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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER • MAY 2010 • IRON MAN 2 - OCEANS – MOTHER AND CHILD – THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO – SCI-TECH AWARDS – ASC AWARDS • VOL. 91 NO. 5
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Julio Macat, ASC hen I was 4, my mother took me to see my first motion picture, 101 Dalmatians. When it ended, I refused to leave my seat, staying to watch it two more times. Moving images had cast their spell on me. Later, films such as Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia compelled me to understand the language of cinematography. “I got my first look at American Cinematographer at UCLA, and I was riveted by the cinematographers’ explanations of scenes. Our unwritten rule is to share our techniques for the betterment of our craft; this is the engine that drives us and inspires innovation in our field. AC is still the perfect platform for sharing the details of our creative processes and discussing the tools we use to achieve our goals.”
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©photo by Owen Roizman, ASC
— Julio Macat, ASC
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
On Our Cover: Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) takes a stand against new enemies in Iron Man 2, shot by Matthew Libatique, ASC. (Photo by François Duhamel, SMPSP, courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment.)
FEATURES 24 40 50 56 72
Armor Wars Matthew Libatique, ASC hits heavy-metal beats on Iron Man 2
Wonders of the Sea A team of cinematographers dives beneath the waves for Oceans
Lost and Found Families Xavier Pérez Grobet, ASC, AMC explores three women’s dramas on Mother and Child
Dark Secrets Eric Kress, DFF deepens mystery for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
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Deep Visual Roots A pictorial recap of ASC Awards weekend
DEPARTMENTS 8 10 12 18 72 74 76 84 85 86 87 88
Editor’s Note President’s Desk 50 Short Takes: ASC Heritage Award Winners Production Slate: The Man Next Door • Academy Sci-Tech Awards Post Focus: Restoring A Star Is Born Tricks of the Trade New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Fred Elmes
— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES — DVD Playback: The African Queen • House of the Devil • The Man Who Shot Chinatown: The Life and Work of John A. Alonzo
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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 ————————————————————————————————————
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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
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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.
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MEMBERS OF THE BOARD Curtis Clark Richard Crudo George Spiro Dibie Richard Edlund John C. Flinn III John Hora Victor J. Kemper Matthew Leonetti Stephen Lighthill Isidore Mankofsky Daryn Okada Owen Roizman Nancy Schreiber Haskell Wexler Vilmos Zsigmond
ALTERNATES Fred Elmes Steven Fierberg Ron Garcia Michael D. O’Shea Michael Negrin MUSEUM CURATOR 6
Steve Gainer
It’s always fun watching filmmaker friends progress to bigger and bigger projects. I first met Matthew Libatique, ASC at the Sundance Film Festival back in January 1998, when he and director Darren Aronofsky broke out of the pack with the black-andwhite, ultra-low-budget brainteaser Pi. More recently, associate editor Jon Witmer and I visited Matty on the L.A. set of Iron Man 2, where we found him sitting with director Jon Favreau at a row of monitors on an enormous set built at the Sepulveda Dam, facing one of the largest greenscreens ever built. Matty appeared unfazed by the epic setup, relaxing in a director’s chair with his legs stretched out, ankles crossed and boots resting on the monitor’s support stand. Sneaking up behind him, I couldn’t resist a jovial barb: “Hey, look at Mr. Big Shot, with all his lights on cranes!” Turning to Favreau, I added, “I’ve known this guy since he was lighting scenes with two flashlights and a bounce card.” Matty responded with his usual enthusiasm. “I know, Dude, isn’t this insane?” He proceeded to take us on a guided tour of the 600'x200' set, which boasted an awe-inspiring arsenal of lighting equipment. “It’s not like the old days, that’s for sure,” he said. “This setup is big. Every time we want to change our lighting, we have to move a crane.” To be sure, there’s nothing small about the Iron Man sequel, which promises to be one of the summer’s blockbusters. Witmer, AC’s resident expert on comic-book heroes, put superhuman effort into his article about the production (“Armor Wars,” page 24), delivering comprehensive coverage despite being tapped for a three-week stint on jury duty as his copy deadline loomed. The logistics were just as daunting on the nature film Oceans, a seven-year undertaking that showcases stunning underwater footage captured by 21 cinematographers. European correspondent Benjamin B penned an outstanding overview (“Wonders of the Sea,” page 40) after interviewing six members of the production team. Arthouse fare is also on our agenda. ASC member Xavier Pérez Grobet applied an “observational” camera style while shooting the indie drama Mother and Child (“Lost and Found Families,” page 50), moving the camera “very little and very precisely. Our work was about blocking the scene and then trying to find a frame that would capture different moments of the scene without requiring a camera move.” Meanwhile, Eric Kress, DFF persuaded director Niels Arden Oplev to abandon his initial plan to employ a “wild, handheld camera” on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (“Dark Secrets,” page 56), and to instead adopt what the director describes as “a slow-burning style with constant movement.” Kress says the two ultimately agreed that an overly showy visual approach “might somehow [overshadow] the intricacies of the plot, so we opted for a very natural style, with a subtle color palette based upon the cold light of a Swedish winter.” Rounding out this issue is a pictorial recap of the ASC Awards (“Deep Visual Roots,” page 63), which put cinematographers in the spotlight over two consecutive weekends. One highlight was an impassioned speech by Lifetime Achievement Award winner Caleb Deschanel, ASC, who expressed his affection for a time-honored format: “I love the uncertainty of shooting on film and not knowing what you are going to get. It’s the jolt you get when you see those images for the first time. I love the mystery of seeing them onscreen.”
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Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editor’s Note
President’s Desk
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
I have thousands of films in my personal collection, including the first films from a number of ASC cinematographers. As I watch those early efforts, what strikes me is that the talent that would ultimately propel those artists to the top was always there. You could see it in their approach to the material; despite low budgets, short shooting schedules, bad actors and even worse video transfers, that elusive talent to light and shoot something in a unique and compelling way shines through. One film from the 1960s, Lila, Mantis in Lace, revolves around a woman who takes LSD and subsequently becomes murderously unhinged whenever men approach her. Her hallucinations include projected images of contrasting splashes of color on her face and jarring in-camera exposure effects. It’s a tour-deforce of creativity on a shoestring budget, and the stylized visuals elevate this B movie to the level of truly effective filmmaking. The cinematographer? The late, great Laszlo Kovacs, ASC. Another future ASC member forever made the chainsaw an iconic horror symbol. Shooting in the blazing heat of a Texas summer, and using 16mm film with an ASA of 16 and tons of visual creativity without tons of money, Daniel Pearl, ASC made 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a visual rollercoaster ride that is impossible to forget. One of the features of the new “Friends of The ASC” subscription site is devoted to rising stars in the field of cinematography. They may be students or young cinematographers, or even shooters who have been working for a number of years but haven’t been recognized for the excellent images they’ve created. Every month, an ASC cinematographer will choose someone they think is exceptional and discuss why he or she thinks that person has what it takes to make a mark in this demanding field. Because your average ASC cinematographer has so many opportunities to view films that are outside the mainstream, we are often exposed to innovative, groundbreaking work that hasn’t yet been noticed by the industry at large. For example, many of us are asked to attend annual screenings of student work. We are frequently impressed by the sophistication of the visual approaches we see, and we make mental notes of the projects and cinematographers that stand out. Sometimes we are invited to view films that do not yet have distribution. When I first came to Los Angeles, I was an unknown cinematographer who didn’t have connections with anyone here in the business. A screening of an independent film I’d shot was set up at a local theater, and, although the budget was very low, I was proud of what I accomplished on that film, so I sent invitations to all my cinematography heroes, none of whom I had ever met. Five minutes before the film was to screen, it was evident that almost no one the producers had invited was going to attend. I had no expectations that my blind mailing to the greatest cinematographers in the world was going to have much of an effect, so my disappointment was tempered by the understanding that they were probably always busy. Just then, Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC came walking up, holding one of the promo cards I’d sent out. He went to the box office and said he was invited to attend the screening. I ran up to him and introduced myself, thanking him for coming to see this small movie he knew nothing about. Vilmos and I sat together during the film. He asked me questions about how I did this and that, and complimented the things he found effective in the lighting and composition. After the screening, I told him how much it meant to me that he came to see the movie. He said, “Well, you invited me, so I came!” That is the spirit of this new feature we’ve included on the “Friends” site. It excites us to see the potential in someone who is doing good work early in his or her development, and it’s encouraging to a young cinematographer to have his or her work recognized by someone in the profession who has achieved success. It goes straight to the heart of one of the ASC’s most important missions: to recognize, educate and encourage new talent.
Michael Goi, ASC President
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American Cinematographer
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Short Takes
Life on Earth, shot by Benji Bakshi (above) concerns a troubled girl stifled by her life in a group home.
Each year, the ASC Heritage Award is named for a distinguished ASC member and given in recognition of outstanding achievement in student filmmaking. This year’s award, named for Richard Moore, ASC, was given to two cinematographers, graduate student Benji Bakshi of the American Film Institute and undergraduate Garrett Shannon of Loyola Marymount University. Bakshi’s winning entry, Life on Earth, follows a troubled girl who develops an interest in the natural world as a way of escaping a dull existence in a group foster home. Scenes in the group home, filmed in a disused sanitarium, were lit in an institutional way with fluorescents, providing contrast with livelier, colorful scenes captured in the Los Angeles Arboretum in Pasadena. Shooting Super 16mm, Bakshi used an Arri 16SR-3 and Zeiss Super Speed prime lenses supplied by Clairmont Camera. He shot Kodak Vision2 500T 7260. Processing was done at Technicolor, and the final color correction was handled at Entertainment Post on a 2K Lustre system. The schedule comprised roughly eight shooting days. “AFI strongly emphasizes supporting the story as opposed to showing off [visually],” notes Bakshi, “and I felt that with this story, we could really say something. Our producer, Kip Pastor, conceived a very relevant story, and [director] Jeff Keith and I wanted to keep it authentic. One fear I had going in was that the images would end up being too safe, too normal or too beautiful; I wanted to make sure there was enough darkness and mood. We wanted the images to support the unsettling nature of the story, and the choices we made were designed to accomplish that. “For example, we chose 7260 because it has an energetic grain 12
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structure, even in the highlights, which meant we could get a grainy feel without having to push the stock. We went for a desaturated color palette in the institutional setting, and we played with the idea that the green fluorescent light was a little nasty, whereas the greens in the exteriors were beautiful.” Bakshi prefers to desaturate color with practical methods rather than leaving that step for post. “If you desaturate using a post effect, the skin tones tend to get sickly or unpleasant, so we deliberately tried to make the desaturation happen around the character, using production design across the separate worlds. We also used haze in the interiors to obtain a slightly desaturated effect.” Bakshi didn’t move the camera at all until the main character discovers her interest in nature through a TV program she happens to see. In the gardens, movement becomes expressive, and the cinematographer made full use of the exposure curve. “I love the look of highlights — I think that’s what makes something cinematic and moody,” he says. “In the garden, we had very dark shadow areas
American Cinematographer
Life on Earth photos courtesy of Benji Bakshi.
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Bakshi, Shannon Win ASC Richard Moore Heritage Awards By David Heuring
and really bright highlights. There’s a nice moment when she is walking through the dark shadows of the bamboo trees; I had a highlight in the background that was probably 5 stops over, and shadows were 3-4 stops under. I put the exposure in the middle and let it go, and we got a beautiful shot without losing detail. I didn’t have to worry about containing or knocking down those bright highlights.” By the end of the film, the girl has taken her first steps toward finding her way in the world. “This is somewhat of a silly business to embark on unless it really means something to you,” Bakshi says of the film industry. “What was really meaningful to me about this story is the real struggle that this character undergoes. Each of us on the creative team connected with this girl on some level; we brought our life experiences to the project. In the story, we see how mankind is instinctively drawn to nature, and how we often get detached from our origins there. I think that’s a godly message.” Shannon’s winning entry, In Memoriam, was directed by Corey Todd Jones. The story follows a young writer (Michael Medino) as he attempts to fulfill the dying wish of a friend, an elderly Polish expatriate. 14
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Shannon and Jones envisioned a measured pace and a poetic, lyrical approach. For inspiration, they looked to Terrence Malick’s The New World (AC Jan. ’06) and Days of Heaven (AC June ’79). Location choices were considered as important as the right dialogue or blocking. “Locations played a key role in the film because they established the mood and guided the characters,” says Shannon. “For most of the movie, the main actor is alone, and we wanted his emotions to evolve with the background.” Those decisions played into other aspects of the visual strategy. “We opted to frame for 2.40:1 to incorporate wider landscapes as opposed to more vertical framing,” says Shannon. “We tried to match the setting’s colors and lighting with what the character was feeling. Because the film focuses so heavily on landscapes, we tried to use wider lenses on exterior scenes for both wide shots and close-ups, and that took a little getting used to. We wanted the backgrounds to be in focus; shooting Super 16 helped in terms of creating greater depth of field, but I also shot at a slower stop than I would normally use with that format.” Shannon used spherical Zeiss Superspeed lenses and an Arri 16SR-2. For day exteriors, he shot Kodak Vision2 50D 7201 American Cinematographer
or 250D 7205. In tungsten light, he used Vision2 200T 7217. In post, the images were transferred to HDCam on a Spirit Datacine at Matchframe Video. “We were looking for saturated but naturalistic colors, and we knew we wanted maximum latitude in the highlights because of the predominance of day-exterior locations,” says Shannon. “We had a lot of challenging locations, and the size, weight and 11-minute running time per 400-foot load were all selling points for the SR-2.” The cinematographer relied on judicious blocking and natural light in many of the exterior scenes. “Because we had a small crew and were shooting outdoors, Corey usually deferred to me when we were blocking,” says Shannon. “That enabled us to make best use of the sun. We agreed that the way the light looked was more important than strictly matching its angle.” ●
In Memoriam photos by Patrick Jones and Nathalie Curtis, courtesy of Garrett Shannon.
Above: In Memoriam follows Jude (Michael Medino), a young writer who befriends an elderly Polish expatriate. Top right: Director of photography Garrett Shannon sets up a shot at a creek bed in Belden, Calif. Bottom right: The cast and crew rehearse a dolly move outside a cabin in Mineral, Calif.
Production Slate
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A Window into the Soul By Noah Kadner
Winner of the cinematography prize in the World CinemaDramatic category at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the intimate thriller The Man Next Door (El Hombre de al Lado) is set almost entirely in the Curutchet House, a famous Le Corbusier structure in La Plata, near Buenos Aires, Argentina. The celebrated ramps and spiral staircases of the house date from the 1950s; it was the sole residential structure that Le Corbusier designed for the Americas. The film’s plot is a classic tale of familiarity breeding contempt. Leonardo (Rafael Spregelburd) is a meticulous, successful architect living a tranquil life with his wife, daughter and maid in their designer home. Their bliss is interrupted in the opening shot of the movie, as their brash next-door neighbor, Victor (Daniel Aráoz), begins demolishing a wall to build a window looking right into Leonardo’s home. The two men attempt to settle their differences amicably, but tension simmers just beneath the surface, and the dispute slowly escalates into a full-blown existential crisis for Leonardo. The Man Next Door was co-directed and co-shot by Argentinian filmmakers Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat. Longtime collaborators, the duo previously created a variety of experimental video-art exhibits and several programs broadcast on Argentinian television. Cohn and Duprat also have two features to their credit: Yo Presidente, a documentary about several former Argentinian presidents, and El Artista, which won a host of awards during its 2009 festival run. 16
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Cohn and Duprat planned The Man Next Door over a fouryear period. “It took us all those years of negotiation to secure the location, because the house is uninhabited and set up like a museum,” recalls Cohn. “We knew the concept really required that special principal location in order to work as a story. The script, written by Gastón’s brother, Andres, is not exactly based on real events, but Andres had a neighbor somewhat similar to Victor.” Cohn and Duprat shot The Man Next Door on their own Sony PMW-EX1, a relatively inexpensive high-definition prosumer camera. “We previously shot El Artista with this camera,” notes Duprat. “We like its image quality, and it’s the camera that responded best to the minimal lighting setups we planned to use on this film. It also enabled us to shoot with the smallest possible crew. Our sound recordist mixed boom and wireless mics directly into the camera, so we could check sound and picture as we shot.” The film opens with a split screen showing simultaneous interior and exterior perspectives of the demolishing of the wall. It was the only shot that utilized two cameras, one on either side. A scenic flat was constructed on top of an existing structure to stand in for the wall. “If we’d broken down a real wall of this historic Le Corbusier house, we’d probably be doing this interview from jail,” says Cohn with a smile. “It was a complicated shot that we had to get right on the first take, because we only had a single fake wall prepared.” Cohn adds, “We shot mostly in chronological order. We were simultaneously editing on a PC running Sony Vegas as we shot, so we would quickly see how the story was coming together.
American Cinematographer
The Man Next Door photos courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival.
In the Argentinian thriller The Man Next Door, an existential standoff ensues when the affable but coarse Victor (Daniel Aráoz) attempts to build a window that directly faces the showcase home occupied by his smug, aesthetically fussy architect neighbor, Leonardo (Rafael Spregelburd).
That gave a lot of confidence to the actors because they could visualize each scene, and it would help them a lot with their performances. “We shot during the day and night, as called for in the script,” Cohn continues. “Every day in the script was equivalent to a full day of filming. This was very practical because we could shoot and download the footage for each day in sequence. We’d insert each scene and shot into its place in the edit to see exactly how the story was coming together. When we started each new shoot day, we could go back and refer to the previous day’s work as needed.” Lighting was limited to 25-watt offthe-shelf fluorescent lights and some reflector boards. “We used the kinds of fluorescent lights you’d find in a supermarket here,” says Cohn. “The Curutchet House has many large windows with a view to a forest and was perfectly designed for lots of indirect sunlight. It had the perfect natural lighting for making a movie. We wanted to add the least amount of artificial light possible and work with available light whenever we could.” In keeping with their minimalist approach, Cohn and Duprat used no lens filtration. “We only used the camera’s builtin ND filters,” says Duprat. “We also stuck mostly with the camera’s built-in zoom lens, supplemented occasionally with a wideangle lens adapter from Sony. We shot a lot of handheld, with some tripod work and also a shoulder support.” During the production, the Curutchet House remained open as a museum, which meant daily visitors. “Tourists would come by and ring the doorbell while we shot,” says Duprat. “They’d also want to take pictures of the structure. It wasn’t part of our original plan, but we decided to film the tourists and incorporate them into the story. We also tried as much as possible to film each scene with a single take; this reduced the possibilities for camera placement and movement somewhat, but it made a big difference to us. When you watch the movie, you might not notice this because we worked hard to make it look natural. “The movie definitely has a heavy dose of mise-en-scène,” he adds. “The house is the story’s third protagonist, so we
Top: Leonardo attempts to block out the noise emanating from Victor’s construction work. Middle: Victor's attempts at charm fail to sway the architect's wife (Eugenia Alonso), who stubbornly opposes his plans. Bottom: While listening to avant-garde music, Leonardo and a friend suddenly realize that some of the jarring sounds they hear are actually coming from Victor’s place.
www.theasc.com
May 2010
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and tried to bounce in natural light with reflector boards. We used our tiny 25-watt fluorescents as needed for additional fill.” Other notable sequences show Victor surreptitiously entertaining Leonardo’s daughter (Inés Budassi) with a tiny pair of boots he puppeteers with his fingers on a small set within the window he’s constructing. “The miniature was positioned in such a way that it had nice natural light falling on it,” says Duprat. “Victor has a special relationship with Leonardo’s daughter, and it was important to us to show his geniality.” After completing the edit in Sony Vegas, the filmmakers turned to Buenos Aires post house Cinecolor, where they did a digital intermediate in HD using Assimilate Scratch. The final graded master was output to Kodak Vision Premier 2393 on an Arrilaser. “We spent a great deal of time working on the composition of the images, and we tried to be almost artisanal both in the shooting and in the finishing of the project,” says Cohn. “This included the color temperature we chose from scene to scene, the framing, the color grading and the final filmout. Diego Bliffeld, our assistant director, participated in all stages of the process with us. “At the Sundance screening, no one could guess how we shot the movie,” he adds. “Most folks thought we’d shot 35mm, or with the Red, or with a high-end professional Sony camera — not a little XDCam prosumer model! But we have always worked in video, so we know the medium by heart. We know how to get the maximum quality out of a camera like the EX1. After Sundance, Sony contacted us and offered a prototype of a brand-new camera for our next project. We’ll see how it goes!”
Top: The crew films a scene in which Victor insists on giving Leonardo the gift of a crude, homemade sculpture. Middle: Directors/ cinematographers Gastón Duprat (left) and Mariano Cohn play back a take on their Sony PMW-EX1. Bottom: Cohn captures a closeup of Aráoz.
TECHNICAL SPECS
tried to keep the camera inside the house, and we have a lot of shots of the house with no one in it.” Outside of the house, one additional location was the interior of Victor’s van, 18
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where he invites Leonardo to join him for a tense but relatively civil discussion of their differences. “We tried to use as little additional lighting as possible in the van,” says Cohn. “We shot those takes during the day American Cinematographer
1.85:1 (16x9 original) Digital Capture Sony PMW-EX1 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision Premier 2393
A Supernatural Transition From Film to Digital I shot the first three seasons of Supernatural with a 35mm dream package from Clairmont Camera. Then, the studio wanted to make a move into the digital world. One thing I wanted to make sure of was a seamless transition from film to digital. Supernatural was coming of age and I didn't want to change the look we set with the 35mm tools. I was looking for an evolution—not a new palette. I had set my mind on two D-21s for our A and B cameras and a Red One for Steadicam, 2nd unit and additional camera works. And what was most important to me was that Denny Clairmont and his team put their resources behind my choices through testing, setting my LUTs and establishing the work flow. On Supernatural we go to hell each week in our stories but one place I didn't want to go was production hell. You know what I'm talking about: weird things happening to your equipment, failure you don't expect, name it. But because of the nature of the preparation and the support of Clairmont Camera we never lost any production time due to the change of system, and whatever glitches we encountered were resolved in a swift fashion. It is well known to what extent the Clairmont family will go to service the camera crews, design and fabricate tools to fit particular demands but there is more. I found friendship, not the business bias type, but friendship based on complicity and dedication in research for the best . What am I talking about? Too good to be true? Maybe I found some kind of heaven on Earth and it's called Clairmont Camera…Heaven for the DP! Serge Ladouceur CSC
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performance capture. Hayden Landis, Ken McGaugh and Hilmar Koch, for advancing the technique of ambient occlusion rendering. Ambient occlusion has enabled a new level of realism in synthesized imagery and has become a standard tool for CG lighting in motion pictures. Björn Hedén, for the design and mechanical engineering of the silent, twostage planetary friction drive Hedén Lens Motors. Solving a series of problems with one integrated mechanism, this device had an immediate, significant impact on the industry.
Front row (left to right): Academy President Tom Sherak, actress Elizabeth Banks and Sci-Tech Committee Chairman Richard Edlund, ASC. 2nd row: Björn Hedén, Hiro Sakai, Andreas Loew, Christophe Hery, Masaaki Miki, Frank Billasch and Tim Hawkins. 3rd row: Dr. Richard Kirk, Dr. James Logie, Steve Chapman, Mark Wolforth, Tony Sedivy and Paul Debevec. 4th row: Gyula Priskin, Tamas Perlaki, Darrin Smart, Wolfgang Lempp and Martin Tlaskal. 5th row: Mark Jaszberenyi, Dr. Reimer Lenz, Per Christensen, Michael Bunnell, Greg Pettitt and Michael Cieslinski. 6th row: Dr. Klaus Anderle, Brad Walker, Bill Werner, D. Scott Dewald, Dr. Mark Sagar and Volker Massmann. 7th row: Bernd Brauner, Colin Davidson, Ken McGaugh, John Monos, Markus Hasenzahl and Christian Baeker. Last row: Hayden Landis, Hilmar Koch, Brett Allen, Steve Sullivan and Kevin Wooley.
This year’s Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical Achievement were handed out in a Feb. 20 ceremony hosted by actress Elizabeth Banks. The star of the evening, however, turned out to be the digital-intermediate process — awards were presented for nearly every aspect of the process. Here is a list of the winners: Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates presented for accomplishments that contribute to the progress of the industry) Mark Wolforth and Tony Sedivy, for their contributions to the development 20
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of the Truelight real-time 3-D LUT hardware system. Through the use of color-management software and hardware, this system enables accurate color presentation in the DI preview process. Dr. Klaus Anderle, Christian Baeker and Frank Billasch, for their contributions to the Luther 3-D LUT hardware device and color-management software. Luther was one of the first color LUT processors widely adopted by DI facilities. This innovation enabled accurate color presentation by facilities that had analyzed projected film output and built 3-D LUTs to emulate print film. Steve Sullivan, Kevin Wooley, Brett Allen and Colin Davidson, for the development of the Imocap on-set performance-capture system. Developed at Industrial Light & Magic, Imocap successfully addresses the need for on-set, low-impact American Cinematographer
Per Christensen, Michael Bunnell and Christophe Hery, for the development of point-based rendering for indirect illumination and ambient occlusion. Faster than previous ray-traced methods, this computer-graphics technique has enabled color-bleeding effects and realistic shadows for complex scenes. Dr. Richard Kirk, for the overall design and development of the Truelight real-time 3-D LUT hardware device and color-management software. Volker Massmann, Markus Hasenzahl, Dr. Klaus Anderle and Andreas Loew, for the development of the Spirit 4K/2K film-scanning system. The Spirit 4K/2K has distinguished itself by incorporating a continuous-motion transport mechanism, enabling full-range, highresolution scanning at much higher frame rates than non-continuous transport scanners. Michael Cieslinski, Dr. Reimar Lenz and Bernd Brauner, for the development of the Arriscan film scanner, enabling high-resolution, high-dynamic range, pinregistered film scanning. The Arriscan utilizes a specially designed CMOS-array sensor mounted on a micro-positioning platform and a custom LED light source. Capture of the film’s full dynamic range at
Photos courtesy of A.M.P.A.S.
I
Academy Salutes Sci-Tech Achievements By Jay Holben
Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy plaques presented for achievements that exhibit a high level of engineering and are important to the progress of the industry)
THE ACADEMY RECOGNIZES EXCELLENCE. SO DO WE. Here’s to this year’s OSCAR® nominees that brought their stories to life with the unmistakable look of film. KODAK Film.
kodak.com/go/motion
© Kodak, 2010. Kodak is a trademark of Kodak. Oscar is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Banks, the evening’s hostess, greets the crowd.
various scan resolutions is implemented through sub-pixel offsets of the sensor along with multiple exposures of each frame. Wolfgang Lempp, Theo Brown, Tony Sedivy and Dr. John Quartel, for the development of the Northlight film scanner, which enables high-resolution, pin-regis-
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tered scanning. Developed for the DI and visual-effects markets, the Northlight was designed with a 6K CCD sensor, making it unique in its ability to produce high-resolution scans of 35mm 8-perf film frames. Steve Chapman, Martin Tlaskal, Darrin Smart and Dr. James Logie, for their contributions to the development of
the Baselight color-correction system, which enables real-time digital manipulation of motion-picture imagery. Baselight was one of the first digital color-correction systems to enter the DI market. Mark Jaszberenyi, Gyula Priskin and Tamas Perlaki, for their contributions to the development of the Lustre colorcorrection system, which enables real-time digital manipulation of motion-picture imagery. Lustre is a software solution that enables non-linear, real-time digital color grading across an entire feature film, emulating the photochemical color-timing process. Brad Walker, D. Scott Dewald, Bill Werner and Greg Pettitt, for their contributions furthering the design and refinement of Texas Instruments’ DLP Projector technology. Working in conjunction with the film industry, Texas Instruments created a high-resolution, color-accurate, high-quality DI projection system that could closely emulate film-based projection in a theatrical environment.
Left: During the ceremony, 15 awards were presented to 45 individual recipients. Right: Edlund offers his overview.
Fujifilm Corp., Ryoji Nishimura, Masaaki Miki and Youichi Hosoya, for the design and development of Fujicolor Eterna-RDI intermediate film, designed exclusively to reproduce motion-picture digital masters. Eterna-RDI 8511/4511 has thinner emulsion layers with extremely efficient couplers made possible by Super-Nano
Cubic Grain Technology. This invention allows improved color sensitivity with the ability to absorb scattered light, providing extremely sharp images. Eterna-RDI emulsion technology also achieves less color cross-talk for exacting reproduction. Paul Debevec, Tim Hawkins, John Monos and Dr. Mark Sagar, for the
design and engineering of the Light Stage capture devices and the image-based facialrendering system developed for character relighting in motion pictures. The combination of these systems allows for the creation of photorealistic digital faces as they would appear in any lighting condition. ●
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Armor Wars Cinematographer Matthew Libatique, ASC and director Jon Favreau shoot to thrill with the action-packed Iron Man 2. By Jon D. Witmer •|•
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few weeks before the end of principal photography on Iron Man 2, AC is on location with the filmmakers at Los Angeles’ Sepulveda Dam, where the production has erected and illuminated a massive greenscreen that emanates a nighttime glow visible for miles. The set represents only part of the exterior of Stark Expo, a showcase for the technological wizardry of Stark Industries and its head honcho, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), who has recently revealed to the world that he is the armor-clad superhero Iron Man. The rest of the expo exterior was a combination of location work at a Los Angeles high school and CG extensions. “The trick is to fulfill what people liked about the first film, but do it in a different way and on a larger scale,” says director Jon Favreau. Judging by the scope of this particular set, the production will succeed on both counts.
American Cinematographer
Unit photography by François Duhamel, SMPSP and Merrick Morton, SMPSP. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment. Lighting plot courtesy of Michael Bauman.
Opposite: Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) introduces War Machine onstage at Stark Expo in Iron Man 2. This page, top: Iron Man — and alter ego Tony Stark — faces threats on multiple fronts. Middle: SHIELD operative Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) infiltrates Stark Industries. Bottom: Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) readies his own attack.
Creating the greenscreen at the dam required hundreds of shipping containers to be stacked, covered in plywood and a thin coat of plaster, and painted chroma green. The screen lines three sides of a courtyard measuring roughly 600'x200'; the elaborate setup includes working fountains fitted with waterproof LiteGear LiteRibbon LEDs, as well as a portion of a bridge supported by four cylindrical columns, each topped with two T8 Technologies Lumapanel Pro 44s, two Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1,200-watt moving fixtures, and two Martin Mac 2000 www.theasc.com
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Armor Wars Washes. Installed in the columns are Barco Versa Tubes, which create pulsing LED-lighting effects. Additional ambience is provided by Condor-supported Sourcemaker lighting balloons. During a break between setups, Matthew Libatique, ASC points to the top of the greenscreen, which is lined with 20Ks and PRG Bad Boys, “the punchiest mover we could get,” he says. Gaffer Mike Bauman notes, “They have a ton of throw, an incredible zoom range and a lot of speed, so we can highlight sections of the set really quickly with them.” With four cameras set to roll, Libatique is soon called back to video village, where Favreau commiserates with Downey and co-star Gwyneth Paltrow, who is reprising her role as Pepper Potts. Although the expo seems to signify a high-water mark for Stark, he actually finds himself at a troubling crossroads. To the chagrin of the U.S. government, he has given up weapons manufacturing and refuses to hand over the technology behind his Iron Man armor, putting him at odds with his longtime friend, Col. Rhodes (Don Cheadle), and forcing the government to back Stark Industries’ rival, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell). Meanwhile, the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Engagement and Logistics Division (better known as SHIELD) has infiltrated Stark Industries with a beautiful operative code-named Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). Worse still, Russian scientist Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) has decided the time is ripe to act on a personal vendetta against Stark and his family legacy. Tying the plot’s threads together, Libatique observes, “It’s really a portrait of someone who’s become too famous. Tony’s dealing with fame, his ego and his conscience all at the same time.” The film reunites Favreau with Libatique, who also shot Iron Man (AC May ’08). When Favreau asked Libatique to return for the sequel, “I didn’t have any reservations,” says Libatique. “I’d learned so much from the first film, and I wanted an opportunity to know what I’d learned from beginning to end. I like to think that when you stack
Top and middle: Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) workshop has been refurbished with an LED grid beneath a Lucite floor — representing a giant holograph “tablet” for Stark to interact with — and a “hall of armor” to showcase each iteration of his Iron Man suit. Bottom: Matthew Libatique, ASC checks Downey’s exposure as Versa Tubes simulate floorprojected holographs.
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Top: A TransLite gives Stark’s mansion a view of the Pacific while Lumapanels offer some “daylight” ambience. Middle: When Stark throws a party, his mansion’s lighting instantly switches to party mode thanks to Clay Paky Alpha Profile 300s positioned above the set. Bottom left: Libatique takes five with Downey and Don Cheadle, who plays Col. Rhodes. Bottom right: Stark and Rhodes don armor for a brawl in Stark’s home gym.
these two films together, they have the same visual language.” Also returning for the sequel were Bauman, key grip Tana Dubbe and camera operator Colin Anderson. Libatique notes, “My focus puller on the first film, Peter Berglund, became the Bcamera operator, and Mark Santoni was the A-camera first AC. The continuity between the two films made it a lot easier and very enjoyable for me. We could work more quickly as a collective because we understood the dynamics of the franchise.” Those dynamics include a predilection for improvisation that emphasizes performance over camera-
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After leaving Stark’s party, Rhodes flies an old version of the Iron Man armor to Edwards Air Force Base (right), where he delivers it to Hammer for study (below). These scenes were shot on location at Edwards.
work. “Jon’s approach is so dissimilar to that of other directors I’ve worked with,” says Libatique. “Because he’s also an actor, he’s ‘performance first.’ It’s about keeping the equipment distant and keeping the light as naturalistic as possible. We wanted to provide a culture of freedom and let the actors work the space.” This time around, Libatique didn’t do his own operating. He explains, “Jon is at the monitor, and he makes decisions very quickly. To maximize my collaboration with him, I had to be right next to him, and on this film I felt a partnership with him that I didn’t feel on the first one because I was engulfed in my operating responsibility. In the scheme of things, I can’t let the film get away from me, and 28
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on a movie of this scale, what I do is largely management.” Although dialogue-heavy scenes were infused with improvisation, Favreau did hew closely to storyboards and previs for action sequences. “There are certain parts of the movie that are untouchable, but there are also parts where I want complete freedom,” he notes. “The combination we’ve arrived upon is to keep the connective tissue very spontaneous and loose so the action elements, which we’ve been planning for two years, don’t feel stale.” To help define the action sequences, visual-effects supervisor Janek Sirrs tapped previs company The Third Floor. The company’s approach included American Cinematographer
motion-capture work of stunt performers running through the paces of particular sequences. Libatique then came into an office fitted with camera-tracking equipment and was handed a tablet monitor that served as a virtual camera, allowing him to frame shots, execute moves and even scale his own size, all using the motion-capture data. Sirrs explains, “We laid down a little dance floor, and Matty could roll around on a wheeled stool and pretend to be on a dolly. We put the tablet on a handheld camera mount and weighted it so it felt like a real camera on his shoulder.” The rudimentary shots Libatique composed were then refined under the supervision of animation director Genndy Tartakovsky. Sirrs describes the methodology as “sort of a James Cameron approach to previs,” referring to the director’s use of similar virtual-camera technology on Avatar (AC Jan. ’10). “That technology has become so available that it’s changing the nature of previs. This is the fastest way to do it and the most naturalistic; it’s wrong to suppose that someone who may be good at building a 3-D model will know how you would follow action as the camera operator would on set. This is a way of injecting that talent back into the equation.” Libatique confirms, “It was a much better way for people to get a sense of how the film was going to be shot.” The production was based in Los Angeles, mostly at Raleigh Studios Manhattan Beach. “I try to keep the work in L.A. when I can,” says Favreau. “You have access to a tremendous talent pool, and as a director I find it’s much easier to work here, especially if you’re going to be changing things on the fly, because the infrastructure is here. I love shooting other places, too, if the script calls for it, but it was clear that L.A. would serve this material the best.” One of the biggest challenges for Libatique was underscoring Stark’s position at the vanguard of technology with the practical fixtures the production employed. “This is one of the richest men in the world, so we can’t buy our practicals from Home Depot,” he notes. “Everything had to be intelligent tech-
MAKE
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nology, and it had to look classic enough to have some shelf life — we didn’t want it to look embarrassingly dated 10 years from now. That made it challenging but fun as well.” Fortunately, he adds, “Mike Bauman is really good at staying up on technology, and our lighting-fixtures foreman, Al DeMayo, made phenomenal contributions. Al also worked on the first film, but this time he had to reinvent a lot of what we were doing.” This challenge was especially pronounced inside Stark Expo, particularly when Stark first appears onstage. Backed by a contingent of female dancers, his entrance called for a light show set to AC/DC’s “Shoot to Thrill.” “The most elegant light show I’ve ever seen was Radiohead’s at the Hollywood Bowl,” says Libatique. “Bauman figured out that they used Versa Tubes, which look like fluorescents but have LEDs inside; you can send video patterns through them, change their color or make them solid.” The Versa Tubes were integrated into the set in a proscenium configuration complemented by moving fixtures that Libatique strove to integrate as graphic elements within the frame. “What I worked on more than anything was configuration, and Bauman chose the lights,” says Libatique. “We ended up using close to 300 moving fixtures, in addition to about 1,000 Versa Tubes,” says Bauman. “It was a constant discussion with [production designer] Michael Riva, because most of
Top: Tony Stark doffs his Iron Man armor onstage at Stark Expo as the “Ironettes” dance behind him. The sequence called for intricate lighting effects executed by lighting programmers Scott Barnes and Joshua Thatcher. Middle: An L.A. high school served as one part of the expo’s exterior. Bottom and opposite: The remainder of the exterior was filmed at the Sepulveda Dam, where the production constructed a massive greenscreen around three sides of a 600'x200' courtyard.
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Taylor Leads 1st-Rate 2nd Unit
fter serving as second-unit director of photography on Iron Man, Jonathan Taylor, ASC was asked to both shoot and direct Iron Man 2’s second-unit work. “I wanted a consistency between both units, and Jonathan did a wonderful job on our first film,” says director Jon Favreau. “He has a great eye, and he integrates well with the first unit. There was definitely a synergy between both units, which you don’t always have on these types of movies.” Director of photography Matthew Libatique, ASC agrees, noting, “Directing and shooting second unit on Iron Man 2 was a lot to handle, but Jonathan was up to the task. He’s such a seasoned veteran. He understands stunts, he has a great knack for knowing where to put the camera, and he’s great at getting the right tool for the job.” Taylor gained his experience climbing the ranks of the camera department in the United Kingdom, where he started on the series Thunderbirds and transitioned into second-unit and visual-effects work on such features as Superman, Superman II and Batman, as well as main-unit work
on Full Metal Jacket and other films. His first director of photography credit came on the model unit for Stargate in 1994. “Then I did Independence Day, and things took off,” he says. “I found a niche, and people started to recognize that’s what I did.” In 2006, Taylor was invited to join the ASC, an acknowledgment from his peers of his collaborative spirit and skill. “I’m not going to go out and do some interesting shots that don’t fit the movie,” says Taylor. “The important thing to me is to make sure my work and the first unit’s work fit seamlessly. The danger is to concentrate on the stunt and forget that it should be integral to the story. “When you do second unit, it’s all about trust and communication,” he continues. “It’s about talking to the director and the cinematographer, getting into their heads, understanding their vision and executing it.” As principal photography got underway on Iron Man 2, Taylor recounts, “I’d go to the prelights with Matty, and we’d work out what second unit would do. Then, if I wasn’t shooting, I would always go to their set with
2nd-unit director/cinematographer Jonathan Taylor, ASC is flanked by camera operators Kent Harvey (left) and Joseph Cicio (right) inside the “Japanese Garden,” the setting of the climactic battle involving Iron Man, War Machine and a bevy of armored drones.
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my gaffer and my assistant director, Michael Moore. We had lighting diagrams from the main unit and photographic references as well, and we worked with Gamma & Density’s 3cP System, which is a good, simple way to share information when you have multiple units.” While filming Iron Man 2’s action sequences, Taylor’s approach was to “shoot the previs almost to the letter,” he says. “But you also have to do extra coverage to create leeway in post. An action piece can fall apart very quickly unless it’s well covered, so you have to see opportunities and follow up on them.” It was not uncommon for the second unit to roll as many as 13 cameras at once to capture elaborate stunts. Looking for opportunities to enhance the first unit’s work also meant suggesting tools and camera systems that weren’t originally on the table, including “using VistaVision for background plates,” says Taylor. “I thought that would be useful on this project. VistaVision gives you great leeway in post because you can recompose within the frame, you can zoom in, and, of course, the quality is superb.” Taylor credits the many secondunit directors he’s worked with for preparing him for his own turn in the director’s chair. “There are all sorts of little tricks you learn just by observation and osmosis,” he says. He also emphasizes the contributions of his crew, including gaffer Dan Riffel, key grip Richard Mall, operators Joseph Cicio and Kent Harvey, 1st ACs Kevin Potter and Louie DeMarco, and 2nd ACs Scott Whitbread and Tony Muller. “All my crew have been with me for at least 10 years,” says Taylor. “I’m loyal to them, and they are loyal to me. One needs that support, especially when you’re both the second-unit cinematographer and second-unit director. You can only achieve that if you have a very strong crew.” — Jon D. Witmer
Director Jon Favreau confabs with Downey and Cheadle for a scene set at a Senate hearing. Filming inside the Pasadena Masonic Temple, the crew built a floor-supported soft box fitted with 250- and 500-watt bulbs on batten strips wired to dimmers and shone through Light Grid.
the stage was going to be defined by the lighting and video elements. [Lighting previs program] ESP Vision proved critical in that discussion. We used 1,500watt and 700-watt Clay Paky Alpha Beams, augmented by High End Systems Showguns and Showbeams for strong shafts and beam effects; Varilite VL3000s and VL3500s mixed with Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1200s as general key and fill; and Mac 2000 Washes for ambience.” Lighting programmer Scott Barnes was charged with designing the light show for the dance number, and Libatique says Barnes’ work was “spectacular. It was like a big demo, a big palette of movement, and we could take the best pieces and put them into the portion that was actually going to be in the film.” Behind the stage was a 30'-highby-74'-wide screen comprised of FLED io11 LED tiles, through which the filmmakers ran video images. While Barnes handled the dimmer board controlling the moving fixtures, lighting programmer Joshua Thatcher was the “gatekeeper,” Libatique says, of the content on the LED wall. Bauman adds, “Josh handled three different media servers: a PRG MBox for the FLEDs and two Catalysts for the Versa Tubes. He was able to use a lot of MBox effects and layering to get looks that Matty and Jon wanted.”
“I couldn’t imagine doing a movie of this size without Al, Josh and Scott,” says Libatique. “Obviously, there were a lot of people involved, but in broad strokes, the ideas would come from me and Mike, the problem-solving would come from Al, and the execution would come from Barnes and Thatcher.” Stark’s cutting-edge technology also extends to his home, in particular in his workshop, which has undergone some remodeling since the first film. Favreau explains, “We wanted to up the tech level in Tony’s workshop so it looks like he’s taken a technological leap.” Libatique adds, “On the first film, they discovered this potential for holographic technology as a way for Tony to work with materials in a non-monitor situation. On this movie, Riva came up with this idea for the floor, making it a giant tablet Tony could walk across, and wherever he went, he could have a holographic image pulled up in front of him.” Onstage at Manhattan Beach, LEDs were installed in a grid pattern — meant to represent the holograph projectors — beneath the Lucite floor and wired to custom-made LED dimmers controlled by a Whole Hog III. Thatcher controlled the floor via pixel mapping, treating each LED as a pixel that was fed content from a media server, which also fed data to other interactive sources. Meanwhile, Barnes 33
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Top to bottom: Libatique and camera operator Colin Anderson prepare a shot of Stark racing at the Monaco Grand Prix; after the second unit shot on location in Monaco, the sequence was completed at Downey Studios, where the crew floated 40'x60' frames of Light Grid to control sunlight; Vanko dons his Whiplash armor and attacks Stark mid-race.
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controlled fixtures rigged from three movable pieces of truss hung from the set’s ceiling. Each rig held “two Clay Paky Alpha 1200s and some Kino Flo VistaBeams — it really gave us a ton of flexibility,” says Bauman. Libatique adds, “We could position them in various parts of the room and bounce the moving lights into cards. Very seldom did we use them direct; we’d use them as sort of movable Source Fours we could control from the dimmer board, which Mike and I like to do because we can keep everything off the set and still have control without putting guys on ladders. “No matter how complicated the rig, I want to be able to improvise when I get on set,” the cinematographer adds, noting that the moving fixtures allowed him to quickly “blade the light down or change the color temperature to match a practical on the floor.” The Clay Pakys were also used in combination with Versa Tubes to create, in-camera, a sense of interaction with the holographic effects that would be added by Sirrs’ team in post. Having such interactive cues on set, Sirrs enthuses, “really sells the final effects. Subconsciously, those little cues tie everything together.” Cutting-edge lighting design is evident throughout Stark’s seaside manse. “His house was more dialed-in than anybody’s house could ever be,” says Libatique. “One of the best examples where everything came together from a lighting perspective is the scene where Tony has a birthday party, and his house looks like a club. All the can lights were Clay Paky Alpha Profile 300s built into the set, so they could turn into this moving-light extravaganza.” The party is interrupted when Rhodes, frustrated with the host’s irreverence, decides to take the Mark II Iron Man armor and personally deliver it to the government. A brawl ensues between Stark, in his Mark IV armor, and Rhodes, in the Mark II, but Rhodes manages to get away with the suit and present it to Hammer at Edwards Air Force Base. Shooting on location at Edwards was kept simple. Libatique recalls, “We ended up shooting scenes at
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Above: A visualeffects composite from one of Iron Man's many flying sequences. Right: Image 80s provide illumination while filming live-action elements for a flying sequence onstage.
the hangar doors, so there was already a relationship between light and dark, and even when we shot inside the hangars, we would find a space with as much depth as possible, and I’d use a lot of existing light. When they’re analyzing the Mark II, we put two VistaBeam 600s on [Matthews] Max menace arms as toplight, and we got the stop up to around T8.5 so we could bury the background a bit.” Taking his exposures with a reflective-light meter, Libatique typically 36
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maintained a shooting stop of T2.8. “I think it’s a nice compromise — I like as little depth of field as possible, but it’s still fair for the focus puller.” Bauman notes, “With Matty, there’s really not a lot that’s ever at key exposure. Usually Gwyneth and Robert were 1 or 1½ stops underexposed.” Libatique explains, “Key light doesn’t feel genuine to me. Even though I was doing a big movie with major stars, I wanted it to feel as if we’d just walked into a location and found that lighting. One way I do that is by American Cinematographer
trying to keep the faces down.” The production shot 4-perf Super 35mm using a camera package from Panavision Hollywood. Panaflex Millennium XLs served as the A and B cameras, which almost always ran simultaneously. Libatique carried a set of Primo primes, “but we primarily used [Angenieux] Optimo 15-40mm and 28-76mm zooms. We used them as variable primes, and they gave us some flexibility with the actors’ improvisation.” In contrast to Stark’s digs, Vanko prepares for his war on Stark in a lowtech workspace. The set “was described to me as being not unlike Max Cohen’s apartment in Pi,” Libatique says with a laugh, referring to the indie he shot for Darren Aronofsky (AC April ’98). “It was that rare opportunity to go lo-fi in the movie, which is, in a lot of ways, my comfort zone. We used shop lights, clip lights, compact fluorescents and weird desk lamps with bare bulbs.” Libatique shot Kodak Vision 500T 5279 in Vanko’s workspace “because I liked how it accentuated the varying color temperatures.” (He used Vision2 50D 5201 and 200T 5217 and Vision3 500T 5219 elsewhere in the production.) Libatique has long employed color temperature as a means
of creating contrast and suggesting conflict, and the character arcs in Iron Man 2 are rife with turmoil. “There’s always a conflict within [Stark], whether it be physical illness or complete irreverence, so I introduced more of a conflict of color in his world as well, but more subtly than I did with Vanko. I’ve always been a believer in a controlled palette, so if I’ve introduced two colors, I’ll avoid introducing a third in the same frame.” Believing the technology that powers the Iron Man armor was stolen from his family, Vanko constructs his own “Whiplash” armor and confronts Stark in a spectacular action sequence at the Monaco Grand Prix. Filming the sequence required the second unit, shot and directed by Jonathan Taylor, ASC, to shoot background plates and shots of a speeding Rolls Royce along the actual Monaco circuit. (See sidebar on p. 32.) Taylor recalls, “The Monaco police force and auto club were very cooperative, but because it’s a working city, we had only an hour or two for each section of track. It was just frantic, and we literally had only one hit at it. Second-unit first AD Michael Moore and I planned the whole thing at Manhattan Beach. It was a question of getting all the equipment set up and having a well-oiled machine.” Taylor’s equipment list included a highspeed camera-tracking vehicle, a Porsche 928 rented from Propulsion in Paris, driven by Jean-François Dubut and mounted with VistaVision cameras from Geo and Procam; an insert car rigged with VistaVision cameras, Arri 435s and Canon EOS 5D Mark IIs; and a Mercedes SUV-mounted Russian Arm rented from Bickers Action. Additionally, ground cameras were positioned to grab shots of the Rolls speeding by, and even a helicopter, rented from Flying Pictures, was employed for aerial shots. “We had all the toys, and we ran a whole convoy around the track,” Taylor continues. “It was quite a trick to pull the whole thing off.” In addition to the location work, a section of track was constructed at Downey Studios, where both units completed the sequence. For lighting,
A Technocrane is employed for an earlymorning scene in which Iron Man enjoys a balanced breakfast courtesy of Los Angeles’ famous Randy’s Donuts.
“Tana floated 40-by-60 Light Grids to try to control the overall ambience and keep it soft,” says Bauman. Equipmentwise, however, the second unit had its hands full. Taylor details, “We used a couple of Photo-Sonics cameras for some high-speed crashes with the racecars. We also had a high-speed track alongside and synced with the racecars so we could launch everything at the same time and run parallel to the cars. [Second-unit key grip] Richard Mall built the track, and we had four cameras on it: a VistaVision, a Phantom and two Arri 435s.” Taylor also incorporated Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLRs, fitted with Canon lenses, as crash cameras. “One of the problems with doing action stuff is www.theasc.com
finding interesting places to put the camera,” says Taylor, adding that he could “actually put the 5Ds on the cars we were going to crash. We cut holes for the lenses in small Pelican cases that we painted to match the cars. We got some amazing shots. Of course, it’s not film quality, but for a 12-frame cut in an action piece, it holds up very well.” After Whiplash makes his auspicious debut, Hammer enlists him to create an army of drones for the government. Whiplash instead pits the drones against Iron Man, who by film’s end is backed up in battle by Rhodes, now sporting his very own “War Machine” armor. “We were talking about CG characters with War Machine, Iron Man and the drones, so the question was, May 2010
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Armor Wars
Favreau and Downey prepare to shoot “inside-the-helmet” footage. Framing the actor in a tight close-up, the camera tracked left and right while Versa Tubes simulated Iron Man’s heads-up display.
‘How much do we really need to do practically?’” says Libatique. “Janek and I agreed that there needed to be physical interactivity with the foreground action to sell the background visual-effects work. We decided to build as big as we could to get a sense of scale and those physical relationships.”
The production built the set, dubbed the Japanese Garden, inside Sony Studios’ Stage 30. Sirrs explains, “There’s a waterfall and a stream running through the middle of the set, and we wanted to capture as much of that with live plates as possible. We’ve also got missile hits, and we wanted to set off real
pyro on the stage to get the atmosphere in there. Even if you have to paint something in later [with CG], it feels better if you have a real visual benchmark.” The Rag Place provided the bluescreen that surrounded the set; this was lit with Kino Flo Image 80s (fitted with Super Blue tubes) positioned along the top and bottom of the screen. To light the set, Libatique turned to a technique that had served him well for the climax of Iron Man: hanging Image 80s from the ceiling. Bauman explains, “Tana and [key rigging grip] Charley Gilleran designed and built a 40-by-60 box containing Image 80s mixed with daylight and tungsten tubes and run through Light Grid. We underexposed a bit to get some reflectivity. The source was low-intensity but very broad, and we could pick up highlights that the CG guys could then work from. We also used Image 80s as soft ambient backlight, and we put up truss with some VL3000s so we could highlight different areas.”
prime choice 15mm – 40mm
optimo cine lenses from 15mm to 290mm There’s no doubt that Angenieux Optimo 35mm film lenses deliver exceptional optical performance and value. They feature extremely fast apertures with outstanding contrast and color reproduction – and the most advanced zoom mechanics available. In fact, an expansive 15 to 290mm range is provided by just four Optimo
The main unit was primarily responsible for filming the dialogue between Stark and Rhodes before they don their masks and blaze into action, after which the second unit stepped in to complete the in-camera elements. Taylor notes, “VistaVision came to the fore. [Steadicam operator] Chris McGuire manned a Revolution rig, which is great for fight sequences. We put the VistaVision camera on that, and although we were shooting background plates, we still had people running through the action.” Sirrs adds, “Even though we were going to put digital suits in there, we had people with partial suits stand in and go through the motions as a reference for how it should look.” Iron Man 2’s negative was processed by Deluxe, and throughout the shoot Libatique viewed select print dailies (timed by ASC associate member Adam Clark). “In the morning, I would look at the print, and at lunch I’d watch the digital version with Jon,” he recalls. “With print dailies, I feel like I can go
28mm – 76mm
into the digital intermediate knowing what I have.” As on Iron Man, Libatique plans to carry out the digital grade at EFilm with colorist (and ASC associate member) Steven J. Scott. The cinematographer emphasizes that although he achieves as much of the desired look as possible in-camera, the DI is “an absolute necessity on this film. I have to manage the Iron Man suit from environment to environment, and we don’t want it dominating the look of the movie. With a DI, I can isolate the suit and make sure the color stays true to what we’re trying to articulate. Chasing the color photochemically would be a nightmare.” When Favreau spoke to AC, he was looking forward to the DI. “On any film, you have very lofty expectations when you set out, and then the concerns become more pragmatic because you’re just trying to finish the job,” says the director. “It’s nice for the last people who touch the film to be your color timer and
17mm – 80mm
35mm lenses. That’s a lot less to purchase, rent and carry. Yet still fills every need from hand-held and Stedicam to dolly and crane applications. The perfect complement to your favorite fixed lenses. Just some of the reasons pro cinematographers around the world consider the Angenieux Optimo family of zoom lenses a prime choice for 35mm film and large format digital production.
[email protected] • angenieux.com
your cinematographer, because they can bring a little bit of perspective from not being as closely involved in every step of postproduction. When you get to the DI and can sit down with the cinematographer in that dark room, it’s your film together again.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Super 35mm Panaflex Millennium XL Panavision Primo, Angenieux Optimo lenses Kodak Vision 500T 5279; Vision2 50D 5201, 200T 5217; Vision3 500T 5219 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision Premier 2393 and Vision 2383
24mm – 290mm
Wonders ofthe
21 cinematographers contribute spectacular imagery to the nature film Oceans, directed by Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud. By Benjamin B •|•
T
he Disney film Oceans begins with a question, asked by a boy on a beach: “What is the ocean?” The answer that unfolds in the following 90 minutes takes the form of a dazzling nature film that defies categorization. The movie starts in the sand underwater, with an iguana slowly making its way from the ocean floor to the surf, finally putting one claw on dry land. A little later, a rocket takes off in the distant skies, and its bright glare is reflected in the iguana’s eye. With a few simple shots, Oceans has visually evoked the story of evolution.
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Sea
The film offers many such rich moments. In the sardinerun sequence, an army of dolphins rushes to meet a gigantic school of fish, starting a feeding frenzy that is soon shared with sharks and birds. There is drama when baby turtles hatch in the sand and make the dangerous journey to the nearby water, preyed upon by a flock of rapacious birds along the way. The film is also replete with scenes that reveal man’s kinship with animals. The camera is the invisible hero of Oceans. It is placed and moved in novel ways that give the viewer the impression, time and again, of seeing marine life as it has never been seen before. The film is the brainchild of Jacques Perrin, who has long experimented with new formats for nature films, starting with Microcosmos (AC Jan. ’97), about the world of insects, and including Winged Migration, an epic that follows birds around the planet (AC July ’03). Perrin produced Oceans and codirected it with Jacques Cluzaud, a collaborator on Winged Migration. Cluzaud notes, “These films are a matter of going ever further and continually asking ourselves, ‘What can we invent?’ Jacques Perrin is not interested in making a film we’ve already seen. We’re always looking for something more.”
American Cinematographer
Photos by Alexander Bugel, Oliver Guéneau, Pascal Kobeh, Christophe Pottier and François Sarano, courtesy of Galatee Films, Pathe Production, Notro Films, France 2 Cinema, France 3 Cinema, JMH/TSR.
Opposite: An Asian Sheepshead Wrasse is one of the many exotic sea creatures featured in Oceans. This page, top: Weddell Seals in the Antarctic. Middle and bottom: Divers explore colorful nooks while swimming through underwater caves in Hienghiène, New Caledonia.
Oceans was a seven-year undertaking that involved 340 weeks of shooting spread over almost five years and 54 locations, notably several wildlife sanctuaries. The film’s 21 cinematographers included 10 underwater specialists, and there were up to six units shooting simultaneously. The filmmakers also researched, designed and built an array of custom camera tools so they could achieve what they wanted. Cluzaud recalls that the starting point was a script comprising poetic sequences that had working titles such as “the dragon and the rocket,” “cavalcades,” “sea feasts,” “chilling out on the beach,” “predator” and “the night world.” “Before we set out to shoot, we asked ourselves which animals could illustrate a specific sequence, and then we selected those that seemed the most interesting,” he says. “For example, the beginning of the film was called ‘the conquest of the shore,’ and we chose the iguana for its prehistoric look. Our choices were about which species would best serve the sequence, and from there, we decided where to shoot and when.” Cluzaud emphasizes that the film’s point of view was defined by a desire to identify with its animal subjects. “The two key words were ‘proximity’ and ‘dynamism.’ We told the operators to seek out the animals’ gazes and eyelines. We spent a lot of time and effort to catch an animal’s gaze and film www.theasc.com
May 2010
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Wonders of the Sea
Top: An intrepid cameraman captures a bold shot of a great white shark off Mexico’s Guadalupe Island. Middle: The filmmakers take viewers straight into a formation of bigeye trevally in the Indian Ocean’s Cocos Islands. Bottom: A clownfish gets his close-up in Nouméa, New Caledonia.
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it like a character. I think what distinguishes this film in particular is that we are dealing with characters: you experience the animals differently because they are filmed differently.” Identifying with the animals also meant “being a fish among the fish,” he continues. “There are very few static shots. The principle was to always be moving because living things move — even the tiny feet of a starfish are moving, however slowly. With fast species such as dolphins, the question was what could we invent to follow them at full speed both above and below the water. We created the Thetys head above, and the Torpedo and the Polecam below. We’ve seen whales, dolphins and sharks underwater before, but never at such a speed.” Cinematographer Philippe Ros shot Oceans’ night sequences, among others; was involved in developing some custom tools; and supervised the workflow as digital-imaging director. The production decided to shoot Super 35mm for material above the water, and high-definition video for underwater work except for slow-motion material. Ros explains that the main reason for choosing HD was the ability to run cassette loads of 50 minutes. The production designed and built four autonomous underwater housings for the diver operators. The housings were American Cinematographer
outfitted with Sony HDW-F900/3s shooting in HDCam format, which was the HD standard in 2005, when shooting began. Speedy animals were shot from a boat, and Sony HDC-950s were used in those instances because the camera head could be separated from the camera body; the camera heads were placed in small capsules that were then fitted to custom-designed Polecams or Torpedoes linked to the boat via fiberoptic cable, a technology the filmmakers refined over a year of development. The Polecam consisted of a submerged camera capsule attached to a large triangular support fastened to the side or the prow of the boat. The Polecam could not be used to shoot backwards because the boat’s wake would spoil the shot, so it was used to capture side angles of the creatures right below the surface of the water. For shots from the back of the boat, camera capsules were placed in Torpedoes that were attached to the stern with a long, metal leash; this arrangement allowed for shooting as far as 100 meters away and avoided the boat’s wake. The Panavised Sony cameras were outfitted with Zeiss 6-24mm and 17-112mm DigiZooms. In order to get the proximity requested by the filmmakers, the dominant underwater focal length was about 7mm, which Ros says is equivalent to about 18mm in 35mm. The lenses were often set to the hyperfocal distance. Underwater camera operator René Heuzey recalls, “The directors really did want us to be ‘a fish among the fish.’ The fish could not be shown to be curious of the camera. We also had to avoid seeking out the fish — the image had to float by itself. You couldn’t feel the camera chasing after the animal. Another rule was to always shoot with natural lighting.” Heuzey shot a unique sequence while moving with a large blanket octopus that unfolded an orange cape as it glided above the ocean floor. “I call that ‘the Batman shot,’” he says. “To get the images, I shot for 12 days, spending three or four hours underwater per day.
First, you have to gain the animal’s acceptance so he understands you’re not a predator. You don’t want to startle the blanket octopus, or it will let go of its ink and change color.” Heuzey often swam in the direction of the current, using the flow to help stabilize the image. He notes that he was given a very specific shot list. “For example, the directors asked me to match the blanket octopus to the sails of a sailboat featured in
another shot. That took me a couple of days.” Working with wild animals demanded patience and persistence, and produced many surprises. Heuzey remembers an orca that sought him out after he had returned to his boat. He dove back in, and the orca led him away from the boat and gave him a private show. “When I blew bubbles, he blew bubbles, and when I nodded, he
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Wonders of the Sea
Top left: A cloud of krill. Bottom left: Filming sea nettles in Monterey Bay, Calif. Above: For shots taken from the back of boats, camera capsules were placed in Torpedoes that were attached to the stern with a long leash, which allowed the filmmakers to avoid the boat’s wake while shooting.
nodded. It was incredible — I felt like we knew each other.” The production’s main film camera was the Arri 435, which was used on boats, in helicopters and on land. An extensively modified Arri 2-B was used in the tiny Birdy Fly helicopters that could hover above whales and other large mammals without startling them. Much of the above-water work was done with a 435 on a small crane with a Thetys, a rugged, gyrostabilized head designed and built by the production. Because whales and other mammals are less threatened by smaller boats, the Thetys rig was often put in an inflatable Zodiac. Operating the Thetys was cinematographer Luc Drion, who 44
May 2010
used a variety of Angenieux zoom lenses, including the Optimo 1780mm, the Optimo 24-290mm and an HR 25-250mm. Drion recalls that his job involved a blend of patience, guesswork and reactivity. As example, he cites the shot of a huge shark leaping out of the ocean, capturing a bull seal in its jaws. “We spent a lot of time on that shot, and the game was to follow a seal, hoping it would be eaten by a shark,” he says. “That shot was the result of stubbornness, ours and the production’s! We had to throw away 20 or 30 1,000-foot loads, unprocessed. We didn’t get the shark the first year, so we went back in the second year and got it. Then they American Cinematographer
said they wanted a close-up for the edit, so we went back the following year and we got the shot! “The work was a mixture of joy and frustration,” he continues. “It was fantastic at certain moments, and completely depressing at others. Sometimes I just missed an extraordinary shot because I was a little too tight, and I was only too tight because I’d zoomed in for no particular reason right before the whale jumped.” Many of the most spectacular jumps were shot at 50 or 100 fps. Drion used an Easy Look unit with the video assist to simulate the slow-motion playback. Although the land-based footage was shot in 3-perf Super 35mm, less predictable material was shot in 4-perf to allow for reframing in post. Drion also remembers moments of bliss: “You’re there with hundreds of dolphins jumping around you, and you’ve been looking for this shot for two years. You’ve already seen dolphin cavalcades, but they didn’t have the same energy, the same sea, the same everything! There’s a kind of miraculous synchronicity, and that’s also due to the directors, who wanted this shot and sent you back to the same spot the following year because you didn’t get what they needed the first year. It’s stubborn work at every level.” Drion was also the operator for a
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Wonders of the Sea violent storm sequence, which shows large boats dwarfed by powerful waves. In one shot, a warship is filmed head-on and then completely obscured by a huge, oncoming wave. Drion reveals that the scary image was shot from a helicopter. “The waves were 15 meters [49'] high. Because they were spaced far apart, we’d go down above the water when the wave was low, and the pilot would look behind him to get back up before the next wave arrived.” Drion’s Arri 435 was in a gyroscopic Stab-C mounted on a side bracket. “I had absolute trust in the helicopter pilot. To get the waves to hide the ship, I would say, ‘Lower, lower,’ but when he refused, I didn’t insist! It was impossible to use a rain deflector, so the camera assistant, wearing a harness, would lean out of the chopper and wipe the lens by hand.” Part of an especially memorable underwater night sequence was shot off a dock. The protagonists are squillas and crabs, and the filmmakers created an underwater dolly setup complete with tracks to follow “Joe the crab” as he hustles along the underwater reef. To key the scene, Ros set up Dino lights shining down into the water through cookies. The Dino bulbs were made to flicker independently to emulate dappled wave patterns underwater. The sequence also contains a macro shot of the squilla’s extraterrestrial eye, which was shot in a shallow pool that afforded more lighting control. One of the major challenges in post was matching HD to the film footage, which was scanned at 4K by a team (including Tommaso Vergalo, Juan Eveno and François Dupuy) at Digimage Cinema in Paris. The results look seamless, which is especially impressive given that most of the digital footage was shot in the 8-bit HDCam format, which has a recorded horizontal resolution of 1,440 pixels. Ros emphasizes that he designed the workflow with the final goal of 2.40:1 exhibition in mind. To create an HD image that would match the 35mm as closely as possible, he did extensive testing and worked in coordination with Olivier
Top: To capture side angles of animals just below the surface of the water, the filmmakers used the Polecam rig, a submerged camera capsule attached to a large triangular support fastened to the boat. Middle: Macro shots of squillas were captured in a shallow pool that afforded more lighting control. Bottom: A radio-controlled Birdy Fly helicopter was used to capture dynamic footage of whales and other mammals.
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American Cinematographer
The filmmakers employed an underwater dolly to great effect, especially for a night sequence that follows a crab hustling along a reef.
Garcia and Christian Mourier to develop a series of custom gamma curves and scene files for the video operators to use. The low-contrast curves were varied to address different lighting conditions. To accommodate different sea coloring, Ros notably reduced and isolated the blue or green vectors in the F900 multi-matrix menu. He also tweaked the levels in the detail menu for murkier scenes. Ros and his team created two simple knobs on the underwater housing to apply this range of settings. One knob was for the ocean color, and the other for the scene’s contrast and visibility. Each knob had five settings, creating 25 possible combinations, or, as Ros says, “25 digital film stocks.” Matching HD to film, he continues, “had two components: preserving the highlights and getting maximum resolution when shooting, and reducing noise in post. In production, we strove to have the right gamma curve for the highlights, the right saturation for the sea, and the right setting in the detail menu, usually between -45 and -60, for the scene. “I knew that up-converting from HD to 4K in post would work if the images had little noise, but the thing we couldn’t correct for was the solarizing
effect, when you lose detail in the whites. So we always chose to protect the whites, even if it meant more noise. But when we didn’t have strong highlights in the image, we used curves that had less noise. That’s why we had several gamma curves.” Key for Ros was the constant communication between production and post, and the constant verification of the dailies by the cinematographers, the digital-imaging technicians (led by François Paturel) and the colorists. Ros also instituted a daily testing procedure www.theasc.com
that accustomed the operators to evaluate the rendering of a test chart. “Above a certain threshold, around 2K, it’s not the number of pixels that matters, but the quality of your pixels,” he observes. “That’s why we did a lot of work on certain menus and, especially, why we diminished the level of noise. When you can get rid of the noise, each pixel is cleaner, and you can increase your MTF because you can then discern detail.” Def2shoot in Paris applied a proprietary noise-reduction process to the HD material and a degraining May 2010
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Wonders of the Sea
Designed and built by the production, the rugged, gyrostabilized Thetys head was often set up in an inflatable Zodiac, which was less threatening to sea creatures than larger boats.
process to the 35mm. The HD upconversion to 4K was done after the digital grade, using a custom Digimage process. Digimage also applied a proprietary process called “wide range” to get slightly stronger whites in the filmout, and created multiple digital negatives, which were used to print positives directly so as to avoid the loss of two extra generations. For the DCP master, selective focus was applied to 200 shots
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as a way of emphasizing certain elements in the frame. Perrin asked an old friend, cinematographer Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC, to shoot a few fictional sequences that are absent from the U.S. version of the film, and also to supervise the DI at Digimage. “Jacques said he wanted an eye to harmonize the different footage according to the vision of the directors,” says Tovoli, who spent 12 weeks on the
grade with Ros and colorist Laurent Desbruères. “I was lucky to work closely with Laurent and Philippe,” says Tovoli. “As always with Perrin productions, the atmosphere was one of honesty and profound respect for the professionalism of others.” The main challenge, notes Tovoli, was matching disparate footage cut together in a scene. “One scene could contain shots done three years apart in different seas — they were edited together to look like reversal shots,” explains Tovoli. Desbruères adds that another challenge was the multitude of ocean currents, which created variegated colors, sometimes even in the same shot. He cites the sardine run as an example. “It’s amazing — you get a variety of nuances from blue to cyan and then magenta which appear with small changes of depth.” Another difficulty came from murky waters, which the colorist brightened by enhancing beams of light.
Desbruères graded the film on a DaVinci Resolve, spending a lot of time drawing dynamic grading windows to compensate for constantly changing hues and luminosity. He remembers that one shot moving toward the surface of the sardine run required almost 60 tracking windows. “A window may only last 10 frames and then fade out,” he notes. Sometimes he would outline a small creature in the frame to make it more visible onscreen. Desbruères remembers the intense grading sessions fondly: “I didn’t feel the fatigue because I was at the heart of something that transported me.” Tovoli recalls that the grade evolved with time. “Our first timing was pretty contrasty, with beautiful blacks, but the directors didn’t want too much contrast underwater because they didn’t want it to be scary,” he explains. “For them, the color of the ocean was the color of life. They wanted a blue that isn’t heavy, that is transparent, agreeable
and light, so we chose the lightest color, because color can become threatening. We never left any impenetrable dark zones, even in the night sequence with predators.” Perrin has described Oceans as “an underwater wildlife opera.” Whatever the genre may be, one word that arose frequently during AC ’s interviews was “collaboration.” After initial shoots with the directors, many cinematographers were trusted to continue on their own. “We were both amazed and yet not surprised by what they brought back, because we were on the same wavelength,” says Cluzaud. “Having many cinematographers meant having many different ways of filming, and that gives the film an incredible richness.” “I never believed filmmaking was a collaborative art,” Tovoli confesses, “but this film proved me wrong. Putting 21 cinematographers and two directors in harmony, now that is collaboration!” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Super 35mm and High-Definition Video Super 35mm (4- and 3-perf): Arri 435, 235, 2-B, 2-C, 35-3; Aaton 35-III Angenieux, Zeiss and Cooke lenses Kodak Vision2 50D 5201, 250D 5205, 100T 5212, 200T 5217, 500T 5218; Fuji Super F-64D 8522 HD: Sony HDW-F900/3, HDC-950, F23 Zeiss and Panavision lenses Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
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Lost and Found
Families Women take center stage in Rodrigo Garcia’s Mother and Child, shot by Xavier Pérez Grobet, ASC, AMC. By Rachael K. Bosley •|•
W
ritten and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, the new drama Mother and Child presents three women whose paths intersect at a Catholic adoption agency that plays a prominent role in their lives. Karen (Annette Bening) comes to the agency in search of the daughter she bore at age 14 and gave up for adoption; adoptee Elizabeth (Naomi Watts) pays a visit to try to track down her biological mother; and Lucy (Kerry Washington) and her husband (David Ramsey) arrive seeking to adopt a baby. Garcia has explored women’s lives to memorable effect in previous features — Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her (2000), Ten Tiny Love Stories (2001) and Nine Lives (2005) — but Mother and Child doesn’t employ the episodic structure that characterized those films. Instead, each woman’s story is intercut with the other stories, and they eventually prove to be threads in the same tapestry. The film is Garcia’s latest collaboration with director of photography Xavier Pérez Grobet, ASC, AMC; they first teamed on Nine Lives and have since worked together on a number of projects, including the TV series In Treatment and Deadwood. One of the ASC’s newest members, Grobet has 50
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worked steadily in film and television since he moved to Los Angeles from his native Mexico a decade ago. His recent credits include the features The Back-Up Plan and I Love You Phillip Morris. Shortly after Mother and Child was given its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Grobet met with AC in Los Angeles to discuss the project. American Cinematographer: In terms of camerawork, Mother and Child couldn’t be more different from Nine Lives, which told each of its nine stories with a single Steadicam take. Was this movie as challenging in its own way? Xavier Pérez Grobet, ASC, AMC: Yes. When I read Rodrigo’s script, I knew we could talk about doing something visually that would be very different from Nine Lives. I think Rodrigo’s projects are always interesting, and we both really enjoy the process of looking for what each film is, coming up with a way to tell the story that makes sense. Mother and Child is very emotional, and we wanted to let the story unfold in front of the camera. We talked about creating a style where the camera was more observational than intrusive — not a protagonist. We started thinking about
American Cinematographer
Unit photography by Ralph Nelson, SMPSP, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Opposite: Three stories depicted in Mother and Child concern (clockwise from left) Paul (Samuel L. Jackson) and Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), attorneys who become lovers; Joseph (David Ramsey) and Lucy (Kerry Washington), a couple eager to adopt a child; and Karen (Annette Bening) and her invalid mother (Eileen Ryan). This page, left: Elizabeth interviews for a job at Paul’s firm. Above: Director/writer Rodrigo Garcia (left) and Xavier Pérez Grobet, ASC, AMC plan a shot.
moving the camera very little and very precisely. So when we came to the shoot, our work was about blocking the scene and then trying to find a frame that would capture different moments of the scene without requiring a camera move. Did that discipline ever feel too limiting? Grobet: Well, the difficult part is taking it all the way through the shoot! By week three, if you’re not careful, you start going back to what you usually do, and you can get lost. But I actually think that when you limit yourself that way, you open yourself up to new possibilities, and you come up with ideas that might never have occurred to you [otherwise]. It’s very easy to slip into the modes you’re used to — to think, ‘Oh, it’s this kind of scene, so I can use #37. I know it by heart and it works.’ But when you force yourself into a new way of doing things, I think it opens up some other part of your brain. On this film, it was a real learning experience to find the exact right spot for the camera each time. What do you want to see? What’s important in the scene? We found some frames that I don’t think we would have found if we hadn’t had our specific visual concept in mind. What made you and Rodrigo decide to shoot digitally?
Grobet: Shooting hi-def came up for budget reasons, and Rodrigo was concerned about it initially because he wanted this movie to look elegant. We talked about achieving a gentle image, one that wasn’t too harsh in terms of lighting, contrast or color. After we shot tests with the [Panavision] Genesis and took them to a filmout, we agreed HD would work for us. In fact, I think the Genesis was perfect for this movie. We captured a single shot with the Red [One] because it came up at the last minute, while we were in prep, and we could get a Red quickly. Naomi was actually pregnant, and we were able to fly to New York, find a location and get that shot. [Ed. Note: The shot, captured with an Angenieux Optimo 28-76mm zoom lens, is a day interior that shows Elizabeth contemplating her fully pregnant belly.] Was this your first HD project? Grobet: Yes, and getting used to the format, especially the way it handles highlights, took a few days. On the first day, the windows were too blown-out, and we wanted to capture the detail outside, so I changed my exposure accordingly. I was also able to bring some [highlights] down in the digital intermediate, which we did at EFilm in Hollywood. It was a good www.theasc.com
experience to see what you can accomplish in a DI when you shoot HD as opposed to film. With HD, you definitely want to have a thick ‘negative,’ because if you’re down a bit, it’s really hard to bring it up. If you’re 1⁄3 of a stop over, you have lots of room to play with, but if you’re down by one stop, you’re in trouble. I always used the Genesis on the overexposed side, rating it at 320 ASA. Did you use any of the look-up tables EFilm has developed to emulate specific film stocks? Grobet: No, because I didn’t think any of them were right for this film. We came up with a base LUT through testing. EFilm applied that to our dailies, and we were also able to see its effect with the large HD monitor we had on set. Hector Moreno, our digital-imaging technician, sometimes did minor tweaking, but I didn’t really want to play with the color timing on set. I didn’t want to get distracted, so I’d go to the base LUT and try to stay there. I knew that from there, I could go in different directions in the final timing if I wanted to. The final look is actually very close to the look of the dailies, because I realized that by applying the LUT and looking at the HD monitor, I could build the look I wanted into some scenes with my May 2010
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Lost and Found Families lighting — I was basically color timing with lighting. For example, I wanted the birthday-party scene to have a lateafternoon look, so I put an 81EF [filter] on the lens and then gelled the lights orange, adding or subtracting [gels] based on what I was seeing on the monitor. How early in the shoot did you decide to do that? Grobet: It started with the first night scene we shot, where Karen gets out of bed, walks down the hall and gets into bed with her mother [Eileen Ryan]. I wanted a night look with a different feel, one that wasn’t too blue, and I used a Rosco filter I’d discovered
Top: Grobet lines up a shot of Bening as production designer Christopher Tandon (left), Garcia and script supervisor Ingrid UrichSass (kneeling) look on. Middle: In the same location, Garcia, 1st AC Mariana Sanchez and Grobet (behind camera) prepare a day-for-night shot of Bening. Bottom: Grobet mans the A camera (background) while Sanchez and key grip Miguel Benavides work the B camera for a scene at Karen’s workplace.
“The final look is actually very close to the look of the dailies.”
on Phillip Morris called Shark Blue. I filtered all the lights with it, and when I saw the effect with the LUT on the monitor, I realized I could add or subtract gels to get the right level. From that point on, for certain scenes I’d go beyond the base color and try to get the level I wanted in camera by gelling the lights. By eye the scene sometimes looked way too colorful, but on the monitor it looked right. When we got to the DI, [colorist] Natasha Leonnet didn’t have to alter any levels for those scenes. Did using the Genesis affect your methods any other way? What about operating? Grobet: I like operating on films like this. On bigger projects, where I need to have control over more things, I don’t operate, but on a personal film like Mother and Child, I do. I actually 52
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did all my operating through the Genesis’ on-board monitor; I didn’t use the eyepiece. It was pretty comfortable. We started as a onecamera shoot because that’s what we could afford, but we got a second camera when we could. Working with two cameras gives you more possibilities in less time, and I think the B camera sometimes gets the better angle because it can be a bit looser. We shot about half the movie singlecamera. As a former cinematographer, does Rodrigo get very involved in the day-to-day details of your work? Grobet: You might think he’d have a lot to say about my job, but he’s very respectful of his collaborators and lets you do your work. Often he won’t tell you what he wants; he’ll wait to hear your ideas. We’ll block the scene, and then he’ll come to me and say, ‘What’s on your mind?’ I’ll explain what I’m thinking, and he either embraces it or proposes something else. He’s very collaborative. There’s a scene we disagreed about initially, the one that shows Lucy and her husband having dinner with his parents. Rodrigo wanted to seat the couples across from the each other and cover the scene with two-shots, but I thought that would feel very square. I suggested we put the father-in-law at the head of the table to create more [coverage] options. It took a while to convince him, but he eventually agreed. By doing that, we could put the in-laws on either side of the frame in the first shot of Lucy and her husband, and that suggests something about what’s going on in the scene. When Lucy and her husband have their final argument, the scene ends on a striking note, with the camera holding on Lucy as she turns and walks down the hall and out of focus. Grobet: On Nine Lives, we started exploring the idea that what happens outside the frame can be as important as what is in the frame. On this movie, it became very interesting
Top: Joseph and Lucy are interviewed by a pregnant woman (Shareeka Epps) at the adoption agency. Middle: The lighting setup for the adoptionagency scenes, which were shot in a second-floor classroom at the American Film Institute. Bottom: Garcia and Grobet at work.
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For this late-afternoon exterior at Karen’s house, Grobet recalls, “We were losing the light, so [gaffer] Max Pomerlau had the big guns ready to roll with enough warmth on them to create the right feel when the sun went down.”
to find a frame and let the action happen; if the actor went out of frame — or, in this case, out of focus — it meant something. The film’s opening shot of 14-
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year-old Karen with her boyfriend has a lovely kind of distortion, an effect that’s repeated to varying degrees in two other scenes. How did you achieve that?
Grobet: I used a [Panavision] Slant Focus lens and held diopters in front of the lens and moved them around. Sometimes I used the lens or diopter on its own; sometimes I used them together. It creates the feel of a handheld camera and adds life to the frame. We use subtler versions of the effect when Elizabeth gives birth, and when Karen and that boyfriend reunite in a motel room as adults. Which location posed the biggest challenge in terms of lighting? Grobet: Well, the trickiest spot was the doorway of Elizabeth’s apartment, where she has a conversation with her new neighbors. The doorframe was flush against the ceiling, so there was no room to place a light. We bounced light off the hall ceiling and had to rely on the existing fluorescent practicals. When I agreed to that location, I did it on the condition that we could change the fixtures, but when we
got there on the day, we didn’t have the new fixtures, so I ended up filtering all the lights green and taking it down in the DI. There was no way we could shoot without the practicals, so I had to embrace the green. Our biggest lighting setup was the nun’s office at the adoption agency because a lot of scenes take place there; they’re all day scenes; and we were shooting in January, which meant we lost the light around 4 p.m. It was a second-floor classroom at the American Film Institute that had windows on one side, and my key grip, Miguel Benavides, covered the windows with a huge frame of white silk, and my gaffer, Max Pomerlau, put two 18Ks on separate Condors and two 6K Pars on stands outside. Fortunately, there were some trees between the windows and the rag that gave the light a bit of life. Inside, I used what turned out to be my main source on this film: a 4-by-8 diffusion frame with a honeycomb clipped on it and [Kino Flo]
Image 80s. We wanted all the women to look beautiful, and those sources were great. They threw a wide, soft light that was controllable. The diffusion was usually Opal or Full Grid, depending on the setup. So if the nun’s office was your biggest lighting setup, what was the smallest? Grobet: The single shot of Naomi that we got in New York. We had a couple of Litepanels and practicals, some blankets and some clothespins — it was like a MacGyver lighting workshop! I always find it fun to try to make something work with whatever I have on hand. Who knows? Sometimes a fork or a towel can save your life. ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Digital Capture Panavision Genesis; Red One Panavision Primo, Slant Focus; Angenieux Optimo lenses Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
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Eric Kress, DFF digs to the roots of a twisted family tree in the Swedish thriller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. By Jean Oppenheimer •|•
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wedish journalist Stieg Larsson’s crime novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo took Scandinavia by storm when it was published in 2005, and in bringing the book to the screen, the filmmakers were well aware that “creating a look that respected the source material was crucial,” according to director of photography Eric Kress, DFF. Equally important, however, was crafting a style that would help viewers absorb the details of the narrative, which spans six decades and features several key characters. “[Director] Niels Arden Oplev and I worried that giving the film too strong a look might somehow [overshadow] the intricacies of the plot,” says Kress. “So we opted for a very natural style, with a subtle color palette based upon the cold light of a Swedish winter.” Dragon Tattoo concerns disgraced investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), who is hired by a wealthy industrialist, Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), to find out what happened to Vanger’s niece, Harriet, who disappeared 40 years before, when she was a teenager. Vanger believes Harriet was murdered by a member of his own family. Mikael teams up with an expert hacker, Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace), the “girl” of the story’s title, to solve the case. Oplev recalls that his initial ideas about a visual approach were quite different from the path he and Kress eventually took. “I was leaning toward a wild, handheld camera, like in The Bourne Ultimatum,” recalls the director. 56
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“Eric, on the other hand, advocated a slow-burning style with constant movement. His intuition about material is one of his great strengths and one of the reasons I hired him, so I went with his recommendation.” Born in Zurich and raised in Copenhagen, Kress grew up on a diet of Hitchcock and French New Wave films thanks to his parents, who ran a cinema club. Wanting to get practical experience before he enrolled in film school, he volunteered as a lighting and dolly grip assistant on whatever projects he could find. After attending film school in Copenhagen, he worked as a gaffer and dolly grip before working his way up the camera ranks. After he became a director of photography, in 1994, one of his first jobs was Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom (Riget). “I was very fortunate to work on that — it was entirely handheld, which was extremely rare back then,” he notes. “We watched the American TV show Homicide to study the camerawork.” Kress, who does his own operating, worked primarily from a dolly on Dragon Tattoo, using it to achieve subtle moves. An early scene finds Vanger sitting at his desk, gazing at a photo of his missing niece until he is overcome with emotion. Rather than starting wide and pushing in on him, Kress starts on a medium close-up of Vanger and slowly tracks back as the distraught man begins to weep. “I think tracking back is a way of emphasizing feelings,” the cinematographer offers.
American Cinematographer
Photos courtesy of Music Box Films. Frame grabs courtesy of Nordisk Film Short Cut.
Kress says he is a stickler for very accurate blocking before cameras roll, even if the actors plan to improvise during the take. “The best films are those in which the cinematographer pays attention to the psychology between the characters,” he remarks. “To do that, you need to know [the precise movements of the actors], but you also have to have the ability to act on impulse, to push in slightly to catch an emotional moment or to subtly adjust the frame during a take.” A single Arricam Lite was employed for most of the shoot. For a few scenes, a second camera was brought in for Steadicam work. Kress shot most of the picture with Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses, but when a dolly wasn’t practical, he often put an Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm zoom on the camera so he could ride the framing. (The camera and lighting packages were provided by Dagsljus AB in Stockholm.) Dragon Tattoo contains two especially harrowing scenes that Kress shot handheld. In one, Lisbeth is raped by her parole officer, and in the other, she gets her revenge. “These scenes were terrible to do because the actors were doing them so well,” recalls Kress. In the Opposite: Expert hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) pores over some data in a frame from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. This page (top to bottom): Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) meets with Henrik Vanger in Vanger’s study; Vanger (SvenBertil Taube) shows Blomkvist a newsreel shot on the day his niece disappeared; the mystery deepens as Blomkvist and Lisbeth’s investigation progresses.
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Top: Lisbeth’s new parole officer (Peter Andersson) subjects her to a particularly savage rape. Middle: Lisbeth returns to take her revenge. Bottom: Cinematographer Eric Kress, DFF lines up a shot for a scene depicting the characters’ first meeting as focus puller Daniel Wannberg assists.
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first sequence, the rapist throws Lisbeth facedown on the bed. “We wanted to be close to her at all times,” says Kress. “We’re even in bed with her, looking right into her face, with the rapist on top of her but out of focus. We had to break down the bed in order to position the camera where we wanted it.” Ville Penttila, Kress’ gaffer, recalls the challenge of lighting the set, which was built in a warehouse: “Arden and Eric wanted to use wide lenses, and they wanted to see the whole room, so we built a long junior boom arm that could reach from behind the camera to the bed, and we attached a Litepanels 1x1 to it, essentially toplighting the bed. For close-ups, we came in with 2-by-2 and 2-by-4 banks of Kino Flos, which we warmed with some CTO. The rest of the lighting came from the practical lamps in the room.” Lisbeth’s revenge also takes place in the officer’s apartment. She Tasers him and then hog-ties him on the floor. For some shots, Kress was sitting on the bed with the camera on his knees. “We wanted to give the scene a frantic feel and also wanted to be able to make small adjustments,” he recalls. “My great focus puller, Daniel Wannberg, was in the room with me. I like to keep him close at all times.” The day scenes that take place in Vanger’s office and in the guest cottage where Blomkvist stays provide good
examples of the movie’s lighting style: cold, white shafts of light from the windows key both sets. Penttila notes that the 19th-century mansion that served as the Vanger estate “was perfect for the movie but extremely difficult to light, because the rooms we wanted to use were on the upper levels. It was 7 meters [23'] from the ground to the bottom of the windows.” A 6K with a medium lens was placed outside each window on a cherry picker. Nothing could be attached to the windows, so the crew made special gel frames and positioned them close to the glass; the top 2⁄3 of the frames were 250, while the bottom third was ½ CTO. “It worked great,” recalls Penttila. “With one lamp, we were able to get both soft ambience and harsher light — Eric wanted harsh light on Vanger’s desk. Cirro Mist gave the scene even more atmosphere.” Chimeras with 1,000-watt bulbs dimmed down 70-80 percent provided soft backlight in the office, adding a touch of warmth. Kress notes that his favorite lighting tools are Chimeras and Kino Flos. On Dragon Tattoo, he mostly used KF29 Kino Flos, adding 1⁄8 or ¼ CTS. He prefers placing instruments on stands or on the ground. The interior of Blomkvist’s guesthouse, another set built onstage, was lit primarily by 5Ks and 10Ks placed on the floor outside the set’s many windows and bounced into frames of poly and bleached white muslin. Production designer Niels Sejer designed the set to feature hard ceilings and windows along every wall. “It really gave you the sense of being there,” enthuses Kress. Most of the cottage scenes were shot by additional cinematographer Jens Fischer, FSF, who stepped in when the production ran over schedule and Kress had to depart to honor another commitment. To justify all the windows, the filmmakers decided to suggest the cottage was next to the sea. “In late winter, the days [are getting brighter], and light seems to be bouncing into the house from every direction,” says Penttila. “We didn’t even use low-boards or turtle bases. I just used stirrups to angle the lamps about 20 degrees.” ➣
Top: Kress checks the light on Taube in Vanger’s guesthouse, a set built onstage. Cinematographer Jens Fischer, FSF shot a majority of the film’s guesthouse scenes after the shoot ran long and Kress had to depart for another project. Middle: Kress enjoys a light moment on location. Bottom: Director Niels Arden Oplev (wearing purple baseball cap) and Rapace discuss the upcoming shot as Kress stands by with the camera.
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In one of the film’s flashbacks, young Blomkvist admires a necklace Harriet Vanger is wearing. Kress created a high-key look and captured as many lens flares as possible to suggest a home-movie feel.
Backdrops were placed outside the kitchen and bedroom windows; these were lit with 2K Blondes for daytime scenes and Kino Flos with tungsten tubes and ¼ CTB for night. The other windows were covered with white cloth. “When the camera saw out those windows, we just overlit the cloth,” says Penttila.
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The filmmakers wanted to give the film’s flashbacks, which show 16year-old Harriet and Blomkvist as a child (Harriet was his babysitter), a totally different look. “We wanted those scenes to have that light feeling memory gives you, almost as if you’re watching a home movie,” says Kress. “We went handheld and used slow motion — I
think I shot 40 fps — and went for a high-key look.” The sequences were shot outdoors on location, and to create as many flares as possible, Kress shot toward the sun and bounced sunlight into the actors’ faces with large butterfly frames of bleached muslin. A grim set of flashbacks showing Harriet with her abusive father surfaces
later in the film. Kress used the digital grade, carried out at Nordisk Film, “to give these an edgier look. I made colors stronger and added some vignetting.” At one point, Vanger shows Blomkvist newsreel footage of a car accident that occurred on the day Harriet disappeared. Kress created that material with Super 16mm, using black-andwhite film stock. (He used an Angenieux 11.5-138mm zoom and a Canon 300mm lens with an Arri 16SR-3.) “When Vanger shows that footage, we actually projected the footage we’d shot — we didn’t want to cheat with CGI,” he says. “I really have to credit Niels Sejer and the art department, who did a tremendous job making all that footage credible,” continues Kress. “Niels is just terrific; he always thinks about where the light is coming from, what the light source is and all those important details. He, Arden and I enjoyed a wonderful collaboration.”
Another key sequence finds Lisbeth on her motorcycle, pursuing a car driven by the killer. “Noomi didn’t have a driver’s license for a motorcycle, so we had to put her on a trailer,” recalls Kress. The car was also on a trailer. Dinos on industrial cranes provided backlight and overall ambience. For close-ups of the actors, Penttila stood on the trailers handholding tungsten lights gelled with ½ Plus Green and Full CTS, mimicking the sodium-vapor streetlamps that dotted the road. “How lucky we were to get that location!” recalls the gaffer. “Just outside of Stockholm, they were building a new highway, a loop around the city. It wasn’t open to the public yet, but all the lamps and traffic lights were in place.” When asked whether any other “happy accidents” occurred during the shoot, Kress laughs. “Actually, they happen to me every day. It can be something as simple as a light that wasn’t turned off from the previous scene that
creates a wholly unanticipated but wonderful reflection in the scene at hand. It can be actors doing strange things. I think the cinematographer’s job is basically to pay attention to what’s around us and use those elements in the right way at the right time.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 3-perf Super 35mm and Super 16mm Arricam Lite; Arri 16SR-3 Zeiss Ultra Prime, Angenieux and Canon lenses Kodak Vision3 500T 5219; Vision2 250D 5205, 50D 5201; Eastman Double-X 7222 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
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Caleb Deschanel, ASC makes a stirring speech as he receives his Lifetime Achievement Award.
DeepVisual Roots Photography by David Graves, Matt Frouk, Jared Jordan, Yousef Linjawi, Chris Mankofsky, Phil McCarten, Danny Moloshok and Logan Schneider
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he American Society of Cinematographers devoted two February weekends to honoring cinematographers’ 2009 achievements, beginning the celebration on Feb. 20 with the Society’s annual Open House, and wrapping on Feb. 27 with the 24th annual ASC Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography. These were the nominees for ASC Awards in competitive categories. They are presented in alphabetical order, with the winners highlighted in boldface type: Television/Regular Series: Eagle Egilsson, Dark Blue, “Venice Kings”; Jeffrey Jur, ASC, FlashForward, “The Gift”; Michael A. Price, Ugly Betty, “There’s No Place Like Mode”; Christian Sebaldt, ASC, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, “Family Affair”; Glen Winter, CSC, Smallville, “Savior.” Television/Motion Picture, Miniseries or Pilot: Alar Kivilo, ASC, CSC, Taking Chance; Rene Ohashi, ASC, CSC, Jesse Stone: Thin Ice; Jerzy Zielinski, ASC, The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. Theatrical Release: Barry Ackroyd, BSC, The Hurt Locker; Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS, Nine; Christian Berger, AAC, The White Ribbon; Mauro Fiore, ASC, Avatar; Robert Richardson, ASC, Inglourious Basterds.
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1. Brian Holt warms up the audience with a Jimi Hendrix guitar riff; 2. Awards Committee Chairman Richard Crudo welcomes the crowd; 3. Johnny Simmons, ASC introduces the evening’s first presenter, actress Amanda Righetti of The Mentalist; 4. Righetti hands the Regular Series award to Eagle Egilsson; 5. Egilsson thanks the Society and his Dark Blue team; 6. George Spiro Dibie, ASC (left) watches Sol Negrin, ASC (center) accept the Presidents Award from his son, Michael Negrin, ASC; 7. Negrin offers his thanks for the recognition; 8. Isidore Mankofsky, ASC watches graduate student Benji Bakshi thank the Society after receiving the Richard Moore Heritage Award; 9. Mankofsky explains the award’s origins and announces the two winners; 10. Undergraduate Heritage Award winner Garrett Shannon takes his turn in the spotlight.
American Cinematographer
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A Star is Born Restoration Starts With 8K Scan By Robert S. Birchard
It was Sept. 24, 1954, and the atmosphere at Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre was electric. It was a movie premiere that rated live TV coverage, with actor Jack Carson playing host on the red carpet as the town’s A-list gathered to see Judy Garland’s comeback picture, A Star is Born. The 3-hour-16-minute film they saw that night became legendary, but it would never be seen again. By the time A Star is Born played its first road-show engagements a few weeks later, editor Fulmer Blangsted had trimmed the picture by 14 minutes. But the 3-hour-2-minute cut was problematic as the film moved into general release, and it was trimmed by another 28 minutes so exhibitors could squeeze in an extra show a day. The film’s director, George Cukor, disowned the 154-minute version, claiming that a carefully crafted dramatic story had been turned into an episodic mess. Audience response was lukewarm, and box-office receipts were disappointing. Garland’s grand comeback — after a four-year absence from the screen — was a bust, and it would be seven years before she appeared in another film. Nevertheless, critics and film buffs championed A Star is Born as much for what it might have been as for what it actually was. In 1981, one of those buffs, Ron Haver, who was then head of the film department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, set out to reconstruct the 182-minute road-show cut of the film. The result, revealed in 1983, included rediscovered footage and a reconstruction of several minutes of missing scenes using available still pictures. It clocked in at 176 minutes; the six-minute deficit resulted from trimming pauses in the 182-minute soundtrack to snap up the pace where it was felt that stills would not hold the attention of the audience. Widely acclaimed, Haver’s reconstruction was given a theatrical release, and it has been available on home video in various 72
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formats. (For more details on the Haver project, see AC Feb. ’84.) The Library of Congress selected A Star is Born for inclusion in the National Film Registry in 2000, deeming the film “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant,” and Warner Bros. undertook a photochemical preservation in 2004, making new black-andwhite color separations and a new interpositive. However, time had not been kind to this landmark film. One of Garland’s signature songs in the film is “The Man That Got Away,” and A Star is Born very nearly became the film that got away. “Our photochemical preservation was not entirely successful in terms of correcting for color fading,” says Ned Price, vice president of mastering at Warner Bros. Technical Operations. “It did capture the color remaining in the original [Eastmancolor] negative, but only 40 percent of the yellow layer remained in that negative, so it yielded an image with yellowish whites and purplish blacks, in addition to density flickering. There was also a noticeable loss of highlight and shadow detail — also a result of color fading.” Furthermore, he adds, “The original 1954 YCM separation master positives were heavy, grainy and incapable of generating a picture that would do justice to the CinemaScope imagery of director of photography Sam Leavitt [ASC].” A Star is Born seemed like a good candidate for a digital restoration. However, even a famous title like that cannot be projected to generate revenue close to what a contemporary film might yield. “I’m an executive with a major film company who has a responsibility to the company and the shareholders to make these sorts of projects profitable, but I’m also a film buff who would like to see everything released on DVD,” says George Feltenstein, senior vice president of theatrical-catalogue marketing for Warner Bros. “It’s a struggle to balance the two, but our digital restorations of Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz and North By Northwest were sensationally successful in bringing back those films’ visual splendor, and everyone agreed that [restoring] A Star is Born would
American Cinematographer
Frame grabs courtesy of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging.
Esther/Vicky (Judy Garland) laments “The Man That Got Away” in this digitally restored frame from A Star Is Born (1954). Fifty years after the film’s release, Warner Bros. found that the original Eastmancolor negative had lost 60 percent of its yellow layer.
be a wonderful thing to do.” In preparing for the new digital restoration, all of the film’s surviving elements were taken out of storage and evaluated. The search was meticulous, and although it turned up several thousand feet of alternate takes, it didn’t unearth any new footage from the finished film. Price did uncover original separation materials for the number “Here’s What I’m Here For,” and the scene in which Norman Maine (James Mason) proposes to Esther/Vicky (Garland), both of which had been cut for the generalrelease version, and he was able to improve on the material Haver had used for these scenes. Price explains, “The separations survived by chance — an editor made deletions to the separation masters but did not realize the camera negative had been rebalanced to accommodate the new shortened running time. Because of this oversight, the scene survives in the masters.” The original four-track stereo mag master had been erased in order to re-use the 35mm magnetic stock back in the 1950s. “That was a common practice in the early ’50s, as good stock was scarce,” says Price. There was a monophonic mag track for the 182-minute version, but three original mag-striped release prints were used for most of the sound track. Warners had one such print, and the Library of Congress provided the other two. “We also found a 35mm four-track stereo music and effects track in France,” says Price. “The track was incomplete, but it contained the majority of Garland’s vocal performances in English. We also located isolated vocal units for Garland and chorus, as well as the complete orchestral scoring sessions.” It was decided to scan A Star is Born at 8K resolution; this was done at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging on a Northlight scanner. “Some might argue that an 8K scan is overkill for this feature, given that the film stock and the early ’Scope lenses limited the picture resolution on the negative,” says Price, “but I’m unable to address that at this moment because our ability to see what the scans can yield is limited by current monitoring devices. With the viewing equipment we have today, I can’t really tell the difference between a 4K scan and an 8K scan. We decided to scan at 8K and complete the color correction and digital-
Central to the story is Esther’s troubled relationship with alcoholic actor Norman Maine (James Mason). These images were both cropped from the restored CinemaScope frames.
restoration work at 4K.” Color timing was done by MPI colorist Janet Wilson, who spent almost five months on the project over the course of a year. “It was one of the more difficult projects I’ve worked on,” she says. “The majority of the film was scanned from the original negative, but there was added material from different sources. The original material was very early Eastmancolor, and there was dye fading, especially in the optical dupe sections, which looked entirely different from the surrounding camera neg. Oftentimes when working on older films, the original scan does not bear any relation to how the film is actually supposed to look. In retiming and correcting the color, it was also important to stay as close as possible to the filmmakers’ intent.” “The overall work took about nine months,” says Price. “Janet is as meticulous as she is patient, and she really brought the picture back to life. Sound was also an www.theasc.com
important part of the restoration, and, just as with the picture material, we were working with multiple sources. Most of the track was re-recorded and pieced together from the surviving stereo release prints; Jim Young did that work at Chace Audio.” The digital restoration had its world premiere last month at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre as part of the inaugural TCM Classic Film Festival. According to Feltenstein, the supplements on the Blu-ray, set for release June 22, will include some material that hasn’t been seen before, including alternate takes of the numbers “Gotta Have a Go” and “Lose That Long Face.” ●
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Tricks of the Trade Creating a Virtual New York for 24 By Douglas Bankston
Season eight of the series 24 features a United Nations peacekeeping crisis and a nuclear terrorism threat hanging over New York City. The show isn’t shot in New York, nor has the production traveled across the continent to film typical establishing shots, but that is the real U.N. headquarters visible in the background behind the CounterTerrorism Unit’s office. Thanks to Stargate Studios’ digital chicanery, 24’s director of photography, Rodney Charters, ASC, CSC, is able to exploit virtual New York sets without ever leaving L.A. “This idea of texture-wrapping reality into a virtual space and then reshooting it, motion-tracking it and slaving it to real camera movement is what we’re into,” says Stargate founder Sam Nicholson, ASC. Virtual sets are not new, but the most photo-realistic ones are usually seen in big-budget projects courtesy of VistaVision or high-end datacine cameras. That idea was turned on its head with the introduction of Canon’s EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR, which is capable of high-definition-video recording. The camera has an 18-megapixel sensor and costs $3,000-$4,000 fully outfitted. “A standard HD sensor is down in the 6-, 8- or 12-megapixel range,” says Nicholson. Still-photo plate elements as well as high-definition moving elements are shot in High Dynamic Range, which enables Nicholson’s team to “access a lot of color depth and range,” he says. “A standard HD frame is about 6MB uncompressed in DPX, whereas any one of our Virtual Backlot frames is running at 100-200MB. They are massive, but I can zoom in 800 percent and the resolution holds up.” If you composite a foreground element into a 2-D HDR background, the resulting image will look flat and fake, and 24’s handheld shooting style complicates matters. “The plates have to be what we call ‘dimensionalized’ — texture-mapped onto three-dimensional surfaces,” explains Nicholson. “When you move handheld on your foreground subject, your background retains all the proper parallax so that it doesn’t appear to be flat. The midground is really what this is about: The further out you go toward infinity, the flatter things become, so the background can be flat while the midground is dimensionalized and the foreground is live action. We can do that to such an extent now that we can walk entire city blocks in a photo-real virtual environment.” For example, the CTU helicopter pad is supposed to be on a grassy knoll on Roosevelt Island, with the U.N. complex across the water in the background. In actuality, the helicopter and the actors are shot in Rye Canyon in Valencia, Calif. Charters explains, “We shoot our actors running across a grassy knoll in Valencia with an extreme long lens, and we push a 20-by-20 greenscreen on wheels behind them. We’re cowboy-framing them, and as long as we keep them on the greenscreen, it sells. As the helicopter pulls away, we want to follow it; Stargate segues from traffic across the shore and boats 74
May 2010
The New York skyline is added to a scene from 24 via background elements shot with the Canon EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR.
going by into the hi-res file, and we can chase the helicopter with extraordinary resolution. You look at the sequence and think the actors are in New York.” The Canon 5D shoots HD video in 1920x1080 24p in AVCHD compression, a much lower resolution than the HDR still frame, so Nicholson embeds only the elements in motion in the massive HDR background plate. Each completed frame can be a composite of 20 or more different types of images. “We combine multiple resolutions of motion pictures, still images, computer graphics and digital matte paintings into a single, very-high-resolution background plate,” explain Nicholson. “Our background environments are then digitally matched with the live-action foreground camera dynamics of each take.” Another helpful byproduct for cinematographers is the ability to freeze time. “We can shoot the perfect magic-hour backdrop for any scene,” says Nicholson, “and it will stay magic hour for as long as necessary because we’re on a set, lighting it for magic hour. “It is critical for the director of photography to be a part of that process on set,” he notes. “We can do a finished-quality highdefinition composite on set with two cameras handheld, and the cinematographer can see how to light and frame the greenscreen sequence. If the sun is dipping in and out of trees, he can see that in real time and tune the reactive lighting accordingly. Rodney’s involvement at this level is why we get the realistic look we get on 24.”●
American Cinematographer
Images courtesy of Stargate Studios.
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• SUBMISSION INFORMATION • Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to:
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S.two Ships FlashDock S.two Corporation has added the FlashDock transfer station to its family of uncompressed digital film production solutions. The FlashDock is a portable editorial ingest and archival station for FlashMag solid-state magazines from the OB-1, S.two’s onboard digital film recorder. Supporting uncompressed 4:4:4 RGB and raw data — including ArriRaw — the FlashDock provides multiple transfer target interfaces, including dual-link HD-SDI, eSATA, USB 2.0, Gbit Ethernet, RS422 and SAS. FCP-style XML and Avid-style ALE metadata files are generated and made available over Ethernet or to a USB device for automated editorial ingest. An optional Expansion Chassis provides two half-height LTO3/4 drive bays and is powered from the FlashDock for true on-location archival backup capability. The FlashDock is capable of operating on 100-240-volt AC or 24-volt DC power, and is designed for use on remote shoot locations, in the studio or in a post facility. “This is the workflow component that our OB-1 customers have been looking for,” says Chris Romine, president of S.two. “It is economical, field portable and facility friendly, and satisfies both dailies generation and backup requirements with a user-friendly touch-screen LCD interface.” The first FlashDock production units have begun shipping to sales and marketing partner Band Pro Film & Digital. For more information, visit www.bandpro.com and www.stwo-corp.com.
FTC Makes Smooth Moves Filmotechnic Canada Ltd., a Toronto-based camera-supportequipment rental and manufacturing company, has introduced the 2-Axis Rotary Damper & Level Control Nose Mount for Technocrane and MovieBird’s telescopic cranes. The 2-Axis Rotary Damper & Level Control consists of two fully adjustable rotary hydraulic cylinders with axel shafts apposed at 90 degrees in a single, lightweight, compact aluminum body. The
Schneider Intros IRND Filters Schneider Optics has developed a range of absorptive IRND filters designed to address the demanding requirements of today’s highdefinition cameras. Many hi-def cameras have a high sensitivity to light just beyond the visible range. While this can be beneficial in extending the camera’s color gamut to more closely approach that of film, the light in the IR spectrum can also cause unwanted false color shifts and prevent the camera’s imagers from capturing true black tones. To solve this problem, Schneider’s Platinum Series IRND filters limit the light striking the camera’s imager to the visible spectrum. By carefully calculating the cutoff frequency in nanometers, Schneider has produced a near-
infrared cut filter, eliminating the near-infrared light leakage and letting the camera maintain true color rendition in the blacks while maintaining high MTF of its lenses and camera system. Schneider Platinum Series IRND filters are free of off-axis color shift regardless of the focal length and can be stacked without introducing reflections. They can also be used as standard ND filters with all HD video and film cameras. The filters are available in standard video and cine sizes, including 4x4, 4x5.65, 5x5, 5.65x5.65 and 6.6x6.6, plus rounds in 138mm, 4.5" and Series 9. Each filter is available in ½-, 1-, 2-, 3- and 4-stop densities. For more information, visit www.schneideroptics.com.
May 2010
upper cylinder is perpendicular to the crane arm and the lower cylinder is inline with the arm. Each X- and Y-axis has a rotational range of +/-75 degrees. When a crane arm is panned left or right, the Rotary Damper absorbs the stop and start inertia, as it does when the crane telescopes in or out. The faster the move, the more resistance is provided by the special hydraulic fluid inside the rotating cylinder. The Rotary Damper further eliminates dynamic rotational stress on a crane’s arm sections. “The 2-Axis Rotary Damper & Level Control was originally designed to work with the Flight Head V on our Russian Arm to improve its performance,” says Oleksiy Zolotarov, president of FCL.
American Cinematographer
Alex Chibisov, FCL’s vice president and chief engineer, adds, “We developed a compact, lightweight but heavy-duty hydraulic damper that would eliminate rotational stress on the arm and allow the gyros in the FHV to work freely, as they should. Then it became clear we could remove our leveling system from the RA, lightening the nose, because the damper also automatically levels the FHV using gravity. The mass of the head and camera, resisted by the damper’s hydraulic fluid, results in a smooth leveling process every time, whether moved slowly or aggressively.” Zolotarov notes, “When we tested the Damper prototype and saw how the FHV behaved, a second and maybe more significant application came to mind: replacing the heavy electronic leveling gear on the Techno and MovieBird series of telescopic cranes.” The 2-Axis Rotary Damper & Level Control offers a quiet, responsive, purely mechanical camera-head leveling system, with no electronics that might fail. It also offers a 30-pound reduction in nose load on both Techno and MovieBird cranes; the weight savings can be applied to an increased camera load or a reduction in the crane’s counterweight. The 2-Axis Rotary Damper & Level Control has a payload capacity of approximately 220 pounds. The Russian Arm version weighs 14.3 pounds, and the MovieBird/Technocrane nose mount weighs 21.2 pounds. Mounting options include Mitchell to Mitchell, Filmotechnic to Mitchell and Mitchell to Filmotechnic. For additional information, visit www.filmotechnic-canada.ca. Cinevate Accessorizes DSLRs Cinevate has introduced two support options for DSLR camera systems, the Medusa cage and the Uno rig. The Medusa cage features a dovetailed, quick-release tripod plate — allowing users to quickly remove their rig from the rails on the fly — and two varimount, form-fitted hand grips — adding stability, comfort and countless options for handling and bracing the cage. Support-
“It’s an extraordinary thing to teach film without reducing it to techniques and rules, and yet teach the rigour and effort that is necessary to improve your work .” Paz Fabrega, 2006 MA Filmmaking graduate. Paz's first feature Agua fría de mar won the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival 2010. She was selected for the 2009 Cannes Cinefondation Residence programme.
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ing standard 15mm rails and 5⁄8" grip rods, the Medusa also boasts a varimount top plate and includes a ¼" 20 and 3⁄8" quick-release tripod mount. Inspired by Cinevate CEO Dennis Wood’s interactions with still photographers and filmmakers, the Uno rig’s unique link system allows a wide range of configurations customizable to the user’s shooting style and a large array of camera platforms. The Uno rig includes an 11.8"-long, 15mm solid carbon chassis; one vari-mount Uno grip; a tripod mount; a baseplate system; and one vari-mount shoulder stock. Features include CNC machined aluminum components and 360 degrees of flexibility on all parts. For additional information, visit www.cinevate.com. Thoma Provides Remote Control Thoma Film und Videotechnik has introduced the Remote Kit, capable of converting conventional tripod heads into full-scale remote systems. The user-friendly Remote Kit can be assembled and dismantled in 20 minutes with no mechanical handling. With the Remote Kit, remotecontrolled panning and tilting is based on friction-wheel drives with DC motors and integrated digital rotary encoders, guaranteeing jitterfree operating. The electronics function via power steering and joystick control, and the system boasts extreme accuracy with 400,000 steps per 360 degrees of motion. With near-silent (less than 25 dB) mechanics, the Remote Kit is ideal for both studio and location shooting. The mounting kit fits into a small, easy-to-transport case. Furthermore, the robust Remote Kit boasts hardened-steel construction, offering protection against accidental damage. The Remote Kit and its electrical plug connections are watertight according to IP65. The Remote Kit is compatible with all 78
May 2010
modern Sachtler tripod heads, and Thoma is currently developing the system to be compatible with Vinten heads. For more information, visit www.thoma.de.
core team in Santa Clara will function as Barco’s hub for creative LED solutions. For additional information, visit www.barco.com.
Rose Brand Illuminates Neoflex Rose Brand has introduced Neoflex, a flexible strip of diffused LED lighting available in a variety of colors. 70-percent more efficient than cold-cathode neon, Neoflex
MediaRecall Joins Deluxe Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Inc. has acquired the assets of metro-Chicago based MediaRecall Holdings, LLC, a fast-growing player in the digital video services arena. Founded in 2007, MediaRecall offers a cost-effective, high-speed digitalvideo workflow process and related technologies around digitizing, clip selecting, meta-logging and transcribing enterprisescale video archives, enabling them to be more easily searched and monetized online. The company’s core expertise revolves around a highly trained North Americanbased 2,000-person distributed-media workforce and its proprietary technologies, including web-enabled digital services tools, a digital video search platform and a workforce management system. Remaining in its current metroChicago offices, the business will now operate under the name MediaRecall by Deluxe, and it will report to Gray Ainsworth, Deluxe Digital Media’s senior vice president of operations. “Deluxe continues to look for ways to add value for content owners and provide unique services that create true partnership opportunities,” says Ainsworth. “MediaRecall entered the booming online video space at the right time as large content owners are trying to find more efficient ways to get their content digitized and searchable online. MediaRecall did a terrific job on the client projects we have done together, and this transaction was a logical next step for us.” George Deeb, current CEO of MediaRecall, adds, “Our team is very excited about deepening the relationship we have with Deluxe. We look forward to bringing our technologies into the Deluxe pipeline for film studios and television networks in addition to the non-Hollywood market.” For additional information, visit www.bydeluxe.com and www.mediare call.com.
maintains a consistent color temperature throughout its 50,000-hour lifespan. Neoflex is a rugged, easy to maintain alternative for outdoor installations. Neoflex is available in Diffused 120-volt and Diffused 24-volt, and both varieties come in Amber, Blue, Green, Red, Orange, Cool White and Warm White. Color Jacket Mini Neoflex, which features color embedded in the diffusing plastic as well as in the LEDs — allowing color accents even when not illuminated — is also offered in the 24-volt configuration. For additional information, visit www.rosebrand.com. Barco Acquires Element Labs Belgium-based Barco has announced its acquisition of the products, intellectual property rights and know-how of Element Labs, an LED video-systems expert based in Santa Clara, Calif. “Element Labs’ products have added a spectacular dimension to numerous concerts, events, corporate headquarters and flagship stores around the world,” says Paul Matthijs, vice president of Barco’s Video & Lighting Solutions business. “This transaction will help to accelerate the turnaround which is underway in our Video & Lighting activities by enabling Barco to address a wider segment of the market.” With immediate effect, the name “Element Labs” ceases to exist. Structured as an asset sales transaction, Barco obtains all product designs, rights and intellectual property of Element Labs. Element Labs’ American Cinematographer
Fujifilm Establishes New York Office Fujifilm North America Corporation’s Motion Picture Products Division has announced that, following the elimination of its reseller network, all customers of its motion-picture products will be served on a direct basis nationwide. The announcement accompanied news that Richard Kalinsky has been appointed key account executive for the eastern United States. “Motion picture film customers demand the highest levels of personal attention and care,” says Graeme Parcher, group vice president of Fujifilm North American Motion Picture Division. “Our own professional staff is in the best position to provide Fujifilm customers with the high level of service and collaboration they need. We can only do this by controlling the distribution of our products. “The east coast is a critically important region in motion picture film and television production,” Parcher continues. “The continued growth in the region, particularly in the metro New York area, has prompted us to take this new approach to personally serving our customers.” For additional information, visit www.fujifilmusa.com. Sony Opens 3-D Center Sony Corporation has opened the Sony 3D Technology Center, located at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, Calif., to train and nurture a community of experts in the rapidly growing market of 3-D entertainment. The new center offers professionals from across the industry a hands-on opportunity to learn more about the techniques
and equipment used to create top-quality 3D productions of all kinds, including sports, television and movies. The center also features Sony’s top-of-the-line business and professional products, which are widely
used in capturing, manipulating and displaying 3-D productions. “Our mission is to support the spread of high quality 3-D throughout the marketplace,” says Chris Cookson, president of Sony Pictures Technologies, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Chief Officer of the Sony 3D Technology Center. “Modern technologies and techniques can create much more natural and realistic 3-D than most people had experienced in years past, so we have an interest in helping the industry as a whole seize this opportunity to give audiences really great 3-D experiences. People must reliably and consistently be able to enjoy what is presented in 3-D for it to gain acceptance in the long term.” “Making 3-D is easy, but making good 3-D is hard,” adds Buzz Hays (pictured), senior vice president of the Sony 3D Technology Center. “I’ve had the pleasure of making 3-D movies with Hollywood’s true pioneers over the last five years, and I am excited to dedicate my time fully to sharing what we’ve learned as this medium makes its way toward primetime.” For additional information, visit www.sony.net. Kodak Releases Film Calculator App Kodak has released the Kodak Film Calculator and Glossary application as a free download from the iTunes App Store. The tool determines the running time for any length of film in any format and how much film is needed for a specific duration, making complex mathematical calculations quickly and conveniently. “This is the first Kodak Cinema Tool to be made available as an application for mobiledevice users,” says Nicole Phillips, Kodak’s director of Web marketing for the Entertainment Imaging Division. “We plan to release additional applications in the near future, with the goal of helping filmmakers bring their visions to the screen. This Film Calculator app provides quick, on-thespot answers to questions wherever and whenever they arise. As we
begin our foray into mobile tools, we look forward to offering new ways to connect our customers to information they need, effortlessly.” Information can be entered into fields where data is known, including format, length, run time and frame rate. The app then calculates and supplies the other variables. Film length can be measured in feet or meters for all formats, including Super 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, 3perf 35mm and 65mm film. The intuitive user interface includes a “reset” button that makes recalculating data easy, and the “film format” drop-down menu allows switching and comparing formats at the touch of a finger. The app also includes Kodak’s Glossary, which provides instant definitions for hundreds of filmmaking terms. The Glossary is designed to help filmmakers and their collaborators communicate clearly and accurately. For additional information, visit www.kodak.com/go/motion.
ZipCalc App From ZipCam ZipCam Systems has released the ZipCalc DP freeware planning tool. Designed primarily for cinematographers and key grips, ZipCalc DP provides interactive simulations and graphical plots of cablecamera flight paths, helping users determine the best flight path for cablesuspended tracking cameras such as the ZipCam. Ben Semanoff, president of ZipCam Systems, notes, “ZipCalc enables productions to take full advantage of our cablecamera system and saves them time and money while helping them get the shots they need, even over challenging terrain and obstacles.” Users can input values for key factors that affect the cable camera’s flight path; as users adjust values, ZipCalc
DP displays the flight path changes in real time. ZipCalc DP is available for free download from the ZipCam Systems Web site. For more information, visit www.zipcam.com.
Avid Updates DS Avid has introduced version 10.3 of its DS finishing solution, combining advanced effects, compositing and graphics capabilities with new features designed to deliver real-time finishing and accelerate the rendering process of popular file-based formats. DS is also now optimized to handle Red, 2K and ArriRaw projects, and it supports the Red Rocket Accelerator Card, which decodes .R3D files, alleviating the CPU of this process. DS version 10.3 allows post facilities and high-end independent professionals to more effectively manage file-based project pipelines by reducing ingest and conform requirements. In particular, DS 10.3 offers native conform from Avid Media Composer for .R3D and ArriRaw files, enabling customers to instantly re-create complete timeline information — including effects, titles and colors — for real-time playback and faster rendering. Additionally, AVX2 support offers customers a simple path for total conform of visual effects generated in Media Composer and Avid Symphony editing systems. Customers can also benefit from the full creative effects toolset at any stage of the editorial process with a new AVX2 plug-in interface, making it possible to use Boris FX and Sapphire effects in DS from any offline Avid project. DS version 10.3 can be downloaded now from Avid’s download center. For more information, or to download a trial version, visit www.avid.com.
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The Foundry Upgrades Nuke, Allies with GenArts Visual-effects software developer The Foundry has released the Nuke 6.0 and NukeX 6.0 composting engines, designed to meet the latest creative and workflow needs. Nuke 6.0 incorporates a completely new shape rotoscope and paint toolset based on a rewritten core curve library and new RotoPaint node. This release introduces a flexible, non-destructive layer-based hierarchy integrated with Nuke’s animation and tracking capabilities and supporting perobject attributes such as blending modes and motion blur. As an additional benefit, The Foundry’s Keylight keyer is included as a standard feature with Nuke 6.0. NukeX 6.0 extends the range of tools usually found in the compositing environment, adding an integrated 3-D camera tracker, automated and manual lens-distortion tools, FurnaceCore (The Foundry’s reengineered set of Furnace plug-ins) and a DepthGenerator plug-in. Both Nuke and NukeX are fully script compatible, with Nuke capable of viewing and rendering nodes created using the extended NukeX toolset. Offering visual-effects users two different Nuke products enables facilities of all sizes to implement a Nuke solution to fit a range of artist and customer needs. Additionally, The Foundry and GenArts Inc. have entered into a broad strategic alliance. Under the terms of the agreement, GenArts will acquire The Foundry’s Tinder and Tinderbox plug-ins business, and the two companies will enter into an arrangement to collaborate closely to expand the capabilities of the Nuke platform. This strategic alliance allows the development teams from The Foundry and GenArts to work closely together to fully maximize the functionality of their future products, opening the door to more effective delivery of new technology as the host platform and plug-in development can be more synchronized. For additional information, visit www.thefoundry.co.uk and www.genarts.com. ●
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Advertiser’s Index 16x9, Inc. 84 AC 1, 4 Aja Video Systems, Inc. 11 Alan Gordon Enterprises 85 Arri 29 AZGrip 84 Backstage Equipment, Inc. 77 Burrell Enterprises 84 Cavision Enterprises 13 Chapman/Leonard Studio Equipment Inc. 7 Cine Gear 83 Cinematography Electronics 81 Cinekinetic 84 Cinema India 60 Cinerover 84 Clairmont Film & Digital 19 Convergent Design 48 Cooke Optics 6 Deluxe C2 Eastman Kodak 9, 21, C4
Film Gear 79 Filmtools 81 Five Towns College 79 FTC West 84 Fuji Motion Picture 45 Glidecam Industries 5 Ikan Corporation C3 Innovision 84 Kino Flo 55 Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 84 Lensrentals.com 82 Lights! Action! Co. 84 Litegear 35 Lite Panels 2 London Film School 77 Los Angeles Film Festival 75 Lowell 43 Maine Media Workshops 80 Mole-Richardson 49, 84, 85 Movie Tech AG 85 MP&E Mayo Productions 85 New York Film Academy 15 Oppenheimer Camera Prod. 84 Panther Gmbh 61 PED Denz 23, 85 Photon Beard 85 Photo-sonics, Rental 54 Pille Film Gmbh 85 Pro8mm 84 Production Resource Group 62
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Rag Place, The 6 Shelton Communications 85 Stanton Video Services 81 Super16 Inc. 84 Technocrane 6 Telescopic, LLC 85 Thailand Film Commission 22 Thales Angenieux 38-39 Tiffen 43, VF Gadgets, Inc. 85 Willy’s Widgets 84 www.theasc.com 77, 80, 82, 86 Zacuto Films 85 Zipcam Systems 33
Clubhouse News Deakins Wins Spirit Award Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC won the cinematography prize for his work on Ethan and Joel Coen’s A Serious Man during the 25th Film Independent Spirit Awards. Deakins won a Spirit Award in 1997 for Fargo, and was also nominated in 1991 for Homicide. Deakins’ competition this year comprised Andrij Parekh, for Cold Souls; Peter Zeitlinger, for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans; Anne Misawa, for Treeless Mountain; and Adriano Goldman, for Sin Nombre (AC April ’09). Society Welcomes Medencevic Born in Derventa, Bosnia-Herzegovina, new ASC member Suki Medencevic developed an early interest in both science and art. Before graduating from high school, he chose to focus on photography, and he became one of only five students accepted in the National School of Dramatic Arts’ department of cinematography in Belgrade. He furthered his education at the renowned National Film School in Prague, where he earned a master’s degree in cinematography and also won the Chancellor’s Award and the Jaroslav Kucera Award for his accomplishments behind the camera. Medencevic came to Los Angeles in 1991 as a guest of the University of California-Los Angeles, where he taught and conducted workshops. Since then, he has compiled credits on features, short films, special-venue films, documentaries and commercials, shooting a variety of formats that range from 70mm to high-definition video. For his work on The Great Water, Medencevic was nominated for a Golden Frog at the 2004 Camerimage International Festival of the Art of Cinematography and won the Best Cinematography award at Spain’s Mostra Valencia festival. He remains committed to still photography, demonstrating particular interest in architectural and fashion photography, and collections of his stills have been the subject of multiple solo exhibits.
Fiore Visits Alma Mater, Wins Oscar Mauro Fiore, ASC won this year’s Academy Award for cinematography for his work on Avatar (AC Jan. ’10). He was nominated alongside Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC, for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; Barry Ackroyd, BSC, for The Hurt Locker (AC July ’09); Robert Richardson, ASC, for Inglourious Basterds (AC Sept. ’09); and Christian Berger, AAC, for The White Ribbon (AC Jan. ’10). In the weeks before the Oscar ceremony, Fiore returned to his alma mater, Columbia College Chicago, where he visited the school’s new Media Production Center and spoke with students. Wexler Reminisces at Egyptian Following a recent screening of Elia Kazan’s black-and-white epic America, America at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, cinematographer Haskell Wexler, ASC participated in a Q&A moderated by film historian Foster Hirsch. Also joining the conversation were actors Stathis Giallelis and Lou Antonio. Thinking back on the frugal production and bemoaning an absence of dailies that resulted in what he considers “over-filled” exteriors, Wexler mused, “I’d like to reshoot a lot of this film.” Later, when Hirsch asked Wexler how he and Kazan had arrived at the film’s style,
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Wexler responded, “I was just trying to make a good picture!” Rosen Named Prime Focus International CTO ASC associate member Daniel Rosen has been named international chief technology officer of global visualentertainment-services group Prime Focus. Based in Hollywood and reporting to Prime Focus Global CEO Namit Malhotra, Rosen will oversee technical operations for all Prime Focus North American locations and, together with his counterparts in the United Kingdom and India, will further integrate the company’s studios around the world. Rosen previously led engineering efforts at Warner Bros., DreamWorks SKG, Dalsa Digital Cinema, Cinesite and other organizations. “Daniel’s expertise in imaging, experience integrating global technical processes and leadership abilities are simply unparalleled in our industry,” says Malhotra. “The talent and skills he brings are going to be a key part of our execution, and we’re thrilled to have him on our team.” Friends of the ASC Now Open The subscription-only Friends of the ASC service is up and running, offering a wealth of behind-the-scenes tips, tricks and tales straight from the lips of ASC members. Exclusive online content includes “Tech Tips” video tutorials; “Ask the ASC,” where Friends can pose questions to ASC cinematographers; “ASC Legends,” a collection of filmed interviews with ASC members; “Anatomy of a Scene,” offering a close examination of well-known scenes from famous films; and “Rising Stars,” in which ASC members highlight the work of up-andcoming cinematographers. For more information, or to become a Friend of the ASC, visit www.theasc.com/friends_of_the_asc. ●
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Close-up
Fred Elmes, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you? The film that grabbed my imagination was The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), directed by Robert Wise. I was 12 years old and was on vacation with my family in the Midwest. It was haunting: the spaceship, the huge robot, the words that would save the world. I was entranced. I stayed and watched it a second time. Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire? I’m a great admirer of Sven Nykvist, ASC; his lighting and camerawork take the art to a fantastic new level. Also, Gianni Di Venanzo; Carlo Di Palma, AIC; and Gregg Toland, ASC. More recently, I find the work of ASC members Nestor Alméndros, Jordan Cronenweth, Caleb Deschanel and Vilmos Zsigmond inspiring. What sparked your interest in photography? My dad gave me his Leica camera at an early age, and it was my ticket to exploring the world. I began to understand about controlling the image while tinkering with a light on a still-life photograph I was setting up. I noticed that putting the light behind the subject gave the picture a very beautiful, new quality. Backlight made all the difference. Where did you train and/or study? I studied still photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I went on to New York University’s graduate-film program, where I had good hands-on experience. After NYU, I was invited to become a fellow at the American Film Institute. There, I learned in greater depth film history and analysis, furthered my experimentation and experience making student films, and was afforded an introduction to Hollywood. Who were your early teachers or mentors? At NYU, I was teaching assistant to the wonderful Czech cinematographer Beda Batka, who opened my eyes to the power of camera and lighting to tell a story. At the AFI, Frank Daniel and Tony Velani were great influences. What are some of your key artistic influences? Photography: Edward Weston, André Kertész, Alfred Stieglitz and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Painting: Edgar Degas, Wilhelm Hammershoi and Pieter de Hooch. Music: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Phillip Glass. Films: Sasha Hammid and Maya Deren, Fritz Lang, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and Francis Coppola. How did you get your first break in the business? At the AFI, I worked with David Lynch on Eraserhead. I also had the amazing luck of collaborating with John Cassavetes, the resident filmmaker at the AFI. When he asked me to shoot The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, I enthusiastically signed on. So early in my career, I benefitted from working with two extremely talented and original filmmakers. 88
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What has been your most satisfying moment on a project? One that comes to mind is a choice made on Kinsey. Bill Condon and I grappled with how to combine the decades-long biographical aspect of the story with the sexual-history interviews conducted by Kinsey and his students. We decided that by alternating color with black-andwhite stock — a difficult choice from the production and distribution perspectives — we could take the story to another level. The audience response to that choice was extremely satisfying. Have you made any memorable blunders? One day late in the schedule on Blue Velvet, we were upstairs in a building with no elevators. The crew was extremely unhappy about having to carry the gear up four narrow flights of stairs, so I permitted them to bring up only half the lighting I’d asked for. It was already the end of another long day; the actors’ moods were frayed, and the rehearsal went on and on. Soon I regretted not having the gear left on the truck. We were well into overtime, and at that point, I was stuck with providing a soft toplight that I didn’t think David would be happy with. He loved it, and it’s become a classic, elegant Lynchian moment: Dean Stockwell sings ‘In Dreams’ to Dennis Hopper using a work light as his microphone. What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received? It’s the director’s movie. The director is always right. What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you? An exhibit at MoMA of Monet’s Water Lilies, Paul Outerbridge photos at the Getty Center, and the films The Lives of Others and The Constant Gardener. Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to try? I’ve always wanted to turn an opera into a film. If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doing instead? I’d like to be a chef. I love the art and science of cooking — it’s creative, but in the end, it has to please the audience! Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership? Haskell Wexler, Steven Poster and Vilmos Zsigmond. How has ASC membership impacted your life and career? It is an honor to be accepted by those I’ve always admired. It’s also an opportunity to support the community of young filmmakers. After all, that’s where we all started. ●
American Cinematographer
ONFILM E R I C
S T E E L B E R G
“Film has been a part of my life since I can remember. I went to a lot of movies while I was growing up and remember getting lost in the imagery and stories. My parents bought me a plastic camera at a young age. I just loved looking through the lens and taking pictures. In high school I helped create a film class. My friends wanted to be writers, directors and producers so I became the cinematographer by default, and it came natural to me. At 15, I shot my first short film for friends taking a summer production workshop at the University of Southern California, and can remember the emotion and magic when we projected the first roll of 16 mm black-andwhite film. … This is a collaborative endeavor. You listen, discuss, and work together to execute your vision. Cinematography is developing a recipe of compositions and lighting to set the appropriate tone for each scene while being as elegant and transparent as possible. Beauty is born out of that. The decisions I make about using different lenses, film stocks, and lighting are all part of the visual grammar of filmmaking. Every DP expresses it differently and there is no right or wrong. That’s what makes it an art.” Eric Steelberg is in the dawn of his career. In addition to many award-winning short films and commercials, his recent cinema credits include Juno, (500) Days of Summer, Up In the Air and the upcoming release of Going The Distance. [All these films were shot on Kodak motion picture film.] For an extended interview with Eric Steelberg, visit www.kodak.com/go/onfilm. To order Kodak motion picture film, call (800) 621-film. www.motion.kodak.com © Eastman Kodak Company, 2010. Photography: © 2009 Douglas Kirkland
