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A M E R I C A N C I N E M A T O G R A P H E R • J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 0 • A V A TA R - T H E L O V E LY B O N E S - S H E R L O C K H O L M E S - C A L E B D E S C H A N E L , A S C • V O L . 9 1 N O. 1
JANUARY 2010
BEST PICTURE BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY ROGER DEAKINS, ASC, BSC
MAZEL TOV.
“####. ONE OF THE COEN BROTHERS’ BEST AND MOST PERSONAL FILMS. BEAUTIFULLY PHOTOGRAPHED BY ROGER DEAKINS. IT’S A MOVIE MITZVAH.” -LOU LUMENICK, NEW YORK POST
For up-to-the-minute screening information, go to: Awards.FilmInFocus.com To read complete rave reviews from across America, visit: FilmInFocus.com
©2009 Focus Features. All Rights Reserved.
Over 150 sets were built across 52 different soundstages. Spanning 183,000 square feet, the 52 different stages were the most ever deployed for a stop-motion animated feature.
“AN EXTRAORDINARY ACHIEVEMENT. It’s almost impossible to overstate the artistry that unfolds on writer-director Henry Selick’s screen. A darkly compelling fantasia in which every corner holds surprises.”
–Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News
For Your Consideration In All Categories Including
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE Written ForThe Screen And Directed By
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Pete Kozachik , ASC
©2009 FOCUS FEATURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
For up-to-the-minute screening information, go to: Awards.FilmInFocus.com
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
On Our Cover: After inhabiting an alien body, Jake Scully (Sam Worthington) explores a distant planet in Avatar, shot by Mauro Fiore, ASC. (Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.)
FEATURES 32 48 60 70
Conquering New Worlds Mauro Fiore, ASC tackles new technology on Avatar
Watchful Spirit Andrew Lesnie, ASC, ACS brings a bestseller to the big screen with The Lovely Bones
Super Sleuth Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC lends a kinetic look to Sherlock Holmes
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The Right Stuff Caleb Deschanel, ASC receives the Lifetime Achievement Award
DEPARTMENTS 8 10 12 18 84 88 94 98 99 100 102 104
60 Editor’s Note President’s Desk Short Takes: Hyundai Sonata Campaign Production Slate: The White Ribbon • The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Post Focus: Technicolor Hollywood • HPA Awards Filmmakers’ Forum: Shane Hurlbut, ASC New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Billy Dickson
— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES — Podcast: Rodney Taylor, ASC and Lance Acord, ASC DVD Playback: Easy Rider • The Samuel Fuller Collection • Homicide
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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, 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 ———————————————————————————————————— 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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“With its gorgeously framed shots and superb craftsmanship, ‘Bright Star’ is a thing of beauty.” -Claudia Puig, USA Today
“Campion’s award-winning young cinematographer, Greig Fraser, captures the vitality of Keats’ and Fanny’s world as well as its plainness. But he also studs the film with gorgeous scenes of nature so startlingly good you could frame them.” -Karen Durbin, Elle
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American Society of Cinematographers The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but an educational, cultural and professional organization. Membership is by invitation to those who are actively engaged as directors of photography and have demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC membership has become one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a professional cinematographer — a mark of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2009/2010 Michael Goi President
Richard Crudo Vice President
Owen Roizman Vice President
Victor J. Kemper Vice President
Matthew Leonetti Treasurer
Rodney Taylor Secretary
John C. Flinn III Sergeant At Arms
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
Claudia Puig
’’
Visceral suspense as well as explosive battle sequences and powerful performances... It is a hauntingly memorable film that is as visually riveting as it is emotionally intense.
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’’
Joe Morgenstern
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cinematography.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Barry Ackroyd, B.S.C.
For screening information, please visit: TheHurtLockerAwards.com
As you’ve probably noticed, this issue has a slightly different look — streamlined and more contemporary, with updated fonts, reconceived layouts and a variety of other subtle enhancements. It’s been 12 years since our last redesign, and in the interest of maintaining a progressive philosophy, we asked our creative director, Marion Gore, to conjure up a fresh aesthetic. After a series of brainstorming sessions with the editorial staff, she responded with sample treatments that earned enthusiastic kudos. Cinematography is an artistic pursuit, and we’ve always attempted to echo its visual flair in our pages; this issue starts us down a path that stays true to the magazine’s traditions, blending informative articles with stylish presentations. As always, a great deal of care went into the selection of images to accompany the text. Although modern Hollywood has an obsession with approval processes the CIA itself might envy, we always do our utmost to dig for photos and other illustrations that best reflect a cinematographer’s creative intentions and methods. Allies in various publicity departments helped us add pizzazz to this debut issue, and we thank them for their support. This month’s unofficial theme of “forward thinking” is aptly reflected in our cover story, Avatar (“Conquering New Worlds,” page 32). Director James Cameron’s ambitious film combines motion capture, high-definition video and 3-D technology in ways that have never been seen. For cinematographers, the production could mark a watershed moment in terms of technology’s impact on their craft; as Mauro Fiore, ASC reveals, most of his lighting strategies were planned on virtual sets, with 70 percent of the footage achieved via motion capture. Nevertheless, he notes, the show’s futuristic look was heavily influenced by the liveaction work he spearheaded in New Zealand: “Although the motion-capture work was mostly finished, the actual look of the film was yet to be created. The footage we shot in New Zealand ultimately defined the overall style of the movie.” Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC also took a non-traditional approach to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes (“Super Sleuth,” page 60), which adds a bit of brawn to the famous detective’s brains. “How do I make Sherlock Holmes a Guy Ritchie film?” Rousselot muses. “I didn’t want it to look like a costume drama. I didn’t want it to look pretty. I wanted it to be grungy. I wanted it to look like RocknRolla or Snatch.” Andrew Lesnie, ASC, ACS reteamed with Peter Jackson on The Lovely Bones (“Watchful Spirit,” page 48), in which a murdered teenager, trapped in limbo after her death, is able to observe her family and her killer as the years pass. “Andrew and I have worked together enough that the basics don’t have to be discussed,” notes Jackson. “What we talk about is the new ideas we want to bring into a particular project.” Good ideas are consistently evident in the work of Caleb Deschanel, ASC, who will be honored Feb. 27 with the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In an overview of his career (“The Right Stuff,” page 72), Deschanel shares some of the wisdom he has accumulated while earning an ASC Award and five Oscar nominations.
Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor 8
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editor’s Note
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President’s Desk Mark your calendars, because on Feb. 20, 2010, something huge is going to happen. Have you ever wanted to watch your favorite cinematographer light a scene and explain his or her thought process? Are there questions you’ve always wanted to ask ASC members about their lives and careers? Do you wish you could find out the little tricks we use to make a scene truly memorable? Have you ever wanted to visit the ASC Clubhouse? Well, all these things, and many more, have been dreams and requests we’ve received over the years from American Cinematographer subscribers and, more recently, our Facebook fans, and we’ve been working feverishly on a way to make them possible. Next month, they will be. “Friends of the ASC” is a new level of ASC membership that will open the door to the inner workings of the Society and its members. It will give you unprecedented access to new, exclusive content about lighting, camerawork and associated technologies, as well as access to industry events featuring ASC members. Thanks to our partners, the vendors who support our educational and outreach pursuits, it will also help you pursue your professional goals; these partners will offer you discounts on their products and services. What will you get as a Friend of the ASC? The list of benefits is growing by the day, but here are just a few of them: • A one-year subscription to the digital edition of American Cinematographer • A “Friends of the ASC” membership card granting access to exclusive discounts on equipment and services from the top professional vendors in the industry, in addition to savings at the ASC Store • A free annual event at the ASC Clubhouse especially for Friends of the ASC, so you can meet and talk with ASC members in person • Discounted admission to select ASC events • Exclusive access to Friends of the ASC content at www.theasc.com, which will include how-to videos about lighting featuring ASC members; technical tips from industry professionals on subjects such as digital intermediates; and “Ask the ASC,” where you can address questions to specific cinematographers and have them answered • Exclusive access to historic audio interviews with such ASC legends as James Wong Howe, Karl Struss and Ray Rennahan And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We plan to add even more features based on what our subscribers say is most interesting and important to them, including discounted admission to select ASC events. All of these benefits will be available for a $100 annual fee. Regardless of your location, you can connect with the ASC in ways that were never before possible. Friends of the ASC will be officially unveiled on Feb. 20 at the ASC Open House, where attendees will get a firsthand look at everything this new level of membership offers. You will be hearing a lot more about this fantastic new program in the near future. It’s been in the works for a few years, and the ASC staff has worked closely with the Society’s officers, board members, and active and associate members to make Friends of the ASC the most exciting, informative and inspiring way for all filmmakers, emerging and established, to be closer to the Society and what we do. I’m looking forward to having you join us!
Michael Goi, ASC President
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American Cinematographer
Film. No Compromise. © Kodak, 2010. Kodak and Vision are trademarks.
Short Takes
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Launching the 2011 Hyundai Sonata By Curtis Clark, ASC
I love the challenge of using light to bring out a car’s personality and presence. You can put a certain amount of direct light on a car, but it’s the source that provides shaping and contouring. The bigger the reflective element, the easier it is to manipulate the contouring of the lines. When you raise the light, the reflection gets smaller; the closer you get to the car, the bigger it gets. The critical thing is that the reflection has a clean, white edge to it. You can see this in the commercials launching the 2011 Hyundai Sonata, for which I used an overhead soft box as my primary sculpting tool. In addition to providing direct light, soft boxes create the kinds of large reflections needed to effectively bring out a vehicle’s design features. One example of a soft box is a Fisher Light, a big unit that can be suspended and mounted in different ways, usually on a chain motor or with a crane. It can be repositioned on the fly to provide the cinematographer with a lot of lighting choices. You can program fades and chase sequences within the fixture, build in transitions, or dim down or shade off certain areas of the flickerfree color-balanced (tungsten or daylight) fluorescent globes to reduce intensity in certain areas. If I were shooting in the United States, I would normally use a Fisher Light, but on the Sonata spots I had my own soft box, a 30'x20' fluorescent unit built for a Hyundai commercial I’d shot in 12
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Seoul, South Korea. This particular rig only has two settings, full strength and half strength. Compared to a Fisher, it doesn’t offer much flexibility in shaping the light, but it’s bright enough that I’m able to shoot anywhere between T2.8-T8 at 250 ASA. Like a lot of standard fluorescents, the fixture’s globes have a green spike, so I have to be careful about matching my daylight-balanced lamps (which, for the Sonata spots, included 18Ks, Pars, Dedos and Source Fours). Because I can’t filter the soft box, I add Plus Green to all of the supplemental lighting and remove the green in telecine. Using Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, I photographed two different Sonatas, one with a diffuse, metallic body that gave me soft reflections, the other with a glossy, red paint job that offered clearer, more specular reflections. The opening shot of the silver Sonata is a three-quarter view, lit with a combination of my soft box and supplemental lighting on the ground; the light is reflected in the windshield and on the hood, and it casts a shadow pattern beneath the character line, a convex detail in the chassis that runs from the front wheel arch to the back of the car. The character line is echoed with a highlight, a parallel line caused by the door panel curving out, beneath which is a shadow caused by the door panel angling back in. I positioned the soft box above the hood at a 45-degree angle, favoring the driver’s side. This gave me the greatest degree of depth of shadow and the right degree of highlight. The light’s not directly overhead, and it’s not on the side; if it were, the car
American Cinematographer
Photos courtesy of Curtis Clark, ASC.
Cinematographer Curtis Clark, ASC had translucent balloons specially made for a commercial featuring the 2011 Hyundai Sonata. Keeping in mind the car’s trajectory as well as the moving camera, the balloons were strategically placed in the frame to reflect along the side of the car.
Top: The crew positions the balloons onstage. Clark’s lighting also included an overhead soft box (center, above the balloons) and 18Ks (left and right). Middle and bottom: For another sequence in the commercial, Clark devised a 20'x30' grid of 80 fluorescent bulbs. The grid’s reflection on the car echoes a musical-scale graphic that was added in post.
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American Cinematographer
would be too flat. If I moved the light to the background, the image would be too contrasty. You have to find a position that will give you the best balance amongst all of these choices. In this first shot, the highlight on the hood, above the headlight, marks the start of the car’s A-line, which runs along the hood, up the windscreen, defines the curvature of the roof and terminates at the tail light. That shape is very important — it’s almost like a vanishing point. How the light and shadows converge around that shape can evoke movement, even though the car is stationary. There is just a bit of highlight reflection on the grill with the Hyundai badge, and beneath that is the air intake. The lower lip of the intake is an important design feature of the car, so I needed to draw attention to its shape with highlights surrounded by shadow. The left side of the intake is accented by bounce from a bead board. Bringing out a car’s important features is not just about the light. It’s also about using the right focal length at the proper angle from the best distance. Before I photograph a vehicle, one of the first things I do is walk around it with my lenses (in this case, Arri Master Primes) and a viewfinder, looking to see what angles, lens heights, distances and focal lengths will best enhance the car’s contours. A lens that’s too long can compress the car, which is less flattering. At the other end, if you get too close with a 14mm, you risk over-exaggerating the perspective. You don’t want to distort the vehicle to the point where it doesn’t resemble the one the customer sees in the showroom. You’re there to enhance the car’s intrinsic design features. Embellish them, reinforce them and draw attention to them, but always stay true to the actual design. Once you’ve found a look for the car, how do you maintain it once the car starts moving? You have to make sure the lighting transitions reinforce your philosophical approach. The choreography of your shots should be fairly specific: you need to know how far the vehicle is moving and exactly how much of the area you need to light. Make sure you’ve got a
Above: Clark (right) discusses his plan with producer Michael Song (center) and 1st AC Jeoun Sung Ho. Right and below: The red Sonata was placed on a rotating pedestal and the camera was mounted on a Technocrane to maintain a constant sense of motion.
long enough run with enough sources in place to get direct light hitting the car and reflections bouncing off of it. In addition to the overhead soft box, I designed a grid of 80 fluorescent bulbs that reflects a pattern onto the surface of the car. The rig is simple, a 20'x30' metal grid painted black and suspended with an industrial crane. Its effect is a poetic rendering of the light, echoing the floating musical-scale graphics that were added in postproduction. I also had translucent, glowing balloons specially made for the commercial. As the car moves around the balloons, you see their reflections in the side of the car. When I plotted out the design of the driving takes, I had to make sure the balloon lights were properly positioned along the length of the shot, keeping in 16
January 2010
mind the car’s trajectory and the camera position. I had to make sure my lighting was in the right position to give me the proper reflective contouring. It can be a bit of a puzzle. For the red Sonata, I used the same lighting tools, but the effect of the light on the car was different, like lighting a red mirror. I wanted to create a look combining the effect of liquid light with the richness and luminescence of an oil painting. The camera was on a Technocrane, and it needed to look like it was constantly moving around the car. Because of the roving camera and the rotating pedestal, the light from the soft box warps and undulates across the chassis, mimicking the animated computer-generated pattern on the 40'-long LED screen in the background. American Cinematographer
In the first shot, the car is on a turntable, moving left to right through the frame. Our focus is on the shape of the headlamp, the shape of the light around it, and the shape of the fender going into shadow. Even though we’re in a close-up, the combination of the A-line and the sharp border, which defines the shaded area beneath the lamp and extends back across the fender, gives a sense of the specific elements’ connection to the rest of the design aesthetic. The second shot still focuses on the front of the car, but in a wider shot that takes in the hood, the headlights and the grill. I didn’t want to light the side of the car because it would distract the viewer’s eye. Instead, I let a simple accent created by a chain of three fluorescent bulbs play along the length of the car, providing a sense of depth and elongation. A focal spot unit (like a Source Four) was used to bring out details in the rims and tires. The approach to both spots was impressionistic. I wanted to present specific and dynamic elements of the car’s design. The viewers already know it’s a car, but by the time they see it in its entirety, those key design elements should be set in their minds. To view the 2011 Sonata commercial, visit www.youtube.com/watch? v=BP21zS_V3qE. ●
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Above: Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus), Martin (Leonard Proxauf) and other local children are caught eavesdropping on a round of police questioning in a scene from The White Ribbon. Left: The schoolteacher asks Klara and Martin for information.
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Rural Terrorism By Jean Oppenheimer
Set in northern Germany just prior to the outbreak of World War I, The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band) concerns a small, rural village whose orderly existence is shattered by a string of malicious acts committed by unknown perpetrators. The rash of misdeeds — among them a barn fire, the kidnapping and torture of a child, and a horseback-riding “accident” that injures the town doctor — expose the bankrupt social order that lies just beneath the community’s respectable surface. Winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, The White Ribbon is the fifth collaboration between director/writer Michael Haneke and cinematographer Christian Berger, AAC, follow18
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ing Benny’s Video, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, The Piano Teacher (AC May ’02) and Caché (AC Jan. ’06). When Haneke told Berger he wanted to make the film in black-and-white, “my first reaction was, ‘Oh, nice, the old days!’” Berger recalls. “But shooting on black-and-white wasn’t possible because the producers wanted a color version for television. So we shot color and achieved the black-and-white in the digital intermediate. “The color negative actually gave us a crisper, cleaner look because of its high contrast range and exposure tolerance,” he continues. “The rich color tones made for a very fine gray scale, and because candles, oil lamps and torches frequently were our only sources of illumination, the stocks’ stable highlights and shadows proved a valuable asset.” Berger shot The White Ribbon in 3-perf Super 35mm using a Moviecam Compact and Cooke S4 prime lenses. “I like the Moviecam’s simple handling and good viewfinder, and I think the S4s are still the best for avoiding lens flares, which was especially important given our practical light sources,” he says. “I also appreciate the look the Cookes achieve — not as hard as Zeiss Primes but still sharp.” To calculate the values for the final transfer from color to monochrome, Berger shot tests of every material used for décor and
American Cinematographer
The White Ribbon photos courtesy of Films du Losange, Sony Pictures Classics and the filmmakers.
Production Slate
David Ward/ WRITER/DIRECTOR Sleepless in Seattle, The Sting
Dezso Magyar/ ARTISTIC DIRECTOR No Secrets, Summer
John Badham/ DIRECTOR Saturday Night Fever, WarGames
MFA IN FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCING MFA IN SCREENWRITING MFA IN PRODUCTION DESIGN MFA IN FILM PRODUCTION: Cinematography • Directing • Editing • Sound Design JD/MFA IN FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCING MBA/MFA IN FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCING
Film has the power to make us laugh or cry, to challenge dearly held beliefs or to put forth new concepts.
Alexandra Rose/PRODUCER Norma Rae, Frankie and Johnny
Lawrence Paull/ PRODUCTION DESIGNER Back to the Future, Blade Runner
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Paul Seydor/EDITOR White Men Can’t Jump, Barbershop II
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Top: Dinner at the home of the town pastor (Burghart Klaussner). Middle: The town doctor (Rainer Bock) and his daughter (Roxane Duran). Bottom: White ribbons make Klara and Martin stand out in the children’s choir.
costumes. “I wanted to retain all information, from the darkest, deepest black to the lightest white,” he says, adding that set designer Christoph Kanter and costume designer Moidele Bickel were “outstanding collaborators.” Haneke wanted to avoid any feeling of warmth or nostalgia, two qualities frequently associated with period pieces. Instead, the filmmakers opted for what Berger describes as “a kind of modern look,” although he readily concedes, “I 20
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don’t know how to explain ‘modern’ other than to say it’s not nostalgic.” In addition to examining photographs from the period, Berger studied Ingmar Bergman’s black-and-white collaborations with Sven Nykvist, ASC, as well as two more recent black-and-white films, The Man Who Wasn’t There (AC Oct. ’01), shot by Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, and Good Night, and Good Luck (AC Nov. ’05), shot by Robert Elswit, ASC. He found Unforgiven (shot by Jack Green, ASC) and 1900 American Cinematographer
(shot by Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC) especially helpful in terms of lighting night exteriors with oil-based sources. Berger used the B&B Cine Reflect Lighting System, which he developed a decade ago in collaboration with lighting engineer Christian Bartenbach and the Bartenbach Light Research Center, for all of his movie lighting. CRLS relies on a powerful HMI source — Berger used eight 1.2K HMI Panibeams — and a series of aluminum reflectors that redirect the light to wherever it’s needed. The reflectors are adjustable, can be remotely controlled, and come in a variety of textures that give specific shape and quality to the light. No direct light ever hits the set. Even with a dimmer on the ballast that reduces the light by 50 percent, direct light usually is too strong, says Berger. “It’s very much like using different lamps. Some [of the reflectors] are hard, and some are soft; some have optical surfaces, and some don’t. Even multiple reflections are possible. I always use the same source, a parallel beamer.” With the exception of the pastor’s house, which was built onstage in Leipzig, the sets for The White Ribbon were built or found on location in Netzow, Germany. One of Berger’s favorite scenes finds the doctor’s children, Anna (Roxane Duran) and Rudi (Miljan Chatelain), in their kitchen, talking about death. “It was twilight, and we managed a very decent fill light inside the room from above — the CRLS was bouncing off the sound insulation in the ceiling. There were no lamps inside the room, only two small reflectors beside the camera creating a modest eyelight for Rudi and his backlight. We had another three reflectors outside the window sending light into the room. By combining the CRLS and natural daylight and changing the sheets of ND gel on the windows, we were able to convey the onset of twilight.” A disturbing sequence in the film shows Rudi wandering through his house in the middle of the night, calling out for his sister. He walks down the stairs, through an unlit salon and then into the dining room, where a single oil lamp is burning. Still in search of Anna, he goes back into the salon and then walks down a dark corridor toward the kitchen. The scene ends when Rudi opens a door into a brighter room and
Clockwise from top right: Director Michael Haneke (center) and Steadicam operator Jörg Widmer prepare to film; Haneke works with actors Christian Friedel (left) and Leonie Benesch as Christian Berger, AAC (background) sets up the shot; the church interior; the CRLS setup used outside the church.
discovers his father (Rainer Bock) and Anna in a compromising position. The sudden glare of light is startling, underscoring the scene’s shocking content. “That was very difficult to do,” Berger recalls. “Haneke kept saying, ‘Darker, darker,’ and I couldn’t see anything in the viewfinder, and the camera was constantly moving, following this invisible boy. The entire scene was one long shot. The lens was wide open, and I had to underexpose by 2 stops using 5219. It wouldn’t have been printable the analog way!” Berger used three “beamers” to light the shot, producing a shimmer of moonlight on Rudi as he descends the stairs and moves through a patch of light on the rug in the hallway. A bit more light filters in here and there, but overall, the scene is very dark. “Holding focus under such conditions is very challenging, and my first assistant, Gerald Helf, did a masterful job,” notes Berger. “The little boy is wearing a light nightshirt, and I 22
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tried to constantly modulate the contrast between it and the dark.” In the room where Rudi discovers his sister and father, Berger augmented the practical lamp with a small source hidden in the corner and erased the extra shadow in post. Referring to Haneke’s penchant for dark images, Berger laughs and comments, “Michael dislikes technical restrictions and has a tendency to just ignore them. That makes life not so easy for a director of photography. More light on a scene would give me more information for postproduction!” One key scene in the film takes place outdoors, in bright sunshine. It’s a village dance, where romance starts to blossom between the town’s schoolteacher (Christian Friedel) and Eva, a shy governess (Leonie Benesch). “No reflectors were needed because Eva’s white blouse was reflective enough,” says Berger. “With the camera moving 360 degrees, there was no opportuAmerican Cinematographer
nity to use lighting, anyway! My favorite Steadicam operator, Jörg Widmer, just danced along with the characters, and he is a very good dancer. Gerald had to sit atop a tall post in order to follow with the focus.” Later in the film, a distraught Eva goes to the teacher’s quarters to tell him she has been fired. He tries to calm her by playing his piano. A single oil lamp illuminates the room. “Again, the room was dark,” says Berger. “How do you light? How do you handle the shadows that come from a single oil lamp? You need another source, but you can’t put one in without a second shadow appearing. The answer was postproduction. We used two 12-volt halogen lamps to bounce light onto the actors’ faces, and we erased the double shadows in post.” All of the post work was done at Listo Videofilm in Vienna. For the DI, the negative was scanned at 4K on a North-
FILM, VIDEO, AND BROADCASTING
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TECHNICAL SPECS Super 1.85:1 3-perf Super 35mm Moviecam Compact Cooke S4 lenses Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, 250D 5207 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak 2302
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Left to right: Percy (Verne Troyer), Anton (Andrew Garfield), Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), Valentina (Lily Cole) and Tony (Heath Ledger) update their traveling-theater show in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
I
Through the Looking Glass by Jon D. Witmer
It’s a cold, rainy day when AC arrives at The Bridge Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia, where director Terry Gilliam is leading cast and crew through the second half of a turbulent shooting schedule on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. A few months earlier, the production came to an abrupt halt when its star, Heath Ledger, died mid-shoot. Ready to throw in the towel, Gilliam was ultimately convinced to complete the film by his daughter, producer Amy Gilliam, and cinematographer, Nicola Pecorini. “Heath’s work [on the film] was so bloody good, and I felt it would have been totally unfair to Terry and to the film that Heath wanted to make to not finish it,” says Pecorini. Ledger plays Tony, an apparent amnesiac who joins a traveling theater troupe headed by Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), who is aided and abetted by his daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole); his young assistant, Anton (Andrew Garfield); and his longtime friend and confessor, Percy (Verne Troyer). The band takes its horse-drawn wagon through London’s modern streets, pausing hither and yon to stage a show fueled by the doctor’s unbridled imaginaAmerican Cinematographer
tion. “We didn’t start with a story in mind; it was just an idea of a traveling theater arriving in a modern city and nobody paying attention to this extraordinary, wonderful little show,” says Gilliam, who penned the screenplay with Charles McKeown. “I was digging through my drawers of ideas that I’d never used, and we’d stick things in.” Parnassus divides its time between the real world and the surreal Imaginarium, located on the other side of a magic mirror on the wagon’s stage. Scenes set in the real world were shot primarily on location in London, whereas everything set in the Imaginarium was saved for stage work in Vancouver. When Ledger died, the actor had already completed the London portion of the shoot, and jumping through the magic mirror offered Gilliam a reason to have three different actors step into the role of Tony: Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. The Imaginarium reflects the mind of the individual inside it, so the interior landscape shifts radically each time it appears onscreen. To achieve the different vistas, Gilliam, Pecorini and visual-effects supervisors Richard Bain and John Paul Docherty opted to shoot against greenscreen and bluescreen with certain physical set pieces. (At the end of the shooting schedule, the
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus photos by Liam Daniel and Richard Bain. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
light; the color-correction was done on a Baselight 8; and the 2K filmout was done on an Arrilaser. Berger notes that colorist Willi Willinger did a “superb job.” There is a visual consistency to all of Berger’s work with Haneke. Some of their stylistic hallmarks are long oners and an avoidance of wide angles. “Michael makes very precise storyboards, with arrows indicating movements to the right or left,” says Berger. “He draws them himself on the back of each page of the script; the entire crew gets a copy. “The camera is kept at eye level or slightly below, and it never moves on its own — moves are prompted by an action or even by the finest gesture in an actor’s face,” he adds. “The 32mm and 40mm lenses are our standard because Haneke prefers the normal human perspective. On rare occasions, we’ll use a 27mm or a 50mm. A fluid head allows the camera to ‘breathe’ with the actor. Socalled static shots are never really static. There are always tiny movements, and they’re led by the actors.” Berger admits that things can get stressful on Haneke’s set. There were times on The White Ribbon when “Haneke pushed me to the limit, but I have to thank him for that, because you never fall back on your repertoire of easy solutions or old tricks. Even the most common problem becomes a new challenge.” To meet those challenges, he stresses, one needs a good crew — “people you can trust absolutely.” In addition to the aforementioned collaborators, he puts gaffer Kimber Lee Jerrett and executive producer Michael Katz in that category. “Michael Katz is an extraordinarily sensitive production leader, and that’s quite rare,” he observes. “We had some complex problems on this project, and he was able to handle all of them.”
Film And Digital Get Along!
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Left: A Visqueen “cloud” was used onstage for a lighting effect in an Imaginarium-set sequence with Tony (Jude Law). Right: Tony (Johnny Depp) guides a woman (Maggie Steed) through the Imaginarium while director Terry Gilliam looks on.
filmmakers also shot extensive model work at Bray Studios near Windsor, Berkshire in the U.K.) When AC enters the stage, a manmade hill fills half the floor, with Law resting at the top next to a gnarled tree, his face dirtied and his neck in a noose. Some 50 space lights have been rigged from the stage’s ceiling and run through a board for selective control of ambience, while Kino Flo Image 80s line the perimeter to illuminate the bluescreen, which hangs along all four stage walls. “We’re shooting mostly at T3.5 or T4, and the screen is around that level as well,” says Pecorini. “I always make sure the visual-effects guys are pleased with the nature of the screen, because they’re the ones who actually have to manipulate it. “The light is almost constantly moving or changing colors when we’re in the Imaginarium,” he continues. For example, after wrapping out the scene on the hill, the crew moves on to a sequence that will ultimately be set in a computer-generated 26
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valley with ladders reaching up into rapidly moving clouds. To simulate the clouds’ effect onstage, Pecorini explains, “I opted for a big piece of diffusion, about 40 by 25 feet, made of different layers of Visqueen for different densities, with some holes in it. In order to float it without producing a hard shadow, we had to support it with something that was transparent as well. We came up with helium balloons that we filled with different densities of smoke, and so we created a cloud on a leash that we could move in front of the lights.” In addition to playing in front of the space lights, the “cloud” is also walked in front of a row of four Jumbo lights mounted on a cherry picker for a directional source. Provided by the Rome-based company Iride, each Jumbo contains 16 600-watt GE aircraft-landing lights. The filmmakers’ references for the Imaginarium sequences ranged from painters like Maxfield Parrish and Odd American Cinematographer
Nerdrum to illustrator Theodor Geisel, a.k.a Dr. Seuss. To keep their ideas in order, Pecorini assembled his “bible,” which includes references, notes, sketches and other material. “I do a bible for every movie,” he explains. “I learned very early on, even before I was a cinematographer, that a lot of things get said during prep and then forgotten. The bible is a way of keeping track of those ideas. We also put in all of the technical pieces we need in a scene, so it becomes a bit like an enriched creative breakdown.” The bible became especially dense for Parnassus, whose short shooting schedule and tight budget necessitated detailed storyboards for every visual effect. “Because we had to be so precise, Terry and I actually stuck to the storyboards and the previs much more than we usually would,” says Pecorini. “We normally do all of these preparations, and then on the day, we do what we feel like.” ➣
Clockwise from above: A cluster of Concorde and Jumbo lights create a shaft of illumination for a flashback in a monastery; Parnassus strikes a deal with Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) in a setting inspired by painter Odd Nerdrum; 1st AC Dean Morin (left), Plummer (center) and cinematographer Nicola Pecorini get cozy inside Parnassus’ wagon.
Pecorini shot all of the visual-effects sequences on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219. “5219 has certain advantages, such as more information in the undertones, less grain and better blacks, but [Vision2 500T] 5218 has very little grain, too, and I thought it was also a good fit. We shot London at night with 18 because it cost a bit less, and we shot day exteriors on [Vision3] 250D 5207.” The mirror that bridges the Imaginarium and the real world sits in the middle of Parnassus’ portable stage, which folds into the side of his wagon. Production designer Anastasia Masaro built two versions of the wagon, one with the stage open, and the other with it folded up (for scenes in which the wagon actually moves). For performances on the open stage, Gilliam recalls, “Nicola positioned a bunch of lightbulbs around the set. It was crude, but it was great. It needed the sense of a little traveling theater without any sophisticated lighting.” Inside the wagon’s cramped quarters, which serve as the troupe’s home, Pecorini incorporated those same stage 28
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lights for illumination, generally using 100watt bulbs wired to separate dimmers, although he would often switch to 60- or 40-watt bulbs if they were prominent in the frame. “Very often I would take one of those rows of bulbs out of shot and put it on a magic arm at the height I needed,” he explains. “We also used some covered wagons, which are about 1-foot long and have one or two 60- or 100-watt bulbs on dimmers, and the result is like a small China ball. Those were very easy to position, and we could even clip them to the curtains.” As the wagon carries the troupe away from a performance one dreary night, its riders find Tony (Ledger) hanging from a noose beneath Blackfriars Bridge. “I couldn’t pound too much light there because it would have killed the background, but at the same time, we wanted to see the river,” says Pecorini. “There was no way to bring a crane in, so we went to the roof of a nearby building and set up two DC16s and four DC8s — we rented them from Iride, and they’re like Mini-Brutes, with 16 and eight 1,000-watt Par 64s. Then I made sure the real lights on and under the American Cinematographer
bridge were properly working, and I had my guys put spun glass on some of those to make them softer.” Many of London’s day exteriors were filmed at Battersea Power Station, a crumbling, open-air structure where Parnassus’ troupe sets up camp between performances. To help shape London’s overcast skylight, Pecorini “lit from the outside with Jumbo Lights, often through Grid, and other times through 250 or 251,” he says. “I never went higher than ½ CTB in correction. “The DI is so much faster than photochemical timing for evening out a day scene,” continues Pecorini, who did the digital grade at Technicolor London with colorist Paul Ensby. Gilliam has also embraced the DI process, noting, “I love it completely. Shoot on film — it’s still the best medium for gathering the maximum amount of information — and then go straight to digital. I don’t ever want to see film projected again! I love the DI because we can fix all the bits that didn’t quite go as well as we’d liked in the rush of the daily shoot. I don’t want to sit there and change things; I just want to tidy things up a bit.” Pecorini rented his camera package — which included two Arricam Lites and two Arri 435 Xtremes — from Technovision Rome. “I’ve known them for 32 years, so I’m very good friends with them,” he says. “When we got to Vancouver, I spoke with Denny Clairmont, and he has a long history of collaboration with Technovision, so we actually got complete technical support from Clairmont Vancouver while we were in Vancouver with Technovision Rome’s cameras. I thank Denny for that.” ➣
Left: Gilliam supervises the setup of a flashback to Parnassus’ younger days. The “rotating dingles” at left create a sense of motion on the stationary gondola. Right: Tony (Colin Farrell) reflects upon his latest visage.
Pecorini chose a set of Arri/Zeiss Ultra Primes, and he admits to using longer focal lengths than he usually does on a Gilliam project — although the 14mm remains the director’s favorite. “We used a lot of the 32mm, 40mm, and at times even the 50mm and 65mm because we had no time and had to achieve a lot of shots,” says Pecorini. “I was always operating the B camera handheld with a longer lens to stay out of the way of [London A-camera
operator] Pete Cavaciuti, who most of the time was on a 14mm on the Steadicam. We also managed to sneak in quite a few setups with the wonderful 8mm Rectilinear Ultra Prime.” (Pecorini’s other key collaborators in London included gaffer Phil Brookes and best boy electric Joe Judge. His Vancouver crew included A-camera operator Jay Kohne, 1st AC Dean Morin, key grip Mike McLellan and gaffer Stuart Haggerty.)
Considering the wide-angle approach that has characterized all of their work since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (AC May ’98), Pecorini muses, “Terry and I have come to the conclusion that we apply ‘cinematic democracy.’ When you see things in real life, your eyes give you a very wide angle of vision, and you decide to concentrate your attention on one thing instead of another according to your needs, your views, your interests and whatever it is
prime choice 15mm – 40mm
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that strikes you at the moment. Terry likes giving that option to the audience; he doesn’t like dictating what has to be seen.” “I don’t seem to be able to stop myself from putting on wider-angle lenses,” Gilliam admits. “I look through the camera and say, ‘I want to see more.’ It’s almost as if I’m trying to climb inside the film. And I don’t like showing things in isolation — I don’t think of the world in that way. Things are always in relation to other things, and I think those relationships are just as important as the thing itself.” Long after AC’s set visit, Gilliam looks back over the arduous production and observes, with marked relief, that the finished film is “an utter miracle. It’s actually the film we set out to make, but it seems to have made a few quantum leaps along the way. It’s much more of a wild freak show than we set out to do. One of my huge regrets is that I’ll never get to see the film we would have made if Heath had lived through the whole process, but what we achieved is just wonderful.”
28mm – 76mm
Gilliam (at camera) checks the frame while Ledger catches a ride on the back of Parnassus’ wagon.
TECHNICAL SPECS Super 1.85:1 3-perf Super 35mm Arricam Lite; Arri 435 Xtreme, BL-3 Arri/Zeiss Ultra Primes Kodak Vision2 500T 5218; Vision3 250D 5207, 500T 5219 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
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.
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ERRATA Print-stock information was incorrect in three articles last month. Release prints of Nine, Brothers and Fantastic Mr. Fox were made on Fuji Eterna-CP 3513DI. ●
24mm – 290mm
Mauro Fiore, ASC helps James Cameron envision Avatar, a 3-D science-fiction adventure that combines highdefinition video and motion capture. by Jay Holben •|•
Conquering
NewWorlds
A
decade in the making, James Cameron’s Avatar required four years of production and some major advances in cinema and 3-D technology in order to reach the screen. Cameron spent much of the decade exploring the 3-D format on the hi-def Imax documentaries Ghosts of the Abyss (AC July ’03) and Aliens of the Deep (AC March ’05). On both of those films, he partnered with Vince Pace of Pace HD, who adapted two optical blocks from Sony’s F950 CineAlta HD cameras to create a 3-D camera with controllable interocular distance and convergence. With an eye on Avatar, Pace and Cameron refined their 3-D digital camera system considerably over the course of their collaborations. “A feature-based camera system needed to be quieter and react more quickly to interocular and convergence changes than our original system did,” says Pace. “The original system was perfectly suited to Imax but a bit more 32
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challenged for a feature, especially a James Cameron feature!” The result of their refinements is the Fusion 3-D Camera System, which incorporates 11 channels of motion: zoom, focus and iris for two lenses, independent convergence between the two cameras, interocular control, and mirror control to maintain the balance of the rig (especially for Steadicam). The system can also be stripped down to facilitate handheld work. “We also devised a way to have more control over the interocular distance — on Avatar, some shots were down to 1⁄3-inch interocular, and others were all the way out to 2 inches,” Pace adds. “With all of those elements combined, you’ve got an intense 3-D system.” The Fusion 3-D system can support a variety of cameras. For Avatar, the production used three Sony models: the F950, the HDC1500 (for 60-fps high-speed work) and, toward the end of production, the F23. All of the cameras
American Cinematographer
Photos by Mark Fellman, courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
Ex-Marine Jake Scully (Sam Worthington, opposite) goes native after his alien avatar is sent to the distant planet Pandora, where he forges a close bond with Na’vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana, above). The pair ultimately confront a human invasion led by Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang, middle). Below: Mauro Fiore, ASC mans an HD camera.
have 2⁄3" HD chips and record images onto HDCam-SR tape, but on Avatar, they were also recording to Codex digital recorders capable of synced simultaneous playback, allowing the filmmakers to preview 3-D scenes on location. “We used the traditional sideby-side configuration in certain circumstances, but that’s too unwieldy for Steadicam work, so for that we created a beam-splitter version that comprised one horizontally oriented camera and, above that, one perpendicularly oriented camera, forming an inverted ‘L,’” says Pace. “However, there was a change in balance when the camera shifted
convergence or interocular distance, so we created a servo mechanism with a counterweight to keep the camera in perfect balance. This Steadicam configuration also allowed us to get the interocular distance down to a third of an inch. There was a tradeoff: we lost 2⁄3 of a stop of light through the beam-splitter’s glass. And for really wide shots, we needed a larger beam-splitter mirror. With that rig, we were able to get as wide as 4.5mm [the equivalent of 15mm in 35mm], which I believe is unprecedented in 3-D. The oversized mirror wasn’t really conducive to handheld work, so we kept it on a Technocrane www.theasc.com
January 2010
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Conquering New Worlds
most of the time.” Avatar is set roughly 125 years in the future. The story follows former U.S. Marine Jake Scully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic who is recruited to participate in the Avatar Program on the distant planet Pandora, where researchers have discovered a mineral, Unobtainium, that could help solve Earth’s energy crisis. Because Pandora’s atmosphere is lethal for humans, scientists have devised a way to link the consciousness of human “drivers” to remotely controlled biological bodies that combine human DNA with that of Pandora’s native race, the Na’vi. Once linked to these “avatars,” humans can completely control the alien bodies and function in the planet’s toxic atmosphere. Scully’s mission is to infiltrate the Na’vi, who have become an obstacle to the Unobtainium-mining operation. After Scully arrives on Pandora, his life is saved by a Na’vi princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and his avatar is subsequently welcomed into her clan. As their relationship deepens, Scully develops a profound respect for the Na’vi, and he eventually leads a charge against his fellow soldiers in an epic battle. For the film’s live-action work, Cameron teamed with Mauro Fiore,
The paraplegic Scully regains the ability to walk after his consciousness is transferred into a Na’vi avatar.
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American Cinematographer
ASC, whose credits include The Kingdom, Tears of the Sun and The Island (AC Aug. ’05). “Jim saw The Island and Tears of the Sun, and he was apparently impressed with the way I’d treated the jungle and foliage scenes in both films,” says Fiore. “They brought me in for a three-hour interview, and [producer] Jon Landau walked me through the whole 3-D process, the motion-capture images, the promos and trailers they had done. The next day, I had a 30minute interview with Jim, and we hit it off. They were already deep into production on the motion-capture stages in Playa del Rey, [Calif.,] and they were preparing to shoot the liveaction footage in New Zealand.” The technology employed on Avatar enabled Cameron to design the film’s 3-D computer-generated environments (created by Lightstorm’s inhouse design team) straight from his imagination. By the time Fiore joined the show, the director had been working for 18 months on motion-capture stages, shooting performances with actors who would be transformed into entirely CG characters. Glenn Derry, Avatar’s virtual-production supervisor, contributed a number of innovations
A virtual diagram shows a pair of “remote research stations” that were built in a former Mitsubishi factory in New Zealand. Gaffer Chris Culliton explains, “Because we had these exact virtual models of the warehouse and the sets, we were able to design and test the lighting and greenscreen weeks before we arrived in Wellington. As you can see, on the real set we decided to go with 24-light Dino softboxes rather than 20Ks on the rolling truss; the ability to change the bulbs and the diffusion allowed us more options for a soft, ambient push. Between the Dinos, we also hung 10K beam projectors to create a hard, warm sun feeling where needed.”
that helped Cameron achieve what he wanted. With all of the locations prebuilt in Autodesk MotionBuilder and all of the CG characters constructed, Derry devised a system that would composite the motion-capture information into the CG world in real time. He explains, “With motion-capture work, the director usually completes elaborate previs shots and sequences, shoots the actors on the motion-capture stage, and then sends the footage off to post. Then, visual-effects artists composite the CG www.theasc.com
characters into the motion-capture information, execute virtual camera moves and send the footage back to the director. But that approach just wasn’t going to work for Jim. He wanted to be able to interact in real time with the CG characters on the set, as though they were living beings. He wanted to be able to handhold the camera in his style and get real coverage in this CG world. “Jim used two main tools to realize his virtual cinematography,” continues Derry. “One was a handheld ‘virtual January 2010
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Conquering New Worlds camera,’ which was essentially a monitor with video-game-style controls on it whose position was tracked in space. Using the virtual camera during the mocap portion of the shoot, Jim could see the actors who were wearing mo-cap suits as the characters they were playing. For example, by looking through the virtual camera, he’d see Neytiri, the 9foot-tall Na’vi, instead of Zoe Saldana. He’d operate the virtual camera like a regular camera, with the added benefit of being able to scale his moves to lay down virtual dolly tracks and so on. For instance, if he wanted to do a crane shot, he’d say, ‘Make me 20-to-1,’ and when he held the camera 5 feet off the floor, that would be a 100-foot-high crane. “The other tool was the SimulCam, a live-action camera with position reflectors that could be read by mo-cap cameras,” continues Derry. “It superimposed the CG world and characters into the live-action photography by tracking the position of the liveaction camera and creating a virtual camera in the CG world in the same place. The two images were composited together live and sent to the monitors on the set [as a low-resolution image].” For example, when Cameron was shooting a scene in a set involving an actor and a CG Na’vi, if he tilted the camera down to the actor’s feet, the viewfinder would show not only the actor’s feet, but also the Na’vi’s feet, the entire CG environment and the CG details outside the set, such as action visible through windows. All of this could be seen in real time through the SimulCam’s viewfinder and on live monitors on the set, allowing the human actors to interact directly with the CG characters and enabling Cameron to frame up exactly what he wanted. “With the SimulCam, you don’t have to imagine what will be composited later — you’re actually seeing all of the pre-recorded CG background animation,” says Derry. “So if you want to start the shot by following a ship landing in the background and then settle on your actor in the frame, you can do that in real time, as if it’s all happening in front of
Top and middle: After Scully tames a flying Banshee on Pandora (top), Neytiri shows him how to mount the beast. Below: Saldana takes a ride on the motioncapture stage.
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connect the shots consolidate your acquisition options. sacrifice none. Unifying all your video sources and cameras has never been easy — until now. The AJ-HPM200 P2 Mobile is the key workflow tool on any production because its HD-SDI connectivity lets you record from any camera or device in 10-bit, 4:2:2 independent frame AVC-Intra100 or DVCPRO HD/50/25 and, simultaneously* in long GOP AVCCAM.** So no matter how many sources you have, you can bring them all into one portable unit. With the new HPM200, you can play P2 and AVCCAM footage, as well as full frame rate P2 playback from a disk drive. You can also archive
master-quality footage and FTP low bit rate AVCCAM dailies without ever leaving the set. With the most diverse I/O connectivity of any recorder/player and a bevy of features, like e-SATA and GigE interfaces, split-screen editing, six P2 slots for long record times and full cross-conversion capabilities, it’s easier to list what the HPM200 doesn’t do. The P2 Mobile won’t deliver craft services, but it just might save you from running into overtime. Learn more at www.panasonic.com/broadcast.
*With optional AJ-YCX250G codec board **Panasonic markets its professional AVCHD products under the AVCCAM brand name © 2009 Panasonic of North America
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Conquering New Worlds
Quaritch talks to Scully while testing an Armored Mobility Platform suit. This sequence was shot in the former Mitsubishi facility in New Zealand, where Culliton and key grip Richard Mall created the illusion of a 100'-tall space by hanging greenscreen teasers of different lengths, which hid the light fixtures and the real 22' ceiling.
you. On every take, the CG elements are going to replay exactly as they’ve been designed, and you can shoot however you want within that world.” Because the SimulCam becomes a virtual camera in a virtual world, it can be placed anywhere in space. Standing more than 9' tall, the Na’vi are larger than humans by a ratio of 1.67:1. If Cameron wanted a shot to be at the Na’vi’s eye level, he would ask the 38
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system operator to make him 1.67:1, which would reset Cameron’s height to that level. In other words, he could continue to handhold the camera on the real stage floor while “standing” at a height of 9' in the virtual world. “Jim used the SimulCam as a kind of virtual viewfinder to direct the performances and get the shots he wanted, and then, in post, we’d tweak things further,” says Derry. “We could redo the art direction
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Conquering New Worlds
Military helicopters fire their missiles into Pandora’s toxic atmosphere. The “staggered teasers” strategy was also employed for these greenscreen shots.
of the set by moving a tree, moving a mountain, or adjusting the position of a ship or the background players. For Jim, it’s all about the frame; what’s in the frame tells the story.” Virtual camera operator Anthony Arendt, who also operated the Fusion cameras alongside Cameron in the L.A. unit, recalls, “After Jim was happy with his takes from the SimulCam, they were still far from ready to send to Weta. We screened every shot in 3-D with him in 40
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a theater nicknamed ‘Wheels and Stereo,’ and he gave us meticulous notes on every aspect of the shots. He gave the virtual artist notes on the overall scene and all of its detail; he gave stereographer Chuck Comiski notes on the 3-D; and he gave me specific notes on the camera moves. Because the recorded motion-capture images lack depth-offield, he also gave me detailed notes on depth-of-field cues that would help Weta down the line. We treated depthAmerican Cinematographer
of-field as if we were shooting with one of the 3-D Fusion cameras. “As the project progressed, we figured out ways to give Jim’s SimulCam shots the specific feel of different moves: Steadicam, Technocrane, handheld and so on. We could do that a number of different ways, depending on how the shot started and what Jim wanted to end up with. In the theater, we’d play back Jim’s SimulCam shots through MotionBuilder and then
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Conquering New Worlds re-operate the shots according to his notes. He was very specific. For example, he gave me a note that said he wanted a shot from one of the Scorpion gunships to feel like it was shot from a Tyler mount, not a Spacecam. His attention to detail was mindblowing!” After 18 months of motion capture, Cameron brought in Fiore to shoot live-action footage onstage at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand. “About 70 percent of the movie is motion capture, and the rest is liveaction,” says Fiore. “Although the motion-capture work was mostly finished, the actual look of the film was yet to be created. The footage we shot in New Zealand ultimately defined the overall style of the movie.” Because all of the sets were created in MotionBuilder long before any physical construction began, Fiore was able to take a virtual tour of the sets and plan his approach. “We spent a good month in Los Angeles laying out the lighting plan in the virtual sets,” the cinematographer recalls. “We were able to position specific fixtures and see exactly what it would do in the environment. We had accurate measurements of the real stages, so we knew where we had to work around low ceilings or support beams, for example, and we could solve those problems well before we ever set foot on the stages in New Zealand. We also spent a great deal of time blocking scenes on the virtual sets. Basically, all of our tech scouts were done virtually.” This process revealed a problem that Fiore and his gaffer, Chris Culliton, would confront in the Armor Bay set. A massive armory on Pandora, this set piece would stand 100' tall and hold hundreds of Armored Mobility Platform suits, large, robot-like devices that the soldiers can control. In reality, the set was constructed in a former Mitsubishi factory in New Zealand, and only two AMP suits were made, one functional and one purely for set dressing. The ceilings in the factory were just 22' high, so the rest of the set had to be created digitally. “The challenge was that a lot of the shots in the Armor Bay were looking up
Top: Scully makes his way through Pandora’s jungle foliage while trailed by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver). Middle: Director James Cameron offers Worthington and Weaver a demonstration of proper military technique on the motioncapture stage. Bottom: Worthington jumps a horse also covered with mo-cap sensors.
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at this great expanse of a 100'-tall location that simply didn’t exist — we were looking up into our lighting fixtures and the ceiling,” says Culliton. “We had to find a way to light from above yet still have a greenscreen up there so the rest of the set could be added later.” To solve the problem, Culliton and key grip Richard Mall took a cue from the theater world and hung greenscreen teasers of different lengths from the ceiling. The teasers were hung in between the rigging; the lights were clear to illuminate the set, but from the camera position, the teasers hid the fixtures. “We hung the teasers perpendicular to the ceiling, covering roughly 150 feet of ceiling space, with about 6 to 10 feet of space between each teaser,” says Culliton. “If you stood in the corner and looked up, it appeared as a single piece of greenscreen. On the camera side, between the teasers, we hung Kino Flos to light the green; we’d normally use green-spike tubes for greenscreen, but because of the lights’ proximity to the actors and the set, we went with standard tungsten tubes. To light the set, we hung 10Ks gelled with 1⁄2 CTB, and we had about 50 10-degree Source Four Lekos gelled with 1⁄4 CTB and 1⁄4 Hampshire Frost hanging between the teasers. Those gave us little hits and highlights throughout the set.” Greenscreen, in abundant supply on the shoot, was often placed close to actors and set pieces for particular composite effects, which led to concerns about green spill. Fortunately, while touring the Weta Digital facility, Fiore found a solution with the help of fellow ASC member Alex Funke. “We went over to visit with Alex, who shoots the miniatures for all of Weta’s work, and he showed us this 3M Scotchlite material, the same highly reflective material that’s used in traffic signs and safety clothing. He put it around the miniatures and lit them with ultraviolet light, which allowed him to pull really clean mattes without corrupting the rest of the set.” Using standard black-light fixtures, Fiore and his team began attaching the Scotchlite material to
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Conquering New Worlds
Virtual-production supervisor Glenn Derry (top) aims the SimulCam, which allowed the filmmakers to shoot live motion-capture footage and immediately see a low-resolution version of the CG animation on a monitor (middle). Bottom: Cameron and Fiore review their work on set.
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specific aspects of a set or environment that would need to be replaced in post. Nearby, they would hide a small UV black-light fixture, which would retroreflect the bright green from the Scotchlite back to the camera without affecting the area around it. “In some situations, we also used green UV paint on various surfaces to achieve the same results,” notes Fiore. “These areas were small enough that we could light them with small sources. A 12-inch or 24inch black-light tube was really all we needed.” The UV technology was also applied to the avatar booths, tight, coffin-like enclosures that resemble MRI equipment. After a soldier lies down on a table, he is inserted into the booth, where his consciousness is projected into the body of his alien avatar. Circling around the opening of these machines is a spinning display of colored liquid (a CG effect). Because the CG area was very close to the actors and other set components, Fiore used the UV paint on the rim of the machine to prevent spill and create a clean matte for the CG work. At the onset of principal photography in New Zealand, a dailies trailer incorporating two NEC NC800C digital projectors was set up so the filmmakers could view each shot in 3-D as it was completed. Playing back the recorded footage via a synchronized feed from a Codex digital recorder, Cameron and Fiore could experience the 3-D effects on location and refine them as needed, shot-by-shot. “We called it ‘the pod,’” Fiore recalls. “In the beginning, we were checking on nearly every shot to make sure the lighting was solid and the convergence and interocular were correct. It was a very laborious way to start working, but it was necessary. The cameras themselves were a bit finicky in the beginning, and sometimes getting them to match up was a challenge. If one was even slightly off in terms of focus, the whole effect was ruined.” Avatar was Fiore’s first digital feature — he had shot a commercial on HD — and his first foray into 3-D.
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“One of the things that was really tricky for me was the 2⁄3-inch-chip 3-D cameras’ extended depth-of-field,” he says. “It’s a lot like the depth-of-field you get with 16mm. It’s really difficult to throw things out of focus and help guide the audience’s eye. Shallow depth-of-field is an interesting dilemma in 3-D, because you need to see the depth to lend objects a dimensionality, but if you have too much depth-of-field and too much detail in the background, your eye wanders all over the screen, and you’re not sure what to look at. I had to find new ways to direct the audience’s eye to the right part of the frame, and we accomplished that through lighting and set dressing. We strove to minimize the distractions in the background. I learned that if I controlled the degree of light falloff in the background, I could help focus the viewer’s attention where we wanted it. Instead of working with circles-of-confusion, I had to create depth-of-field through contrast and lighting levels, which was a really fun challenge. “Once we started shooting, we quickly discovered that highlights in the background were a problem, because depending on the convergence of the scene, two distinct images of that highlight might diverge, creating a ghosting
effect that was very distracting,” continues Fiore. “Even a practical fluorescent could cause a problem. I tried a few experiments, like putting polarizing gel on the highlight sources and a Pola on the lens and then trying to dial them out, but as soon as the camera moved, the effect was gone. So I had to bring in smoke, where I could, to bring down the contrast.” Fiore also had to rethink his approach to composition. “Anytime you’re in a position where one lens is obstructed by an object and the other isn’t — say, when you’re shooting over someone’s shoulder or through a doorway — you get into a situation your eyes can’t comfortably handle in 3-D. Whenever we got into that type of situation, we had to be very careful to ensure both lenses were seeing both the obstruction and the clear view.” Because so much of the film’s world is virtual, Fiore was constantly matching interactive lighting with elements that would be comped into the image in post. An example of this is a plasma storm that takes place on Pandora. “What is a plasma storm? No one knows — it’s all inside Jim’s head!” Fiore exclaims with a laugh. “We had to figure out a way to create a fantastic event that no one had ever seen before.
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Augustine examines mission data with Scully, Spellman (Joel Moore, right) and Chacon (Michelle Rodriguez, background).
In the scene, Scully is in a remote science lab with Dr. Augustine [Sigourney Weaver], and they see the storm happening outside the windows. We had to find a way to create the effect of the storm on their faces.” He turned to the DL.2, a DMX-controlled LCD projector that acts like an automated light source. By utilizing a preset “anomalous” pattern in the DL.2 and project-
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ing the image through Hampshire Frost onto the actor’s faces, Fiore achieved a unique look for the storm’s lighting effects. Interactive lighting was also crucial for selling process shots inside vehicles, such as the military helicopters that swarm around Pandora. “The helicopters were built on a gimbal system,” says Culliton. “The gimbals were strong
and capable of some good movement, but they only created about 15 degrees of pitch and roll. Jim’s paramount concern is realism, and helicopters move a lot more than 15 degrees, especially on military maneuvers. When they turn, they turn very quickly. We had to find a way to represent that speed and velocity through light.” Fiore explains, “We put a 4K HMI Par on the end of a 50-foot Technocrane arm and used the arm’s ability to telescope and sweep around to get the feeling of movement in the helicopters. When the helicopter turned, that sunlight would move through the cockpit, throwing shadows from the mullions onto the faces of the actors. By exploiting the Technocrane’s arm, we could quickly zip the light from one end to the other and create the impression of fast movement.” Because the light was positioned on a remote head controlled by standard camera wheels, Fiore asked his camera operators to control the light. To assist
the operator, a small lipstick camera was mounted to the Par and fed back to the operator’s monitor, allowing him to operate the lamp just like a camera; he could aim the beam precisely where Fiore wanted it to hit the helicopters. For the climactic sequence, in which a human army descends on Pandora to attack the Na’vi, the stages at Wellington weren’t large enough to hold the construction crane required to drop a mock helicopter full of soldiers. Instead, the production moved outside to the parking lot, setting the scene against a 400'-wide-by-50'-high curved greenscreen (built out of industrial shipping containers faced with plywood and painted chroma green). The sequence takes place during the day, but Cameron insisted it be shot night-for-day. “At first I thought he was insane,” recalls Fiore. “But when I thought about it, I realized it made a lot of sense. We had to be able to completely control the light without worrying about sun direction or cloud
coverage. As crazy as it might seem to shoot an outdoor day scene at night, it was the right decision.” Two 100-ton construction cranes were positioned to hold a lighting truss over the outdoor set. (A third crane supported the helicopter.) “We built a 60-by-40-foot truss structure complete with grid and walkways,” says Culliton. “We basically turned the outdoors into a working greenbed! Above the truss, we suspended a 100K SoftSun through a large frame of Light Grid and ¼ Blue, mimicking the ambience of the Pandoran sky. We also hung a combination of 7K and 4K Xenons and 4K HMI beam projectors to get shafts of daylight through the vegetation, which was added later.” “This entire production was extraordinary, the most extraordinary experience of my career so far,” says Fiore. “The challenge for me, and what really got me excited about the film, was to use the tools to tell the story in the
best way possible. It required a lot of experimentation and a reinterpretation of how I deal with composition and lighting. There were times when it was a miserable experience, but I know that everything from here on out is going to be a lot easier! If you’re going to delve into new technology and a new world, Jim Cameron is the guy to do it with.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 1.78:1 High-Definition Video Sony F950, HDC1500, F23; SimulCam Canon zoom lenses Digital Intermediate
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Andrew Lesnie, ASC, ACS reteams with Peter Jackson on The Lovely Bones, in which a murdered teen tracks her killer. by Simon Gray •|•
Watchful Spirit A
story centered on the brutal murder of a 14-year old girl wouldn’t seem likely to yield a film for the whole family, but that was exactly director Peter Jackson’s intent with The Lovely Bones, an adaptation of Alice Sebold’s 2002 novel. “I wanted to make a film my daughter could see, a film with hopeful things to say about life after death,” says Jackson. A coming-of-age story with a significant twist, the film is narrated by Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) after she is murdered by a neighbor, George Harvey (Stanley Tucci). Unable to accept her own death, Susie is caught “in between,” in a kind of limbo between heaven and earth. “The book is written from Susie’s point-of-view, and she has a very strong, powerful voice,” says Jackson. “Her journey is reclaiming her
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life from the man who killed her. How she escapes the label ‘Susie Salmon, murder victim’ is the thrust of the film.” Susie watches over her family as they struggle to cope with her death, which eventually shatters her parents’ marriage. “The poignancy of the film is that Susie stays 14 while her family grows older,” says Jackson. “Through the Salmon family, we see the years pass. When Susie is killed, in 1973, her younger sister, Lindsey [Rose McIver], is 12, and by the film’s conclusion, Lindsey is almost 20 and expecting a baby.” The Lovely Bones is Jackson’s fifth collaboration with director of photography Andrew Lesnie, ASC, ACS, following the Lord of the Rings trilogy (AC Dec. ’01, Dec. ’02 and
American Cinematographer
Photos by Barry Wetcher, SMPSP; Matt Mueller; and Pierre Vinet. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of DreamWorks Studios LLC.
Opposite: Susie (Saoirse Ronan) approaches a lighthouse in an “inbetween” sequence that leads to a grisly discovery. This page, top: Susie and her father, Jack (Mark Wahlberg), bond in his study. Middle: Andrew Lesnie, ASC, ACS lines up a shot in the set with Peter Jackson (foreground). Bottom: George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), Susie’s murderer, is seldom shown in full view in the film.
Jan. ’04) and King Kong (AC Dec. ’05). “Apart from great skills and ideas, the very best working relationships are those based on trust and friendship,” notes the director. “Andrew and I have worked together enough that the basics don’t have to be discussed. What we talk about is the new ideas we want to bring into a particular project.” Principal photography was scheduled over three separate shoots. The filmmakers first shot on location in Pennsylvania from late summer 2007 through the following winter, taking full advantage of the region’s dramatic change of seasons. The set for the interior of the Salmon house was also built and shot during this stage of the project. Lesnie’s key crew comprised gaffer Jay Fortune, key grip George Patsos, camera/Steadicam operator Kyle Rudolph and 1st ACs Carlos Guerra, Bobby Mancuso and Michael Asa Leonard. “Norristown, Pennsylvania, in 1973 was a very particular pocket of America with a very specific culture, and I wanted to make sure we captured that completely,” says Jackson. One of the main requirements for the Pennsylvania locations was that they www.theasc.com
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Watchful Spirit have geographical proximity, especially the Salmons’ and Harvey’s homes. “That’s very important to the underlying sense of unease,” notes Jackson. “It’s disturbing that Susie’s missing, presumed murdered, and Susie and the audience are the only ones who know it’s the guy living four doors down. He even has all the evidence of her murder, including her body, in his house.” The cornfield where Susie’s kidnapping and murder take place lies between the safety of the school and her house — Harvey, almost within plain sight, has dug a small room under the cornfield. Susie leaves school late one afternoon, and as she walks across the field towards home, she drops one of her books, and a note from a boy she has arranged to meet falls out and blows across the field. As she gives chase, the camera reveals Harvey, standing in the middle of the otherwise empty field. He attempts to persuade Susie to climb down into the underground room, which he has furnished with toys. Initially reluctant, she is finally won over when Harvey taunts her that the other kids will see it first. Set in the late afternoon, the scene was filmed over two days in a variety of weather conditions. Lesnie combined a cool ambience (Kodak Vision2 200T 5217 with an 81EF filter on the lens) with warm tungsten lighting in the background to provide separation. “From the cornfield, you can see the school soccer field and some of the neighborhood houses,” he explains. “Jay’s crew rigged 10 unsnooted Mole Pars on each of four poles surrounding the soccer field, and we also had tungsten light — a mix of Nine-light Maxis and 2K and 5K Fresnels — emanating from the nearby houses.” Some time later, in a night scene, Susie is shown escaping from Harvey’s underground room and running across the cornfield. (It is, in fact, her spirit that has escaped.) Lesnie lit the scene with 12K Pars on two 135' Condors, with smaller HMIs and tungsten sources backlighting the naturally occurring mist. He recalls, “Saoirse
Top: Harvey keeps an eye on his prey. Middle: Susie comes faceto-face with Harvey on her way home from school. Bottom: Harvey successfully lures the girl into his underground toy room.
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came out of that hole at full pelt, and I filmed her from the back of a quadbike, handholding the camera. It was a rough ride over an area the size of several football fields. Letting her run in the semi-darkness or having her backlit for sections of it was fine, because the shadows are telling the story as much as the highlights.” Lesnie’s main cameras were Arricam Lites and Arri 435s, and he regarded Angenieux Optimo zoom lenses, particularly the T2.6 15-40mm, as invaluable on the shoot. “We shot the majority of the film on that lens. The 15mm end is nice and wide, and the 40mm is close enough to get into a head-and-shoulders frame size without too much distortion. If I chose to ride the zoom during a shot, we had that option.” (The production also carried T2.6 17-80mm and 24-290mm Angenieux Optimos, as well as a set of Arri Ultra Primes.) To capture scenes in a local shopping mall, the production took over the MacDade Mall in Holmes, Pa., where only two shops were in use. Knowing Jackson’s predilection for roaming with a freewheeling camera, Lesnie established an unobtrusive high-level ambience in the shopping center using practicals and fake skylights created by production designer Naomi Shohan. “I noticed during the location scouts that some of the malls had skylights providing stabs of sunlight that livened everything up,” he recalls. This mall’s ceiling contained halogen lamps with a green spike, and the narrow ceiling space precluded hanging lamps. Fortune and Shohan devised what Lesnie describes as “an ingenious solution.” He explains, “We selected sections down the length of the mall from which to remove the ceiling paneling. The art department then built a circular structure made out of solid polystyrene that was attached to the metal section of the roof. We crammed as many Image 80s and other Kino Flos as we could into the circle.” An egg crate helped focus the light while maintaining its softness. The
Top: Preparing a night shoot in the cornfield. Middle: Harvey checks on his secret room. Bottom (from left): 1st AC Colin Deane, camera operator Cameron McLean, Lesnie, 1st AC Dean McCarroll and stills photographer Pierre Vinet capture Harvey at home. Stretchedmuslin ceilings helped the team reduce lighting technology in house interiors.
www.theasc.com
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Top: A gazebo figures prominently in Susie’s “in between,” serving as a motif for her varying emotional states. Bottom: The filmmakers prepare to shoot on location in New Zealand.
mall’s halogen lights were switched off, and the rest of the sources — practicals and household fluorescents — were “a complete mish-mash of color temperatures, with pools of what appeared to be daylight coming through skylights,” says Lesnie. He kept lights off the floor, using the ambience in the mall to allow 52
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long Steadicam, handheld and crane shots. In keeping with the style of houses in southeast Pennsylvania, the Salmon and Harvey homes feature small rooms and low ceilings. “Peter likes to choreograph scenes on the move — busy, chaotic family scenes American Cinematographer
such as the kids getting ready for school that roll from one room to the next,” notes Lesnie. “In order to reduce the amount of lighting technology in the set, we put up stretched-muslin ceiling pieces, which are light and look solid. They allowed us to add more fill if required and provided easy access for other departments.” For daylight scenes in the Salmon house, 5Ks and 10Ks were hung on TransLite rails outside the set, and at least one lamp was put in place for each window. “It was very easy to slide the lamps into position, and because all the light was coming from outside, Peter could design complex choreography inside,” says Lesnie. “The set became energized, and everyone got into a good working rhythm.” For night scenes, space lights hung around the windows gave a soft blue rim on the window ledges, while practicals and Jem balls illuminated the interiors. “We used Jem balls all the time for ambient light or to replicate the light from the practicals,” says Lesnie. “They’re great lights — soft, compact and dimmable.” In a particularly poignant scene,
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Above: Jack thinks he catches a glimpse of his missing daughter in his study window. Right: (from left) Gaffer Jay Fortune, Lesnie and Jackson sit in what Lesnie calls “the only safe place during an expansive Steadicam shot around the Salmon household.”
Susie’s father, Jack (Mark Wahlberg), sees her ghost reflected in the window of his study, where he and Susie had spent hours putting model ships in bottles. To replicate the light from the candle Jack is holding, Lesnie used a rod holding peanut globes that had been dipped in orange ink. “There wasn’t enough space between Mark and the window to get a normal light in,” he explains. “I could simply hold the wand in the right position so the light appeared to come from the candle.” 54
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Several of the bulbs were constantly on, and others pulsated through a chaser. After taking a break for Christmas, the filmmakers resumed production at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand, where they shot interiors such as Harvey’s underground room, his house, and some additional scenes in the Salmon house. Lesnie’s crew for this leg of the shoot included gaffer David Brown, key grip Dion Hartley, operator/Steadicam operator Cameron McLean, A-camera American Cinematographer
1st AC Colin Deane and B-camera 1st AC Dean McCarroll. The third and final part of the shoot, also shot in New Zealand, involved Susie’s “in-between” sequences, a mix of studio and location work. For that material, the gaffer was Danny Williams, the key grip was Tony Keddy, and the camera crew comprised McLean, Deane and Bcamera 1st AC Brenden Holster. Harvey’s underground room is “not much bigger than a walk-in closet,” says Lesnie. “To get a master of the scene, I used a Libra head on a 15foot GF modular crane looking up as Susie and Harvey come down the ladder, then pulling back to see the entire room. We shot the rest of the scene with two handheld cameras.” The set is adorned with candles, which Lesnie augmented with dyed peanut bulbs hidden behind various ornaments and wooden beams. The only other light was a 2' 4-bank Kino Flo gelled with 1⁄2 CTO, with barn doors and blackwrap cutting spill. “Ideally, I would have kept the shadows towards camera, but the space was prohibitive, so I kept the Kino right on the floor,” says Lesnie. ➣
THE
LOVELY BONES
Cinematography by
Andrew Lesnie ACS, ASC
Cameras & lenses from
A MEMBER OF THE ARRI RENTAL GROUP Florida • Los Angeles • New Jersey • New York • North Carolina
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Watchful Spirit
Above: One of Jack’s ships-ina-bottle takes on surreal dimensions in Susie’s “in between.” Bottom: Filming in a barley field that provided elements for another “inbetween” sequence.
Although The Lovely Bones has an overall tone of hope, Harvey is its dark heart. “The audience learns who killed Susie very early on,” says Jackson. “There’s no revealing the mystery, but we do tease in the sense that we only see Harvey’s face for the first time when Susie does. In a flashback scene, when Harvey initially meets the Salmon family, we use various techniques to not reveal him — we see him in soft focus, or he’s obscured by foreground objects, such as flowers. Inside his own house, he is often lit almost in silhouette.” As the years go by, Susie discovers she isn’t Harvey’s only victim; he is 56
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actually a serial killer. In one of her “inbetween” scenes, she is drawn toward a lighthouse, and when she enters it, it’s Harvey’s house, and she is bombarded with imagery of the other victims. Rather than undertaking a complicated visual-effects sequence, Jackson wanted the encounters to happen in real time, with no cuts. “I wanted to blend Harvey’s house with the sites where he’d dumped the bodies: a swamp, a ditch, underneath the floorboards, in an old shack, and underneath a freeway,” says Jackson. “I wanted to be able to film Susie in Harvey’s kitchen, then pan across and suddenly be in the swamp, American Cinematographer
then pan back to be back in the kitchen. It was an idea that was almost impossible to explain — the only way to do it was to actually do it. “Naomi Shohan worked it all out and built a fantastic set blending the house with the exterior locations,” he continues. “It was strangely simple: there’s a kitchen, and when the wall ran out, the set became a concrete freeway upright, then an old garbage heap with a body in it. At one point, Susie walks down the stairs and trips and falls, and as she rolls out the bottom of the stairs, she keeps on rolling down into a ditch that was built for real.” Lesnie notes, “Some of the transitions required lighting changes from a house interior to whatever situation Susie found herself in, in this case a ditch in the middle of the night that was moonlit and very dark.” Much of the spectacular imagery in Susie’s “in between” is CGI created by Weta Digital, but several elements were live-action. “That imagery expresses Susie’s subconscious desires and changes depending on her mood,” explains Lesnie. Strange as it may sound, the object that links her “in between” with the real world is a gazebo. The idea for this specific visual
“To simulate Susie drifting down through a watery environment, Saoirse was lowered slowly on a wire rig, with fans below taking out some of the gravity effect,” says Lesnie. “We bounced HMI Pars into 10-by lamé reflectors loosely tied and shaken to create a ripple effect. We filmed this at 120 fps with two Arri 435s, one on a Scorpio head on a Giraffe crane, which doubled the height of her fall by starting low and craning up to the ceiling, and the other on a Steadicam, maintaining a slow-moving wide shot.”
motif came about when Lesnie and Jackson were scouting locations in Pennsylvania. “We saw quite a few gazebos on the corners, and we thought it was a great vehicle for Susie to travel to different places in and could itself become a visual motif of her emotional states,” recalls Lesnie. Jackson adds, “She comes to realize that the gazebo represents hope — when she’s killed, she is about to have her first date, and the boy was going to meet her at the gazebo in the local shopping mall. When she feels alone and afraid, the gazebo is a refuge for her.” Jack comes to suspect Harvey for his daughter’s murder, and in one scene, he runs into the cornfield at night because he thinks Harvey is destroying evidence; Jack enters the field armed with a baseball bat, only to run afoul of a large teenager ( Jack Abel) with his girlfriend. To capture the scene, the filmmakers built a large section of the cornfield onstage and used two cameras, one on a Technocrane that followed Wahlberg and rose to reveal the entire field, and the other on a dolly
capturing Wahlberg in profile. “Because Susie wants to prevent Jack from pursuing his course of action, we needed to keep her presence close to him without letting her leave the gazebo,” says Lesnie. “Since we’re viewing events from Susie’s perspective, we could change the shape of the gazebo to allow her to run with her father, so we physically reconfigured the gazebo into a long deck. In order to externalize her state of mind, we made the landscape quite violent; we had Dinos simulating firelight and Lightning Strikes units buried in the cornfield.” Early in her travels through her “in between,” Susie meets Holly (Nikki SooHoo), a teenager and fellow victim who becomes a friend and roommate of sorts. This sequence was shot in a forest in Glenorchy, on New Zealand’s South Island, in the region’s 2008 winter. The combination of short days and tall trees presented Lesnie with some challenges. “The forest was so dark that I only had enough light for an exposure after 10 a.m.” he recalls. “I pushed [Kodak Vision2 500T] 5218 one stop and shot 57
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Lesnie prepares to negotiate a shopping mall with key grip George Patsos (left) and dolly grip Louis Sabat.
without any filtration. It got dark again after 3:30 p.m., and I needed sky in the background to keep the image alive, so we put three 6K Pars on a large ridgeline in the forest and camouflaged the stands. When we weren’t doing shots that included the ridgeline, I used those three lamps to shoot down into background, adding a bit of smoke. If we did see the ridgeline, I turned off two of the Pars and had the other one point-
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ing straight at us, as if it were the sun giving a hot spot. At one point I had the real sun on the horizon as well as the Par while doing a long tracking shot; we slid the Par sideways so we’d only have one source coming through the forest at any one time! Rather than using lights in the foreground, I simply bounced ambient light onto the actors. It looked more realistic that way.” Lesnie shot most of The Lovely
Bones in 4-perf Super 35mm, but two digital cameras, a Red One and a 1080p C-mount Ikonix HD-RH1 (outputting to an HDCam-SR-1 deck and viewed on an HD monitor), were used for some material. Jackson used the Red to capture some landscapes in Pennsylvania and New Zealand for the “in-between” sequences, and Lesnie used the Ikonix (with 2.8mm, 4mm and 8mm Fujinon lenses) to give Harvey’s perspective a distinct visual motif. “Peter and I were looking for a way to make Harvey’s world look a little bizarre,” says the cinematographer. “For example, we used the Ikonix to film him from inside the dollhouses he makes for a living, dramatically emphasizing the disparity of scale; having a giant Harvey looming outside the dollhouse reinforces that he is master of his domain. The Ikonix was also great for showing, in a very specific way, things that were important only to him, such as cuttings in his scrapbooks and the
combination lock on the safe holding Susie’s body.” A little more fill light was required for the Ikonix’s slightly aggressive contrast, and Lesnie was careful to avoid clipping the highlights, which were defocused during the 2K digital intermediate to match the 35mm footage. “Of course, the 1080p signal isn’t as high-quality as 35mm, but the dynamic, almost surreal shots have their own look,” he observes. Jackson also used the Ikonix to achieve an unusual shot early in the film, when Susie and Jack succeed in putting a model ship in a bottle. The director wanted a shot from inside the bottle as the ship slides through the neck and the sails and masts are raised. Lesnie put an OConnor head on a 3' Slider Camera Movement System. With a long lens rod on top of the head, the camera cable was fed through the tube, and the Ikonix was gaffertaped to the end of the rod. “Peter, who
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operated that setup, could then slide the whole thing back and forth, tracking in as well as panning,” says Lesnie. “It’s the equivalent of a dolly but on a 3-foot slider.” The production’s HD dailies were graded by Sam Daley at Technicolor New York and Jon Newell at Park Road Post in New Zealand. The final grade was done at Park Road Post on Quantel’s Pablo by David Hollingsworth and Florian Utsi Martin. Throughout the shoot, Lesnie e-mailed a detailed report on each day’s filming, along with graded stills, to Daley and Newell every evening. “I told them to grade the footage like they were grading the finished film,” he says. “Sometimes people stare at ungraded images for months on end and become so used to the film looking that way, they think it’s how the final product should look. I wanted to avoid that. With our workflow, if an HD cut was shown to the studio, they saw some-
thing much closer to the finished product. This approach worked so well that some of the looks Sam and Jon applied to the dailies are in the final film.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Super 35mm, 4K Digital Capture, High-Definition Video Arricam Lite, Arri 435, Red One, Ikonix HD-RH1 Angenieux Optimo, Arri Ultra Prime, Fujinon lenses Kodak Vision2 500T 5218, 200T 5217 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
New LEE
Urban effect filters Create a Sodium effect with tungsten or daylight
Think LEE www.leefilters.com
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Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC uses creative deduction to craft a striking look for Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. by Benjamin B •|•
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herlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Dr. John Watson ( Jude Law) are riding inside a carriage. As they exchange playful banter, we catch glimpses of London circa 1890 outside the window. The scene cuts to a spectacular wide shot from the London Bridge: in the background is the giant Tower Bridge, under construction; on the Thames below are cargo ships; and above is a dark, cloudy sky. The image freezes, becoming painterly. Sitting at the back of the digital-intermediate suite at Technicolor in London, Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC muses, “It’s beautiful. Do we want to mess it up?” He turns to colorist Adam Inglis and adds, “I know a storm is coming, but after all, it is the middle of the day.” Inglis says, “Perhaps a little lighter?” The two men try a few variations and settle on a slightly more sunlit version of the image, with a more upbeat feeling. Spending time with Rousselot and Inglis during the DI
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process for Sherlock Holmes gives one a renewed appreciation for the range of finesse — and finessing — involved in colortiming a feature film. Some of their work involved matching disparate shots to provide seamless transitions, but much time was also spent refining the contrast and color of the image to provide just the right mood. The visual precision required is remarkable. Whereas traditional photochemistry involves a unit of one printer light, Inglis explains, “Our basic unit is a half printer light, and occasionally a quarter printer light.” Rousselot notes, “It’s like 1⁄9 tones in music: once you train your ear, you can hear them.” Directed by Guy Ritchie, Sherlock Holmes gives Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective a stylish, contemporary twist. Holmes is eccentric and athletic, and Watson, his roommate and assistant, is dashing. Their chemistry is at the heart of the film, and their exchanges are humorous, in particular when the
American Cinematographer
Unit photography by Alex Bailey and Barry Wetcher. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Warner Bros.
jealous Holmes repeatedly discourages Watson’s affection for his fiancée, Mary (Kelly Reilly). Holmes has an adversarial relationship with his own love interest, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams). “The film is my interpretation of Conan Doyle’s vision,” says Ritchie. “I’m not sure it’s more modern; it’s just a different take. We’ve upped things that have been previously marginalized. For instance, Conan Doyle’s Holmes was a rather robust individual, an expert in martial arts. We tried to be true to that vision, so in a way this film might be more authentic than previous productions.” The story follows Holmes’ efforts to debunk the alleged supernatural feats of arch-villain Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), who, after being hanged, appears to come back from the dead to terrorize London with acts of black magic, ultimately endangering the British government itself. Holmes’ intricate, brilliant deductions are illustrated in stylish bursts of flashback images. “He’s an intellectual action hero, [and] I think most people are not used to action heroes being intellectual,” notes Ritchie. “I don’t see why we can’t have our cake and eat it, too! “This is what they call in the business ‘a four-quadrant movie,’” the
Opposite: Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) searches for clues, backed by his loyal sidekick, Watson (Jude Law). This page: The duo brainstorm at 221B Baker Street, a set built in Brooklyn. Bottom: Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC finds his frame.
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Holmes often finds himself at odds with the alluring Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), and keeps a close eye on Watson’s romantic prospects. Rousselot notes that he kept the look of the main characters’ faces a bit on the cool side: “I prefer a cold skin tone to a warm one. I find it more elegant and also closer to the period — in those days, people stayed out of the sun.”
director adds with amusement. “I didn’t know what that meant six months ago, but the idea is you can take the family.” (A four-quadrant movie is one that appeals to all demographics: young and old, male and female.) Rousselot, whose recent credits include The Great Debaters (AC Jan. ’08), The Brave One, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (AC July ’05) and Constantine (AC April ’05), was recommended to Ritchie, and the director is enthusiastic, to say the least, about Rousselot’s contributions to the project. “Philippe is the fastest cinematographer I’ve ever worked with, and it was the least amount of fuss I’ve ever had with a cameraman,” he says. “He’s a bit of a legend, but he’s so humble — an egoless individual. You won’t get me to shut up about the positive aspects of Philippe Rousselot! He’s a gentleman, he’s smart, he’s hard-working, he’s fit, he’s tenacious and he’s talented!” 62
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Rousselot recalls that one of the questions he asked himself at the outset of the production was: “How do I make Sherlock Holmes a Guy Ritchie film? I didn’t want it to look like a costume drama. I didn’t want it to look pretty. I wanted it to be grungy. I wanted it to look like RocknRolla or Snatch.” He initially decided to ground his approach in realism, with the intent to re-create the warm gas, oil and candlelight sources of the late 19th century. He laughs as he recalls how these preconceived ideas fell by the wayside on the first day of location shooting: “You should never shoot on the first day of shooting!” he jokes. The location was a Freemason temple where Blackwood takes over a sect and demonstrates his powers with a spectacular feat. The marble interior, Rousselot recalls, “was beautiful, but I really struggled there, because every time we placed a light it was reflected in American Cinematographer
the marble. It’s as if you had mirrors all around. Actually, it would have been easier with mirrors, because then we could have lit the entire place with one light!” To complicate matters further, Ritchie set up a long, complex Steadicam shot, “almost 360 degrees, which was cut in the editing. So the only thing we could do was put lights on the floor or the ceiling.” Rousselot ended up using two helium balloons hovering above and, when necessary, a few sources on the ground. “I started out on this film wanting warm, soft lighting with dark corners, and contrast in the overall image, but that was very difficult to achieve on this sequence, and I was never happy with it,” says the cinematographer. “When I worked on it in the DI, I went the other way; I made the image very cold.” He assesses the scene’s final look as “180 degrees away from what I thought at first. It’s completely different, but I feel it tells the story a lot better. It’s darker, more sinister. There are actually many scenes in this film that ended up very different from what I thought to do at the beginning, I think for the best. “What’s paradoxical is that it’s the method that’s important, not the result … because the result escapes you,” he continues. “You can control the light, the exposure and the choice of film stock, but you can’t completely control everything that’s in front of the camera. It’s an ensemble. So the result is something you discover when the film is finished. More so than on any other film I have done, the result in Sherlock Holmes is
To thwart the dastardly Blackwood (Mark Strong, far left), Holmes must also roll up his fists. Portions of this sequence were shot in slow-motion with the Phantom HD camera. Bottom: Director Guy Ritchie (wearing tie) preps the scene.
completely different from what I imagined, even on the day of shooting. It was a day-by-day discovery.” The film’s images have a crisp, sometimes edgy look, with soft lighting and strong contrast; it’s a look far removed from a traditional period piece. The look was completed in the DI by an occasional, slight softening of the shadows and some highlights, creating a subtle smear, and a grade that deepened and sometimes gilded the blacks of an already-contrasty image. “Usually you want detail in the blacks, but on this picture we purposely lost detail,” notes Rousselot. “It looks like those 19thcentury paintings that used bitumen.” Bitumen, he explains, was a black paint made from coal tar that degraded over time, eventually damaging the works of Delacroix and others who had used the material to create strong blacks in their paintings. The location work in Sherlock Holmes was shot in Great Britain, and the soundstage work was shot across the Atlantic, on the Armory stages in Brooklyn. There, the production built the interiors of Holmes and Watson’s Baker Street flat and of the Tower Bridge site where the third-act showdown takes place. Because of the production’s tight schedule, Rousselot worked with two gaffers, both longtime
collaborators: Chuck Finch in England and Jack English in America. Finch proudly claims to have been the one to introduce Rousselot to Chinese lanterns on Hope and Glory (1987). “Obviously,” says Finch, “he’s come a long way with them since then!” Indeed, to many cinematographers, the moving Chinese lantern is Rousselot’s signature source. Finch recalls that the Sherlock Holmes team was often rapidly moving from one difficult English location to another, and he uses a very British expression to express the hectic pace: “Every day it was ‘kick, bollock and scramble.’ The most difficult thing was coming in and out of places. It was a www.theasc.com
challenge, and Philippe was the ideal man for the job.” Noting Rousselot’s proclivity for soft light, he adds, “Ninety percent of our lighting was done with Chinese lanterns.” Other sources were mostly bounced; sometimes it was a simple 2K Blonde aimed at a polystyrene board. The crew would occasionally add a frame of Lee 250 diffusion to soften HMI China balls. Finch reports that when an actor moved across an interior, Rousselot would often use a Fisher boom (normally used for microphones) to move a Chinese lantern with a 250-watt or 500watt tungsten bulb to provide a constant, soft key above the actor’s face. ➣ January 2010
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Super Sleuth Taking control of a sinister sect, Blackwood demonstrates a mastery of black magic. Helium balloons were used to provide ambient lighting in some of the show’s larger locations.
Holmes’ athleticism is highlighted in a spirited boxing match, a sequence shot as a night interior in a small hall. The scene is painted with distinctive orange hues, motivated by an onscreen grid of peanut bulbs wrapped in muslin that mimics the luminous wire meshes of the gas mantle lamps of yore. Rousselot’s lighting was characteristically simple: Rows of 500-watt Chinese lanterns were in a skirted box above the ring, supplemented by a similar arrangement above the bar on the other side of the room, and a few soft sources dotted the floor. Here, as on most tungsten interiors, the lights were on a dimmer board, allowing Rousselot to quickly modulate the warm wash of soft light. A Phantom HD camera was used to create bursts of slow-motion in two fight sequences, one during the boxing match and another at the very beginning of the film. The Phantom was ramped from 24 fps to 800 fps and back, and Rousselot estimates that he rated the camera at 100 ASA, “although it’s difficult to say because it’s not film.” He used two 20Ks bouncing off 12'x12' Ultrabounce to provide the brief blasts of light required. “You can’t use sources 64
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Top: Framestore created digital matte paintings of the buildings and sky to add a 19th-century feel to this grand view of London’s Houses of Parliament. Middle and bottom: Watson signals a warning while investigating a slaughterhouse, part of a sequence shot on location at docks in Liverpool.
under 5K, as they will flicker at high speeds,” he notes. He adds that it was a struggle to match the Phantom footage with the film footage in the DI. A restaurant scene in which Holmes rudely confronts Watson’s fiancée was shot on location in a traditional “gentlemen’s club.” Rousselot placed a 650-watt Chinese lantern between the seated actors and hung a grid of China balls from first-floor balustrades to light tables around them. “I like to hang a Chinese lantern between the actors,” he notes. “If you get close, you can get a T3.5-T4. I play with some black wrap to get less light here or there, or sometimes I’ll put a small diffusion frame on an arm underneath the Chinese lantern to re-diffuse it.” Like most setups in Sherlock Holmes, the restaurant scene was shot with two cameras. Rousselot likes the design of “two criss-crossing cameras,” in this case one on Holmes and one on Mary. “When it’s possible, I love to do that, because having both actors on camera when they’re talking to each other gives the scene an extraordinary energy.” The two cameras were usually both wide or both tight. “We did that systematically. Most of the time you’re going to edit the wide with the wide, and the tight with the tight. I will change the lighting between the wide and the tight shots, but … let’s put it www.theasc.com
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this way, never in a way that would be offensive. On the close-up, I might lower the light to get more into the eyes. I try to put the light as close to the edge of frame as possible, so when we’re tight I can lower it a bit.” He adds that the restaurant confrontation was “another scene that we rescued from the tradition of oil lamps and rendered colder” in the DI than what “realism” would have mandated. He describes the grading changes as adding “a little blue in the highlights to help the skin tone” and simultaneously diffusing the highlights to “get the skin to glow a little.” Indeed, a subtle but distinctive trait of the cinematography in Sherlock Holmes is Rousselot’s treatment of the main characters’ faces, which are somewhat cool. “I tried to get away from the Hollywood orange skin tone,” he explains. “I prefer a cold skin tone to a warm one. I find it more elegant and also closer to the period — in those days, people stayed out of the sun. So I avoided reds and pinks.” One night-exterior sequence involves Holmes and Watson arriving on a ship and sneaking around docks to investigate a slaughterhouse. Rousselot
The film’s climax takes place on the upper level of the unfinished Tower Bridge, an effect that was realized with the help of effects artisis at Double Negative, who combined CGI with live-action photography shot on practical sets. The original plate was shot on an exterior set at Leavesden Studios, with the actors filmed walking against a greenscreen wall. The rest of the shot, including the Thames River, the Tower of London, the sky, the distant city, the Tower Bridge and even the foreground bridge railings, are completely CG.
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An elegant gentlemen’s club serves as the setting for a confrontation between Holmes and Watson’s fiancée, a sequence the filmmakers captured with two cameras.
remembers the location scout in Liverpool well: “We were standing there in the drizzle, and we said, ‘Okay, they come from the river, they get to the little lighthouse and they see the big factories in the distance.’ So I’m looking at a shot that covers 180 degrees of bare landscape, with a huge factory building in the distance, and it’s supposed to be night. And there are bodies of water that would require backlight. Lighting that whole landscape was daunting, involving maybe eight or nine generators, a huge amount of work … and the expense! So I turned to Guy and said, ‘I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I can’t light this — it’s too vast. The good news is that we can do it day-for-night.’ 68
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“Thank God,” adds Rousselot, “for the DI and CGI!” Because each shot required CG elements to place the scene in the 19th century, the cinematographer could rely on the visualeffects team to modify the sky, which is always the big challenge in day-fornight photography. “If you want to sell the idea of night, you have to sell the sky,” he observes. “On a moonlit night, the sky is bright, even if it’s almost black. Also, if you have practical lights, doing day-for-night is very complicated, because practicals can’t overpower daylight.” Knowing a DI lay ahead, Rousselot exposed the day-for-night footage “normally, although I certainly didn’t overexpose.” To create moonlight in the dayAmerican Cinematographer
for-night footage, he used backlight or sidelight. For a Technocrane shot of Holmes and Watson on the deck of the boat, he used a 100K SoftSun on a cherry picker to provide ¾ backlight from the moon. He used backlighting from the sun wherever possible and “pounded HMIs on a 12-by” to create backlight on a closer shot of Holmes and Watson leaning against the lighthouse wall. Visual-effects supervisor Chas Jarrett explains that to create the night skyline, 2nd-unit cinematographer Alan Stewart shot day-for-night background plates. Two Arri 435s were mounted on a single Libra head “and shot across each other so we could stitch the two shots together and pan and scan within a 4:1 image,” says Jarrett. 6K HMI Pars were placed on the shore in the middle of the frame to create reflections in the water. “We painted out the HMIs, added CG gas lamps, cloned the reflections and moved them around,” says Jarrett. Inglis describes the day-for-night grading as a mixture of pale colors and silvery darkness. He explains, “First we desaturated a lot, because at night you don’t see color, and then we added a subtle cyan wash. Finally, we brought the skies down, which was quite tricky because they varied with each shot. Harsh sunlight turns to day-for-night very easily because it has a silvery quality. Philippe noted that night isn’t really blue; it’s gray.” While Rousselot was shooting in the U.K., English was preparing the lighting on the sets being built in Brooklyn. “I had one day of pre-light, so I relied completely on Jack, a wonderful gaffer who has been my collaborator for 20 years,” says Rousselot. “I use him whenever I shoot in the States. He spent a month on the sets for Sherlock Holmes, prepping the Tower Bridge and Baker Street sets.” The apartment on Baker Street is the setting for several scenes, including Holmes’ elaborate experiments to test his theories about the case. The windows look out on a TransLite back-
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Rousselot (left) confers with Ritchie and an unidentified crewmember.
ing. The filmmakers chose to not remove the ceiling of the set. The base lighting involved space lights just outside the windows that could be lowered for different ambiences, a few Nine-light Mini-Brutes through 216 diffusion to provide fill on the side facing the windows, and occasional Chinese lanterns on the floor. Jarrett encourages the use of TransLites over greenscreen because he believes it’s more economical, and he
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often had the visual-effects department make the transparencies. A TransLite was also used on a location, an office overlooking the Thames from which Holmes makes a daring escape, but Jarrett notes that the TransLite had to be replaced with a greenscreen for several shots where the camera got close to the window, “because we weren’t sure the TransLite would hold up with that perspective.” Jarrett estimates there are 300
greenscreen shots in Sherlock Holmes, many of them in the climactic sequence that takes place on an upper level of the Tower Bridge construction site. This was shot on a set completely surrounded by greenscreen walls and floor. Rousselot’s team lit the set with a ceiling grid of 300 space lights that were placed on dimmers. “I wasn’t using all the space lights at once, but I needed to be able to have lighting variations,” says Rousselot. “They were divided in rows and columns so that I could balance the greenscreen and the actors.” Indeed, minimizing green spill on the actors was a major challenge. The filmmakers tried to keep the set at least 20' from the screen, which implied building it 20' off the floor. Off-camera portions of the screen were covered in black drapes. The Tower Bridge sequence begins with a Technocrane shot swooping around Irene as she runs. Jarrett explains that CG wobble, weave and rolling were added to the image “to
make it feel as if it was shot with a helicopter.” The multiple ironies of creating a virtual helicopter move to add realism to a greenscreen set in a 19th-century story are not lost on the filmmakers. Inglis notes that the last days of a DI are often fully occupied by a CGIladen final act. “On a lot of films now, you end up with a very short space of time to grade what is sometimes the hardest scene in the film: the big finale,” says the colorist. “And it’s often the hardest thing because it’s mostly CGI.” On Sherlock Holmes, this process was greatly simplified by the use of digital mattes; for a few key scenes, effects facilities Double Negative and Framestore sent both the final image with the composite effect and black-and-white mattes of the separate elements. In the Tower Bridge sequence, this meant an outline matte for the stormy CG sky, a second matte for the CG bridge, and a third (foreground) matte of the actors’ silhouettes cut out from the greenscreen. Inglis
could then use the mattes to, for example, grade the foreground actors separately from the CG sky or bridge. After praising 2nd-unit cinematographers Stewart and Neal Norton, camera operator Des Whelan, and the other members of his crew, Rousselot assesses the evolution of the movie’s look: “Guy wanted to make the film realistic as opposed to stylized, but he also wanted to give the film a recognizable look, which in a way is a contradiction. But contradictions are always interesting! This meant we had to try to find something that was neither realistic nor stylized, and I think we finally found it at the end of the DI.” “As a filmmaker, I’m really trying to get away from reality — I want to create an enhanced reality,” affirms Ritchie. “Philippe and I talked about a look, and, like all these things, you sort of change things on the day. It sort of naturally percolates. Lighting is not necessarily an intellectual process. It’s an
art form, and I suppose with any art, you really have to put your intellect out of the equation. I don’t think it comes from the mind; it comes from somewhere else, rather like music.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS Super 1.85:1 Super 35mm and High-Definition Video Panaflex Millennium, XL; Arri 435; Phantom HD Panavision Primo lenses Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, Vision2 250D 5205 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
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TheRight Stuff Caleb Deschanel, ASC is honored with the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award amid his still-thriving career. by Jon Silberg •|•
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n The Black Stallion (1979), his first feature as a director of photography, future ASC member Caleb Deschanel had an opportunity to collaborate with a director, Carroll Ballard, whose goal was the kind of visually poetic feature cinematographers long to shoot. After wrapping the project, however, Deschanel was far from certain that an illustrious career awaited him. The production was difficult; many of the Canadian crewmembers were deeply skeptical of Ballard’s improvisational approach, and the director and cinematographer had begun to have their own doubts. Deschanel was reassured, however, when his wife, actress Mary Jo Deschanel, saw the finished film. “She was blown away by it,” he recalls, “and she got so mad at Carroll and me for having been so cautious, so negative.” He went on to win the Los Angeles Film Critics’ cinematography prize and earn BSC and BAFTA award nominations for his work on the film. Deschanel’s cinematography career, which so far
American Cinematographer
Photos by Ron Grover; Sidney Baldwin; Bruce Herman; Brian Hamill, SMPSP; Takashi Seida; Andrew Cooper, SMPSP; and Philippe Antonello.
Opposite: Caleb Deschanel, ASC (right) consults with director Philip Kaufman during filming of The Right Stuff. This page, top: Kaufman and Deschanel flank legendary pilot Chuck Yeager on a break during the shoot. Bottom: Deschanel takes to a crane to capture a shot for the film.
includes such memorable films as Being There (1979), The Right Stuff (1983), The Natural (1984), Fly Away Home (1996), The Patriot (2000), The Passion of the Christ (2004), National Treasure (2004) and Ask the Dust (2005), has indeed been impressive, and it’s still going strong. Next month he will accept the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award, the latest honor on a roster that includes an ASC Award (for The Patriot), two other ASC nominations (for The Passion of the Christ and Fly Away Home), and five Academy Award nominations (for The Passion of the Christ, The Patriot, Fly Away Home, The Natural and The Right Stuff ). A native of Philadelphia, Pa., Deschanel became interested in photography as a boy after receiving a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye as a gift. He took up the hobby in high school, shooting photos for the school newspaper and yearbook, but when he began considering colleges, he decided to pursue a career in medicine. He enrolled in Johns Hopkins University, thinking he would become a doctor, but his interest in the visual arts soon took hold, and he began studying art and photography. A meeting with New York-based photographer George Pickow led to an opportunity to work
as his assistant during summer breaks from Hopkins. “I knew I wanted to be involved in photography, but at that point I hadn’t thought of it as a career,” says Deschanel. Working in the darkroom and watching Pickow shoot the eclectic assignments that were typical of a successful photographer’s shop in the mid-1960s helped push Deschanel closer to the idea of pursuing photography as a profession. “George did all kinds of stuff — catalogs, album covers, magazine covers,” recalls Deschanel. “He’d take six models and some wigs out for a couple of days and shoot a year’s covers for one of the www.theasc.com
murder magazines that were popular at the time. He could use each model at least twice by changing her wig.” Deschanel spent his free time in New York’s revival houses, where he mainly watched foreign films; the French New Wave and Italian neo-realism made a strong impression. “Those films just felt more accessible to me than the big studio movies of that time, and I really liked the themes and stories,” he recalls. “They were much more naturalistic. There was a certain casualness to them, and it made me realize you could actually do a movie like that instead of Ben-Hur. The French filmmakers didn’t have the budget for 20 January 2010
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Right: Deschanel at work on Being There, his first collaboration with director Hal Ashby. Below: The cinematographer glances up during filming of More American Graffiti, his second feature credit.
arc lights to fill all the shadow areas. Even now, the big studio films of the 1950s and ’60s seem artificial to me.” After graduating from Hopkins with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts, 74
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Deschanel decided to follow two friends and fellow Hopkins grads, Walter Murch and Matthew Robbins, to the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema and American Cinematographer
Television. “I wasn’t going to USC necessarily to study cinematography, but I knew how to use a light meter, so I got enlisted to shoot a lot of student films in my first year.” He also applied his experience to documentary work for companies such as Encyclopedia Britannica and Churchill Films. After completing the requirements for his USC degree, in 1968, Deschanel enrolled in the first class at the American Film Institute along with such aspiring filmmakers as David Lynch and Terrence Malick. “Today it’s a real school with real classes, but at that time it was more of a place to hang out,” he notes. “There was a great screening room, and we could drink hot chocolate, watch films by Hitchcock and John Ford, and trade ideas.” He shot quite a few films at the AFI, including Malick’s first directorial effort, the short film Lanton Mills. The school agreed to grant him a small stipend so he could intern on a professional movie set, but Deschanel’s choice of cinematographer proved unacceptable to the powers-that-be: he wanted to observe New York cinematographer (and future ASC member) Gordon Willis. At that point, Willis had only two features to his name, End of the Road and Loving, and “the AFI had never heard of him,” recalls Deschanel. “But I’d seen those movies and decided that was the kind of work I wanted to do, so I stuck to my guns.” He paid his own way to intern with Willis on The People Next Door. “I observed every aspect of what Gordon did on that film. I spent time with him at the lab, and I could see how he exposed film and where the printer lights were. I would go around the set and read all the lights, and then Gordy would call out, ‘2.8,’ and I’d think, ‘Wow, that seems gutsy!’ He talked to me about his ideas on every aspect of the job. I realized that he’d set his exposures so that nobody could print it any differently than he wanted. “The important thing I learned from him, though, was how important
it is to conceptualize the way you’re going to shoot a film,” Deschanel continues. “Think about All The President’s Men. It’s about the minutiae that build and can bring down an entire government, and the whole visual approach contrasts the small with the large, focusing on the finest details and then widening out to a broader perspective. If you conceptualize something like that and stick to it, the audience may never realize what you have in mind specifically, but your choices can still communicate it to them on some subconscious level.” Willis remarks, “As a cinematographer, I’ve tried to do what I thought was appropriate for a given story, and I think Caleb has always shared that perspective. If I’ve helped, in some small way, to focus his thinking over the years, I couldn’t be happier. He understands the elegance of simplicity, and I think his visual choices have been superb.” After shooting more short films and documentaries, Deschanel wrote, directed and shot Trains, a short film that won the Silver Bear at the 1976 Berlin Film Festival. The next year, Ballard, a neighbor and collaborator on some documentary films, brought him aboard The Black Stallion, Ballard’s first feature. The production was filmed in Sardinia and Canada. “Back then, the Toronto crew was used to TV productions and that fast mode of working — they were used to directors who’d shoot from a list of shots,” says Deschanel. “Carroll hated call sheets. He wanted to be able to change his mind and shoot what he felt like shooting. I’d say, ‘Guys, Carroll is a really wonderful filmmaker,’ but they didn’t believe it.” Ballard credits Deschanel for his perseverance and ingenuity throughout the shoot. “Caleb has a tremendous eye, and he can invent things right on the spot,” he says. “For example, there was a scene where the boy [Kelly Reno] is supposed to get on the horse that’s standing in the water, and we just couldn’t get the horse in the water. We decided to shoot the scene from under-
Deschanel offers his daughters, Zooey (at camera) and Emily, a glimpse of life on the set during filming of The Slugger’s Wife.
water, where you could just see hooves and feet, so we could use a different horse. Neither of us had ever done any underwater photography, but Caleb got this very old housing for the Éclair and just did it with the most rudimentary equipment imaginable. Really, some of the neatest shots in the movie are things I didn’t even know he was shooting.” Ballard recalls a particularly rough day when he was sure the entire project had become a mistake. “I was just wiped out, and I was sure the film was a catastrophe,” says the director. “Caleb and I were walking together, trying to get back to the car, and we came across this river that just seemed to appear out of nowhere. We had to get across the river to get to where we were going, and Caleb said, ‘Come on. Get on my back and I’ll carry you across.’ I’ll never forget it. He was kind of like that the whole way through the film.” www.theasc.com
Once completed, The Black Stallion sat on the shelf for two years. “The suits at United Artists said it was unreleasable,” Ballard recalls. “They said, ‘What is this, some kind of art film for kids?’” It wasn’t until 1979, when Ballard’s friend Francis Ford Coppola threw his support behind the film, that it reached theaters — and achieved critical acclaim and box-office success. Deschanel was offered his second feature by George Lucas, one of his classmates at USC. Lucas was producing More American Graffiti (1979), a sequel to his phenomenally successful American Graffiti, and he and director Bill Norton wanted visuals that were somewhat experimental: 16mm newsreel, anamorphic 35mm, standard 35mm and multiple-screen psychedelic imagery. (The film’s alternate title is Purple Haze.) “The 16mm material really showed me what a great medium film is,” Deschanel notes. “We January 2010
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Top: Deschanel checks Robert Redford’s light during filming of The Natural as the actor chats with director Barry Levinson. Right: Levinson and Deschanel line up a shot.
blew it up to 35mm and it still looked ‘too good.’ We ended up making prints of the 16mm material and then striking negatives from the prints to give it more of the gritty, contrasty look we wanted.” The experience was valuable, “and I think a lot of the movie is cool, but I’m afraid it became a series of mechanical devices that overtook the story.” While seeking his next cinematography opportunity, Deschanel was approached by Hal Ashby about shooting Being There. The two had met when Deschanel was still at USC, planning a documentary about film editors that never came to fruition; 76
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Ashby had been a successful editor before moving on to directing. Ashby took a chance on Deschanel despite the fact that neither of his two previous features had opened yet. Being There, which stars Peter Sellers as a simpleminded gardener who is mistaken for a brilliant political philosopher, “is probably the film most influenced by my relationship with Gordon Willis,” says Deschanel. “The way I lit the film and our use of tableau-style shots were all influenced by my internship with Gordy.” Soon thereafter, Deschanel made his feature-directing debut with The Escape Artist (1982), shot by American Cinematographer
Stephen Burum, ASC. Deschanel then shot two more films for Ashby, the Rolling Stones concert film Let’s Spend the Night Together (1983) and the comedy The Slugger’s Wife (1985). The Stones film offered him a chance to coordinate multi-camera shooting at an array of large arena concerts. Deschanel recalls that Ashby was dividing his time between the Stones film and another project during prep, and the cinematographer often found himself planning coverage based on the band’s frustratingly impermanent set list. The Stones weren’t always delighted to find themselves on camera while offstage, he adds. “At one point, Keith Richards spotted [Steadicam inventor] Garrett Brown filming him backstage and turned and shoved the Steadicam really hard. Now, Garrett’s 6-foot-6, and he doesn’t like people shoving his Steadicam. I saw the expression on Garrett’s face, and I knew he would really like to pummel Richards; I also knew that would not be a good idea five minutes before the show! I caught Garrett’s eye and shook my head. Fortunately, he calmed down, regrouped and followed the Stones out onstage in front of 75,000 screaming fans. It’s an amazing shot.” Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s nonfiction bestseller The Right Stuff (AC Nov. ’83) offered Deschanel the chance to try his hand at an epic canvas. “The movie tries to get to what ‘the right stuff ’ means and who has it,” he says. “There are two perspectives: Chuck Yeager’s and the astronauts’. It’s two different eras but the same idea. Yeager lives in a simpler world, whereas the astronauts live in a world of hype and bravado. But after the astronauts get squeezed through the hype and come out the other end, they survive with the right stuff, too.” Asked about one of the film’s most famous images — the shot that shows the astronauts walking down a hallway — Deschanel remarks, “I think those images only have meaning within the larger context of the whole film. You have to earn the right to say,
CALEB DESCHANEL , ASC Congratulations Caleb on receiving the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CINEMATOGRAPHERS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Caleb, Congratulations on this distinguished honor. Your creativity and vision have inspired filmmakers throughout the world. Lucky for us your artistry will continue to excite us for years to come!!! www.panavision.com
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Deschanel at work on Carroll Ballard’s Fly Away Home, a production that employed Ultralight aircraft to get unique perspectives of its winged subjects.
‘This shot means this.…’ And you establish ‘this’ with all the shots that come before, the shots that show you the everyday activities and humiliations these guys had to go through to reach the point where they become heroic and extraordinary. I think that’s a major difference between still photography, which is about the meaning of an individual image, and cinematography.” Kaufman recalls that the famous hallway shot came together at the last minute, when he and Deschanel noticed the way the light looked in the hallway of the office space they were using for preproduction. “It was a totally improvised shot — it was never scheduled,” says the director. “I just said, ‘Let’s get the guys into their suits and walk them down 78
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the hall.’ It was probably a half-hour of shooting time, but that shot ended up being talked about and imitated. It worked because Caleb and the actors really shared an enthusiasm about getting the film made.” One of the shoot’s other unexpected moments, Kaufman adds, was a bit hairier. “We were shooting a scene with chimpanzees at USC, and one of the chimps attacked Caleb as he was setting up the camera. [The chimp wrangler] got the chimp away from Caleb, and he just went right back to setting up the camera!” The Right Stuff went on to earn eight Academy Award nominations, including Deschanel’s first, and won four statuettes. Deschanel notched his second Oscar nomination for his next American Cinematographer
feature, The Natural (AC April ’85), Barry Levinson’s adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s novel about a mysteriously gifted baseball player, Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford). The story begins with a bolt of lightning striking a tree whose wood is then crafted into a baseball bat — one of many mythic images that gave Deschanel the cue to apply a somewhat expressionistic approach to his cinematography. One of the film’s best-known shots isolates Glenn Close, who plays Hobbs’ first love, from the surrounding crowd in the stands during a baseball game. Deschanel used an ethereal backlight to illuminate her gossamer hat and blonde hair. “We figured a nice way to get Roy to notice her would be to put some intense light on her,”
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Gil Hubbs, ASC stumbled into cinematography when a friend asked me to help shoot an industrial film. We had a Bolex camera and three lights, and I thought the process was a lot more fun than working as a waiter. After that, I bought an Arriflex camera for $800 and started shooting anything I could, mostly working for free. “My education has come from many people who have been kind enough to share their experiences. Ron Dexter, ASC introduced me to American Cinematographer, and it was as if a magician’s secrets had been revealed. I realized the only limits to my future would be the ones I placed on myself. AC continues to be an inspiration and a constant reminder that every creative accomplishment starts with an idea.”
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©photo by Owen Roizman, ASC
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Top: Deschanel makes a last-minute adjustment to Bai Ling’s crown for a scene in Anna and the King. Right: The cinematographer prepares a crane shot on the show.
recalls the cinematographer. “[Cocostume designer] Bernie Pollack came up with the hat she wears — it’s not really even a hat, it’s just a white, translucent ring. I decided to put a 185-amp Baby Arc in the stands above Glenn and have some of the extras stationed between her and the light. On cue, one extra would move and the 80
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light would get brighter, and then someone else would move and it would get even brighter. By the time all the people walk away, her hat and hair are exploding with light. She stands up, and Roy sees her because the light behind her has become almost blindingly bright.” Deschanel joined the ASC in American Cinematographer
September 1984 after being proposed for membership by Burum, Haskell Wexler and Conrad L. Hall. Shortly thereafter, he decided to spend more time closer to home and took nearly a decade off from shooting. He started a commercial-production company, Dark Light Pictures, and took up directing. During those years, he tackled commercials, the 1988 feature Crusoe and some episodic television (including three episodes of Twin Peaks). He returned to cinematography with Andy Bergman’s It Could Happen to You (AC July ’94) and then reteamed with Ballard on Fly Away Home (AC June ’97), which tells the story of a girl (Anna Paquin) who leads a family of orphaned geese back to their home. Ballard’s work methods remained similar to those on their first collaboration, but this time, the two men were completely sure of their approach. “Fortunately, the kind of film we were making allowed Carroll to work the way he likes to work,” Deschanel says.
“We had a little girl, her father [ Jeff Daniels], some geese and the Ultralight airplanes. It was like having a boy and a horse — Carroll could drastically alter a lot of the scenes at will and still have everything work out.” After shooting Forest Whitaker’s Hope Floats (1998), Luis Mandoki’s Message in a Bottle (1999) and Andy Tennant’s Anna and the King (1999), Deschanel signed onto Roland Emmerich’s The Patriot (AC June ’01), a Revolutionary War drama starring Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger. “Roland was great to work with,” says Deschanel. “He was used to working in a grand scale and made it seem easy.” The project provided the rare opportunity to shoot 65mm, which the filmmakers used for the battle scenes. Deschanel notes, “We never struck a 70mm print, but even when it’s reduced to anamorphic 35mm, 65mm gives you so much more detail. It’s like scanning film: even if you’re releasing in 2K, scanning at 4K or higher looks better.” He regards The Patriot as an example of a particularly successful collaboration with a production designer, in this case Kirk Petrucelli. “It’s always great to work with a production designer who understands what you need to be able to do with lighting. I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of fine ones, and the house interiors Kirk did on The Patriot were just so well designed. We were able to get light into all those spaces and still have them look very natural while shooting from any angle.” Deschanel then shot the 2003 features The Hunted (for William Friedkin) and Timeline (for Richard Donner). After wrapping Timeline, Donner recommended Deschanel to his friend Mel Gibson for The Passion of the Christ (AC March ’04). Deschanel acknowledges that he didn’t anticipate the controversy Gibson’s film would generate. “I read the script and saw a story about someone who shoulders the burden of others’ pain and absolves them of responsibility, and that seemed like an exciting premise to me,” he says.
“I was brought up as a Quaker, so the story was new to me. Quakers just sit around in excruciating silence and hope peace will happen.” The filmmakers’ approach emphasized a heightened realism. “Mel wanted viewers to feel as though they were there, and using the Aramaic language certainly contributed to that,” says the cinematographer. “I was inspired by the work of some of the painters I’d studied
in college. At Hopkins, a wonderful teacher named Phoebe Stanton got me excited about many Renaissance painters. Mel is a big fan of Caravaggio, and we thought The Passion was a great chance to use that kind of imagery as inspiration for the visuals.” Deschanel’s most recent cinematography credits are the family drama My Sister’s Keeper (2009) and the fantasy film The Spiderwick Chronicles
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The Right Stuff (AC March ’08). He has recently returned to directing television on occasion, including episodes of Law & Order and an episode of Bones, which stars his daughter Emily. His younger daughter, Zooey, is also a successful actress; she recently co-starred in (500) Days of Summer. Deschanel says he and his wife neither encouraged nor discouraged their children to work in the business. “We impressed upon them the idea that to do anything well, you have to love it and work hard at it. I think they understood that because they’d grown up seeing the hard work that goes into making movies. They’re both very talented, but they also know talent is only part of the picture; there’s also luck and a lot of hard work and dedication.” Kaufman observes that Deschanel’s daughters have a good role model on all fronts. “Talk about the right stuff,” he marvels. “Caleb showed that when we worked together. He was totally committed and did whatever was necessary to get the movie done.” ●
Top: Deschanel lines up an overhead angle for The Patriot. Middle: The cinematographer checks the light on his wife, Mary Jo Deschanel, for an interior scene in the Revolutionary War drama. Bottom: Deschanel checks Jim Caviezel’s light during filming of The Passion of the Christ.
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Post Focus
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Inside Technicolor’s New Hub by Michael Goldman
An August story in the Los Angeles Times declared that Technicolor had recently “invested more than $200 million in its production facilities” at a time when “much of Hollywood is scaling back.” The article referenced the debut of Technicolor’s new, six-story headquarters in Hollywood and expansions at other Technicolor facilities around the world, and alluded to Technicolor’s goal of “keeping pace with the digital revolution that has reshaped the entertainment industry.” The new building does retain some familiar components, such as two floors dedicated to traditional telecine systems and the company’s servicing of tape-to-tape color-correction. The building’s physical location, near the venerable Sunset-Gower Studios, is where the film industry was born more than a century ago, and its interior walls, adorned with vintage photos, spotlight Technicolor’s rich Hollywood history. Still, a tour of the facility makes it clear that the company has embraced the industry’s inexorable move toward digital production and post workflows and is offering comprehensive ways to manage those new paths. In truth, Technicolor was pursuing that agenda long before it moved into its new headquarters, which has become a foundation upon which the company’s various digital initiatives can finally come together. For the first time, Technicolor is able to plug its Creative Bridge on-set service and equipment-rental business, its DP Lights previsualization service, its data-centric Fanfare dailies-mastering system, its HD Dailies on Demand viewing system, and its evolving Web-based, remote color-timing collaboration system for digital-intermediate workflows directly into a single, centralized, digital hub for clients in all 84
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sectors, working in all formats and using a myriad of workflow approaches. “The concept is that we should have a data-centric model, but one that is agnostic,” explains Marco Bario, vice president of theatrical postproduction for the company. “Once you build your hub, it doesn’t matter if the material was acquired on film or digitally, or what your production workflow was. You can connect to our systems and we can turn the material into data, perform the services needed and make it all look good coming out the back end. “I’d like to say this was all figured out exactly when we drew up plans for the new building, but in some ways, the egg came before the chicken,” he continues. “We wanted a new headquarters, but we couldn’t build it just for today’s workflows. This was an opportunity to start with a blank piece of paper and integrate all these different solutions into one building. We’ve essentially built a pipeline that resembles a DI pipeline, except it runs from the very start of the process to the very end.” In planning the new facility, Technicolor knew many of its customers would continue acquiring on film while a growing customer base would be capturing digitally. “They would all need different workflows, so the idea was to build something robust enough to let them do whatever they want to on the front end, knowing our pipeline here could support it,” says Bario. DP Lights, a front-end previs system designed to give cinematographers more color control throughout production and into the DI process, now enables productions to emulate different film stocks, grades and saturation levels during early testing, dailies, the editorial process and so on, all without altering the original data. “We’ve updated the system to export information in the industry-standard ASC CDL format all along the chain,” says Brian Gaffney, vice president of Technicolor Creative Bridge. “On set, clients can shoot however they want and get a color-correction system that has real-time, dynamic film emulation integrated into it. They can switch back to their original picture to see the blacks or the highlights with some true, meaningful value, and they can plug all of their data into our pipe with increased options.” Through Creative Bridge, Bario says Technicolor is “maintaining a link” between production and post, allowing filmmakers to compare what they shoot with what they envision for their final imagery, without having to continually develop proprietary methods for doing so. Central to that concept is that any and all data, from any stage along the path, will be easily accessible at other stages. Technicolor officials say the company has collaborated with various vendors to incorporate almost all currently significant file formats and software tools into the pipeline.
American Cinematographer
Photos courtesy of Technicolor.
Technicolor’s new Hollywood headquarters honors the company’s heritage while keeping pace with modern technology.
As data leaves the set and travels through the Technicolor hub, the company’s Fanfare system plugs into the process to offer a single, integrated pipeline for handling both film-acquired and digitally acquired dailies. By building a solution for dailies coming from either acquisition universe, Technicolor intends to avoid the worst aspects of the process in both worlds; for example, the company will no longer need to re-scan and re-grade film-acquired material that has already been telecined for dailies. Built upon Technicolor’s Bones Dailies technology, Fanfare aims to bring the color, deliverables and archiving pipelines together in a single process. At press time, Technicolor was finalizing the elimination of videotape from the deliverables process, meaning that after initial film scans, the entire approach will be filebased. “In traditional telecine, we make files from videotapes and send those to the customer, but in this workflow, we have files already,” says Bario. “We are well into development on having the ability to take the files this system generates, bake in color and other important factors, and then transport [that new file] as a deliverable. This is more efficient and accurate and saves a generation. Soon, we will have a render farm and a management system that will start making those files in the background while the colorist continues working. We expect to make the first two file formats — Avid DNX and MPEG-2 for standard-def DVDs — by early 2010, and we’ll then refine the GUI [graphical user interface] and add additional file formats.” During AC’s visit, Technicolor demonstrated the real-time, remote-collaboration capabilities of its DI arm, which was recently used to color-correct the teaser for Christopher Nolan’s Inception. The project allowed cinematographer Wally Pfister, ASC to work from Technicolor’s Soho facility, collaborating in real time with colorist Chris Wagley, who was using DaVinci Resolve color-correction technology at Technicolor’s new Hollywood headquarters. After the grading session, 4K data was rendered out at the new building and simultaneously sent to Technicolor’s Pinewood laboratory in London and answer-print facility in North Hollywood for filmouts. Pfister calls the
experience “a great convenience that did not exist in the past,” adding that he found the session “flawless, functioning just as if we were all in the same room together.” In keeping with the concept that filmmakers should be able to utilize dailies anywhere, at any time, Technicolor has connected another tool to its hub: HD Dailies on Demand. Essentially, that service allows users to receive and view Fanfare dailies on a standard computer through a
secure Web browser or, in a process dubbed Technicolor Remote Grading, a proprietary GUI. The approach revolves around offering content creators an HDquality, high-encode bit rate playback server capable of supporting DMXencoded content, played out any number of ways, with that data then available to the editorial team to maximize their ability to take advantage of earlier work done on those dailies. “Clients get a cheaper encode rate, because instead of making a
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Left: Fanfare Dailies offers a streamlined post workflow. Below: Dan Lion, vice president of Technicolor Creative Bridge, reviews footage in a digital suite.
tape for their dailies system and another for the DVDs, plus digitizing all their material for their Avid, we make a single digitization pass for editorial,” says Gaffney. “They can play content at full HD bandwidth or as full 2K files [off Technicolor’s Fanfare server], and they can receive dailies [online] and drag them to their desktop with the ability to scroll to any scene, reel or take, or see all clips at once.” The colorist Sparkle, who in his years at Technicolor has worked on both the film and broadcast sides, raves about having such collaborative tools and the ability to plug into the larger data pipe for his commercial and television work. He calls Technicolor’s new hub and workflow paradigm “a global approach to the problem. People can be off somewhere working on their next project while they’re finishing the current project with us. This benefits us in broadcast, commercials and features, all of which have access to the same [infrastructure]. There was a time when you came to us, did your [film] scans for your feature, and then went to the marketing department, where they did their edit, and then you had to rescan your material. Now, everything is readily available to all of us, anywhere.” HPA Honors Post Professionals The Hollywood Post Alliance recently presented its fourth annual HPA Awards during a gala event at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The HPA Awards honor top post talent in features, television and commercials. Judges this year included ASC members Antonio 86
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Calvache, David Darby, Fred Goodich, Levie Isaacks, Denis Maloney, Bill Neil and Yuri Neyman. ASC President Michael Goi and Daryn Okada, ASC presented the awards for Outstanding Color Grading to ASC associate member Stefan Sonnenfeld of Company 3, for the Pepsi “Pass” commercial; Siggy Ferstl of Company 3, for the “Yankee Stadium Tribute: Yogi’s Bronx” TV special; and ASC associate member Steven J. Scott of EFilm, for the feature Julie & Julia (AC Aug. ’09). Other nominees in the category were Valerie Junge of Big Sky Editorial (American Express, “Members Moments”); Alex Bickel of Outside Editorial (Jaguar, “XJ Launch Film”); Sergio Cremasco of Rumblefish (“Four Single Fathers”); Tim Vincent of LaserPacific (Mad Men, “The Jet Set”); Dave Cole of LaserPacific (Pride and Glory); and Natasha Leonnet of EFilm (Defiance). Outstanding Editing awards were presented to Chris Dickens, ACE, for Slumdog Millionaire; Lynne Willingham, ACE, of Sony Pictures Entertainment, for Breaking Bad, “ABQ”; and Neil Gust of Outside Editorial, for the Jaguar ad “XF/XK.” Outstanding Compositing awards went to Nelson Sepulveda, Ben O’Brien, Matthew Brumit and Robert Hoffmeister of Industrial Light & Magic (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen); Thomas Tannenberger, Olcun Tan, Shane Cook and Josiah Howison of Gradient Effects (Krupp, “Eine Deutsche Familie”); and Colin Renshaw of Animal Logic (Toyota, “Ninja Kittens”). Outstanding Audio Post awards were given to Chris Jenkins, Frank A. American Cinematographer
Montano, Scott Hecker and Eric Norris of Universal Studios Sound (Watchmen); Thomas Harris, Michael Ferdie, Chris Reeves, Mark Fleming and Tom Dahl of Walt Disney Studio Post Production Services (Fringe, “Unleashed”); and Nathan Dubin of Margarita Mix Santa Monica (Honda Civic, “Grooves”). Three Engineering Excellence awards were also presented. DVS Digital Video Systems earned one for Clipster, a complete hardware and software turnkey finishing system capable of performing uncompressed image processes at up to 4K resolution in real time. Signiant earned an award for its Content Distribution Management software, which was developed to centrally manage, secure, accelerate and implement business-process automation for digital media content. Finally, S.two Corp. earned an award for the OB-1 Uncompressed Digital Recorder, which provides on-board flash-based recording and interfaces to a complete workflow system for post and archiving. Sound designer Ben Burtt was honored with the Charles S. Swartz Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Post Production, and Paul Haggar was honored with the HPA Lifetime Achievement Award. “These awards honor those who make the art happen, the collaborative partners throughout the creative process,” says HPA President Leon Silverman, an ASC associate member. “It is no small accomplishment to contribute to a vision and make it reality.” ●
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Filmmakers’ Forum
I
How Digital SLRs Can Change the Way We Make Movies by Shane Hurlbut, ASC
I first saw the Canon EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR at an ASC function at Samy’s Camera in Los Angeles, just prior to the camera’s commercial release. The 2½-pound camera, which has a 36mm x 24mm 21-megapixel CMOS sensor, can shoot 1920x1080 video at 30 fps (recording to UDMA compact flash cards), and its ASA range is adjustable from 50 to 25,600. I have since shot a number of projects with the 5D, and I’ve never been so excited by the creative possibilities a camera offers cinematographers. With its incredibly small footprint, which enables a lightning-fast working method, this camera truly is a game-changer. The lightbulb went on over my head when I considered Canon’s long history in still photography. Motion-picture cinematography originated with still photography, but HD technology has, by and large, been based on ENG videography, an awesome achievement in documenting the news, but not the proper foundation for theatrical features. What we’ve been missing is an HD camera born out of the still-photography tradition, and that’s exactly what we’ve been handed with Canon’s 5D (and 7D, but I’ll get to that later). The 5D’s small size and light weight make it infinitely versatile and nimble, enabling you to move quickly and capture perspectives that would be impossible with any other camera system, and its sensor size provides what are essentially the depthof-field characteristics of VistaVision. It would be a good sensor in any body, but the fact that it showed up in a 21⁄2-pound still camera completely shifts the paradigm for moviemaking. You can handhold the 5D in ways unthinkable with film cameras, and for 88
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long periods without fatigue. Sure, you can still mount it on sticks, dress it up with a mattebox and create a monster, but that’s moving in the wrong direction. As an example, let’s talk about car mounts. People have said we can throw away the speed-rail rig a film camera requires and use a small suction-cup rig for the 5D, but that’s not going far enough. With the 5D, we can even throw out the suction cups. Shooting from a pickup truck, I can stand in the bed and reach forward to handhold the camera right outside the driver-side window, moving the camera in ways not possible with a rig while getting closer than a pursuit arm could allow. Inside cars, too, you can move the camera easily and capture perspectives no other camera system can deliver. My first chance to put the 5D through its paces came when McG asked me to shoot a series of 10 three-minute Webisodes that served as an interactive marketing campaign for Terminator Salvation (AC June ’09). We shot all 10 episodes in three days. After that, I used the 5D to shoot the feature-length documentary Cheech & Chong’s Hey Watch This, directed by Christian Charles and produced by the Weinstein Co., and which mixes footage from the comedians’ live stage show (shot with Panasonic AJHPX3700 VariCams) with a series of backstage vignettes (shot with the 5D). I shot the entire feature in three days. I’ve also used the 5D to shoot a series of short recruitment videos for the U.S. Navy. One features a Navy swimmer performing a water rescue; we follow him from the base, where he gets the call, into the rescue chopper, out over the ocean and down into the drink, where he rescues a downed pilot. We shot all of that action — including shots inside the helicopter, from one helicopter to another, and underwater — in three hours with seven 5Ds.
American Cinematographer
Photos courtesy of Shane Hurlbut, ASC.
Left: Shane Hurlbut, ASC adjusts a Canon EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR in a helmet-cam rig worn by a Navy SEAL. Above: A handheld rig is used to follow the action indoors.
The way I work fast is to increase the number of cameras I’m carrying. On The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, the feature I’m shooting now for directors Scott Waugh and Mike McCoy, we started with seven 5Ds, and that wasn’t enough. When we went up to 15 cameras, we became incredibly efficient. We keep a handful of cameras stripped down and ready for whatever unforeseeable mounting situation the day might call for, and all the rest are built in a different configuration at the beginning of the day, so there’s always a camera ready to go for any situation. We never have to waste time switching a camera from handheld mode to helmet-cam mode, Steadicam mode or whatever the situation requires. Carrying so many cameras does not increase our footprint, however. With the 5D, I go in with a crew of five to nine, and all of the cameras and their accessories fit in nine Pelican cases. Working like this requires an open mind and a back-to-film-school approach in which everyone is flexible enough to tackle multiple jobs. The projects I’ve mentioned wouldn’t have been possible without my elite team, which includes my longtime camera operators, Gary Hatfield and Rudy Harbon, and camera assistants Marc Margulies, Darin Necessary and Mike Svitak. When we go out on a shoot, I can give each of them his own camera, and we can knock out a huge number of setups in a very short time. Everyone has a great sense of framing, composition and light. We’ve also come up with kits for each camera that fit everything you need to shoot a movie inside one Pelican case: ND, memory cards, backup batteries, chargers, etc. Since the 5D is still new to moviemaking, the way I use it is continually evolving. For example, we made the Terminator Webisodes before Canon released the free, downloadable firmware upgrade for the 5D that enabled manual adjustment of ASA, shutter speed and f-stop; this marked a huge step forward in making the camera production-friendly. Prior to the firmware release, we used Nikon lenses so we could at least set the f-stop on the lens itself, but we then had to “trick” the camera into its other
Hurlbut used the camera to follow Navy SEALs on their maneuvers for the feature The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday. The camera allowed a wide variety of angles to be captured quickly.
settings by panning it around until it settled on 1⁄ 50 shutter and 500 ASA. We then locked the camera for the take, but as soon as we cut, the settings were lost. Even with manual control over the exposure settings, the still lenses were troublesome, most noticeably in terms of focus pulling. In our early days of working with the 5D, Gary Hatfield rigged a coffee stir stick to the lens that he could adjust using three notches he made on the side of the camera corresponding to full (infinity), half (2') and empty (8"). Though we made it through with that configuration, this system was especially dubious considering the camera’s extremely shallow depth-of-field. We worked with Panavision Hollywood, first to put together some helmetcam rigs for the Terminator Webisodes, and eventually to attach Panavision’s FIZ remote-focus units to the cameras. With FIZ units on still lenses, we went into production on The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, which follows real Navy SEALs on training missions and incorporates that footage into an overarching fictional 90
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narrative. When we started shooting, we applied a hybrid approach, using 5Ds to capture unique and visceral angles to underscore the action when the SEALs were on missions, and using 35mm for the expository scenes that would set the stage for the action. The 5D’s small footprint gives us access to areas we’d never get into if we showed up with a 35mm package and a 50-person crew. Easy Day could not be made with any other camera currently available; there’s no other way to capture, in such high quality, the sense of immediacy we want for the SEALs sequences. We can give helmet-cam rigs to the soldiers to get POV shots over the gun barrel and in other action; we can be in the chopper over the pilot’s shoulder; and we can be in the river getting blasted with water. We can put the audience right in the thick of things and capture all of the action in real time. Keen to see where else we could push this camera, I called Dan Donovan, the senior marketing executive who has been my contact at Panavision Hollywood American Cinematographer
for years, and asked if he had a Panavision lens adapter for a Canon still camera. It turned out there were two sitting around from the old Kodak/Panavision PreView system. We were about to shoot aboard an aircraft carrier, so I took the Panavision adapter and mounted a Primo lens to the 5D for a Steadicam shot following two SEALs all through the ship. When I looked at the monitor, everything fell into place. This little DSLR camera was giving me an image that looked just like film. Because of the 5D’s lightweight plastic body, the Primos can torque the mount in a way that makes the FIZ motor pop off, so Guy McVicker and Dan Owens at Panavision Hollywood have designed a mounting bracket that essentially supports the lens, with the camera hanging off the back of the Primo. I’m sure this is a glimpse of the future of moviemaking, when we’ll literally mount a chip on the back of a high-quality motion-picture lens. Because the 5D’s sensor is so huge, we figured the widest Primo we could actually put on the camera was the
35mm. But then Canon released the EOS 7D, with an APS-C-sized (roughly 23mm x 15mm) 18-megapixel sensor that lets us use the entire range without vignetting. So instead of going back to still lenses for the wide work, we can use Primos for everything (unless, of course, we’re using a helmet-cam rig). The only drawback is that the 7D’s sensor doesn’t seem as nice in its handling of underexposure and overexposure. But the 7D shoots in 24p, so you don’t have to worry about converting footage from 30 fps, and it also has dual Digic 4 Imaging Processors and is capable of shooting 60 fps. The color space with both cameras is incredibly narrow: 8-bit color depth in video mode. And if you don’t feed the sensor enough light, the camera cycles into lower bit depths to capture the image, resulting in an even more fragile image that stands almost no chance of surviving color correction. (Consequently, you have to constantly monitor the camera’s color temperature and ensure that what you’re shooting is as close as possible to the desired final image.) However, the camera gives us a leg up in that it can shoot at an ASA well over 500, and it’s better to increase the ASA, even at the cost of increasing digital noise, because it gives you a tighter workspace with your color. On Easy Day, I’ve been shooting night exteriors at 1,600 ASA, and to smooth over the digital noise, I recently shot a test on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, rolling a couple hundred feet on a gray card. Technicolor processed the film and transferred it so we could play with it digitally, and with After Effects, we were able to dial out the gray and extract only the grain, which we then laid over the footage from the 5D. The 5219 grain pattern totally absorbed the digital noise. The 7D’s smaller sensor results in greater depth-of-field compared to the 5D, meaning you can shoot at a T2 instead of a T5.6 and still have a fighting chance of keeping things in focus. On both cameras, though, the latitude is pretty extraordinary, and I’ve learned that you can’t use a light meter. I’ve been in situations where my meter read T.7 and we were exposing at a T4, and the subject
looked like he was keyed. Shooting with still lenses, I was seeing about 5½ stops below key and about 3½ stops over. When we went to the Primos, the latitude increased by about 1½ stops in both directions. After seeing the Primo glass combined with the 5D’s sensor, we’ve decided to shoot the remainder of Easy Day — even the sequences we’d planned to shoot with 35mm — with a combination of the 5D and 7D. Bandito Brothers is the Los Angeles-based production company I’ve worked with on all of these 5D projects. I like to think of the company as a one-stop shop from prep through post, and its modus operandi is in keeping with the small-footprint mentality the 5D encourages. Everyone wears multiple hats on a Bandito production, and the company’s facility gathers everything you need to make a movie under one roof: three editing bays, an Inferno bay, a screening theater, a full color-timing suite, a cafeteria, a conference room, and “production offices” set up in army tents. We’ve recently been working on what we call the “sizzle reel” for The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, an extended trailer that the producers can show to potential distributors. Honestly, every time I watch it, I well up because of what we’ve been through to get to this point. The 5D and 7D are at the cutting edge, and they’ve thrown me plenty of curveballs, but I’m convinced that riding this wave will take us into whatever the future paradigm of moviemaking might be. Falling off the board is part of the ride. We get back up and keep going. We embrace the cameras’ quirks, and we push the cameras to be better, even as they push us. To see footage shot with the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, visit www.hurlbut visuals.com. ●
Top and middle: Working with Panavision Hollywood, Hurlbut has taken to mounting Primo primes and zooms on the camera. “I’m sure this is a glimpse of the future of moviemaking, when we’ll literally mount a chip on the back of a highquality motionpicture lens,” he writes. Bottom: Hurlbut and camera assistant Mike Svitak (left) set up a shot for a U.S. Navy recruitment video.
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JOIN HOLLYWOOD’S PROFESSIONALS IN
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June 4-5, Expo and Premier Seminars June 3-5, The Film Series & Competition June 6, Master Class Seminars The Studios at Paramount, Hollywood, CA phone: 310.472.0809 fax: 310.471.8973 email:
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New Products & Services LiteGear Offers LiteRibbons LiteGear Inc., a specialty lighting company owned and operated by on-set lighting technicians, has announced the official availability of its LED LiteRibbon system. The system consists of a flexible LED ribbon, flicker-free dimmers, and a complete line of power supplies and distribution. LiteRibbon is available in Warm White, Cool White, Diffused Silicone, RGB and other color configurations. Able to be cut into custom lengths in 1" increments, LiteRibbon is complemented by LiteDimmer, a high-frequency, high-capacity LED dimmer capable of flicker-free operation regardless of camera speed, shutter angle or ramping. LiteRibbon strips are easily powered by 12 volts of DC power from supplies, batteries or automobile adapters. The system can also be made waterproof. Al DeMayo, LiteGear’s head of engineering, says, “Technicians like the ability to easily create custom light fixtures that meet their unique needs. On the fly, guys can whip up something that fits into a handheld prop, spaceship or even the [illuminated] power source for a certain iron superhero.” LiteRibbon has been tested and proven on such features as Star Trek (AC June ’09) and the upcoming Iron Man 2 as well as such series as Bones, The Mentalist and Southland. For more information, visit www.litegear.com. Dadco Shines with 24K HMIs Dadco, manufacturer of the Sunray line of HMI lighting fixtures, has introduced two 24K HMIs, the Challenger SunArc and the G4. Both fixtures are designed with a host of advanced features, including a cost-effective convertibility allowing each unit to operate as a 12, 18 or 24K light. Boasting 30-percent more light output than 18K discharge lights, both the Challenger and G4 are ETL listed to UL standards and built by highly trained IATSE Local Union craftsmen. In addition to the Sunray product line, Dadco manufactures a line of specialty lighting fixtures and AC power-distribution systems. For more information, visit www.dadcopowerand lights.com.
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• SUBMISSION INFORMATION • Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to:
[email protected] and include full contact information and product images. Photos must be TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.
LEDZ Expands Brute Line LEDZ has introduced the Brute3, a versatile, lightweight, 5500°K LED fixture. The Brute3 boasts a circular beam with a long throw, and the light’s various accessories — including an onboard battery — make it useful in a variety of situations. The Brute3 is available in different kit options, including a car kit with two head units and an extended battery that clips to a belt or c-stand; the extended battery will run the fixture for up to 4 hours. Additionally, LEDZ provides the following photometrics for the Brute3: Distance 2' 4' 6' 8' 10'
Footcandles 400 90 48 30 22
Diameter 1.5' 2' 3' 4' 5'
All LEDZ products are available through worldwide distributor Hollywood Rentals. For more information, visit www.led-z.com. Panasonic Updates P2 Mobile Panasonic has introduced the solid-state AJ-HPM200 P2 Mobile, a P2 HD mobile recorder/player. The HPM200 offers all of the popular features found in its predecessor, the AJ-HPM110, and adds such functionality as enhanced editing with separate source and record windows, playback from external disk drives, AVCHD compatibility (with the AJYCX250G option card), upconversion of live video inputs in real time, FTP and Giga-bit Ethernet interfaces for expanded network connectivity and 24p time code input for production applications, including use as a source for a dailies process. With DVCPro HD and AVCIntra standard compatibility, AVCHD optional compatibility and expanded input/output connections, the HPM200 P2 Mobile is a
American Cinematographer
Camtrol Opens Operating Possibilities The Camtrol stabilizing platform for video and DSLR cameras is now available. Following a “no rules, only tools” philosophy, Camtrol offers users balance, support and freedom while enabling dynamic shooting possibilities. Features of the Camtrol include a LANC remote receiver, “true-feel” Action Control Grip (ACG), fully articulated joint system, channeled mounting plate and retractable “landing gear.” The ACG provides for natural hand positioning and control, and the channeled mounting platform helps keep the system centered, level and easy to handle. The platform also adds critical weight for stability, and its cushioned design prevents camera slippage and unwanted vibration. Camtrol’s three 360-degree rotating ball joints enable both low angle and overhead shots, and the four swing-out legs give the user a quick and safe way to reset the Camtrol in different positions. A vertical stabilizing bar properly adjusts the system’s center of gravity and also enables twohanded control. Additionally, the sturdy T-6 aluminum body offers protection and support in case the camera is dropped. The Camtrol has a recommended price of $399.99. For more information, visit www.camtrol.com. comprehensive and versatile master-quality HD field recorder that can be used with a wide array of camera systems. The field recorder offers 10-bit independent-frame 4:2:2 quality recording in a variety of highdefinition formats and frame rates, including 1080p (native), 1080i and 720p, as well as standard-definition DVCPro50/25 and DV. With enhanced editing functions and network capabilities, the HPM200 has increased appeal for use in production facilities, news, sports and live-event staging applications. The HPM200’s split-
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screen function displays both the source and recorded images simultaneously for easier editing, and other new features enable clip exchange, multiple clip selection, undo/redo last action, auto record and text memo. The P2 Mobile also offers two-channel voiceover recording and realtime audio memory during playback. In addition to the connections offered on the HPM110 — including HDSDI input/output, analog component/composite and audio, IEEE 1394 and USB 2.0 — the HPM200 adds compatible AES Digital audio inputs and outputs as well as high-speed eSATA and Giga-bit Ethernet. The P2 Mobile ensures highquality recording with 10-bit 4:2:2 AVCIntra or compatibility with existing DVCPro editors when connected to any HD-SDIequipped camera, camcorder, deck or device; professionals can then randomly access and view content selected via thumbnail clips on the unit’s built-in 9" LCD monitor. Additional features include RS422A for remote-control operation, a range of recording functions (including loop record), eight 16-bit digital audio channels, built-in waveform and
vectorscope, broadcast-level editing controls with a jog/shuttle dial (100x forward/reverse speed) and audio faders, an SD card slot and assignable user files. The P2 Mobile boasts a durable, compact, laptop-style design with a magnesium diecast frame for easy transport. It operates on either AC or DC power and is backed by a five-year limited warranty program. For more information, visit www.panasonic.com/broadcast.
Sony Pictures Opens Colorworks Sony Pictures Entertainment has opened Colorworks, a full-service digitalintermediate facility located on its historic lot in Culver City. The 14,000-square-foot center, housed in Stage 6, features stateof-the-art technology offering real-time 4K processing in a full digital workflow.
manage the extraordinary size of digitized motion pictures, the DI center houses nearly 3.5 petabytes of computer storage. In fact, Colorworks’ digital-file-based workflow leads the studio’s development of a digital production and distribution infrastructure called the Digital Backbone. “Digital intermediate and mastering are a lesser known but critical piece of the filmmaking puzzle,” says Gary Martin, president of Production Administration and Sony Pictures Studio Operations. “We are thrilled to have our own center here on the lot, but more than that, the facility and the personnel are truly top of the line.” The Colorworks team includes colorists John Persichetti, Steve Bowen and Trent Johnson; projects that have already gone through the Colorworks’ pipeline include Michael Jackson’s This is It, Zombieland and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. For more information, visit www.sonypictures.com.
The facility can scan and manage film in 4K to ensure the highest quality archival and distribution product for new and restored motion-picture projects. To 96
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Atlas Supports, Stabilizes Cameras The Atlas Camera Support and Stabilization System uses patented overthe-shoulder support — combining a comfortable harness with a flexible fiberglass rod — to hold a camera. This design takes the camera’s weight off the operator’s shoulders and arms and distributes it to the operator’s core, enabling longer periods of shooting without fatigue. A Velcro strap with an attached Dring wraps around the camera’s handle and allows the camera to be connected to the fiberglass rod using an adjustable webbing strap. The rod, which is held in place with a tunnel casing on the back of
American Cinematographer
the operator’s harness, then absorbs vibrations before they reach the camera, making for smooth shots even when moving. The regular-duty Atlas can accommodate cameras from 4 to 14 pounds, while a heavy-duty option works with cameras up to 30 pounds. For more information, visit www.atlascamerasupport.com.
Key Grip Systems Unveils Monotracks KGS Development, a subsidiary of Key Grip Systems Belgium, has introduced the Monotracks system. Designed for ease of use, the Monotracks are precision machined from carefully chosen aluminum alloys. The lightweight, rigid, symmetrical tracks boast a sleeper assembly allowing for fast setup in a variety of shooting situations. The Monotracks’ high-resistance stainless-steel connectors and pre-stressed mechanical assembly contribute to the track system’s precision, while plastic profiles guarantee the tracks are protected during transport. For more information, visit www.kgsd.eu. ●
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Classifieds CLASSIFIED AD RATES
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE
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All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set in bold face or all capitals are $5.00 per word. First word of ad and advertiser’s name can be set in capitals without extra charge. No agency commission or discounts on classified advertising.PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER. VISA, Mastercard, AmEx and Discover card are accepted. Send ad to Classified Advertising, American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078. Or FAX (323) 876-4973. Deadline for payment and copy must be in the office by 15th of second month preceding publication. Subject matter is limited to items and services pertaining to filmmaking and video production. Words used are subject to magazine style abbreviation. Minimum amount per ad: $45
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Advertiser’s Index 16x9, Inc. 98 AC 4, 79 AFI 87 Aja Video Systems, Inc. 17 Alan Gordon Enterprises 99 Apparition 5 Arri 41 Arri CSC 55 AZGrip 98 Backstage Equipment, Inc. 95 Band Pro Film & Digital 9 Barger-Lite 6 Birns & Sawyer 98 Burrell Enterprises 98 Camera Image 97 Canon 83 Cavision Enterprises 29 Chapman/Leonard Studio Equipment Inc. 13 Chapman University 19 Chrosziel Filmtechnik 85 Cine Gear Expo 93 Cinematography Electronics 89 Cinekinetic 98 Cinerover 98 Clairmont Film & Digital 25 Convergent Design 46 Cooke Optics 6 Deluxe 39
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Eastman Kodak 11, 67, C4 Equipment & Film Design 27 Evidence Productions 98 Film Gear 43 Filmtools 91 Filter Gallery, The 98 Focus Features C2-1 FTC West 98 Fuji Motion Picture 53
Rosco Laboratories, Inc. 58 Shelton Communications 98 Stanton Video Services 6 Summit Entertainment 7 Super16 Inc. 98 Technicolor 15 Telescopic 99 Thales Angenieux 30-31 Tiffen C3
Glidecam Industries 21
VF Gadgets, Inc. 99
High Def Expo 103 Hollywood Post Alliance 89 Hochschule 95
Willy’s Widgets 98 www.theasc.com 70, 83, 95, 99
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Clubhouse News
Lukk Becomes Associate New associate member Howard Lukk began his work with the ASC while serving as director of technology for Digital Cinema Initiatives. Along with fellow associate member Walt Ordway, Lukk contacted the ASC to seek members’ input in the establishment of standards for digital exhibition. That collaboration led to the ASC-DCI Stem test. Lukk is currently the director of media systems at Pixar Animation Studios.
Top to bottom: Jim Denault, ASC; Mario Tosi, ASC (right) and Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival President Gregory von Hausch; Robert Primes, ASC; Lance Acord, ASC (left) and AC associate editor Jon D. Witmer.
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Tosi Honored in Fort Lauderdale Mario Tosi, ASC was recently honored with the inaugural Lifetime Achievement in Cinematography Award at the 24th annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. The festival screened a retrospective of his films, including Carrie, MacArthur, The Betsy, The Main Event and The Stunt Man. A native of Rome, Italy, Tosi settled in Fort Lauderdale after enjoying a American Cinematographer
busy career in Hollywood. “This recognition … makes this town ever more my city,” he says. Deakins, Farrar Honored in L.A. The 13th annual Hollywood Film Festival and Hollywood Awards recently honored Society members Roger Deakins and Scott Farrar. Deakins received the Hollywood Cinematographer Award, while Farrar took home the Hollywood Visual Effects Award for his work on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (AC Aug. ’09). Deakins received another honor, the 2009 Nikola Tesla Award in Recognition of Visionary Achievement in Filmmaking Technology, at the International Press Academy’s 14th annual Satellite Awards. Primes Dines with FilmFellas Robert Primes, ASC recently joined cinematographers Trent Opaloch, Philip Bloom and Jens Bogehegn for Zacuto Films’ Web series FilmFellas. The foursome talked shop around the dinner table, discussing creative freedom, the art of collaboration, and how to maintain a project’s vision. A lively debate centered upon DSLR cameras’ impact on filmmaking. To watch FilmFellas, visit www.zacuto.com. ASC Busy at HD Expo Lance Acord, ASC discussed his work with AC associate editor Jon D. Witmer in a keynote presentation at HD Expo Los Angeles in November. Focusing on Acord’s continuing collaboration with director Spike Jonze, the conversation touched on the features Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are. Also at HD Expo, Rodney Taylor, ASC joined the panel discussion “3-D: Creativity, Imagery and Cinematography”; Yuri Neyman, ASC led an intensive workshop on Gamma & Density Co.’s 3cP system; and associate member Larry Parker participated in the panel “Hard Core, Revolutionary and Indispensable: Must-Have and Must-See Gear.” ●
Primes photo courtesy of Zacuto. Acord photo by Ryan Millar, courtesy of Capture Imaging and Createasphere.
Society Welcomes Denault Growing up in New York’s Hudson River Valley, Jim Denault, ASC developed an early fascination with photography and received his first camera when he was 7 years old. His passion eventually took him to the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in photography. Denault credits 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he saw at the age of 9, for making him aware of cinematography. But it wasn’t until 1986, when he was hired as the boom operator on the low-budget independent feature Cheap Shots, that he realized not all filmmakers grew up in Hollywood. He began working steadily as an electrician, climbing the ranks to gaffer and then cinematographer. His credits as director of photography include the features Boys Don’t Cry, Real Women Have Curves, Maria Full of Grace (AC May ’04) and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. He earned an Emmy nomination for his work on the series Carnivàle, and he shot episodes of the series Six Feet Under, In Plain Sight and Royal Pains.
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Billy Dickson, ASC
When you were a child, what films made the strongest impression on you? I can recall two, both very dramatic pieces: Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Wait Until Dark (1967). Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire, and why? There are so many great cinematographers it’s hard to say, but probably ASC members Caleb Deschanel and Jordan Cronenweth, because when I was a young cinematographer, producers were always asking me to make our movies look like the films shot by those gentlemen. I loved to study their work. What sparked your interest in photography? My uncle was a great amateur photographer. He’d take Kodachrome slides and come over to the house and set up his projector, and we’d all sit around the living room watching his slide shows. I was mesmerized by the crispness and color of the photographs. Where did you train and/or study? I attended Pasadena City College for two years, but I am mostly self-taught. I worked a graveyard shift at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and on slow nights, which were many, I read everything about filmmaking that I could get my hands on. At that job, I earned enough money to rent cameras, buy 16mm film and pay for processing so I could make short films. I ruined a lot of film. Who were your teachers or mentors? I was fortunate to meet a cinematographer named Henning Schellerup, who was a great teacher. He was shooting movies for a company called Sunn Classics, and he asked me to work as his second camera assistant. Working at Sunn Classics was like filmmaker boot camp; I learned so much. As an AC, I’d load film, pull focus, set up cameras, and sometimes go off and shoot second unit. It gave me the training no school could have given me at the time. What are some of your key artistic influences? I like to watch a lot of movies and television. I get the most from seeing other cinematographers’ work. Good or bad, I learn a lot. How did you get your first break in the business? I was officially moved up to director of photography on a TV movie by producer Andrew Mirisch and director E.W. Swakhamer. I had been operating on movies of the week and met both men while we were shooting a series of Westerns, Desperado, for NBC. They liked my operating, looked at a demo I put together, and decided I would be a good choice to shoot the next two Desperado movies for them. What has been your most satisfying moment on a project? Once, when things were pretty tough and I thought my work 104
January 2010
wasn’t very good on a series I was shooting, I came home to find a message on my machine from Woody Omens, ASC, telling me I’d been nominated for an ASC Award. I celebrated all night. It validated the work I was struggling with. I kept that message on my machine for the longest time and played it back whenever I doubted myself. Have you made any memorable blunders? Conveniently, I don’t remember most of them! On the first TV movie I shot, I underexposed the night work on the first day. Feeling pressure from the producer, I rushed to get the scene done on time — I wasn’t ready but shot anyway. The next day, I got the lab report, and my stomach sank. That’s the worst feeling a cinematographer can have. They forgave me — ‘first day’ and all — but I have not underexposed film since then. What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received? Stay true to yourself. When everything is crazy around you and you feel like you’re being forced into making all the compromises, do what is right for you and make the compromises you can live with. In the end, what people see on the screen is what they remember you by. What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you? I’m a little weird in that trade magazines and tech books inspire me. Magazines like American Cinematographer and Popular Science stretch my imagination and get me thinking. Do you have any favorite genres, or are there genres you would like to try? I would love to do another Western. I also love period pieces and sci-fi. I’d like to create my own vision of something with no real boundaries or rules to adhere to. If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you being doing instead? I always wanted to be an astronaut, but since NASA isn’t likely to accept my application, I’d probably work in visual effects. I like doing CGI. Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership? George Spiro Dibie, Richard Rawlings Jr. and Sy Hoffberg. How has ASC membership impacted your life and career? It has validated the 30 years I’ve been in this business. Being a member of an elite group of people is an honor in any field. Being invited to join the ASC is by far the best recognition I’ve ever received. Having ‘ASC’ after my name is an honor and a privilege. ●
American Cinematographer
Photo by Billy Dickson Jr.
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ONFILM M I C H A E L G O I, A S C
“I believe in magic. As a child, I watched 8 mm movies projected on the living room wall at a friend’s house and gazed at the frames as they danced toward the light. That these images on a piece of celluloid could tell stories, take me to strange places, teach me about the past, and inspire me toward the future was absolutely magical to me. When I was 8 years old, my parents bought me a secondhand movie camera and I never looked back. ... The power of cinematographic images circles the entire world. It goes beyond entertainment, beyond information. It is an indelible document of who we are and what we believe; something that cannot be erased – a work of art born from a passion for light and shadow. … When I finish a movie, I still ask the projectionist if I can rewind the last reel so I can see the frames and watch the cuts go by. The magic is still there.” Michael Goi, ASC earned an Emmy® nomination for My Name is Earl and ASC Award nominations for the television films The Fixer and Judas. He has earned more than 50 credits, including The Mentalist, Who Killed Atlanta’s Children?, The Dukes, Red Water and Expecting Mary. Goi is president of the American Society of Cinematographers. [All these programs were shot on Kodak motion picture film.] For an extended interview with Michael Goi, visit www.kodak.com/go/onfilm. To order Kodak motion picture film, call (800) 621-film. www.motion.kodak.com © Eastman Kodak Company, 2009. Photography: © 2009 Douglas Kirkland
