective regions, thereby supplying their customers with a single source for complete optical and encoded tracking and on-set visualization systems. Lightcraft Technology builds the Previzion virtual studio system, which combines real-time photorealistic 3-D rendering, keying, lens tracking, compositing, metadata recording and camera tracking; the camera tracking works with either the inertial/optical combination of Lightcraft’s Airtrack precision gyro and Intersense’s IS1200, or with Mo-Sys encoded camera supports. Among Mo-Sys’ offerings is the 3D Inserter, offering fast and flexible live previsualization and data logging of camera moves on a virtual set. In addition to its own products, Mo-Sys will now distribute Lightcraft’s Previzion system in Europe, while Lightcraft will distribute MoSys’ 3D Inserter, Motion Logger and full range of encoded camera heads and cranes in the Americas. Eliot Mack, CEO of Lightcraft Technology, notes, “It is rare to find a company to work with that has Mo-Sys’ combination of technical expertise, vision and innovation. We are excited about the potential that this relationship will provide us and our customers as we expand the use of virtual production tools worldwide.” Michael Geissler, CEO of Mo-Sys, adds, “We are impressed with the competence and innovative spirit at Lightcraft. The collaboration brings together a unique and powerful complimentary chain of tools for next-
generation filmmaking and ensures both stay at the forefront of developments to come.” For additional information, visit www.lightcrafttech.com and www.mosys.com. 3cP Guides Images on Set, in Post Gamma & Density has announced that its 3cP on-set color-correction system for cinematographers has been extended for use during the pre-post and post phases of a production. The enhanced 3cP Set + Post system allows for even more creative freedom for contemporary image makers while maintaining the predictable, consistent results 3cP has become known for. 3cP Set + Post includes a variety of new and improved tools for data management, color correction and previsualization. When used in conjunction with Blackmagic Design’s HDLinkPro, the software-based system allows cinematographers and digitalimaging technicians to color-correct a live HDSDI stream in real time. Furthermore, colorcorrected dailies created by 3cP Set + Post can be targeted for viewing on such devices as iPads and iPhones and can be produced in Apple ProRes and Avid formats. 3cP Set + Post also adds the ability to work with Red’s Mysterium-X sensor, accessing and decoding the data directly from its raw format to ensure the highest quality imagery. To further aid this task, Gamma & Density has added Red Mysterium-X tungsten and daylight color charts to its chart family, which already included Rec 709 and film charts. Additional features of 3cP Set + Post include expanded support for the DaVinci/Blackmagic Design Resolve color corrector, an ability to previsualize lighting, support for generating Nucoda-style 3-D LUTs, enhanced P2 file handling, support for anamorphic and 3-D imagery, and more. For additional information, visit www.gammadensity.com. Calibrated Software Decodes AVC-Intra Calibrated Software has expanded its Calibrated{Q} family of QuickTime components with the introduction of Calibrated{Q} AVC-Intra Decode, a QuickTime decode codec that expands AVC-Intra-based postproduction by providing an easy and high-
Lens repair repair,, service, serrvice, v evaluation, and a sales. Factory Factor y authorized Angenieux ser service vice Optimo specialists NEW LENSES FOR SALE Zeiss ZF.2, ZF.2, ZE, and Compact Prime Prime CP CP.2 .2 quality way to independently work with and view AVC-Intra files. The software speeds sharing, distribution and review of AVCIntra files by allowing users to skip timeconsuming conversion steps and tailor viewing immediately and specifically to their setup, regardless of platform and without having an editing application installed. AVC-Intra is an advanced 10-bit video compression technology developed by Panasonic for cameras in the company’s professional P2 product line. Calibrated{Q} AVC-Intra Decode streamlines the use of AVC-Intra material by letting users share, view and work with AVC-Intra MOV files in QuickTime Player and other applications that support QuickTime directly on their Mac or PC systems with up to full 10-bit color depth and without requiring additional software, such as Final Cut Pro. AVCIntra Decode also enables cross-platform, standalone playback and use of P2 AVCIntra MXF files in QuickTime Player or Square Box Systems’ CatDV asset-management software when used in tandem with Calibrated{Q} MXF Import. “We are excited by the development of products like Calibrated{Q} AVC-Intra Decode that extend the quality, flexibility and efficiency of AVC-Intra media into the postproduction process and provide customers with a comprehensive range of options for working with AVC-Intra files,” says Michael Bergeron of Media & Production Services, Panasonic Solutions Company. “Calibrated Software is an important provider of workflow tools for the broadcast and film industry and we are pleased to be welcoming the company as an official new
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member in the Panasonic P2 Partner Alliance.” Greg Booth, president of Calibrated Software, adds, “As advancements in image formats continue to evolve, Calibrated Software is committed to delivering accessible tools that map today’s changing workflows and can be easily installed onto a user’s Mac or PC to help them see and work with their material as directly and immediately as possible. Many broadcasters and postproduction facilities are adopting a Panasonic AVC-Intra workflow, and Calibrated{Q} AVC-Intra Decode was created to facilitate rapid viewing and review of AVCIntra material at up to full 10-bit quality and according to the end user’s specific platforms and needs.” Version 1.0 of Calibrated{Q} AVCIntra Decode for Macintosh OS X 10.5/10.6 (Intel only) and Windows 7/Vista/XP is now available. For more information, visit www.calibratedsoftware.com. Magic Bullet Grinds DSLR Video Red Giant Software has introduced Magic Bullet Grinder for converting DSLR video to edit-friendly formats, enabling smooth playback and faster rendering. With Magic Bullet Grinder, Final Cut Pro users now have a fast way to get DSLR footage from video-capable Canon DSLR cameras into their timeline for editing, add time code and generate proxies all in a single time-saving pass. Batch processing and multi-threading make for fast and painless conversion, allowing editing to begin even on location. Magic Bullet Grinder supports all
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video-capable Canon DSLRs, with additional format support coming soon. The software tool converts to ProRes, Standard, ProRes Proxy and PhotoJPEG formats, complete with a time-code track. The batch-processing feature supports multi-threaded systems to ensure fast, glitch-free operation; users working with eight cores can convert eight files at once. Magic Bullet Grinder also adds file-name and time-code information directly to proxies and converts 30p and 60p media for quick 24p slow-motion effects. Magic Bullet Grinder is available for $49. For additional information, visit www.redgiantsoftware.com. LightSpace Manages Color Light Illusion has released LightSpace CMS, a fully featured color-management system. The system is a continued development of Light Illusion’s widely adopted LUT Manager display and calibration software. LightSpace CMS brings major calibration enhancements to users, with full display and film-profiling capabilities, as well as the automatic generation of calibration LUTs from the various profiles generated. Improving on Light Illusion’s 3D LUT Manager, LightSpace CMS makes it much easier to implement total color management facility wide for DI, visual effects, grading, animation, games or exhibition using any direct display or projection-monitoring system. LightSpace CMS is not only suitable for visualizing film images on digital displays, but also for directly matching different displays, allowing operators, colorists, supervisors, cinematographers and directors to see a matched final look at every point in the digital post chain. “LightSpace CMS makes accurate color management available to all industry operations, and its new tools and capabilities really help to enhance facilities’ calibration capabilities and accuracy,” says Steve Shaw, CEO of Light Illusion. “While LightSpace CMS will be welcome in all facilities looking for high quality color management, its affordable price makes it easy for studios, post and broadcast facilities to establish company-wide color calibration, regardless of the specific display or creative hardware being used.” LightSpace CMS brings together a American Cinematographer
range of tools and capabilities that go far further than simple LUT building, with options that provide for full underlying color management, display profiling, profile matching (auto-LUT generation), direct profile and LUT transformation, calibration visualization and display comparison, colorspace conversion, and even batch image processing with multiple image parameter controls. LightSpace CMS enables customers to accurately measure all displays to fully manage the color pipeline, regardless of the technology being used. A wide and growing range of measuring probes can be used, including X-Rite Hubble, Klein K-10, i1 Pro, i1 Display 2, i1 Display 1, i1 Display LT and ColorMunki. LightSpace CMS can be purchased as a fully configured package, or via option components allowing customers to build their color-management tools as their requirements grow. For more information, visit www.lightillusion.com. Avid Takes Editing Line to Next Level Raising the bar on format flexibility, openness and speed, Avid has introduced the Media Composer v5, NewsCutter v9 and Symphony v5 editing systems. New features include native support for popular formats such as Red, QuickTime and Canon XF; support for Matrox MX02 Mini monitoring hardware, a low-cost external monitoring solution enabling field editing and simplified client screening sessions; HD-RGB finishing capabilities, allowing customers to keep high-end finishing in-house; multi-channel audio support; and an array of interface enhancements. Avid Media Access enhances productivity by supporting the most popular filebased formats and eliminating the need for
customers to transcode, re-wrap, log and transfer media. In addition to supporting Red .R3D, QuickTime and Canon XF files, the updated editing systems also support the AVCHD format as well as XDCam proxies, the latter offering access to proxy video and high-quality audio files, enabling customers to make more informed creative decisions in the offline edit and easily link back to full-resolution XDCam clips to complete projects. The enhanced user interface in Media Composer, NewsCutter and Symphony offers a new timeline Smart Tool, featuring drag-and-drop audio and video elements as well as editing and trimming features for direct manipulation of clips in the timeline, providing customers with more choices in the way they work. For additional information, visit www.avid.com. Media 100 Upgrades Suite Media 100, a provider of advanced editing systems for the corporate, broadcast, postproduction and new-media industries, has announced the availability of Media 100 Suite Version 1.6. Version 1.6 supports Calibrated Software’s Calibrated{Q} MXF Import, AVC-Intra Decode and DVCProHD Decode products, allowing Media 100 Suite editors to directly open MXF files, import and play back AVC-Intra media, and play back media created in the DVCProHD codec. Version 1.6 also includes Boris XML Transfer Version 2 for Media 100 Suite, giving users the ability to export Media 100 Suite timelines to Adobe After Effects CS5. Additional features of Version 1.6 include a new intelligent folder import option, which recognizes certain file and folder patterns (such as the Panasonic P2 folder pattern that commonly holds AVCIntra media) and selectively imports files from those folders, and faster rendering of multi-layer Boris Red filters. Media 100 Suite Version 1.6 is available through the Media 100 worldwide reseller channel and direct from the Media 100 website for a recommended price of $1,295. For more information, including how to upgrade from a previous version of Media 100 Suite, visit www.media100.com. ●
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Advertiser’s Index 16x9, Inc. 90 Abel Cine Tech 15 AC 1, 4, 93 Aja Video Systems, Inc. 11 Alan Gordon Enterprises 90 Arri 35 ASC 89 AZGrip 90 Backstage Equipment, Inc. 73 Band Pro Film & Digital 91 Burrell Enterprises 90 Camera Essentials 91 Canon USA 5 Cavision Enterprises 25 Chapman/Leonard Studio Equipment Inc. 23 Cinematography Electronics 85 Cinekinetic 90 Cinematographer Style 54 Cinerover 90 Cinevate 21 Convergent Design 40 Cooke Optics 6 Creativesphere 75
Dell 9 Deluxe 37 Denecke 91 Duclos Lenses 87 DV Expo 95 Eastman Kodak 13, C4 EFD USA, Inc. 53 Film Gear 6 Filmlight 65 Filmtools 6 Fujji Motion Picture 16a-d, 47 Glidecam Industries C3
Schneider Optics 2 Shelton Communications 91 Soundscapers 90 Stanton Video Services 85 Super16 Inc. 90 Sylvania 49, 51
International Supplies 83
Technocrane 85
JMR Electronics, Inc. 19
VF Gadgets, Inc. 90 Visual Products 39
K5600 7 Kino Flo 55 Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 90 Lensrentals.com 83 Lite Panels C2 Maine Media Workshops 73 Movcam Tech. Co., Ltd. 63 Movie Tech AG 91 MP&E Mayo Productions 91 Nalpak Inc. 91 Nevada Film Office 61 New York Film Academy 27 Oasis Imagery 77 Oppenheimer Camera Prod. 90
92
Panther Gmbh 41 PED Denz 39, 91 Photon Beard 90 Pille Film Gmbh 91 Postworks 73 Pro8mm 90 Production Resource Group 67
Welch Integrated 79 Willy’s Widgets 90 www.theasc.com 54, 87, 92 Zacuto Films 91
Clubhouse News 5 ASC Members Invited to Join Academy The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently invited 135 members of the film industry to join its ranks, including ASC members Shane Hurlbut, Tom Hurwitz, Dan Mindel, Tobias Schliessler and Robert Yeoman. Those who accept the invitation will be the only additions to the Academy’s roster of voting members this year.
Top: Phedon Papamichael, ASC. Bottom: Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC.
2010-2011 Board, Officers Elected Michael Goi, ASC has been elected to a second term as president of the Society. His fellow officers for 2010-11 are Vice Presidents Richard Crudo, Owen Roizman and John C. Flinn III; Treasurer Matthew Leonetti; Secretary Rodney Taylor; and Sergeant-at-Arms Ron Garcia. Other members elected to the Board of Governors are John Bailey, Stephen Burum, Curtis Clark, George Spiro Dibie, Richard Edlund, Stephen Lighthill, Isidore Mankofsky, Daryn Okada, Robert Primes, Nancy Schreiber, Kees Van Oostrum, Haskell Wexler and Vilmos Zsigmond. Alternates are Fred Elmes, Rodney Taylor, Michael D. O’Shea, Sol Negrin and Michael B. Negrin. 94
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Papamichael Honored for Career Achievement Phedon Papamichael, ASC was honored with the Orpheus Award for Career Achievement at this year’s Los Angeles Greek Film Festival. The award recognizes Papamichael’s professional achievements in cinematography and directing, as well as his continued support of the arts. Director Alexander Payne, who collaborated with Papamichael on Sideways, presented the cinematographer with the award. In a separate event, Arcadia Lost, a new feature that Papamichael directed and shot, was screened, and he participated in a Q&A. McAlpine Journeys to India Don McAlpine, ASC, ACS presented three sessions during the recent Cinema India Expo in Mumbai, India: a Kodak-sponsored master class, and two conversation sessions arranged by Createasphere, Cinema India’s international sales and programming partner. “The workshops in Mumbai were truly rewarding for all of us,” notes McAlpine. “The local film people seemed to be very interested in what I had to say, and attendance grew during each American Cinematographer
workshop. The questions were searching, and each session ran overtime. It was time well spent.” Prieto Speaks at LAFF Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC recently participated in a Kodak Focus seminar during the 16th annual Los Angeles Film Festival. He showed clips from his work and discussed his collaborations with an array of directors. ASC Participates in Cine Gear Expo Cine Gear Expo, an annual showcase of cutting-edge motion-picture technology, unfolded over four days in June at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, and ASC members were involved in a number of events. Peter Anderson, ASC delivered the keynote to kick off a daylong 3-D symposium, after which began a series of Premiere Seminars. Seminar participants included ASC members John Leonetti (discussing Piranha 3-D); Wally Pfister (discussing Inception); Richard Edlund (moderating a panel for the Visual Effects Society); and John Bailey, Daniel Pearl, James Chressanthis and Rodney Taylor (panelists for the Kodak-sponsored “Truth About Film and Digital Production”). George Spiro Dibie, ASC moderated an ASC panel comprising Society members Russ Alsobrook, Stephen H. Burum, James L. Carter, Allen Daviau, Michael Goi, Johnny E. Jensen, M. David Mullen, Sol Negrin, Nancy Schreiber and Christian Sebaldt; Joe Dunton, BSC also joined the panelists, and Donald M. Morgan, ASC participated from the audience. Rounding out the weekend, Society members Amy Vincent, Bill Bennett, Gabriel Beristain, Ron Dexter and Stephen Lighthill participated in master classes at Mole Richardson, and associate member Volker Bahnemann received the Cine Gear Expo Lifetime Achievement Award. ●
Papamichael photo courtesy of Los Angeles Greek Film Festival. Prieto photo by Alexandra Wyman/WireImage, courtesy of Film Independent.
“Being elected to serve a second term as ASC president is a great honor and a privilege,” says Goi. “At a time when so much is going on in the industry, this is a tremendous vote of confidence that this body of incredible artists believes in my vision of where the ASC is going in the future.”
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Close-up
Charles Minsky, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you? Lawrence of Arabia (1962). At 16, I worked as an usher at the Beverly Hills theater where it played in 70mm for nine months, and I was reminded every day of the power and scope of movies. I knew every image and all the music cues, and I could recite every line. More importantly, it changed the way I regarded film, because I never tired of watching it. That had never happened before. Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire, and why? Freddie Young, ASC, BSC, who turned me around and made me see how images could transport you to a completely different world. John Alonzo, ASC, for his work on Chinatown — his handheld work and the polished gloss of L.A. Conrad Hall, ASC, for his brilliant and innovative vision on Searching for Bobby Fischer; his use of light, long lenses and color made the world of chess appear utterly magical.
Where did you train and/or study? All of my film education was on the job. I graduated from the University of California-Los Angeles with a degree in political science but didn’t pay attention to film until that first job, three years after I graduated. I took two film classes, but they weren’t very interesting. Who were your early teachers or mentors? As a camera assistant, I worked steadily for five years with a commercial director/cameraman named Melvin Sokolsky. I watched him and learned how to conceptualize a project. I also watched and learned about lighting. I also worked for years as an assistant in the camera departments at Universal and Warner Bros. I worked with [ASC members] Matt Leonetti, Joe Biroc and John Alonzo, and with Ray Villalobos. What are some of your key artistic influences? I love photojournalism, especially Robert Capa, Sebastiao Salgado, and Tyler Hicks of the New York Times. I also love paintings and prints by Charles Sheeler, Ralston Crawford, Georgia O’Keeffe and Paul Strand. How did you get your first break in the business? After working as a social worker and a waiter, I went back to school to August 2010
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project? Finding the center of the scene I am shooting and making sense of it. Cinematographers are storytellers, and we are always searching to make an idea into an image. Have you made any memorable blunders? On the first job I got as a union assistant, I white-lighted 1000' of film on the first day of prep. I thought it was the end of the world.
What sparked your interest in photography? Blind luck. On my first job in the business, I was told to carry camera cases and help the camera assistant. I spent three months doing everything that was asked of me, and before I finished, I fell in love with the camera. I hadn’t taken so much as a Polaroid before, but suddenly I was fascinated by cinematography. My life changed in a matter of months. I got a Nikon F2 and took as many pictures as I could afford.
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study psychology. Out of boredom, I got a job on a low-budget project in San Diego — my father knew someone who knew someone who wanted to make a movie. I was hired as a gofer. I never looked back.
What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received? I’m not sure it’s the best advice, but when I first began working as a camera assistant, Joe Ruttenberg, ASC lived next door. He took me into his house one day and showed me his two Academy Awards and told me to become an editor, because they had more control of his art than he did. It didn’t deter me, but it made me aware that I wasn’t in complete control of the finished product. It’s a lesson I’m still learning. What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you? I read a lot of mysteries and enjoy Ken Bruen, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, Robert Parker and Richard Russo. I just finished reading all of Ken Haruf’s books, including Plainsong. Movies: I just watched The Lookout and (500) Days of Summer. Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to try? I love all kinds of detective stories and would love to shoot more of them. I’m also a huge fan of children’s stories. If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doing instead? Teaching. I love working with students and sharing some of the knowledge I’ve retained over the years. Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership? John Toll, Robert Primes and Bing Sokolsky. How has ASC membership impacted your life and career? I consider myself lucky to be in the ASC. It’s a very inclusive group of professionals. It’s a safe place to exchange ideas and thoughts, and we share problems and solutions. People want to be members, and, once admitted, we are open and trusting of each other. It makes me proud to be in the ASC. ●
American Cinematographer
ONFILM CHRIS MENGES, ASC, BSC
“I don’t know a cinematographer – certainly not myself – who has contributed to a meaningful movie who wasn’t collaborating with a highly visual director. Part of it is luck, getting to work with the right director, actors and script, and then it takes an incredible amount of hard work. The inspiration comes from the words and inside the characters. All you have to do is bring your soul and great energy. But it goes beyond collaborating with directors. You are also working with the production and costume designers, makeup artists, gaffers and everyone on your crew to get the right composition, camera movement and focus to capture magic moments on film. Film is collaboration; you cannot dream on your own, but more importantly you have to trust your instincts.” Chris Menges, ASC, BSC won Academy Awards® for The Killing Fields and The Mission, and earned additional nominations for Michael Collins and The Reader. He is the 2010 recipient of the American Society of Cinematographers International Award. His body of work includes Kes, Angel, Local Hero, The Boxer, A World Apart, The Pledge, The Good Thief, Dirty Pretty Things, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Notes on a Scandal, and other memorable documentary and narrative films. For an extended interview with Chris Menges, visit www.kodak.com/go/onfilm To order Kodak motion picture film, call (800) 621-film. © Eastman Kodak Company, 2010. Photography: © 2010 Douglas Kirkland
